Warren Spector
Studio Director, OtherSide Entertainment
After starting his career in 1983 in tabletop games, Mr. Spector moved into digital games in 1989 where he worked at Origin/Electronic Arts (Ultima VI, Martian Dreams, etc.) and, later, Looking Glass (Underworld, System Shock, etc.), Ion Storm (Deus Ex) and Eidos (Deus Ex: Invisible War, Thief: Deadly Shadows). In 2004 he started Junction Point Studios, later acquired by the Walt Disney Company (Epic Mickey, Epic Mickey: The Power of Two). Now he works at Otherside Entertainment as Studio/Creative Director.
Jonathan Blow
President, Thekla, Inc
Jonathan Blow is a game designer/programmer living in San Francisco, USA. His most recent games were The Witness and Braid. He is working on a programming language to replace C++, and is a partner in IndieFund.
Gabby Llanillo
QA Supervisor, Riot Games
Gabby Llanillo is a QA Supervisor on Valorant at Riot Games with over 5 years of experience in the games industry. She previously worked on Naughty Dog’s upcoming standalone multiplayer project and The Last of Us Part II as a QA lead, and did localization for Square Enix’s Dragon Quest XI and Idea Factory Intl’s Death end re;Quest. She hopes to continue to advocate for increasing diversity in both video games and the workplace, as well as improved treatment and recognition for QA industry-wide.
Ilari Kuittinen
Studio Head, Housemarque
Ilari Kuittinen is the co-founder and Studio Head of the award-winning game studio Housemarque. Ilari started his career in 1993, when he co-founded one of the first game studios in Finland, before co-founding Housemarque with Harri Tikkanen two years later. After 26 years of full-time entrepreneurship and running an independent game studio, Housemarque joined PlayStation Studios family in 2021.
Dennis Micka
Senior Game Designer, Guerrilla
Dennis Micka is a Dutch Senior Game Designer at Guerrilla in Amsterdam. His most recent credits includes Horizon Forbidden West, for which he designed the Cauldrons and Salvage Contracts – two optional activities in the game.
Credits:
– Horizon Forbidden West
– Horizon The Frozen Wilds
– Karmaflow: The Rock Opera Game
– Killzone Shadow Fall
Moritz Lehr
Senior Quest Designer, CD PROJEKT RED
A lifelong lover of tabletop RPGs & sci-fi literature, Moritz’s work on Cyberpunk 2077 allowed him to explore the intersection of storytelling, agency, technology, and philosophy. Before entering game dev in the Berlin indie scene, he worked in television and made promo videos for nightclubs while finishing his master’s degree in philosophy.Apart from Cyberpunk 2077, Moritz has also worked on the Phantom Liberty extension, GATES, Forever Forest, Jermania, Eddie’s Teambuilding, Kingdoms & Monsters.
Sarah Beaulieu
Narrative Director, Ubisoft
Sarah Beaulieu is a writer and narrative designer, who recently worked as narrative director on Assassin’s Mirage. She has written for several media during the past 12 years, from movie, theater, to video games or virtual reality. She is deeply passionate about all forms of narrative, and dedicates lots of her time to learning more about ways to tell stories.
Linda Komsic
Senior QA Manager, Square Enix
Cat mum of the year. Snapback and hoodie enthusiast. Ex-plant killer. Quiet nerd by day, Swiftie by night. Your typical Aries that impulsively left Canada for London for new challenges. Been doing this Quality Assurance thing for 16 years since starting as a tester in 2007 and love talking about anything and everything QA – the unsung heroes of the industry.
Jakub Dvorský
CEO, Amanita Design
Jakub is the founder, game designer, and creative director at Amanita Design, an independent studio based in Prague, established in 2003. The studio is best known for games such as Machinarium, Botanicula, Samorost series, Chuchel, Pilgrims, Creaks, and Happy Game. Currently, the studio is actively working on ‘Phonopolis’ along with two other yet-to-be-announced projects.
Viktor Blanke
Art Director, Mojang Studios
Viktor Blanke is an art director and creative leader with over 15 years experience in visual design, game development, branding, storytelling, UI/UX and animation.
Currently an Art Director at Mojang Studios, he’s previously worked at EA DICE and Paradox Interactive on games including Battlefield 4, Star Wars: Battlefront, Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, Minecraft Dungeons, Surviving Mars, Empire of Sin and more.
Prior to moving into games, he worked with design, branding and motion graphics studios in London and Sydney for 10 years, before moving back to his native Stockholm.
Will Byles
Director, Dial M for Monkey
Will Byles has been an actor, writer, designer, animator and director in games, film, TV and theatre. Over his long career in the gaming industry, he’s been taking part in the development of such well-known titles as Battlefield 2: Modern Combat, Syndicate, Until Dawn, Hidden Agenda, Man of Medan, The Quarry.
