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Moritz is a senior partner and the head of gaming & interactive media at Lightspeed, a globally leading VC firm with 13 offices, $43 billion in assets, and over 200 exits across the U.S., Europe, and Asia. An advocate for world models, he is also a founding member of General Intuition, a research lab that trains spatiotemporal agents on proprietary video game data and raised a $133.7 million Seed round in 2025.

Prior to that, Moritz founded and led the firm’s global gaming practice at Goldman Sachs. A lifelong gamer, he spent his teenage years competing in Blizzard’s Diablo II, culminating in a #1 ranking among over 12 million players in 2003.

Ari is a research scientist at Blizzard Entertainment. A 4-year vet of the studio, her work in research and design primarily for the Overwatch franchise contributes to the missions of 1) deliver a healthy player experience by promoting prosocial play and 2) mitigate disruptive behaviors. When she's not working, she's trying out new games, taking care of her dogs, or indulging in random interests she picks up along the way.

When the world's biggest game studios need music that moves millions of souls , defines franchises, and elevates storytelling, they turn to Edouard Brenneisen. A sought-after composer for video games, film, and television, Edouard has crafted the soundscapes of some of the most iconic and best-selling titles in the industry. His work spans multi-billion dollar franchises and global hits, including Overwatch 2 (Blizzard), Call of Duty: Mobile (Activision), MultiVersus (Warner Bros.), PUBG Mobile/Game for Peace (Tencent), Honor of Kings, and League of Legends (Riot Games), where he played a pivotal role as Lead Composer, shaping the game's musical identity across champions, skins, cinematics, and game modes. His contributions to these massive franchises have earned him multiple HMMA and G.A.N.G. Award nominations, and in 2023, he took home the HMMA Award for Best Video Game Score for his work on New World (Amazon Games).

Rogelio Cardona-Rivera is an Assistant Professor in the Entertainment Arts and Engineering Program and in the School of Computing at the University of Utah, where he directs the Laboratory for Quantitative Experience Design. His research focuses on computationally modeling how game players think and act inside video games, as well as developing tools that use these models to help game designers design. Cardona-Rivera has interned as a computational narratologist at Sandia National Laboratories and Disney Research, and his research has been supported by the GEM Ph.D. Fellowship, the Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellowship, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects' Agency, Oculus VR, and Activision | Blizzard.

Kenny Carvalho, Co-founder at Dardo Studios, brings over 20 years of industry expertise, leading talent acquisition as well as an art manager at Blizzard, Riot Games, Wildlife, and Phoenix Labs. He has hired over 500 creatives globally and played a key role in assembling the influential global art team for “Project: Titan” the precursor to Overwatch.

Todd Castillo is a senior sound designer and composer with over a decade of experience in the game industry. He began his career in 2015 working at Hex Entertainment and Six Foot as an in-house composer and sound designer. He went on to contribute to multiple titles at MobilityWare before founding his own audio company in 2020, working with studios like Mythical Games on Blankos Block Party. In 2023, he joined Blizzard Entertainment full-time as a senior sound designer on Diablo Immortal, where he leads the sound design and voice over pipeline. His work on Diablo Immortal helped earn a 2024 G.A.N.G. Award for Best Audio in a Casual or Social Game.

Peet Cooper is the Co-Founder and Creative Director at Millions of Monsters. Peet is a versatile game dev veteran with over 20 years of experience as an art generalist and game designer. He has worked with many leading companies in the industry, including Blizzard, Riot, EA, Nintendo, Activision, and Airship, on big game franchises such as League of Legends, Diablo, World of Warcraft, Star Wars, Call of Duty, and more. As an Art Director at Riot, Peet helped to define the visual quality and style of League. He has contributed to over 50 games, wearing many hats. Concept art, Animation, 3D Character art, 2D and 3D Environment art, Illustration, Art Direction, Game design, Level design, and Consultant. Peet is currently a Co-Founder at Millions of Monsters.

