The Game Changer Award: Kate Edwards
The Game Changer Award celebrates an individual who has impacted the gaming landscape in a significant way, a positive disruptor who has has brought a paradigm shift to our community.
Kate Edwards is the CEO and principal consultant of Geogrify, a consultancy for content culturalization, a Board Member of Take This, and is the former Executive Director of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) from 2012 to 2017. In addition to being an outspoken advocate who serves in several advisory/board roles, she is a geographer, writer, and corporate strategist. Following 13 years at Microsoft, she has consulted on many game and non-game projects for BioWare, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and many other companies. Fortune magazine named her as one of the “10 most powerful women” in the game industry and she was named by GamesIndustry.biz as one of their six People of the Year. In April 2018, she was honored with Reboot Develop’s annual Hero Award, and is profiled in the November 2018 publication Women in Gaming: 100 Pioneers of Play
The Bernie De Koven Big Fun Award: Douglas Wilson
This annual honorary award was created in collaboration with Bernie DeKoven, to honor his legacy and to recognize individuals or organizations significantly furthering the field and impact of new, big, and physical games.
Douglas Wilson is a Lecturer at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, where he teaches and researches game design. Douglas is also a co-owner of Die Gute Fabrik, a small games studio based in Copenhagen, Denmark. He is best known for his award-winning motion control game, Johann Sebastian Joust, winner of the Innovation Award at the 2012 Game Developers Choice Awards. His work has been exhibited at festivals and museums around the world, including: MoMA, the Museum of the Moving Image, Hong Kong Arts Centre, SFMOMA, IGF, IndieCade, PAX, and Roskilde Festival.
