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Angelo is an in-house attorney at Microsoft, but unlike the very exciting areas of work within the company like Microsoft Office, Windows, and Azure, Angelo toils daily in the Xbox mines, supporting their first-party game development studios. He currently provides legal support for 343 Industries (Halo), The Coalition (Gears of War), and Ninja Theory (Hellblade). With an engineering background and some experience as a software developer, he understands the technical aspects of game development (while also having enough self-knowledge to acknowledge that he no longer has the coding chops to do it himself), and spends what free time he has left after raising his two young children playing whatever games he can get his hands on (while justifying it to himself as market research). Prior to his role at Microsoft, Angelo has spent time in the legal departments of Google, Yahoo!, and Bandai Namco Entertainment America. Angelo frequently speaks about legal issues affecting the video game industry at legal conferences as well as game industry events such as GDC, PAX, TwitchCon, and SXSW.

West Barnwell is a Director of Product Marketing at Snap Inc. In this role, he bridges the gap between the product organization and the market, developing solutions that can drive real business impact for Snapchat's partners. With a focus in the App and WebDR spaces, West understands what performance marketers are looking for and need to be successful. Prior to Snap, West developed his career at Google, where he held many hats–from product developer to sales lead–while building lasting and impactful relationships throughout the adtech industry. West holds a degree in Business from the University of Georgia, and he lives in Marin County, CA where he, his wife, and his 2 year old daughter enjoy as much outdoor time as possible to hike and fly fish.

