GDC 2024 Session Viewer

Ventura, Sara M.E.

Title: Senior Producer / Neurodiversity ERG Global Lead

Company: Zynga

Sara M.E. Ventura (She/Her) is a Senior Producer at Zynga passionate about spreading knowledge, uplifting diverse voices, and prioritizing accessibility. She also leads the Neurodiversity at Zynga employee resource group and co-leads zPride's LGBTQIA2S+ Learning & Development Committee. In her 9 years of games industry experience, she's worked as a Producer at Microsoft, Mobile Writer/Editor at Nintendo, Partner Marketing Digital Sales Ops. Associate at Ubisoft, and writer/consultant on various indie games. Additionally, Sara has taught for the University of Washington's Game Design program, worked as a freelance digital illustrator, and voice acted in games and advertisements.

Anderson, Glaire

Title: Founding Leader

Company: Digital Lab for Islamic Visual Culture & Collections, University of Edinburgh

Glaire is an award-winning author and historian of Islamic architecture, art, and history (PhD MIT) with 18+ years experience in the UK and US. She began using game engines to visualize historical architecture, landscape, and objects more than a decade ago. As founding leader of the Digital Lab for Islamic Visual Culture & Collections at the University of Edinburgh she works with video games industry, academic, and GLAM partners to make the art and history of the Middle East and North Africa visible and accessible to all. Her collaboration with Ubisoft on the new Assassin's Creed Mirage has been recognised with awards from the UK Economic Social and Research Council, The Barakat Trust, and the Edinburgh Future's Institute Centre for Data, Culture, and Society. Her other games and XR research has been recognized by Creative Informatics Edinburgh and Immersive Scotland.

Andrew, Lydia

Title: Studio Audio Director

Company: EA DICE

Lydia Andrew is a Game Audio Director with almost 30 years of experience in sound. Starting in location sound recording in 1994, moving into sound post-production for film and television in 1999 and into games in 2002. She has experience in all aspects of game audio creation and integration with deep specialism in Music and Voice within multiple game genres, including the Assassins Creed and Battlefield franchises. Her games career started at Electronic Arts UK, Lydia moved to France with Ubisoft and then Canada. Her current role is Studio Audio Director for DICE in Stockholm, Sweden.

Anquetil, Loic

Title: Senior 3D Artist

Company: Ubisoft

Loic Anquetil graduated from Supinfocom and has previously worked at Allegorithmic, the company behind the Substance 3D ecosystem. He joined Ubisoft as Model Artist and Material Artist and has contributed to several AAA games such as Steep, Ghost Recon, and Riders Republic, as well as “indie” productions such as Space Junkies and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. Loic also teaches modeling, sculpting and texturing methods for video games in universities and schools, including Rubika in France and The HELHa CG Academy in Belgium.

Baier-Lentz, Moritz

Title: Partner, Head of Gaming

Company: Lightspeed Venture Partners

Moritz Baier-Lentz is a Partner and the Head of Gaming at Lightspeed, a globally leading venture capital firm with over $29 billion in capital under management and more than 500 investments across the U.S., Europe, and Asia—including Epic Games, Stability AI, and Snap. Moritz loves to partner with exceptional entrepreneurs and has invested over $100 million into the gaming industry—including founders who have led the creation of games like Fortnite, Call of Duty, League of Legends, Wild Rift, Apex Legends, Overwatch, Valorant, StarCraft II, and Warcraft III. Previously, Moritz was a partner and management team member at BITKRAFT. He personally raised over $200 million and, with the founders, scaled the firm to become the most active gaming investor of 2020, 2021, and 2022. Moritz led many of the funds’ marquee early-stage deals, including Inworld AI, Theorycraft Games, and Raid Base—achieving top-decile IRR (collective valuations over $2 billion) and attracting 9-figure follow-on investments from Amazon, Disney, Epic Games, Google, Intel, Meta, Microsoft, NetEase, Niantic, Nintendo, Riot Games, Sony, Take-Two, Tencent, and Ubisoft. Before joining BITKRAFT, Moritz was a Vice President at Goldman Sachs, where he founded and led the firm's global gaming practice. During his 5-year tenure, he advised the world's largest gaming and technology corporations on over $300 billion in transaction volume across M&A, IPOs, VC, and other strategic transactions—including Dell’s $67 billion acquisition of EMC and IBM’s $34 billion Red Hat purchase. A lifelong gamer, Moritz spent his teenage years competitively playing Blizzard’s Diablo II, culminating in a global #1 ranking among over 12 million players in 2003. The first person in his family to graduate high school, he traded the digital swords and armor that he earned in-game to afford his college tuition—two decades before NFTs entered the mainstream. Moritz holds an M.B.A. and M.A. from Stanford, where he graduated as Arjay Miller Scholar and ERP Scholar ("German Rhodes"). He was recognized among the "30 Under 30" (Forbes), "40 Under 40" (Capital), "Young Leaders" (Atlantik-Brücke), and "Young Global Leaders" (World Economic Forum). His recent speaking engagements include Harvard, Stanford, M.I.T., Goldman Sachs, Forbes, New York Times, SXSW, and GDC. In his personal time, Moritz is an avid Ironman and ultramarathon athlete, including the 250km Marathon des Sables and the World Marathon Challenge (7 marathons on 7 continents in 7 days). With his races, he has raised over $250,000 for depression research.