Don Daglow is a three-time Inc. 500™ CEO, a pioneering game designer and 2008 Technical Emmy® Award recipient whose career spans the history of Silicon Valley. Teams have shipped over $1 billion in game products under his leadership. In addition to working with publishers and game developers, Don serves as Sr. Director for Industry Relations at The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, NY (home of the largest collection of video games and related documents and artifacts in the world), as an Advisor at the Founders Space accelerator in San Francisco (rated in the Top Ten by Inc. Magazine), and as the volunteer President of The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Foundation, the charitable wing of the Academy. Daglow has delivered keynotes and speeches at The Smithsonian Art Museum in Washington D.C., BAFTA in London, the Biennale in Frankfurt, Medientage in Munich and many international games conferences. He is the only executive in the history of the games industry who has held leadership and/or creative positions on every generation of video game consoles, from 1980 to the present day. In 2003, he received the CGE Award for "groundbreaking achievements that shaped the Video Game Industry." Along with John Carmack of id Software and Mike Morhaime of Blizzard Entertainment, Daglow is one of only three game developers whose work has been honored at both the Technology & Engineering Emmy® Awards and at the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences DICE Awards. As an engineer working on mainframe computers, Daglow also created key early milestones in the development of chatbots (ECALA, 1972) and the machine translation of natural language (Spanish Translator, 1977).

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.

Shaina Grade is a game production leader based in California. She has spent her career doing everything from AAA PC/Console games at Blizzard to educational games at Filament Games, where she led studio operations/production leadership. She currently works at Obsidian Entertainment as a Senior Producer shipping The Outer Worlds 2.

After Gubman’s first game in 2006 (Pirates of the Burning Sea), he went on to score over 1200 video games helping to establish the sound of many iconic downloadable, mobile, and casual titles while maintaining a solid career composing for various media projects. Gubman’s work can be heard in projects for notable clients like Disney (Tokyo Disneyland, Disney Anaheim, WDW), Zynga, HyperGryph, Blizzard (Overwatch 2, Hearthstone), Sony, Dream, King, Atari, Warner Brothers Games, GameHouse, NBC Today, and Warner-Chappell. He is most known for his pop-broadway style songwriting for the games HEARTHSTONE and ARKNIGHTS, and most recently took over as composer for SKY CHILDREN OF LIGHT (thatgamecompany). In casual and mobile, top selling match-3 title ROYAL MATCH helped them redefine the quality standards for this genre. His speed, creativity, and memorable melodic voice that brings unique branding to the projects he works on - he is passionate about all the projects that he touches, and delivers AAA quality no matter the project scope. Co-Owned with Alex Cox, Moonwalk Audio prides themselves on creating top quality sound while offering opportunities to folks from all race, class, and gender identity. As an arranger and orchestrator, Adam has worked on additional music and orchestration for various TV and Film projects, including Sausage Party, Galavant, Ride Along 2, Smurfs: Lost Village, Baywatch, and he provided orchestration for EDM superstar BT’s album ‘Electronic Opus’. His award winning production work on Greatest Showman (This Is Me) granted him a triple platinum record. Online streams have yielded over 100 million views. Gubman is also known for re-branding the NBC Today Show theme with Warner-Chappell Music Group, and has done numerous licensing and custom audio packages for TV News programs all over the world. Orchestration clients have included collaborations with Alan Menken, Chris Lennertz, Austin Wintory, Tom Salta, Pasek and Paul, BT, Warner-Chappell, Disney, and many more. An avid songwriter, Adam is a composer for Disney Parks, and writes, arranges, orchestrates, and produces music for parades and entertainment. He has shipped over two dozen shows and attractions for Disney Imagineering and Tokyo Disney, including the Baymax Happy Ride that opened in 2021, Star Wars Galaxy Edge, and the Star Wars Hotel project. He also recently scored the Manta Coaster for Sea World Dubai, which opened summer 2023. Adam’s musical ideology can be wrapped up in the slogan “Imagine the Sound of Your World”. His passion is finding the music culture in the games he works on, and he strives to give every project it’s own identity and musical thumbprint that includes source and songs.