Chase Bethea, a distinguished freelance Composer/Technical Music Designer for video games, has clinched prestigious awards like NYX and Global Music, alongside a nomination from VGMO (Video Game Music Online). He has been working professionally in the industry for over a decade and has shipped over 25 games thus far. He is known in the industry as one of the most prolific and omnipresent composers in the video game industry today (according to IlIO) and the Swiss Army knife of video game composition. In his beginning career, Chase worked as an intern at Mobotory Games in 2011 while simultaneously going to school for his AA in Music Theory and Composition. He graduated with his AA from Audio Engineering from Los Angeles Recording School , his AA in Music Theory and Composition from Moorpark College and his BM in Media Composition from California State Northridge all with Honors. Chase has received many accolades throughout his career. In 2010, he won Best Music in Motion Graphic and Poetry Award. In 2013, Chase's score from the successful flash Horror game, I Can't Escape (developed by Fancy Fish Games) received an honorable mention in the Indie Game Magazine. His second soundtrack for the game Cubic Climber earned a Noteworthy on Destructoid.com. In 2016, Chase was nominated for the 2015 Annual Game Music Awards – Artists of the Year – Independent Composer by VGMO (Video Game Music Online) in the entire industry. In 2021, he won an award for the AGROUND soundtrack from the NYX Game Awards. In 2023, Chase Bethea won another NYX Award for the remarkable video game score, On the Peril of Parrotsand garnered two Global Music awards, one for the same score and the other recognizing his excellence as a composer. Two of these pieces are featured in NYC Jam Sessions VGM Real Book Vol. II. In March 2024, Chase was honoured with one of the industry's most prestigious awards: the Excellence in Artistry Award from the Black in Gaming Foundation. This recognition serves as a testament to his consistent dedication and remarkable contributions to video game music within the industry. In 2025, NYX Game Awards honoured Chase Bethea with his 2nd prestigious Gold Winner award in the Game Audio & Radio – Original Game Soundtrack category for his outstanding work on the video game Aground Zero. Chase has also scored Aztec Ride, a highly addictive fun mobile game that shipped on Google Play in October 2020 and was nominated for a Pocket Gamer Mobile Award. His music has been featured on multiple podcasts such as NEXT LEVEL PLAY (on Sling TV/ ESR TV Gaming Network), Pixelated Audio, Level with Emily, Sound of Play, Shure: LOUDER, Everybody's Talking at Once, Games X Music, Super Gamer Podcast and Audio Modeling's MIDI Talk. Much of his discography can be heard on many streaming platforms such as Spotify, Pandora, YouTube, Deezer, Tidal, iHeart Radio, Bandcamp and more. Chase was selected to perform live at Indiecade (2019) and from 2020-2021 streamed on IndieCade's Twitch channel weekly bringing his show Game Audio Life to that platform. Chase's music was also performed live by the Virtual Video Game Orchestra at MAGWest 2022 /2023 / 2024 as well as the Helix Collective in 2023 / 2024. More of Chase's accomplishments include being Game Revolution's first team streamer as well as first Game Audio professional to be featured on a Gaming Website for his Behind the Scene composing series. He used to be a co-host of Game Audio Hour for three years. Chase was the first minority American Video Game Composer to be featured in the Museum of Making Music MIDI at 40 exhibit at the NAMM Museum in San Diego [2023 -2024]. In 2024, Chase made history as the first video game composer to join the prestigious Mogami Cable roster, further solidifying his impact in the industry. He is the first minority American video game composer to write an article on adaptive music in games for Recording Magazine—the first article on video game music published in the magazine in 20 years [2024]. His work and insights have also been featured in the books Global Histories of Video Game Music Technology [2024] by Karen M. Cook, William Gibbons, and Fanny Rebillard, as well as The Theory and Practice of Writing Music for Games [2024] by Steve Horowitz and Scott Looney. In addition, Chase was the IASIG (Interactive Audio Special Interest Group) Chair (2022-2024). In 2024, Chase was celebrated for U.K. Black History Month featured on October 4th among some of the greatest icons in history. This year's Black History Month calendar showcases legends like Herbie Hancock, Jimi Hendrix, Billie Holiday, Queen Latifah, and many more. The calendar has previously highlighted monumental figures such as Quincy Jones, Duke Ellington, Lord Kitchener, Isaac Hayes Lauryn Hill, James Brown, Ray Charles, Nina Simone, Wynton Marsalis, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and others who have shaped music and culture. As a video game composer, Chase has brought his special signature sound to big libraries and has worked with written demos for Spitfire, Reason Studios and Soundiron, curated selections for Native Instruments Sounds.com, been added to the artist roster of the legendary, ILIO and Q Up Arts . Chase has also collaborated with Shure Microphones and Mojave Audio, further expanding his influence in the industry. In addition, he has made two article debuts on the website of the music gear conglomerate, Sweetwater. Chase also contributed music to the 2023 Set 10 Team Fight Tactic Remix Rumble Soundtrack and scored The THING (Remastered) Trailer by Nightdive Studios.

Zac Bowling leads AI developer tooling within Reality Labs at Meta, where he focuses on accelerating and modernizing how VR applications are built. His work helps teams experiment faster, reduce friction, and ship production-ready immersive experiences with confidence. Over his 21-year engineering career, Zac has built new operating systems, programming languages, and AI infrastructure at companies including Google, Modular and Texas Instruments. At Apportable, Zac was lead architect of a mobile game engine and porting SDK that was used by over 21 titles that reached the Google Play Top 100. Today, his work centers on giving VR developers AI-powered super powers by building reliable tooling that integrates directly into the workflows teams already use, enabling them to move from idea to market faster.

Jack brings over 25 years of game industry experience to his current role as Global Director for Games, Strategic Industries, Google Cloud. He has built numerous game platforms at Google and PlayStation, bringing joy and excitement to millions of players all over the planet. Most recently, Jack built the Ecosystem for Living Games at Google Cloud, bringing together live service technology with generative AI to shape the future of games. Prior to that, he spent five years creating Stadia from the ground up, securing partnerships with the world's leading game publishers and developers. Before joining Google, Jack spent nearly a decade at PlayStation, building a variety of platforms including PlayStation Now, PlayStation Home, and PlayStation Plus. In his free time, he enjoys playing games on his extensive collection of game consoles and computers.