Ballart Germà, Marc

Title: UX Designer

Company: Ubisoft Barcelona

Bantin, Robert

Title: Snowdrop Audio Architect

Company: Massive Entertainment

Robert Bantin has been a professional audio programmer for 25 years, with the last 10 in the games industry. They have worked on such games as Guitar Hero Live, Dirt 4 and Tom Clancy's The Division 2. Since joining Massive Entertainment, they have taken a central role in developing the Snowdrop Engine so that it can be used by a wide range of games projects within Ubisoft. Presently they are actively working on such brands as Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and Star Wars Outlaws.

Bonardi, Nicholas

Title: Audio Director

Company: Ubisoft

Director, Designer, Audiophile; Nick has been working in the games industry of the San Francisco Bay Area for the past 15 years. Connecting with GameTank in 2007, Nick created Guitar Rising which was soon acquired by Ubisoft, developed into Rocksmith, and became the first video game to use a real guitar. The success of Rocksmith led to the creation of Ubisoft Studio SF, of which Nick is a founding member. Nick is naturally drawn to vibrant culture, and the creation of truly unique, and immersive experiences. He currently resides as Audio Director at Ubisoft Studio SF working on their newest release, XDefiant.

Boudon, Stephane

Title: Creative Director

Company: Ubisoft Bordeaux

Stephane Boudon has worked at Ubisoft since 2005, starting at Ubisoft Paris studio first as Level Designer (Red Steel franchise, Rayman Raving Rabbids, Ghost Recon: Future Soldier) then Senior Game Designer on Watch Dogs. In 2014 he became Lead Level Designer then Content Director on the Ghost Recon franchise, shipping two AAA games with Ghost Recon Wildlands (2017), followed by Ghost Recon Breakpoint (2019). He was one of the very first pioneers to join Ubisoft Bordeaux Studio in 2018 as Creative Director, he helped building the teams who worked on Ghost Recon Wildlands: Year 2 & Mercenaries before starting to work on Assassin’s Creed Valhalla “Wrath of the Druids” expansion in 2021. He is currently the Creative Director of Assassin’s Creed Mirage.

Chan, Tina

Title: Sr. User Experience Researcher

Company: Respawn Entertainment

Tina Chan is a UX Researcher with a background in live games currently working on Apex Legends at Respawn Entertainment. Previously, she worked on Rainbow Six Siege at Ubisoft Montreal. Her research interests include empowering collaboration in games, such as through gameplay design, governance systems, and designing for inclusive play. She especially enjoys empowering fast-paced teams with player insights. Tina completed her Masters at the HCI+Health lab within the University of Waterloo's Games Institute and often draws on Public Health principles in games research.

Dajczer, Brigitte

Title: Composer

Company: Music Salad Studio Inc.

Brigitte Dajczer is a highly versatile composer, producer & multi-instrumentalist who creates music for games, film, tv & streaming media. Firmly rooted in years of experience touring, performing & scoring as the performing artist Briga; her work spans across many genres: from orchestral & hybrid scores, to electronic, to songwriting, to eastern European & Balkan folk music and more. Brigitte has been involved in creating music for AAA Games since 2006, be it as musician, composer, recording engineer, string arranger or orchestrater. Credits include: CAPCOM's REVII and RE8, UBISOFT's Tom Clancy Splinter Cell & Rainbow 6 Extraction, EIDOS' The Shadow of the Tomb Raider, League of Legends' Quiyana Championship Theme and Kin of the Stained Blade | Spirit Blossom, and Netflix's The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf. She is also currently working on the upcoming MMORPG game "Into The Echo", along with their Interactive Lore Web broswer game dedicated to ITE's fans called: "Journey Across Raava". She is the recipient of numerous awards & nominations; from the Canadian Juno Awards, to Québec's A.D.I.S.Q Awards, to the European Game Awards, and the Canadian Folk Music Awards.

Dansky, Richard

Title: Franchise Narrative Director

Company: Crytek

A twenty plus year veteran of the game industry, Richard Dansky is the Franchise Narrative Director for Hunt: Showdown for Crytek. Prior to that, he spent 23 years at Ubisoft. He is a published fiction writer with eight novels and two short story collections to his credit, and he also was a key contributor White Wolf's seminal World of Darkness tabletop RPG setting. Richard lives in North Carolina with feline companionship and a large collection of books and single malt scotches.

