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Nessa Cannon is a video game writer and narrative designer with over six years of experience in the industry, on over a dozen shipped titles such as Borderlands 4, Date Everything!, Star Trucker, and the Endoparasitic franchise. She has spoken at GDC, Narrascope, CSU LA, and Northeastern University on interactive fiction and branching techniques. She was previously part of IGDA's Next Gen Leader program as well as Academy of Interactive Arts and Science's Amplifying New Voices cohort. She is also an avid video essay watcher and always gets ink on her hands when changing out her fountain pen.

Michelle Clough is a freelance game writer, editor, and narrative designer, and a partner in the game narrative co-op Talespinners. Her work includes Destruction All-Stars, Purrfect Date, Choices, Albert Wilde: Quantum P.I., and Destiny 2. Co-founder of the IGDA Romance and Sexuality Special Interest Group and the Forum for Erotic and Romantic Interactive Media (FERIM), Michelle has been speaking at GDC since 2014 on topics related to sex, sex appeal, and sexuality in video games, and has written a book on the subject, Passion and Play: A Guide to Designing Sexual Content in Games, intended as a resource for exploring intimacy and sex in writing and game design.

Tim Cullings(he/him) is a Seattle video games industry veteran and champion for game development and climate science. He is currently the Executive Director for Seattle Indies, Board Treasurer of IGDA, and formerly the Executive Director and Director of Operations at Global Game Jam. Prior to GGJ Tim worked in Dev Ops and Enterprise Engineering at Oculus helping ship everything between Rift and Quest 2. Tim's passion is empowering and enabling creators to create and be a part of a supportive community of like-minded people.

Jason Della Rocca is a game business consultant, investor, funding advisor, and ecosystem strategist. He currently spends the bulk of his time advising game studio founders on funding and product strategy, and advising governments around the world how to better grow/support the success of their regional game development ecosystem. As the co-founder of Execution Labs, he was a hands-on early stage investor to 25 independent game studios from North America and Europe. In parallel Jason helped launch GamePlay Space, a non-profit hub to support indies and guide them toward business success, whose alumni have generated over $300m in game sales and funding. Between 2000-09 he served as the executive director of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), and was honored for his industry building efforts with the inaugural Ambassador Award at the Game Developers Conference. In 2009, Jason was named to Game Developer Magazine's "Power50," a list which profiles 50 of the most important contributors to the state of the game industry. As a sought after expert on the game industry, Jason has lectured at conferences and universities worldwide.

Christina Drake is the Head of Global Talent Acquisition at Side, leading global hiring strategy across one of the video game industry’s largest service providers. An award-winning talent strategy leader, she is widely recognized for advancing talent acquisition in the games industry and was the first and only recruiter to be featured at The Game Awards.

A LinkedIn leading voice with more than 60,000 followers, Christina is a sought-after speaker and thought leader who regularly shares insights on hiring, leadership, AI, and the future of talent acquisition. She has spoken at leading industry events including GamesBeat Summit, San Diego Comic-Con, GDC, IGDA, and Women in Games International, helping to shape conversations on modern recruiting and leadership.

Alongside her work in talent acquisition, Christina is a passionate advocate for working mothers and inclusive leadership, championing workplace cultures where people can build exceptional careers while balancing family life.

Nashville native Toiya Kristen Finley, Ph.D., has been a freelancing writer and editor her entire adult life. She earned a doctorate in literature and creative writing from Binghamton University. Over her career, she has published more than 80 works of fiction, nonfiction, comics/manga, and games, and has over 20 years of experience writing in a range of genres, tones, styles, and voices. She gained editorial experience interning at Henry Holt's imprint, Owl Books. At Binghamton, she founded the literary journal Harpur Palate and served as its managing/fiction editor. In 2011, she cofounded the Game Writing Tutorial at GDC Online with Tobias Heussner and served as an instructor in 2011 and 2012. In videogames, she has worked as a game designer, narrative designer, game writer, editor, and diversity/narrative consultant (or some combination of the five) on everything from AAA titles to mobile games to games for children to small indie projects. Recent work includes writing visual novel Siren Song (Stardust Works), copyediting for Destiny 2 (Bungie), developmental editing on Insecure: The Come Up Game (Glow Up Games), writing/editing on Ritual of Raven, writing for the Interview with the Vampire TTRPG, and editing Our Brilliant Ruin. A presenter at conferences throughout the year, she has lectured on freelancing and storytelling and led workshops on narrative design and game design. She is a member of the IGDA Game Writing Special Interest Group's Executive Board. The Game Narrative Toolbox (CRC Press), a book on narrative design she coauthored with Jennifer Brandes Hepler, Ann Lemay, and Tobias Heussner, was published in 2015. Narrative Tactics for Mobile and Social Games: Pocket-Sized Storytelling (CRC Press), which she edited and contributed to, was published in 2019. Her latest books are Freelance Video Game Writing: The Life & Business of Digital Mercenary for Hire (2022) and Branching Story, Unlocked Dialogue: Designing and Writing Visual Novels (2023) both from CRC Press. Of late, she has been working on her own visual novel series, beginning with Incarnō: Everything Is Written. Speaking History: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-vZf3N5I_8Nclp0dkZ1UVpBcTQ/view?usp=drive_link&resourcekey=0-Hw0yQbGXjCsqC1CiPu9lmA