Will Byles is a voting member of BAFTA and sits on the Digital Media Lab External Advisory Board of Imperial College London. In 2023 he founded and runs the motion picture company, Dial M for Monkey, working on an unannounced horror feature film.
Robert Carr
Mission Designer/Senior Sound Designer, Redhill Games
An industry veteran with over 16 years working in Video games and over 20 years working in the audio industry, Rob has spent a significant part of his life devoted to making some of the world best known titles such as GTA V, LA Noire, Red Dead Redemption, Max Payne, Nine to Five and many more in between.
For over three years, Rob has been workings as a game designer for Redhill Games, alongside some of the greatest minds and inspiring game developers in Europe and across the pond as co-developers with Blizzard.
Diogo Vasconcelos
CEO, Nerd Monkeys
With +10 years working in game dev, Diogo Vasconcelos is the co-founder of Nerd Monkeys, an indie studio known for games like “Out of Line” and the “Detective Case and Clown Bot” series, and published “Traffix”, “Railways”, and the “Short Games Collection”. Diogo is an active contributor to the game dev scene, co-founding “Game Dev Camp” and the “Invest in Indie Games” events, and being involved in the “Game Dev Lisbon” community. He also co-hosts the “Totally Planned: Game Dev” podcast.
Giulia Zamboni
Lead Producer, Supermassive Games
10+ years experienced producer, has currently shipped 15+ games on PC and consoles, including the award-winning rpg Alaloth – Champions of the Four Kingdoms with the Italian studio Gamera Interactive.
CSM, Ambassador for Women in Games and Asana, Diversity Champion, worthy of Honourable Mention in Develop 30Under30 2017, Selected Contributor for the book “Women in Gaming: 100 Professionals of Play” in 2018, DStars Production Star 2019.
Teaching production tips at the first Italian University course in Game Production and created the first italian High School Course about videogames. Currently Lead Producer at Supermassive Games.
Anya Combs
Freelance, Games Consultant
Anya Combs has been in the digital and tabletop games space for over a decade, overseeing multiple mobile and online titles launched for Nickelodeon & AddictingGames.
She is most known for her time at Kickstarter where she held the position of Director of Games, working with countless game creators to help launch successful projects on the platform. She is excited to continue supporting game devs as they bring their creative projects to life.
Anya is also a freelance musician based out of NYC, actively playing all around the tri-state are in a number of groups.
Noa Singer
Client Partner, Meta
A Meta and industry veteran working with the leading Gaming companies in the world. Consulting on business and marketing strategy, supporting industry leaders growth, achieve and redefine business goals.
Merve Meszaros
Tech Lead, Threaks
Merve is a Tech Lead at Threaks, responsible for the technical project management of console and computer games. With 8 years of experience in the game industry, she has a diverse background working on serious and mobile games. Passionate about nurturing the next generation of game developers, she mentors students at university. Outside of the gaming world, she finds inspiration in aerial arts, defying gravity. Additionally, she is addicted to game jams.
Stoyan Stoyanov
Game Director, Jyamma Games
Game Designer turned Director with over 7 years experience. They say variety is the spice of life – well, my creative taste buds are nuked. Started with educational, VR & mobile – then took the leap to AA RPG’s with Cyberpunk 2077 and Techland’s Project Cornerstone. Currently Game Director at Jyamma Games, finding out the only thing harder than beating a soulslike is making one. Whether you’re into competitive sports, tech or Atlantic sea urchins – I bet we’ll find common ground.
Philipp Zent
CEO, Brainamics GmbH
Philipp is the CEO and co-founder of the VC-backed startup Brainamics, which operates in the field of Neurotechnology and Gaming.So far Brainamics experienced rapid growth and its solution is used by many AAA studios and publishers. Brainamics’ novel approach to testing games is currently completely revolutionising the way game developers validate, test and optimise the user experience in their games.
Mafalda Duarte
Studio Director / Producer, Telescope Games
Alongside the newly created team, Mafalda works on “The Last Whale Singer” game and more.
Mafalda is an ambassador for Women in Games and works for the organization as Ambassador Coordinator. In 2022, she co-founded the Game Dev Lisbon collective with other game developers based in Lisbon, with projects such as Game Dev Camp since 2020, Spotlight Awards and most recently, Spotlight Magazine.
Gustav Pastucha
R&D Producer, Pixel Federation
8 years in finance (alternative investments ) were enough for me to understand that I want to move my talents someplace nice. After 1 year as a producer of PixelFederation’s flagship Diggy’s Adventure I had to opportunity to become producer at our R&D, where my responsibility is to manage and allocate resources between our new games and improvements of the old ones.