DiDomenico, Brian

Title: Lead Audio Designer

Company: Ubisoft

Sound Designer, composer, producer and musician, Brian DiDomenico’s diverse career started as a composer, music implementer and editor. He worked with composer/producer Jack Wall, on such titles as Myst IV: Revelation, Jade Empire, Mass Effect 2 and Call of Duty Black Ops 2. Brian later expanded his career into sound design with developer Spark Unlimited on Lost Planet 3 and Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z. And since then, he has worked as a sound designer, audio director and sound supervisor on various VR experiences and mobile games. As well as titles such as D&D: Dark Alliance, Wasteland 3, Ori and the Will of the Wisp, Black Ops: Cold War, Here They Lie (PSVR) and Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep. Which was nominated for the 2018 Game Audio Network Guild’s ‘Best Sound Design in an Indie Game’. As a musician and producer, Brian has written and produced various albums over the past 15 years with bands such as Mankind is Obsolete and video game rock band, The Megas. He also toured worldwide as stage manager for the video game concert, Video Games Live. He is currently Lead Audio Designer with Ubisoft San Francisco on their new Free-to-play FPS shooter, XDefiant.

Dixon, Lanie

Title: Director of Insights

Company: Ubisoft Montreal

Lanie Dixon is the Director of Insights for Ubisoft User Research, Canada. She leads the embedded Researchers and Insights professionals delivering actionable and player-centric data to the heart of Ubisoft's international development teams. Lanie has been a key contributor to the growth of Ubisoft's internal research capability and innovation, including overseeing the embedded teams across Canada — Toronto, Quebec City and Montreal — and research for successful titles & brands including Rainbow Six Siege, Assassin's Creed, For Honor, Skull & Bones, Far Cry, and several further unannounced titles. Lanie is a community leader with the Games User Research and User Experience SIG, and hosts a semi-regular podcast on the topic of player insight in game development, 'Games User Research Cafe.

Dorias, Osama

Title: Lead Gameplay Designer

Company: Brass Lion Entertainment

Osama is a Lead Gameplay Designer at Brass Lion Entertainment who has previously worked at Blizzard, Warner Brothers, Ubisoft, and other studios. He's also a game design teacher at Dawson College and a co-host of the Habibis podcast. Osama loves to empower people in expressing themselves through game making. He especially loves to give a voice to marginalized people and causes. He has hosted game jams, workshops and other community activities to this end, which has culminated in co-founding the Montreal Independent Games Awards.

Dussault, Sebastien

Title: Cinematic Director and Animation Supervisor

Company: Agora Studios

Sebastien is currently working as cinematic director on 'South Of Midnight' by Compulsion Games. He previously worked at Tuque Games, Digital Dimension and Ubisoft Quebec. He is also a former animation instructor for the iAnimate's Games Workshops. In the past years, he was credited on high-profile projects such as Immortals Of Aveum, D&D - Dark Alliance, For Honor and Assassin’s Creed Syndicate.

Fayolle, Arnaud

Title: Art Director

Company: Ubisoft, Positive Play

Arnaud Fayolle is Art Director at Ubisoft Positive Play, a team dedicated to demonstrating and amplifying the positive impact of videogames on our players and our planet. Over the past 15 years he has contributed to diverse AAA games such as Forza Horizon 3 & 4, The Division 2, The Last of Us, Deus Ex Mankind Divided and many more. He developed a holistic approach to Game Art, merging the complex elements of Aesthetics, Narrative, Gameplay, and Technology to create “Art that plays great”. A nature lover since childhood, Arnaud turned eco-anxiety into a driving force for the evolution of his work, channelling the power of games to influence a cultural shift that can solve the climate crisis. Always on the frontline of game environmentalism, you can also find him in the IGDA Climate Special Interest Group and the Playing 4 the Planet Alliance, pushing the boundaries of what video games can do for our planet.

Fu, Lingxiao

Title: Advanced AI Programmer

Company: Rocksteady Studios

Lingxiao Fu is an Advanced AI Programmer at Rocksteady Studios Ltd, where he focuses on AI pathing systems and bot AI behaviors. He was a Linux graphics driver developer at AMD for a short time before getting his hands dirty on game development and joining Yingpei Games on an unpublished online shooter project. Before Rocksteady, he worked at Ubisoft Shanghai on Far Cry 5 & 6, where he helped realize wildlife AI behaviors, locomotion, and procedural animation.

Habchi, Sarra

Title: R&D Scientist

Company: Ubisoft

Sarra Habchi is a research and development scientist at Ubisoft. She received her PhD in computer science from Inria with a thesis on the identification and tracking of mobile-specific code smells, a work that was awarded the accessit of Gilles Kahn 2020. Her research interests lie primarily in the area of game quality and reliability, with an emphasis on testing, continuous integration systems, and automation tools. Sarra is currently leading the software engineering research group at Ubisoft La Forge, which focuses on quality engineering challenges in the video game industry.

Houdard, Antoine

Title: Research & Development Scientist

Company: Ubisoft

Antoine is a researcher with interests on image processing, 3D rendering and computer vision. Antoine worked on image restoration, texture synthesis, super-resolution, and neural rendering. Antoine developed methods using statistics, optimal transport and deep learning. Antoine is currently working as Research Scientist at Ubisoft La Forge Bordeaux.