Dr. Ashley ML Guajardo (née Brown) is an award-winning teacher, streamer, and scholar. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Sociology from Arizona State University, a Masters of Arts in Sociology from The University of Manchester (UK), and a PhD in Sociology from The University of Manchester (UK). Dr. Guajardo's research interests lie within the intersection of sexuality and play. She is the author of Sexuality and Role-Playing Games (Routledge 2015), Playing Like A Fangirl (MIT Press 2026), and dozens of book chapters and journal articles on fandom, sexuality, videogames, and table-top roleplaying games. She has held several leadership positions in industry and academia-facing professional organizations. She was Vice President of the Global Game Jam (2020-1), conference co-director of the IGDA's Games User Research Special Interest Group (2021-2), and currently serves as president of the Digital Games Research Association (2025-7). In 2025, she was inducted as a fellow of the Higher Education Video Game Association.

Matthew Lee is a Lead Generative AI Analyst at NVIDIA, researcher, designer, and Chair of the IGDA Serious Games SIG whose work explores how games and other disciplines can learn from—and benefit—one another. For more than a decade, he has built bridges between game developers, researchers, educators, healthcare professionals, and industry, advancing interdisciplinary collaboration through research, speaking, and community leadership. His work spans artificial intelligence, serious games, healthcare innovation, player engagement, and interactive design, with a focus on translating ideas across disciplines to create more engaging, meaningful, and resilient interactive experiences.

Sebastian Long is MD of Player Research (a Keywords Studio), the leading agency for insight into players and play. As a gameplay researcher Seb led design-improving playtest studies for hundreds of games, spanning all genres, audiences and platforms - including for beloved IPs Star Wars, FIFA, Sonic, World of Tanks, LittleBigPlanet, Talking Tom, Hungry Shark, LEGO, Dark Pictures, Life is Strange — and seminal games including Control, Elden Ring, and Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty. Seb has consulted on gamedev insight strategies for teams including EA, PlayStation, Xbox, Tencent, Bandai Namco, Ninja Theory, and hundreds more. As Managing Director Seb leads a 25-person consultancy based in the UK and Canada, providing world-class research that drives game development decision-making. Seb is a member of BAFTA, community leader within the IGDA Games User Research SIG, prolific speaker and educator, and is based in Brighton on the UK south coast.

Nik Pantis is a Senior Producer at Riot Games, leading multiple teams on an unannounced project. Prior to this, Nik led teams at Ubisoft on Assassin's Creed Shadows, and worked in the Australian indie scene before that at a number of studios. Outside of their day job, Nik runs leadership programs for the IGDA Foundation non-profit, founded the Game Production Guild mentorship program, and runs the Game Developers of Australia community. Outside of work, Nik enjoys hiking and writing and hanging with their two cats that have travelled the world with them.

Grant Shonkwiler first started making games when he was 12 years old, starting with modding and programming. Since then he has filled many different roles in the game industry: programmer, lead designer, technical producer and currently is a leadership coach and production consultant. His career has taken him from casual games at Megatouch Games, to AAA shooters at id Software and to Epic Games to work on Fortnite. Grant currently runs his own consulting company, and is the co-author of four books including Gear Up: Advanced Game Development Practices. Grant also enjoys building communities within the industry working with the IGDA and the GameDevDrinkup.

Ryo Watanabe is an Audio Director and Manager at Bandai Namco Studios, where he has worked since joining Namco in 2005. His work spans composition, sound design, implementation, interactive mixing, spatial audio, haptics, and large-scale audio direction. He is best known for his work on the ACE COMBAT series, including serving as Audio Director on ACE COMBAT 7: SKIES UNKNOWN and ACE COMBAT 8. Across these projects, he has led the design of immersive aerial-combat audio, real-time mixing systems, radio presentation, music integration, spatial audio, and controller haptics, while coordinating multidisciplinary teams across multiple companies. Watanabe has also contributed to a wide range of Bandai Namco titles and franchises, including THE IDOLM@STER, TEKKEN, RIDGE RACER, SOULCALIBUR, PAC-MAN, Taiko no Tatsujin, Katamari Damacy, and Denonbu. His experience covers both hands-on creation and production leadership, from composing music and designing sound effects to establishing workflows, review methods, and shared creative principles for large teams. A central theme of his work is translating abstract creative intent into practical production decisions. He has developed approaches for aligning music, sound effects, dialogue, cinematics, spatial audio, and haptics around a unified player experience, and for balancing realism, clarity, emotional impact, and gameplay feedback in complex interactive scenes. He has presented at CEDEC and IGDA Japan SIG-Audio on topics including interactive mixing, audio direction, spatial audio, Wwise, and AAA game production. His speaking history includes CEDEC 2014, 2016, 2019, and 2024, as well as GDC audio report sessions in 2018, 2019, 2024, and 2025. At CEDEC, he served for many years as a lead organizer of the sound program, contributing to its programming and overall operation. He has also participated in the Game Developers Choice Awards nomination process. Watanabe was also featured on a television program produced by NHK, Japan's public broadcaster, where he introduced the creative and technical process behind game audio production. He continues to explore how game audio can create stronger emotional and physical connections between players and interactive worlds, and how creative judgment can be made shareable and actionable across large development teams.