GDX 2023 Conference

Cristina has been in the games industry for 8+ years and events for 7+. Founder and President of Latinx in Gaming and Vice Chair for the International Game Developer's Association, she is dedicated to making the industry a better place. 

Cristina's past experiences include Google Stadia, Twitch, Team Liquid, and Unity.

Christopher Chancey is the founder of an award winning independent game development studio, ManaVoid Entertainment. He is also the co-founder of The Indie Asylum, a space in Montréal dedicated to supporting and uplifting the independent game developers that are chosen to be accepted into the asylum's programs.

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As a founding member of La Guilde, Christopher is an authority of what it takes to build a sustainable and thriving ecosystem for independent game development. He will be presenting at the conference, as well as the Indie Town Hall.

Yiyi is a community organizer, artist, and human rights lawyer based in Brooklyn, NY. As a queer immigrant woman of color in this industry, she feels a strong sense of duty to advocate for the development of diverse and supportive communities around games.

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She is currently the PR + Community Manager at Heart Machine, an LA-based game studio best known for Hyper Light Drifter and Solar Ash. She is also on the Board of Directors of GUMBO Collective (NYC’s largest collective of indie game developers) and is the Vice President of Death By Audio Arcade. Yiyi is also an advisor on the NYC Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment Digital Games Industry Council, and runs Women in Games NYC.

In her free time, she does graphic design for Qweerty Gamers (an LGBTQIA+ games non-profit), and moonlights as an attorney helping asylum seekers and refugees gain safety and status in the United States.

Trent Oster is a name that people do not easily forget. From co-founding BioWare, to his most recent IP creation, MythForce, at Beamdog, Trent is a legend in the video game industry and a major player in the Alberta games scene.

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Trent is incredibly passionate about ensuring that people are successful in their endeavors and provides significant mentorship within the community.

Dr. Guzdial is an Assistant Professor at the University of Alberta and a Fellow & Canada CIFAR AI Chair at the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii). His specialty lies in studying the intersection of creativity and machine learning.

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His work on procedural content generation via machine learning has been continuously cited and he continues to explore the relationship between games and artificial intelligence.

Sarah Dawson is a games enthusiast and prior to joining the team at Evolve PR handled marketing and PR and was the communtiy manager for Beamdog and MythForce. 

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Beyond her work in the games industry, Sarah holds a Masters degree in English and has worked extensively with organizations like the Alberta Council of Women's Shelters and Legal Aid Alberta.

Pascal Nataf is one of the co-founders of the Indie Asylum and a previous finalist for Québec's EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

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As CEO of Affordance Studio, Pascal has led his team to continued success and growth while maintaining a sustainable studio.

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Pascal is also an online and in-person teacher/instructor at Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue, and Université de Montréal for their respective game development courses.

Kara is a champion for the games industry's inclusive hiring practices and has been a Women in Games Ambassador since 2021.

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As an HR generalist, Kara joined the games industry in 2018 when she joined the team at Beamdog. She brings her expertise to ensure that Beamdog continues to win "Great Place to Work" awards, which Beamdog has received several times since she joined the team.

Ali is a professionally trained voice actor based in Edmonton who has over six years of experience lending his voice to projects.

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Ali has worked on projects in animation, video games, television, and educational content and uses his versatile voice to create a wide range of unique characters.

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Hear his work samples at https://aligoharvo.com.

Kristen is currently a PhD Candidate at the University of Alberta and her research focuses on quests and using AI to create better player experiences.

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Kristen has worked on the Quest and Narrative team at Inflexion games as well as working as a TA for the Certificate in Computer Game Development at the University of Alberta.

Marina has experience in the non-profit, social enterprise, government and private sectors including working as the Policy and Communications Advisor for an Edmonton City Councillor, as a Government Relations Consultant with a national firm, and as in-house GR for a healthcare organization. 