Isaacson, Katelyn

Title: Singer / Sound Designer

Company: Independent

Katelyn Isaacson is an American sound designer and vocalist based in Paris, France. She was on the audio team at ArenaNet where she worked on season 4 of Guild Wars 2's Living World before relocating to France to be the studio sound designer at Ubisoft Nadeo for Trackmania. Now freelance, she's sound designing for various projects such as a start up working on electronic engine sounds and the studio Homo Ludens' first game, Blooming Business: Casino. As a vocalist, Katelyn started singing in her first choir at the age of 9 and never stopped. Classically trained at the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music, she enjoys singing in a variety of genres. She sang backup for Elton John at the 2013 Emmy Awards, in the Kingdom Hearts Orchestra World Tour, and on video games such as Tap My Katamari and Elsinore. She's currently singing soprano in l'Ensemble Vocal Delta and Soli Tutti, for a number of lyricists and composers, and regularly performs in cover bands and as a backup singer.

Koshlo, Oleksandr

Title: Render Architect

Company: Massive Entertainment - A Ubisoft Studio

Ive started my gamedev career in 2015 by joining Ubisoft Kyiv as a generalist programmer. 6 years ago I moved to Sweden to become a graphics programmer for Snowdrop engine at Ubisoft Massive. I've worked on various graphics features at different levels of the stack, but the biggest amount of time I spent on a lower-level side, handling render backends for DX12, Vulkan and consoles, working on geometry rendering pipeline, and recently actively maintaining lower-level aspects of Snowdrop's ray tracing.

Kuenlin, Quentin

Title: Senior Rendering Programmer

Company: Massive Entertainment – a Ubisoft Studio

Quentin Kuenlin is a Senior Rendering Programmer at Massive Entertainement - a Ubisoft Studio where he works as part of the Render Group on the raytracing features of the Snowdrop engine. Previously, he worked during 3 years at Ubisoft Winnipeg where he worked on some unannounced projects as a graphic programmer.

Lazzaro, Nicole

Title: President and Founder

Company: XEOPlay

Nicole is a game industry legend with over 30 years in Player Experience Design and a focus on XR and Spatial Computing. Her work unlocks human potential through play. With a Stanford psychology degree, she pioneered emotion analysis in gaming and designed the first iPhone game. Her game company, XEOPlay, specializes in innovative mechanics on emerging platforms like spatial audio games for BOSE AR, and "Follow the White Rabbit Tales" an XR Mystery on Apple Vision Pro. Known also for "The 4 Keys to Fun", her clients include Ubisoft, Meta, Disney, and EA on titles like Myst and Star Wars.

Li, Bo

Title: Principal Software Engineer

Company: LIGHTSPEED STUDIOS

Bo Li serves as a principal software engineer at LIGHTSPEED STUDIOS, bringing nearly 20 years of experience from his work at WB Games, Ubisoft, and Funcom. His impressive portfolio includes contributions to titles including the "Far Cry" and "Batman: Arkham" series, "The Secret World MMO," and "Endwar." Bo Li is recognized for pioneering the first production-quality real-time scalable dynamic shadow system without predetermined light source limits. He has a notable speaking history, including the presentation of "A Scalable Real-Time Many-Shadowed-Light Rendering System" at Siggraph 2019.

Limpach, Odile

Title: Professor at Cologne Game Lab and Co-Founder SpielFabrique

Company: SpielFabrique

Professor Odile Limpach teaches Economics and entrepreneurship at the Cologne Game Lab, TH Köln University of Applied Sciences and is managing the Incubator of the CGL. She also is co-founder of the accelerator SpielFabrique 360° and works as Strategic Consultant for serious games and cross-media projects. Between, 2007 and 2014, she was the managing director at the German entertainment software studio Blue Byte. Before she was the managing director of Ubisoft GmbH. She graduated from business school in France and completed her MBA in the USA. Odile Limpach is also involved as a volunteer in the areas of vocational training and creative industries development. Furthermore, during twenty years she acted as an advisor (CCEF) for the French Ministry for International Business Development.

Lopez Malet, Mélanie

Title: Senior Data Scientist

Company: Ubisoft

Mélanie Lopez Malet is a senior data scientist, with a focus on natural language processing (NLP) and human-machine interfaces. After her first career as a literature associate professor, she focused her work on the synergy between human creativity and machine intelligence. Her passion lies in crafting new fictional and immersive experiences powered by AI, building technical pipelines that open new creative horizons to the Ubisoft designers .  

