Kate Edwards is an award-winning veteran of the game industry who is CEO and principal consultant of Geogrify, and the CXO and Co-Founder of SetJetters. She is also the former Executive Director of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) and the Global Game Jam.

AJ serves as the Director of Esports Operations for the University of Utah’s varsity Esports program. Utah Esports is in its’ 5th year as a varsity program and scholarships 34 student-athletes and competes in 4 games. Utah Esports is operated out of the Entertainment Arts & Engineering game development program.

Jeremy Gibson Bond is a Professor of Practice teaching game design and development at Michigan State University, the #1 ranked public university for undergraduate game design education (Princeton Review, 2022). Since 2013, he has served the IndieCade independent game festival and conference as the Chair of Education and Advancement, where he co-chairs the IndieXchange summit each year. Jeremy is the founder of ExNinja Interactive and the author of all three editions of “Introduction to Game Design, Prototyping, and Development: From Concept to Playable Game in Unity and C#,” a best-selling book on game design and development.

Anthony Palma is a Partner at Griffin Gaming Partners, the world’s largest VC firm exclusively focused on the video game industry.

After running Lazy 8 Studios for 8 years and launching award-winning games like Cogs and Extrasolar, Rob moved on to work at Google and Meta, where his lessons from his work as an indie developer have informed his work and shaped his career.

Geoffrey Golden is a narrative designer and game writer in Los Angeles, CA. He’s written for Capcom, Disney, Ubisoft, Square Enix, and indie studios around the world.

A veteran producer with over 18 years of experience in the games industry, Dave has played a critical role in successfully shipping award-winning projects for major game studios and Fortune 500 companies.

The overall goal of my work is to investigate ways in which we can create deeply meaningful and personalised play experiences. I like AI. Besides researching and teaching, I make games, and paint.

Sean Gouglas is a Professor of Digital Humanities at the University of Alberta. His research focuses on the relationship between universities and the computer game industry in Canada and the United States, especially as it relates to curriculum and technology transfer.

Indie Founder/Director at Retora Games and Adjunct Lecturer at University of Texas at Austin. Loves Procedural Generation, Algorithmic Art, and hearing what you are most passionate about!

Steph Orme specializes in gaming and esports research, with a special focus on diversity and inclusion. She has helped several colleges and universities develop esports curricula.

A.M. Darke is an artist and two-time failed IndieCade award nominee. She currently teaches game design and media art at UC Santa Cruz, and directs the Open Source Afro Hair Library.

Passionate about creating at the intersection of art and technology. Working as a consultant and tech-artist for studios of various sizes, primarily on realtime XR and virtual production projects.

Chris Totten is the program coordinator of the Kent State Animation Game Design program. He is also an experienced game developer, author of several books on game and level design, and a co-founder of the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) Arcade.

Benjamin is the Director of Publishing at Freedom Games. A long-time supporter of IndieCade, Benjamin is also on the IndieCade Alumni board.

Tim uses hardware, electronics and code to make products, games and experiences that couldn’t exist in any other way.

Cam Perry is a black, nonbinary designer and writer currently working as a designer for Schell Games. Outside of Schell, they are also working on a variety of projects part-time, most notably the dating-sim “Validate”.

Ted DiNola is a game programmer and designer with over 13 years of experience building games. They currently work at Meta as a developer relations engineer.

Professor Akram Taghavi-Burris is an award-winning designer, writer, and educator, who currently holds the title of Instructor of Computer Simulation and Gaming at the University of Tulsa and is the coordinator of the Computer Simulation and Gaming Conference (CSGC) which takes place annually at the university.

I am currently a student at the University of Tulsa studying Computer Simulation and Gaming, with an emphasis in design. I hope to work in either the gaming or film industry telling stories in a digital space.

As part of Xbox Game Studios, Fiona drives and supports hiring initiatives across all 1st-party studios. Fiona was previously Gaming Talent Acquisition Lead on Team Xbox and Talent Acquisition Lead, Worldwide Studios for Sony Interactive Entertainment.