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As the Director of Public Relations, Marina has been able to bring Areto Labs to the forefront of exciting Edmonton based startups. With a mission to eliminate hate speech and bullying online, Marina and Areto Labs are excited to dive further into the games industry. 

Valentina has an extensive background in data engineering and graduated from Cornell University with a focus on applied and engineering physics. Valentina has used this love of data engineering to found her studio Wirescribe Games, in New York City, back in 2015.

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Working as an independent games developer, she has created a mobile tower defense strategy game from scratch in Unity, designed and implemented cohesive and streamlined gameplay, devised and automated tests to simulate game levels and generated heuristics to access their difficulty and significantly reduce iteration time for level balancing.

Athar has worked on some of the most innovative explorations for phobia treatment using AI and Machine Learning. One of these research projects involves arachnophobia and using VR for exposure therapy.

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She has been cited several times for her work featured augmented intelligence, including her deep dives in serious games and cognitive development.

Joining us from New York City, Porrith is excited to present on some affordable options for indie developers to optimize their games.

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Porrith's talk, "Developing Tools as an Indie Game Developer...All in One Draw Call!" goes into the need to create in-game tools to efficiently debug information and the development of their own in-house tool, NimGui, an efficient 1 draw call UI system in Unity.

Porrith is also a member of GUMBO NYC and excited to share his knowledge on going from a co-working space to forming a collective. 

Charlotte is a community manager that wears many hats. With a background that includes table top games and game development, a unique blend of technical skills and community management comes together to make something truly special in the work she produces.

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As a contractor for several studios, Charlotte is constantly staying ahead of trends for several different types of games to ensure the communities for those studios are well taken care of at all times. Beyond community management, Charlotte works as a Unity developer.

Nicole is a certified executive coach through the Royal Roads University program and she is an Associate Certified Coach through the International Coaching Federation. She has an undergraduate degree from the University of Victoria in Recreation and Health Education and a Masters Degree from the University of Alberta in Exercise Psychology. Nicole is a certified MBTI practitioner, DISC facilitator, and has completed a knowledge translation certificate from the University of Toronto.

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With a long and diverse career in animation, Skylar manages the performance capture space at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT) and has helped game developers create some of the most amazing, and affordable, mocap in the province.

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The stage at NAIT is Alberta's largest motion capture studio and Skylar will be taking folks through the space and speaking about their capabilities.

Aryon is a project, product, and program manager extraordinaire! With 20 years of experience in managing projects, she has had trips into the games industry as well as the public sector.

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In the past, Aryon has worked on AAA games like Anthem and currently works remotely for Relic Entertainment. Taking her background in arts, project management, and love of exploring the games industry, Aryon recently became a Women in Games Ambassador and helps contribute to the powerhouse of professional women working in games in Alberta.

Roberta is an award winning freelance boardgame designer and consultant with experience creating serious games and family games for the hobby market. 

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Roberta is passionate about designing games that create compelling opportunities for learning and conversation and loves to play in the space where play and serious ideas intersect.

Emily is an indie game dev and AI game researcher but also a capable game music designer as well. To add on to her skill set, Emily is currently in the PhD program at the University of Alberta for Computing Science and has presented her research at several conferences, including in Los Angeles for AIIDE in November of 2022.

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As a studio co-founder, Emily began her indie journey with Will-o-Works during the completion of her Certificate in Computer Game Development at the University of Alberta.

Eric is a skilled Unity developer who has been using his skills to make games and gaming more accessible to the deaf community.

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Together, he and his colleagues had already developed five educational games with deaf children as the co-design partners in 2016 - which has only increased in the years since. Eric has worked on teams that helped generate ASL signing avatars that help the user learn to generate full sentences in ASL.

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This research takes place at the University of Alberta in partnership with the David Peikoff Chair of Deaf Studies (DPCDS).

If Shannon had to describe herself in one word, it would be authentic. With a focus on relationship development, Shannon has spent several years of her career helping promote healthy organizational culture practices.