Ludlow, Richard

Title: Audio Director

Company: Hexany Audio

Richard Ludlow is the Audio Director and co-founder of Hexany Audio, a Los Angeles based sound and music studio specializing in audio for games and interactive media. Richard has worked on projects for Disney, Activision, Blizzard, Riot Games, Bungie, Ubisoft

Manzanares, Xavier

Title: Producer

Company: Ubisoft

McEntee, Chris

Title: Game Design Director

Company: Studio MDHR

Chris McEntee has over 12 years of experience as a designer in the games industry, having worked at noteworthy studios such as Ubisoft Montpellier, Moon Studios and Respawn Entertainment. While he originally began his career as a Level Designer, over the years he has been involved in nearly all aspects and areas of design and has even led the design efforts on numerous projects. Games he has worked on include Rayman Origins, Rayman Legends, Ori and the Will of the Wisps and most recently, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. He is currently working as Game Design Director at Studio MDHR.

Mechner, Jordan

Title: Author

Company: Independent

Jordan Mechner is an American author, graphic novelist, game designer, and screenwriter. He created the video game Prince of Persia in 1989, rebooted it with Ubisoft in 2003, and wrote the first screenplay for Disney's 2010 film adaptation, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Prince of Persia is considered an all-time classic, as well as the basis for a transmedia global franchise with over 20 million games sold to date. Since 2017, Jordan has lived in France, where he made his debut as a graphic novel writer-artist this year with the autobiographical Replay (2023). His graphic novels as writer include Monte Cristo (2022, with Mario Alberti), Liberty (2023, with Étienne Le Roux & Loïc Chevallier), and the New York Times best-selling Templar (2013, with LeUyen Pham & Alex Puvilland). His recent works have been published first in French, with English releases slated for 2024. Jordan's video games, including Karateka (1984) and The Last Express (1997), are known for their cinematic narrative quality and innovative use of rotoscoped animation. In 2017, he received the Pioneer Award from the International Game Developers Association. Jordan wrote and directed the IDA award-winning PBS documentary film Chavez Ravine: A Los Angeles Story. His other books include his 1980s game development journals, The Making of Karateka and The Making of Prince of Persia, and an adaptation of Persian tales, Samak the Ayyar. He keeps a sketchbook journal. Follow him at https://jordanmechner.com.

Menzel, Jolie

Title: Senior Game Designer

Company: Night School: A Netflix Game Studio

Jolie Menzel’s decade of experience as a narrative designer, writer, and artist informs her holistic approach to storytelling. Beginning her career as a cinematic artist on Telltale games like The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us, she leveraged her passion for story in her transition to the design team on Tales from the Borderlands. Her unique ability to combine storytelling, design, and production brought her to lead cross-disciplinary teams as the lead narrative designer on Gears 5: Hivebusters at The Coalition and on South Park: The Fractured But Whole at Ubisoft. Jolie is currently a senior game designer at Night School: A Netflix Game Studio. She presented talks on her craft at GDC in 2016, 2017, and at GDC China in 2015.

Merceron, Julien

Title: Worldwide CTO

Company: Bandai Namco Studios

Julien started as a programmer on the Atari Jaguar in the early 90s at Shen Technologies in Paris. He then joined Ubisoft Entertainment to work in game and engine teams before becoming the worldwide technical director of Ubisoft Entertainment in 1999. In this role, he played a major part in the studio's creation, organization, technology, production pipeline design, and multi-platform strategy, as well as in AAA features integration, on brands such as 'Rayman', 'Far Cry', 'Splinter Cell', 'Prince of Persia', and 'Assassin's Creed'. He also took responsibility for middleware and development strategy, communication and cooperation strategy, and hardware manufacturers and middleware relations. At the end of 2005, after having worked extensively on PS3 / XBox360, Julien pursued his career at Eidos, where he served as the worldwide CTO working on the technology strategy, before getting involved in initiating Eidos Montreal and Eidos Shanghai Studios. Julien became the worldwide technology director for Square Enix Group, working on a wide variety of engines and franchises including 'Tomb Raider', 'Final Fantasy', 'Hitman', 'Deus Ex' and 'Kingdom Hearts'. In 2013, he joined Konami as the worldwide technology director to oversee Fox Engine, work directly on the acclaimed 'Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain', and help advance many games in the group including 'Pro Evolution Soccer' 2015 and 2016. Julien joined Bandai Namco Studios early 2016, where he now serves as their CTO.

Mesmar, Fawzi

Title: VP of Creative

Company: Ubisoft / Futuregames

Fawzi Mesmar is an award winning Game designer, leader, author and public speaker that has been in the gaming industry for almost two decades in a career that spanned the middle east, New Zealand, Japan and Europe working for companies such as Ubisoft, EA, Activision Blizzard, Gameloft and Atlus to name a few. He has worked on over 20 titles that have been enjoyed by millions of players worldwide including entries in Battlefield, Persona and Others. He is also the author of "Al-Khallab in the art of game design" the first Arabic language text book on game design.

Morsy, Hytham

Title: Animation Director

Company: Brass Lion Entertainment

With 20 years under his belt, Hytham Morsy has worked on some of the most successful games ever released, managing teams of over 60 people on Grand Theft Auto 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2.