A multiple award-winning composer, Jason Hayes is well known for his long-standingrelationship with Blizzard Entertainment, contributing music to their games set in thepopular worlds of Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo. He was the original lead composer ofWorld of Warcraft, the most successful massively multiplayer online game of all time.Jason's music has been performed by symphony orchestras all over the world in variousconcerts including the show Video Games Live, which debuted at the Hollywood Bowlwith the LA Philharmonic, and continues to tour internationally. He's also been a featuredspeaker for UCLA, USC, the Film Music Network, ASCAP, the Society of Composers andLyricists, the Game Developers Conference, and the Pacific Northwest Film ScoringProgram. Currently he lives in Orange County, California and is the Studio Audio Director ofAnother Axiom Inc.

John Hopson has worked in games analytics for over twenty years, most notably at Xbox, Bungie, Blizzard, and Epic, contributing to landmark games including Halo, Destiny, World of Warcraft, and Fortnite. He has a PhD in psychology from Duke University and is the author of the best-selling book The Secret Science of Games and a longtime advocate for data-informed design. His work bridges neuroscience and creative practice to help developers make better decisions through meaningful data.

Scott Hwang is a System/Technical Design-oriented Game Designer who specializes in multiplayer experiences. He is currently a Senior Game Designer II on the Overwatch team at Blizzard Entertainment. Prior to this role, he was a Lead Systems Designer for an unannounced game project at Blizzard. Scott holds a MET degree from Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center.

Aaron Keller is Game Director of Blizzard Entertainment's Overwatch.

As founder of Midwest Games, Ben Kvalo has pushed forward a new publishing model in the industry, Shadow Publishing, providing more flexible and sustainable support. Ben is an entertainment and video games leader, most recently having built out films and games while at Netflix. Previously, Ben has worked at two of the largest global video game companies, 2K and Blizzard, working across various roles in publishing, marketing, and technology on both video games and Esports. Ben has worked on some of entertainment's biggest brands including Bird Box, Extraction, Army of the Dead, and over 50 other titles. In video games, he has worked on major franchises like NBA2K, Borderlands, BioShock, Civilization, Mafia, and all of Blizzard's Esports brands, having helped to publish over 100 titles. Ben is proudly Midwestern, originally from Wisconsin, having graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.

Diandra Anne Lasrado's vast experience spans nearly two decades working for industry behemoths such as Riot Games, BioWare, Blizzard, and Aniplex. Diandra is an industry veteran with a narrative background that covers editorial, characters, dialogue, and carries throughout the voice-over pipeline. Her experience covers AAA, mobile and indie games. With Diandra's focus on diversity, great imagination and team first mentality she has built a name for herself as a positive and creative influence for games. She currently is Narrative Director for iwot games making a Wheel of Time game.

Sarah is currently the Director of People Operations at Bit Reactor, where she is helping to support the studio culture, and ensure all people-related initiatives are helping the team and studio thrive. As a lifelong lover of all things game-related, she's thrilled at the opportunity to blend her personal and professional interests and contribute to making the games industry a place where people can build successful and fulfilling careers. Prior to Bit Reactor, Sarah spent time working at Proletariat, Inc., and Blizzard, Ent., supporting the development of Spellbreak, and World of Warcraft.   

Carey Littlefield is a QA Lead at Blizzard Entertainment with 7 years in the games industry, leading strategic quality efforts on World of Warcraft. He also serves as a Global Lead for Microsoft's Black in Gaming, where he champions equity, mentorship, and representation. Outside of the office, Carey is a dedicated cosplayer and lifelong fighting game enthusiast, passionate about storytelling, community, and creative expression.