Isaac Cohen ( Cabbibo ) is a Game Developer / Artist who is doing their best to make math dance! They have made games ranging from audio visual music blogs to interactive story books to VR pillow forts, viz for concerts and more! They have collaborated with artists like SOPHIE, Olafur Elliason, Jonsi and Oneohtrix Point Never. They have participated in AiR programs at Dynamicland, Google, Adobe, and Unity. Their work focuses on physical embodiment, induced synthesia, and failing to describe the sublime.

Simon Cooke is a member of the Android Games DevRel team, where he strives to improve Android for game developers, and to make games run better on Android devices. Before Google, Simon spent a decade in the Xbox Advanced Technology Group, and previously was at Surreal Software (and Midway) working on a variety of games. You've probably played a game he's worked on.

Harvey Elliott is the founder and CEO at Playstack, a leading light in indie game publishing. Playstack supports developers to create innovative and captivating games that are enjoyed by players worldwide. Playstack prides itself on putting developers at the heart of everything it does and works tirelessly to maximise the work of its developers and help them realize their full potential. An early interest in development and a hunger to gain more knowledge about gaming led to Harvey being offered a role with Acclaim Entertainment in 1996. At Acclaim, Harvey worked his way from European Product Development Coordinator to general manager of three game studios. In 2003, Harvey joined EA, where he led development teams across a variety of well-known brands including Burnout 3, the Harry Potter games series, numerous Hasbro titles and SimCity. In 2011 Harvey left EA and took the leadership role at Marmalade Technologies; an innovative technology platform and integrated game development studio, continuing his work with Hasbro and partnerships with Google, LG, Samsung, Activision Blizzard, Intel and many more. From 2012 to 2016 Harvey became chair of the Games Committee at BAFTA joining its Board of Trustees; and helping to celebrate the work of the games industry within the creative industries as a whole. Harvey brought all of his experience together to form Playstack in 2016, with the aim of publishing exceptional and inventive games.

Paula Angela Escuadra (She/Her) is the founder and co-chair of the International Game Developers Association Climate Special Interest Group (IGDA Climate SIG) and a member of the UN Playing for the Planet Alliance’s Research working group. She currently serves as the Director, Research & Insights at 2k. Previously, Senior Societal Topography UX Research Lead at Google, and she led games research for Stadia Games & Entertainment’s Publishing division. Paula holds a dual MBA and MPA degree from Presidio Graduate School of Sustainable Management, and uses her experience in games to enable positive outcomes in education, 21st century skills development, workforce development, climate action, resiliency building, and social justice.

Claire L. Evans is a writer and musician in Los Angeles. She is the writer of the experimental video game Blippo+, published for Nintendo Switch and Steam by Panic Games, for which she won the 2025 Herman Melville Award for Best Writing from the New York Game Awards.

In her other life, she is the singer of the Grammy-nominated pop group YACHT, co-founder of VICE’s imprint for speculative fiction, Terraform, and co-editor, with Brian Merchant, of the accompanying anthology Terraform: Watch Worlds Burn (MCD Books, 2022). Her 2018 history of women in computing, Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet, published by Penguin Random House, has been translated into six languages and was named one of the Top 10 Best Nonfiction Tech Books of All Time in 2023. Her award-winning journalism has appeared in MIT Technology Review, Quanta, WIRED, The Verge, and The Guardian, among many others.

She has given invited talks at the Hirshhorn Museum, Sónar Festival, Walker Art Center, TEDx, Google I/O, The New Museum, XOXO Festival, SXSW, Gray Area, Neural Information Processing Systems, the Association for Computational Linguistics, and the Decentralized Web Summit, among many others. She is a 2024 MacDowell Calderwood Fellow for Journalism.

Noah Falstein has been a professional game developer since 1980. He is known for his work as a game designer on his early notable games including Sinistar, The Secret of Monkey Island (1 & 2), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. He has consulted on many types of games ranging from casual and social games to games for health and AAA titles. More recently Noah served for four years as Chief Game Designer at Google, has worked on VR and AR games, and dozens of games for healthcare including the first to win FDA clearance to be prescribed by doctors. More info available on Wikipedia.