He helped open the animation department in Ubisoft Chengdu China, and set up the 3d animation curriculum at Dawson college.

After spending 15 years in games, he decided to bring his experience to the VFX industry becoming animation supervisor on Disney’s Chip n’ Dale Rescue Rangers and Top Gun Maverick among others. Now he is back in games, his first love, as Animation Director at Brass Lion Entertainment.

Mosser, Virginie

Title: Narrative Director

Company: Ubisoft Paris

Virginie Mosser is a Narrative Director at Ubisoft, where she has been shaping stories for the past six years. With a rich background spanning over 16 years as an author and screenwriter across diverse fields such as publishing, television, radio, and podcasting, she harbors a deep-seated passion for world-building and, in particular, character creation. Her fascination with the boundless possibilities presented by Generative AI comes from the conviction that well-written and diverse characters are necessary to craft increasingly immersive experiences. Her will to use AI at the service of a creative vision drove her to join a multidisciplinary team two years ago. Here, she is primarily focused on one pivotal question: "How can we convey new emotions to players?"  

Nader, Georges

Title: Research & Development Scientist

Company: Ubisoft

Georges is a researcher with a passion for geometry processing, computer graphics, and computer vision, or as he likes to call it, the shapes, lights, and eyes of the virtual world. He is currently a R&D Engineer at Ubisoft La Forge France where he spends his days taming neural networks to output the perfect pixels. Before that, he spent time at Panasonic's R&D center in Singapore, where he worked on 3D reconstruction. He completed two postdoctoral research positions, the first at Inria Bordeaux Sud-Ouest where he developed a fast solver for the optimal transport problem, and the second at Singapore University of Technology and Design where he dabbled in the exciting world of machine knitting. During his PhD, he studied the visibility of vertex displacement on a triangular mesh and developed a perceptual model that can predict it. When he's not nerding out on technical stuff, you can find him playing video games, running, hiking, and indulging in my passion for photography.

Newman, Joe

Title: Product, Privacy and Legal

Joe Newman has spent a decade in the games industry working on kids’ privacy and safety issues. He has worked both as in-house counsel for Electronic Arts and Ubisoft, and in private practice for a variety of clients ranging from indie games to some of the largest video game publishers in the world. In his work, he balances the needs of protecting children while ensuring the privacy and security of their personal information, and is always looking for ways to achieve this balance at scale. At his new role at k-ID, he is working towards building solutions for the next generation of video game services.

Nilsson, Joel

Title: Senior Gameplay Programmer

Company: Massive Entertainment - A Ubisoft Studio

Ocean, Daniel

Title: Asc TechArt Director

Company: Ubisoft

Daniel Ocean is an Associate TechArt Director at Ubisoft San Francisco. He has had a varied career over the last 15 years in emerging tech for both film and games. With the mass interest and adoption of AI, Daniel will discuss its analysis for tooling within a game development pipeline. Such as; what it means for future roles, what are it’s limitations, and what are some of the solutions it can provide

Osternacher, David

Title: Lead Audio Designer

Company: Massive Entertainment - A Ubisoft Studio

David Osternacher has been a Sound Designer for 13 years, starting out with BOOM Library and Dynamedion, later working at Creative Assembly on the Total War series, and is currently a Lead Audio Designer at Ubisoft Massive, most recently on Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora.

Palmieri, Olivier

Title: Game Director

Company: Ubisoft Montreal

Oliver is a Game Director at Ubisoft Montreal, expert in game & level design and virtual reality. He is also the official trainer of the Rational Design Methods at Ubisoft worldwide. Olivier has worked on various AAA game series (Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, Rayman, Ghost Recon…). He is the creator of Eagle Flight, the first virtual reality game published by Ubisoft and winner of multiple awards. He has been working in the video game industry since 1998, as a creative director, game director, level design director and international design trainer.

Phan, Hau Nghiep

Title: Technical Art Director

Company: Electronic Arts

I have been a part of the gaming industry since 2003, when I developed my first tower defense game as a hobby. My professional journey began with Electronic Arts (EA), where I contributed to numerous successful games such as GoldenEye 2, Medal of Honor 4, SSX on Tour PSP, and Army of Two. Subsequently, I joined Ubisoft and had the opportunity to work on several games within the Tom Clancy franchise, as well as a couple of installments in the Assassin's Creed series. During this time, I also shared my expertise with aspiring game developers by teaching at the NAD Center in the evenings. After a brief stint with Warner Bros, I returned to EA to work on a project that was eventually canceled. Currently, I am a part of EA's research and development division, SEED, where I focus on enhancing production scalability.

Pomarez, Olivier

Title: Director of development

Company: Ubisoft la Forge

Olivier started his career in the video game industry in the 2000s learning his craft as a gameplay programmer on PC game. After joining Ubisoft in 2004 in Montreal, he worked on multiple AAA franchises like R6, Batman Arkham Origins and others. In 2016, he started Ubisoft la Forge in Montreal to experiment new approaches at how R&D could be done inside Ubisoft.