Nicole Maiorano is currently part of the Diablo Immortal development team at Blizzard Entertainment. She has worked on several areas of the game, including design of zone content, limited-time gameplays, and dungeon content. Prior to working at Blizzard Entertainment, she worked as a game designer on mobile titles at A Thinking Ape, and at Glu Mobile. She has a BA in Game Design from DigiPen Institute of Technology. Outside of games, she enjoys anime, escape rooms, and attending concerts of varying genres.

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.

Natasha is a lead research scientist at Blizzard Entertainment, working on the Player Interactions and Trust team. An 8-year veteran of the studio, she leads the 'Behavior by Design' initiative, using behavioral science to support all the game teams at Blizzard in promoting more respectful, resilient, and inclusive player communities. Natasha previously worked at Square Enix as a games' user researcher. She is also on the Thriving in Games Group Executive Board and has been a part of that organization since 2017.

Marcus Morgan is the VP of Operations at Obsidian Entertainment, which mostly means he's the person people go to when they're not sure who to go to. His past lives include roles across the industry including EA, Activision Blizzard, and Xbox. In his current role at Obsidian, he's helped guide the studio's shift to a first-party studio, worked to bring Obsidian's games to more platforms so more players can enjoy them, and dabbled in the world of streaming television with The Outer Worlds 2 episode in Prime Video's "Secret Level" series. He's contributed to the success of games like The Outer Worlds, Pentiment, and Grounded, the latter of which grew into a 25-million-player surprise hit—and now also serves as Executive Producer for its sequel Grounded 2.

Rob Pardo is the co-founder and CEO of independent video game development company Bonfire Studios. He is a renowned designer, best known for his influential career at Blizzard Entertainment, where he spent 17 years, ultimately serving as its Chief Creative Officer. During his tenure there, he was a key figure in the development of some of the most celebrated video game titles, including StarCraft II, Warcraft III and World of Warcraft. His significant contributions to the video game industry led to him being named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2006. In 2016, Pardo co-founded Bonfire Studios with a philosophy centered on creative independence and a passion for making games that the team itself loves to play. The studio’s first title is Arkheron, a team-based, competitive PvP game currently in an Alpha phase of development. As CEO, Pardo leads Bonfire with a goal of creating games that combine the thrill of competition with the warmth of community.

Jeff is an Associate Art Director at Blizzard Entertainment, where he works with the World of Warcraft art team to help them create the environments, creatures, and characters of Azeroth.  Over the past 15+ years, he has worked in multiple art roles across the game industry, contributing to more than 25 projects. He has also taught art and lectured at universities. As part of his role at Blizzard, Jeff also gets to help with the World of Warcraft Student Art Contest, which just wrapped up its 9th year. 

Yan Perng is Director, Legal, at Blizzard Entertainment, where she supports the legal and business affairs of Blizzard Entertainment. Prior to joining Blizzard, she was senior counsel at Netflix Games, Tencent America and NCSOFT West. Yan received her JD from the University of Washington, her BS from from National Taiwan University, and is now based in Los Angeles.

Rachel Quitevis is a VFX Artist from Dallas, Texas. Since 2017, Rachel has worked for game developers such as Playful Studios, Gearbox Software, Santa Monica Studio, and Blizzard Entertainment. She began her career as a 3D generalist, refocusing her discipline to visual effects in 2020. Rachel is currently a VFX Artist at the co-development VFX studio Beyond-FX since 2024, lending her expertise to AAA titles while honing her craft among the industry's best real-time visual effects artists. When Rachel is not working on video games, she's playing them. She is also an amateur Miata mechanic, rock climber, award-winning dessert baker, musician, plant collector, bookworm, and dog-mom of Cosmo Squirrelbane.

Keith is a veteran art leader with over 25 years of experience in art production, world building, cinematic development, and team leadership. He started in the games industry as an artist in 1998 working on a series of popular outdoor sporting titles. In the years since, he has contributed to a variety of studios and franchises including Presto Studios (MystIII, Whacked!), Volition (Saints Row, Red Faction, Agents of Mayhem), Blizzard Entertainment (TITAN, Hearthstone), and Bungie (Destiny 2, Marathon). Keith is also a long-running veteran speaker at the annual Game Developer's Conference. He is co-creator/co-organizer of the Art Direction Summit along with Andrew Maximov. Keith has also moderated the Art Leadership Roundtable since 2012.