Lauren Frazier is the co-founder of Ramen VR, a startup making advanced AI game development tools like Aura, an assistant for Unreal developers. Their previous project, Zenith, is a best-selling JRPG/anime inspired VR MMO. Prior to Ramen VR, she held engineering leadership roles at Unity and Google. In her spare time she enjoys playing D&D and chasing after her unruly French Bulldog. To date she has raised $46M ($1M seed, $10M A, $35M B)

Dario manages the partnerships between Google and the largest videogaming publishers, helping their ads strategy and revenue. Before Google, he was a founder building eCommerce for VR. Dario was one of the GTA Roleplay inventor and national champion in CoD2.

Tom Giles has more than 30 years of newsroom experience in San Francisco, New York, London and Eastern Europe, focusing primarily on global technology. His work spans a broad range of tech topics for Bloomberg and Businessweek—from AI and cybersecurity to startups and the largest and most powerful tech providers, including Apple, Google, Nvidia and OpenAI. Tom is currently senior executive editor of the award-winning global technology team for Bloomberg, based in San Francisco, where he manages more than 90 reporters and editors responsible for the technology, media and entertainment industries in the US, Asia and Europe. Tom is also a lecturer in business reporting at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. He holds a master’s degree in international affairs from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and graduated cum laude from Princeton University with a degree in Politics and certificate in Latin American studies.

Jeb Havens is a game & interactive designer living in Portland, OR. He has been professionally designing games and software since 2003, working for companies such as Google, Electronic Arts, and YouTube.He has worked across a wide range of platforms, including mobile, console, game shows, and Facebook. And he has designed games for brands such as Disney, Marvel, Critical Role, Samantha Bee, DoorDash, Spore, and Playboy.Jeb is also an award-winning board game designer, a professional puzzle writer, and has given a variety of lectures on game design and cognitive science.

Catherine Hawayek is the Head of Google Cloud for Games, where she directs a team focused on empowering leading game companies to develop and deploy their titles at a global scale using Google Cloud's infrastructure. In her role, Catherine is committed to bringing the necessary resources and expertise to her customers to pioneer new experiences and to leverage data and AI to unlock unprecedented player engagement and new developer workflows. With over a decade of experience at Google, Catherine has been instrumental in guiding the digital transformation of major players within the games sector. Her expertise lies in forging strategic, long-term partnerships and leveraging Google's technology to help game developers and publishers innovate and succeed. Catherine lives in Austin, TX with her husband, two children, and their dog Blaze.

Emil Kjæhr is the Head of Product & Partners at Funday Games. Over the last 10 years, he has helped build Funday into a studio specialized in cross-platform development and IP collaborations, shipping games ranging from Discord and Snapchat to the Steam Deck & Consoles. Most recently, he spearheaded the mobile and Google Play Games for PC launch of Deep Rock Galactic: Survivors, focusing on the technical, design and input adjustments needed to bring the hit PC title to a global mobile audience.

Sailesh Krishnamurthy is Vice President of Engineering at Google where he leads engineering for all Databases at Google Cloud and for all of Google’s services. He is an innovator and entrepreneur with 25+ years of experience in databases and the cloud. Before Google, Sailesh was GM for Aurora and RDS MySQL at Amazon preceded by a stint at Cisco Systems via the acquisition of Truviso, a real-time streaming data analytics software company that he co-founded. Sailesh is an authority in data management and is an author of over a dozen academic papers and several issued U.S. patents. He earned a Ph.D. in Computer Science from UC Berkeley in 2006.

Hailing from Australia, but now living in San Francisco, Mark Mandel is a Staff Developer Advocate improving developer experience on Discord's platform for game developers. He is also often known as the founder of two open source projects - Agones, a dedicated game server hosting and scaling platform and Quilkin, a UDP proxy for large-scale multiplayer game server deployments, both of which he founded while Tech Lead for Developer Relations at Google Cloud for almost 10 years. When not working, Mark spends his time pottering on open source, looking for new and interesting things he can do with cloud native technology and games, being distracted by dogs, and practicing too many martial arts.