Randelshofer, Stefan

Title: Audio Director

Company: Larian Studios

Stefan's passion for Audio made him work in various fields of Audio production over the course of 25+ years - spanning from band and orchestra recordings to TV and Movie Sound Design and interactive audio installations. The last ~17 years he solely focused on Game Audio and shipped and worked on 15+ game titles such as Battleforge, Risen 3. Anno 1800, South Park: The Fractured But Whole, Prince of Persia: The Dagger of Time. He established and lead audio teams in companies like Electronic Arts, Piranha Bytes and Ubisoft. At the moment he is the Audio Director of Larian Studios and recently shipped Baldur's Gate 3.

Redding, Patrick

Title: Creative Director

Company: Ubisoft

Ritchie, Adam

Title: Senior Voice Designer

Company: Massive Entertainment - A Ubisoft Studio

Riviere, Alex

Title: Audio Director

Company: Massive Entertainment - A Ubisoft Studio

Alex Riviere is an Audio Director at Ubisoft with more than 20 years of experience in audio. Alex has worn multiple hats in his career, including: sound supervisor, music supervisor, mixing engineer, sound designer, music designer, voice designer, and audio localization project manager. His work can be heard on many well known franchises, from console action-adventure open-world AAA games, to PC massive multi-player games, virtual reality games, as well as mobile titles.

Robert, Gabriel

Title: Lead R&D Developer

Company: Ubisoft

Dr. Gabriel Robert is a Lead R&D Developer on the Bot (simulated players) research group at Ubisoft La Forge. His focus is on facilitating the transition from the latest academic research to our game productions. Before joining La Forge in 2021, he worked on many game productions at Ubisoft as a Team Lead AI Programmer on brands like Assassin's Creed and Far Cry, bringing life to our games since 2008. He started working in the video game industry in 2000 by doing a PhD on the Reinforcement Learning domain at the University of Paris 6 in collaboration with the Nevrax game studio.

Rollin, Jean-Baptiste

Title: Lead Environment Artist

Company: Ubisoft

Jean-Baptiste Rollin is passionate about video games and creation in general. He started his career at Delphine software and Montecristo, then joined Ubisoft. During his 20 years at Ubisoft, Jean-Baptiste held several positions there, from Artistic Director, Tech Artist to Environment Artist and Lead Environment Artist. He has worked on various games such as Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, Raving Rabbids, Rayman Origins and Raymand Legends, and lately Prince of Persia.

Rouse III, Richard

Title: Studio Creative Director

Company: FarBridge

Richard Rouse III is a creative director, designer, writer and consultant who has worked on a range of titles from AAA to indie and everything in between. He is the Studio Creative Director at FarBridge currently working on dark new games. Past projects include The Suffering, State of Decay, Quantum Break, Drakan: The Ancients' Gates, Damage Incorporated, Odyssey: The Legend of Nemesis and his experimental stealth/narrative game The Church in the Darkness. Previously he was a Design Director/Lead at Microsoft Studios, Ubisoft Montreal, Midway and Surreal Software. Rouse wrote the popular book Game Design: Theory & Practice and is a frequent speaker on game design and interactive storytelling at conferences and universities.

Salomon, Fabian

Title: Lead Producer

Company: Ubisoft Bordeaux

Fabian has been working at Ubisoft Paris & Bordeaux for almost 18 years, working mainly on Ghost Recon, Watch Dogs franchises and most recently on Assassin’s Creed. His first game was Ghost Recon 2 as a Compliant/Platform Specialist, followed by Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 1 and Red Steel as a Test Team Lead. He started to act as an Associate Producer on Raving Rabbids 2 and continued on other titles such as Ghost Recon Future Soldier and Watch Dogs. His first role as Producer was on Watch Dogs 2, followed by Watch Dogs Legion. He was one of the very first pioneers to join & create Ubisoft Bordeaux Studio in 2017 as Producer on Ghost Recon Breakpoint & Assassin’s Creed Valhalla “Wrath of the Druids” expansion. He is currently the Lead Producer on Assassin’s Creed Mirage, overseeing the production of the game from Ubisoft Bordeaux, across 9 co-dev studios.

Simmons, Joshua

Title: Senior Programmer

Company: Massive Entertainment - A Ubisoft Studio

Skalski, Jeff

Title: COO & Executive Producer

Company: Yellow Brick Games

Jeff began his career as an art intern at MicroProse. He later joined Mythic Entertainment in 2002 to work on the Dark Age of Camelot series. Following the company’s acquisition from Electronic Arts in 2006 he relocated to Shanghai as an Art Director to build the art team needed for Warhammer Online. Upon returning to the US, Jeff assumed the role of Producer for WAR. In 2014 Jeff joined Ubisoft as a Senior Producer on the Assassin’s Creed franchise. In 2020, Jeff co-founded a new indie studio in Quebec City called Yellow Brick Games where the focus is on creating new innovative gameplay and original IPs.