Dmytro Sigov
Customer success manager, Tenjin
Started as an Indie game developer. Worked in Space Ape games. Worked in an ad network. Currently mobile analytics platform – Tenjin. Based in Berlin
Roman Nazarenko
Lead DE, Playkot
Roman is a seasoned professional with 7 years in Big Data Management
and 5 years in game development. He firmly believes that adopting
data-informed and data-driven approaches is crucial for long-term
success in the game industry.
At Playkot, Roman plays a pivotal role in creating a data platform
from scratch for various midcore, casual, mobile, and social games.
His expertise spans across data engineering, analysis, data
warehousing, and other domains closely tied to data. Roman is
passionate about linking data with product vision.
Pedro Macedo Camacho
Lead Composer on Star Citizen and HMMA Best VG Score 2022 for Chorus
Lead composer Star Citizen
Composer on World of WarCraft, Wolfenstein2, Witcher 3 , Chorus
Hollywood Music in Media Awards 2022 – Best Video Game Score
Independent Games Festival 2008 – Excellence in Audio Award winner
Turn of the Tide
(Netflix series Top10 Worldwide for 2 weeks)
Felipe Mata
VP of Product / Head of Studio, FunPlus
With over a decade of experience in game development and product management, Felipe Mata is VP of Product and Head of studio of FunPlus in Barcelona. Across the many projects he’s worked on, Felipe has demonstrated his capability to drive innovation, execute business plans, develop monetisation strategies, oversee live game operations, and manage corporate portfolios using data analysis, user research and a lot of creativity.
Rodrigo Terra
President, Brazil Games Association
President of Brazil Games Association, the Brazilian Games Companies Association, with 15 years in Entertainment Business, 8 years in XR, Lifetime enterpreneur. LEGO and tech addict. Innovation at heart. Cofounder and CTE of ARVORE, award-winning XR game studio, behind the success of Pixel Ripped and The Line, recognized with a Primetime Emmy of Outstanding Innovation and D.I.C.E. Awards finalist.
Filipe Duart Pina
Senior Producer, Mr Kite
Video games creator with over 20 years of experience with launched titles on multiple platforms such as Nintendo DS, Switch, PlayStation 3&4, Xbox, PC and mobile. Currently a Senior Producer on Today the Game.
Alex Nichiporchik
CEO, tinyBuild
Alex Nichiporchik has been running tinyBuild for 12 years, going from a 2-man indie game developer to an established publisher with worldwide operations. The company is known for games like Potion Craft, Hello Neighbor, Deadside, and many more.
Fawzi Mesmar
VP Global Creative, Ubisoft
Fawzi Mesmar is an award winning Game designer, leader, author and public speaker that has been in the gaming industry for almost two decades in a career that spanned the middle east, New Zealand, Japan and Europe working for companies such as Ubisoft, EA, Activision Blizzard, Gameloft and Atlus to name a few. He has worked on over 20 titles that have been enjoyed by millions of players worldwide including entries in Mario Rabbids, Battlefield, Persona and Star Wars franchises. He is also the author of “Al-Khallab in the art of game design” the first Arabic language text book on game design.
Tamir Nadav
Head of Creative, Kokku Games
Game Designer and Producer with a career spanning nearly 20 years – working with Visual Concepts, Telltale Games, Disney Interactive, Vigil Games and Kokku among others.
David Westerman Ferreira
Senior Online Marketing Manager, Bytro
Although David is experienced in the biggest marketing platforms like Facebook or Google Ads, he’s always looking for the next big thing. That’s how he has successfully added new platforms like Snap and TikTok Ads to the advertising portfolio while managing +3M€ monthly budgets.
David used to host a Videogame Marketing-focused podcast called Marketing Rockers, together with his dear friend and colleague Linus Otten.
Sergei Belkov
Lead Game Designer, iLogos Game Studios
Sergei began his career as a junior GD, developing browser games in MY.GAMES and Destiny Games, and eventually came to mobile while learning all aspects of game development, holding responsibilities not only for game mechanics, but for QA, CM, localization and business talks. Sergei used to work on Evermerge and consult several teams creating merge products, now he’s a lead game designer in an outsource company iLogos Game Studios, which provides full cycle development for those who want to create great products
Guido Rosso
CEO / Co-Founder, Rive
Guido is a designer who spent the last two decades building interactive experiences for some of the world’s leading brands. Now, he and his developer twin brother Luigi are building Rive, a new design platform for our runtime world.
Miquel Gelabert
Creative Director, Voodoo
Inal Kardan
Gaming Lead, TON Foundation
Inal is the developer advocate at TON Foundation with a focus on game development. Inal has founded several gaming + blockchain successful startups, including Meta0 and Waves Ducks.