For more than a decade, Cami has helped studios big and small build teams, primarily in the fields of gaming, film, and XR. Currently, Cami is a recruiter at ggLocators.com

Adam has been a game designer for (too) many years, was Head of Education at a Game Design department and is now a Head of Education at a private 3D school.
He buys comics and TTRPGs but as there is no such thing as “too many” he is happy with the amount he has…

John Sharp is Professor of Games & Learning at Parsons School for Design at The New School. He is a member of the game design collective Local No. 12, the creators of The Metagame and Dear Reader. He is the author of Works of Game: On the Aesthetics of Game and Art, and co-authored Games, Design and Play: A Detailed Approach to Iterative Game Design with Colleen Macklin; Fun, Taste, & Games: An Aesthetics for the Idle, Unproductive, and Otherwise Playful with David Thomas; and Iterate: Ten Perspectives on Creativity and Failure with Colleen Macklin.

Lindsay is Knight Chair in Interactive Media and an associate professor at the University of Miami School of Communication. He is Vice President for the Higher Education Video Game Alliance and the 2019 recipient of the Games for Change Vanguard award. Lindsay’s book, Doing Things with Games, Social Impact through Design, is a well-received guide to game design. In 2020, he edited and authored Love and Electronic Affection: a Design Primer on designing love and affection in games. In 2021 he published the Amazon best seller, Black Game Studies, an Introduction to the games, game makers and scholarship of the African diaspora

Over a decade of experience working in games ranging from mobile and VR to AAA (credits include Call of Duty and Mafia III). I’ve been runing my indie startup Astire Games since 2016, and teaching game design and development since 2015.

Max is a senior at the University of Miami studying Business Technology with a Minor in Game Design.

I shot the Girl Gamers documentary at IndieCade.

Latoya Peterson lives at the intersection of emerging technology and culture. She is cofounder and CXO at Glow Up Games, a game studio working on their first title set in the world of HBO’s Insecure.

Instructor of Game Design at Bradley University.

Quentin founded Symptomatic Productions LLC shortly after graduating from college and has published two PC games through the company: `Starcats` and ‘Color Cannons+’. Starcats was an official selection of the 2017 IndieCade Festival and a Top 5 Finalist of the 2017 E3 Collegiate Game Competition.

Naomi Clark is an independent game designer who lives and works in New York City; among her three dozen game credits is Consentacle, a two-player card game about intimacy with aliens that won Indiecade’s Impact award in 2015. She’s also the chair of the NYU Game Center, where she teaches game design.

Tim Cullings(he/him) is a Seattle video games industry veteran and champion for game development and climate science and currently the Interim Executive Director and Director of Operations at Global Game Jam, Board President for Seattle Indies and a Board Member for IGDA. Prior to GGJ Tim was a Systems Engineer at Oculus helping ship everything between Rift and Quest 2.

Serious Game Graduate Student in UCSC

I am Polish guy and a traveler. I lived all over the place working on games, freelance writing, and even cinematography at one point. I studied humanities and ethnic conflict, all of which inspire my creative works. I founded my studio Unbound Creations in 2013 which is most known for Headliner: NoviNews, a game about news manipulation and how it affects society, as well as Rain on Your Parade, a game where you play as a cute cloud and ruin everyone’s day.

Dargan Frierson is a climate scientist who leads the EarthGames group at University of Washington.

I am Jennifer Ha, an Animation and Game Design major in my senior year at Kent State University. I am President of the Animation and Game Design Club.

I’m currently a DePaul University graduate student within the Game Design program. I focus on game & level design.

A passionate game designer focuses on level design. Currently pursuing a Master of Science degree in Games and Playable Media at the University of Santa Cruz.

I am a Lecturer of Animation Game Design and I have been teaching full time at Kent State University as an NTT since 2017. I’m also an animation / game design generalist with 15 years of experience.

Allen Turner is a game designer, artist, performer, writer, who teaches game design at DePaul University.