Spaans, Martine

Title: Owner

Company: Tamalaki Games

Martine Spaans is Game Publisher at FGL & Tamalaki, General Manager at the Dutch Games Association. Martine has 17+ years of Gaming experience from Indie to AAA studios. She started at Spil and has had notable stints at Ubisoft, GetSocial and Critical Force. Martine has more than a decade of hands-on experience with App Publishing, ASO, Ad-optimization, IAP optimisation, Retention Strategies, User Acquisition and Customer Support. She also recently added NFT to her extensive repertoire.

Sparling, Ashley

Title: CEO & Character Art Director

Company: K9 Digital

Having worked in the Games Industry for the last 13 years at various studios; Ashley is currently the CEO/character art director of K9 Digital - a character creation studio of his making. He has worked at some amazing studios such as Splash Damage, Lionhead and Ubisoft on AAA titles including Assassins Creed Odyssey and Immortals Phoenix Rising. Ashley has also been teaching with Vertex school and Think Tank for the last five years helping students learn 3D and giving them the vital knowledge they need to succeed in the industry. Learning and researching character development is so important to him and passing this information on is vital to pushing the boundaries within the industry.

Tamer, Valentina

Title: Senior Narrative Designer

Company: Ubisoft Paris Mobile

Valentina Tamer is a senior narrative designer and writer at Ubisoft Paris Mobile, where she has created the narrative for the mobile battle royale Wild Arena Survivors, the Netflix Games collaboration and rogue-lite Mighty Quest Rogue Palace, and several exciting upcoming titles. Previously, she has worked for mobile developer King (overseeing the narrative of Candy Crush franchise at the Berlin studio) and German indie developer Daedalic Entertainment (writing for the point-and-click adventures The Pillars of the Earth and The Night of the Rabbit). With 8+ years of experience in the industry, she's developed a wide range of PC, console and mobile games, and has been sharing that knowledge as a speaker and guest lecturer since 2014. She has recently published the textbook "Narrative Design for Mobile and Live Games", which outlines the creative techniques and challenges of writing for games-as-a-service.

Tan, May Ling

Title: Social Systems Design Lead

Company: Bungie

May Ling is a Social Systems Lead Designer at Bungie, having worked on Destiny 2 for the past 2 years. Her passion for social systems design and cultivating inclusive gaming communities emerged over a decade ago during her work on her first games-as-a-service title at Ubisoft. She remains dedicated to sharing the joy of playing and making games, particularly with underrepresented groups. May Ling is also a founding member of the Polaris Game Design Retreat, a conference uniting brilliant minds to address intricate game design challenges from all over the world.

Tucci, Andrea

Title: Senior Gameplay Programmer

Company: Rocksteady Studios

Andrea Tucci is a Senior Gameplay Programmer at Rocksteady Studios, focusing on Enemy AI and combat behaviours. Andrea graduated in Computer Science and got his Master degree in Games Development, which enabled him to start a career in games at Ubisoft Milan as Gameplay Programmer, specialising in Enemy and Bosses AI. Andrea is passionate about Game AI and has worked with Universita' della Calabria and Abertay University mentoring aspiring game developers and collaborating on Game AI scientific papers.

Vaisse, Alexis

Title: Senior Technical Director

Company: VIRTUOS

Alexis Vaisse is Senior Technical Director at Virtuos Labs Montpellier, a studio of the Virtuos group, specialized in engineering and R&D. He started his career in the video game industry in 1995 at Ubisoft, and is the creator of the Yeti game engine which has been used on several games such as Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. He also led an R&D team in 2008 to develop Motion Physics, an in-house real-time physics engine, and Motion Cloth, a real-time simulation for PC and consoles. Both have been used on most major titles of the company, including the Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry franchises. More recently, Alexis also led the development of Instant Terra, a procedural terrain creation software, dedicated to the creation of large terrains for AAA open-world games.

Viau, Gauthier

Title: Graphics Programmer

Company: Massive Entertainment - a Ubisoft Studio

Gauthier started working at Ubisoft Montreal as a 3D programmer in 2016 to 2018 and worked briefly at Silicon Studio in Tokyo from 2018 to 2019, returning to Ubisoft Bordeaux from 2019 to 2022 before joining Massive Entertainment in 2022. Gauthier has a strong interest in low-level engine programming as well as rendering techniques.

Viladomat, Ramon

Title: Senior Staff Gameplay Programmer

Company: Santa Monica Studio

Ramon Viladomat brings 13 years of experience in the industry as a game programmer. Currently working at Santa Monica Studio, he has also been part of Ubisoft, Crytek, Novarama and Reactable, working on titles such as God of War Ragnarök, Watch Dogs Legion, Hunt: Showdown, Ryse: Son of Rome, and Invizimals. He found his passion for coding at an early age at school and got hooked to games after playing Pitstop 2 on an Amstrad PC. His favorite game of all time is ‘Day of the Tentacle’.