Yaroslav Shakula
CEO, yard [hub]
Yaroslav Shakula is the CEO of YARD Hub, a web3 venture studio. He has been involved in award-winning Web3 projects as an investor and advisor. Yaroslav is passionate about DAOs, community-backed projects, and gaming industry disruption through blockchain. Yaroslav is a Stanford GSB alumni.
Alex Arias
CEO, Huru Gaming
Passionate about videogames since I was 3 years old. Amazed by the revolution that blockchain will create in the sector.
Founder of Huru Gaming. The gateway for gamers into web3 gaming. We are one of the biggest web3 gaming organizations and are developing new products for all the web2 gamers to help them jump into web3.
Stan Minasov
VP of Product, AppMagic
Stan Minasov is VP of Product at AppMagic with over 10 years of experience in the IT industry and a special love for games and education. He has worked both in large corporations and small start-ups and has even developed one of his own.
Additionally, Stan is teaching product management at top-tier universities and actively speaks at international conferences.
Katleen Evers
VP, Publisher & Developer Relations, EMEA, Pingle Game Studio
Senior Business Developer Director, entrepreneurial driven, and proven abilities to create, maintain and enhance cross-continental and cross-level client relationships. 15+ years of experience in expanding businesses, projects and teams, public speaker, judge, mentor, gamer.
Julien Cazenave
Head of product, Kinetix
Julien Cazenave is an experienced product manager who is working for companies in the creative industry for more than a decade. After building and leading the product at Believe, a very successful music start up that finally reached the IPO milestone, he pivoted to the gaming industry, his first love, by joining Kinetix to support the future of gaming.
Jorge Canga
Founder, Kaizen Internet
Jorge is an internet entrepreneur with a full-stack marketing background.
He has been linked to mobile gaming since 2015. Starting his career in the ad network side, he transitioned to a mobile game developer (Lab Cave) where he became the Head of Product Marketing, handling the UA and Ad Monetization on top of building an internal mediation tool. Then, he joined Playwing as the Growth lead where he oversaw all the UA, Ad Monetization and ASO efforts.
Shortly after, he created and has been running his own company for the past 5 years, where he has created several games and apps internally as well as helping other game developers in the UA, Ad Monetization and ASO fronts.
Paco Juan Quirós
Animation Tech Programmer, IO Interactive
Animation Tech and Tools programmer at IO Interactive. Been around the video games industry for six years, most of them spent in multiple programming roles across indie projects. Now working on IOI’s upcoming games, Project 007 and Project Fantasy.
Tom Cunliffe
Product Manager, Kwalee
I have worked at Kwalee for 3 years, recently stepping into a Product role, formerly a Publishing Manager focused on hypercasual titles. I’ve worked on Kwalee publishing titles such as Build Your Vehicle, Who Done It, Tow N Go, Sharpshooter Blitz and Hack Computer as part of Kwalee’s billion download portfolio.
Michael Schade
CEO & Co-Founder, ROCKFISH Games
Michael is a serial entrepreneur, marketing & PR expert, and seasoned speaker with over 30 years of experience in the CGI / video games industry. He co-founded ROCKFISH Games as a fully independent games studio specializing in space action games for PC and console in 2014.
Vasco Magalhães Pereira
AI Programmer, IO-Interactive
Vasco started his career in video games at Rockstar North as a Junior Gameplay/AI programmer. This was a couple of years after he had finished his master’s degree in computer science. He has since started working at IO-Interactive as an AI Programmer and will be presenting some of the work he’s been doing.
Alex Protsenko
Head of Business Development (UX Center), NetEase Games
Alex holds the position of Head of Business Development at NetEase Games UX Center, located in Berlin, Germany. His team specializes in Player Research, Market Research, UX, Data Analytics, and AI solutions for the gaming industry. Having transitioned from the Telecom sector to the dynamic world of gaming, through the past years Alex has predominantly focused on Player Research, Player Experience Insights, and the formulation of Incremental Revenue strategies.
Tadeja Irmancnik
Global brand partnerships & Co-brandings // Talking Tom & Friends, OUTFIT7 Group
Passionate about gaming and business, I’m a dedicated storyteller with a journalism, PR, and marketing background. With over a decade of experience partnering with global brands, I draw inspiration from Talking Tom & Friends. My focus is on merging storytelling, gaming, and business to deliver impactful products and partnerships.
Davíð Einarsson
Senior Project Manager of Player Experience, CCP Games
I have 17 years of experience in gaming customer support. I’ve worn about as many hats are there are to wear within the customer service discipline and have extensive knowledge of most if not all facets of supporting a video game.
New speakers are added to the list regularly.
For the complete list of speakers, including panel discussion participants, and to learn more about their talks, make sure to visit this page on PINE.