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Shannon brings extensive experience supporting peoples' careers, creating success strategies, and growing and improving programs and processes. To put it shortly, Shannon is passionate about supporting and empowering people.

Jyro Blade is a game developer based out of Brooklyn, New York. Currently Jyro works as the Product Lead at BattleFly. He has previously acted as Senior Engineer on AimLab and led development for the award winning titles Killer Queen and Kleptocrat at BumbleBear Games.

Jyro also creates a spectrum of unique artwork for commercial clients, with a focus on interactive installation pieces.

Dagmar, hailing from Iceland, is an accomplished researcher with several publications. Most recently, her work on automating parts of the 2D animation workflow has been her focus and has presented some interesting opportunities for her as she completes degree. 

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Dagmar's research interests are in the realm of generative machine learning and the explainability or responsibility aspects of those systems - but she's always open to talking about new and interesting machine learning projects.

Dr. Fernandez Cervantes has been working on some incredible research to assist seniors through concepts like their Virtual Gym project. When it was first tested, back in 2015, he noted that seniors didn't like it at all and thought it was much too busy. Using that feedback, the system was made more user-friendly and brought into 3D.

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In all of his work with the VirtualGym project, he has always put the end user first, including seniors who need to be actively participating in the design process.

Jonah is the founder of WhaleFood Games, the creators of KungFu Kickball, a team based fighting sports game where the best ball-kicker wins. Jonah began as a solo dev in his journey and has had the pleasure of working alongside other teams for the creation of KungFu Kickball, as it has been incredibly well-received and supported. A former software architect, Jonah is the visionary that will continue to propel WhaleFood Games forward for years to come.

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Jonah joins us as a board member for GUMBO NYC, and is excited to chat about what that community has meant to him.

Amanda is a passionate leader who has been in and around the games industry for a number of years. Whether it be through QA, video game store management, or community work, she has been able to touch many aspects of the industry and can speak to the complexities of each area.

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Recently joining the Evolve PR team, Amanda is a community champion and will be speaking about the importance of PR, marketing, and community management for indie games.

Heather is a resourceful, creative, and passionate educator who aims to build students' confidence and skills by bridging the information learned in the classroom with real-world applications.

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Her work with the Neil Squire Society has helped revolutionize the lives of Canadians with disabilities and their organization has done incredible things to support accessibility in the games industry.

Sam Eng is a solo developer working on Skate Story. Skate Story is an upcoming sports skateboarding video game published by Devolver Digital. The game is tentatively scheduled to release in 2023 for Steam. The game follows a demon in the Underworld who has made a deal with the Devil who has to skate to the moon and swallow it to be freed.

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Sam works with the GUMBO NYC collective and is a great supporter of the independent game scene in NYC and around the world.

Madison is a highly accomplished marketing professional who recently entered the video games industry full-time. Madison is the creator of Edmonton Direct, a local event that highlights games made within Edmonton, and led the Edmonton portion of the development of the Alberta Esports Strategy. 

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Madison's background includes work in the public sector and within post-secondary institutions - along with an extensive experiential marketing career. Her first experience in the games industry was representing Nintendo at K-Days (then Capital Ex) and her involvement with GDX continues to grow each year. Madison has spoken extensively about being a woman in the games industry as well as the streaming side of the industry and is a Women in Games Ambassador and equity, diversity, and inclusion advocate.

Derek is an accomplished culture expert, project manager, and the leader who founded Interactive Arts Alberta in 2014. With a grassroots focus, background in the public sector, and a passion for community economic development, Derek's goals have always been to help local game developers succeed through helping them hone their craft, build meaningful careers, and above all, to live a good life.

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Through GDX, Derek has created a platform for indie game developers to exhibit their work, connect with other industry professionals, and is working towards his goal of making Alberta one of the best places in the world to be an indie game dev. For more information on the Interactive Community Arts Hub, connect with Derek directly.