Chase Shi, Senior Director of Product Management at Blizzard Entertainment, leads commercial strategy for the Diablo franchise, including the award-winning mobile game Diablo Immortal and several incubation projects. He oversees product strategy, monetization, LiveOps, and growth across these games. Previously, he drove business success for top-ranking titles like Star Trek Fleet Command at Scopely. He also hosts Game Bakery, a podcast bridging the gap between Eastern and Western gaming industries through creative dialogue.

Seth Sivak is a seasoned entrepreneur and executive with over 16 years of experience building and scaling companies at the intersection of games, technology, and creative culture. His current role is VP of Product at Bad Robot Games driving product and production across the studio. Previously, he was the CEO and Co-Founder of Proletariat Inc., a game studio he grew from 5 to 130 employees, raising five rounds of funding, launching multiple original titles, and ultimately leading the company to be acquired by Activision Blizzard in 2022. Following the acquisition, Seth served as VP of Development on World of Warcraft, where he oversaw production and product management for one of the world's most iconic game franchises during a period of significant organizational and cultural transformation. An engineer and designer by training, Seth began his career in gameplay programming before moving into product leadership at Zynga. Since 2020, he has been an active angel investor and advisor, supporting dozens of early-stage companies such as Modulate.ai, K-ID, Midsummer Studios and working with venture capital firms such as Courtside Ventures, TIRTA Ventures, and a16z.

Guy has been developing audio engines for various platforms since 2002. He has worked on everything from slot machines to AAA titles to indies, and written audio engines for them all, from a low-level mixer up through next-gen multi-threaded magic. He has also worked as a gameplay engineer on multiple titles, implementing various combat and gameplay systems, and was until recently the lead gameplay engineer at Echtra Games. He now works as an Audio Programmer at Blizzard Entertainment. Guy is editor/author of five books on Game Audio Programming entitled Game Audio Programming: Principles and Practices volumes 1 through 5.

Brian is the founding CEO of Savvy Games Group, the world’s largest esports company and 8th largest global games software publisher. In three years, Savvy has grown to 3500+ employees in 22+ countries, providing above target returns for its shareholders. Brian has nearly 30 years of studio and operations experience with Electronic Arts, Microsoft, and Activision Blizzard, and as founder and CEO of LottoInteractive. At Savvy, he has led nine acquisitions and investments, achieving 5x capital efficiency vs plan. As Senior Vice President, Worldwide Studios at Activision, he led eleven studio acquisitions and quadrupled revenue to $4B over five years, leading all development from portfolio planning and concept design to quality assurance, code release and customer service. Brian managed development, operations, or business teams for eight #1 entertainment franchises with lifetime revenues exceeding $45 billion. The games which he helped lead have won more than 300 Game of The Year and 1400 Editor’s Choice and Outstanding Achievement awards.

Gameplay Systems Designer at Blizzard. Currently working on gameplay content and systems design on Overwatch’s Stadium game mode.  

Zhen leads the centralized AI and ML team at Blizzard, empowering engineers and scientists to leverage AI innovation to transform game development and elevate player experiences. Her team boasts expertise across computer graphics, reinforcement learning, NLP, personalization, and ML pipelines. Outside of work, Zhen contributes to the broader community by teaching C++ programming at a local community college, where she motivates students from diverse backgrounds to explore careers in computer science and gaming.

Tom van Dijck is a senior software engineer with over 26 years of experience in game engine, systems, and security development. At Embark Studios, he has spent the past two years working as an anti-cheat developer, leading security efforts on THE FINALS and ARC Raiders. His background spans low-level engine development, backend systems, and large-scale live games across PC and consoles, with prior roles at DICE, Blizzard, EA, and Sony.