Nathalie Mathe is a pioneer Virtual Reality creator, producer, consultant, and educator. She is currently Professor of Practice in the Game Science and Design Master program at Northeastern University. She founded NativeVR, an independent VR studio focused on creating immersive experiences with a transformative and social impact. Her VR film Uturn on gender bias was nominated for best interactive experience at the Raindance and FIVARS festivals and screened at a dozen international film festivals. She has contributed to dozens of VR projects for JauntVR, Google, Facebook, etc., and created visual effects for feature films like Skyfall and Dark Knight Rises.

After working at PlayStation for over 12 years, starting in the R&D department, moving into the Developer Technology Group and Third Party Relations, Piermaria is now a Senior Technical Program Manager at Google DeepMind, working on Data and Product Quality for Gemini, the Sima team and other AI applications and research.

Steve Meretzky got his start at the legendary adventure game company, Infocom, where his titles included Zork Zero, Planetfall, Leather Goddesses of Phobos, and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (a collaboration with Douglas Adams). He also co-founded Boffo Games, and has worked at THQ, GSN Games, and King. He has also done consulting for numerous companies including Google, Activision, EA, Harmonix, Draft Kings, Blizzard, and Playable Worlds. Steve is currently VP of Design for PeopleFun, extending its successful Wordscapes franchise with the release of Wordscapes Solitaire. Steve has been a long-time GDC advisor, is co-founder of the Game Designers Workshop, and a former board member of the International Game Developers Association.

Alexandre Moufarek is the Product Lead for the Inception team at Google DeepMind, a team of creatives, designers and engineers working alongside research to explore breakthrough experiences that wouldn't be possible without Al. At Google DeepMind, Alexandre has contributed to frontier research projects such as Project Astra, SIMA, Genie and Gemini. Passionate about gaming and the power of AI to augment people, Alexandre Moufarek has 15+ years of experience spanning casual and AAA games (Ubisoft - Ghost Recon Future Soldier, Watch Dogs), consumer robotics (SoftBank Robotics - Pepper Robot B2C) and AI Research & Development.

Jon is a veteran game writer and narrative designer with over fifteen years of industry experience, including work with properties such as Indiana Jones, Game of Thrones, Futurama, Jurassic World, SpongeBob, and more. His expertise is centered on narrative tools & technology, with a specialization in dialogue and conversational interfaces. In 2025 he was named among the top 100 innovators of the first decade of the Voice industry for his company Earplay's pioneering interactive audio story experiences released on mobile, Alexa, and Google Assistant. He most recently collaborated with Scholastic and Petricore Games to develop AR character conversations as a companion experience for the NYT bestselling series The Last Resort.  

Val is part of the Developer Relations Engineering team at Google Play. Her past experience includes working as software engineer for Google Android XR, primarily as a Unity developer, and as an Animation Programmer at Ubisoft. She's looking forward to great conversations about games and tech!

Susanna Pollack is the President of Games for Change, the leading global advocate for the power of games and immersive media as drivers of social impact. As a social entrepreneur and cross-sector leader, Susanna has over 25 years of experience advancing ambitious social impact goals through traditional and interactive media. At Games for Change (G4C), Susanna leads a global nonprofit and community dedicated to using games to tackle real-world challenges, from humanitarian conflicts to climate change and education. She has initiated dozens of G4C's world-class events, public arcades, design challenges, and youth programs in partnership with clients like Nobel Peace Center, Minecraft, Bezos Family Foundation, Google, Hasbro. Under Susanna's leadership, G4C has been widely recognized for innovative programs and cross-sector impact; receiving a Classy Award, an Anthem Award, a Shorty Impact Award, and an Engage for Good Halo Award. She has been named on the Nonprofit Times Power & Influence Top 50 List and the Worthy 100 List. Prior to Games for Change, Susanna worked across the commercial and public sectors, including a 14-year stint in various SVP positions at BBC Worldwide.

Jamie's journey into game dev started in the trenches, writing bots and scripts alongside his brother long before it was his job. After years of navigating diverse industries at Google, he's returned to his roots to focus on his lifelong passion. Today, Jamie bridges the gap between cutting-edge research and gameplay, helping developers leverage AI/ML to build the next generation of immersive gaming experiences.

Chris Pruett is the Director of Games at Meta Reality Labs. A veteran game developer, Chris has spent nearly 30 years building, shipping, and publishing games, including a decade of work in VR. Under the cover of night Chris writes about horror game design. He lives with his family and judgmental dog in Seattle, Washington. Previously, Chris co-founded Robot Invader, where he built and designed games including Wind-up Knight, Rise of the Blobs, and Dead Secret. At Google, he partnered with developers to bring standout titles to Android Market, helped launch the first Android devices in Japan, and created Replica Island, an open-source side-scrolling game for Android. Earlier in his career, he contributed to console titles including Spider-Man, SpongeBob SquarePants, Crash Bandicoot, and Finding Nemo.

Ivan Ramirez leads the Customer Engineering and Principal Architect teams at Google, where he helps companies develop amazing games and reach players globally. He partners with top studios to transform the entire development lifecycle through advanced AI integration, implementing solutions that range from accelerating creation and automating QA to deploying scalable global databases. His work also focuses on fostering healthy communities through AI-driven toxicity detection. A Georgia Tech graduate and former NASA aerospace engineer, Ivan combines deep technical expertise with strategic vision to drive innovation for the industry's most ambitious projects.

Targoon Siripanichpong is a Customer Engineer at Google, dedicated to the gaming industry. He partners with leading game companies to design and implement scalable, cutting-edge solutions on Google Cloud. With a deep focus on infrastructure modernization and the application of AI, Targoon's work explores its transformative impact across the entire game development lifecycle—from accelerating development and QA to enhancing live operations and trust and safety. He holds a Bachelor's Degree from Purdue University and a Master's Degree from the University of Chicago. As an avid gamer, Targoon is passionate about leveraging technology to help build and foster a healthy, thriving gaming community for players everywhere.

Matt is a software engineer at Google with 10+ years of industry experience. He lives in Santa Monica with his dog Aki, wife and new son.

With over 8 years of experience launching games worldwide, Wallace Wei now serves as the Global Publishing Manager for Delta Force at Team Jade Studio, driving strategies, roadmaps, and marketing campaigns that propelled the game to Top 4 on Steam's peak concurrent player charts and topped free game on iOS AppStore in 169 regions and on Google Play in 125 regions. Before this, as Global Operations Manager for PUBG MOBILE, he drove IP collaborations like Blackpink and Godzilla vs. Kong, led creative campaigns for new skins and launched the Player-Driven Design Program (P.D.P.) boosting community engagement and revenue. Earlier, he served for the JX Online series in China through domestic marketing.

Jenny Xu is a long-distance runner, fitness instructor, and Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, CEO of Talofa Games. She began running and making games at age 12, studied Computer Science at MIT, and has shipped 10 mobile titles with over 10 million downloads. A Niantic Beyond Reality Contest grand prize winner, she raised $6.3M in venture capital, making Talofa one of 2025's Top 25 innovative gaming companies. She taught 1,000 consecutive virtual fitness abs classes, holds a professional group exercise certification, and sets marathon PRs (2:56). Jenny also successfully completed Apple's Entrepreneur Camp, Google's Growth Labs, and a16z's SPEEDRUN program.

NetEase game technical art manager & expert, 9 years of experience in the game industry, leading and responsible for a number of handheld game / pc game development of technical art work. Participation in projects： -LifeAfter SOC game with over 200 million cumulative players worldwide, 2019 google play Best Competitive game -Infinite Lagrange(2023 IAA NYX Game Awards best-art direction mobile game) -Infinite Borders（2025 the golden A'Design Award)