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Gordon is a Professor of the Practice of Cinematic Arts at USC and the Director of Cinematic Ethics, helping to cultivate the next generation of leaders in our craft. He has played key business and product leadership roles at Tencent, Electronic Arts, as a designer on Madden NFL Football, and MTV Networks. In 2020, Bellamy was honored by Games for Change as their Vanguard Award winner for his contributions to the craft. In 2019, he was awarded the first ever Jerry Lawson Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 2018 he was featured in Nickelodeon's Black History Month. Currently, he is featured in Netflix's Game Documentary, High Score, Amazon's It's In The Game Docuseries, and on The World According to Jeff Goldblum on Disney + . Gordon serves as the Executive Director / CEO of the Gay Gaming Professionals and on the Board of Directors of Wave and has served as Executive Director of both the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences and the International Game Developers Association. He is a graduate of Harvard College with a BA in Engineering, and resides with his husband Joe Heally, and their dog, Colby Janet, in Los Angeles, California.

Ryan drives global platform, cloud, and distribution partnerships at Electronic Arts, building strategic agreements across console, PC, subscription, and emerging cloud ecosystems. He manages key relationships with leading platform and technology partners, structuring multi-platform deals that expand distribution, build subscription value, and unlock integrated fan experiences at scale.

David Carrasco, CEO and Co-Founder of Vermila Studios and Executive Producer of "Crisol: Theater of Idols", a UE5 first-person survival horror adventure that was launched last February 10th with universal praise and excellent global user reviews. With a career spanning over 25 years, David has worked internationally in major game companies like Nintendo, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, and Atari.

Mark has led the Android Games & Graphics team since 2021. Previously Mark was the CTO for Stadia's internal games studio, the client lead at Niantic Labs and the CTO for First Person Shooters at Electronic Arts. Mark has been making games since 1993 when GPUs were just a fantasy for home enthusiasts.

With over 20 years of leadership experience in the games industry, John has held senior production and operational roles at Riot Games, King, Carbine Studios (NCSoft), United Front Games, Electronic Arts, Microsoft, and Wizards of the Coast. John’s path into gaming was an unconventional one, transitioning from a career as a submariner, where he worked as a research chemist and network engineer, bringing a unique technical and systems-driven perspective to game development and production leadership.

Blair Durkee is the Associate Director of Gaming at GLAAD, the world's largest LGBTQ media advocacy organization. She has a M.S. in Computer Science from Clemson University, where she also began her career in advocacy. Since joining GLAAD in 2018, she has led the expansion of GLAAD's programmatic work in the video game industry and has consulted on a wide range of LGBTQ-inclusive titles like Tell Me Why from Xbox Game Studios and Apex Legends from Electronic Arts. Blair is based in South Carolina, as a lifelong tech-enthusiast and gamer, she is passionate about harnessing the power of video games to create a better world for LGBTQ people.

Andrew Echanique is a passionate leader and gaming enthusiast with a proven track record across sports, live events, and entertainment. He currently serves as Sr. Manager, Franchise Strategy for Madden NFL 26 at Electronic Arts, helping strengthen Madden's position as a leader in interactive football experiences. Previously, Andrew led American Football Esports at EA, helping build and shape the Madden Championship Series in partnership with the NFL. A proud University of Florida alum (Go Gators!), Andrew resides in Orlando with his wife (Jasmine), daughter (Penelope), two guinea pigs (Anna and Elsa), and puppy (Berlin).

Kate Edwards is an award-winning 30+ year veteran of the game industry, and the CEO and principal consultant of Geogrify, a consultancy which innovated game culturalization, as well as the CXO and Co-Founder of SetJetters, a screen tourism app. She is also the former Executive Director of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) and the Global Game Jam. Following her 13 years at Microsoft, she has consulted on over 300 game titles for Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, SEGA, Sony, Square Enix, LEGO, and many other companies. In addition to serving in several board and advisory roles, she is a geographer, writer, and corporate strategist. Kate is the recipient of the Game Developers Choice Awards 20th Annual Ambassador Award, and in 2021 she was included in the Forbes' "50 Over 50" Vision List as well as being inducted into the Women in Games Hall of Fame.

With nearly a decade of industry experience across Tech Art, Build Engineering and Game Preservation, Garrett is now leading the engineering efforts for PlayStation's preservation team. Formerly a preservationist for Electronic Arts, he spends his days learning new tools and technologies while advocating for his work whenever he can.

Monet Gardiner is a Sound Designer with 12+ years of experience in video games, film, television, music, and multimedia. As a Sound Design graduate from Savannah College of Art and Design, Monet has worked with 343 Industries at Microsoft on Halo Infinite and Electronic Arts on NBA Live 19 and NBA Live 20. Noteworthy achievements include Production Mixer & Supervisor on Emmy award-winning live sitcom "The BUZZ", multiple MPSE Golden Reel Nominations for Sound Editing, and Dialogue Designer on 2023 BAFTA Best Audio and EE Game of the Year "God of War:Ragnarok". Recently in addition to her work on God of War: Ragnarok, Monet has been working on titles such as The Last of Us 2 Remastered and Death Stranding 2 as a Dialogue Designer with Sony Interactive Entertainment PlayStation. Monet's impact continues to reverberate through the industry through her commitment to giving back to the game audio community by fostering diversity and inclusion as a proactive board member of the Game Audio Diversity Alliance, a non-profit charity which aims to provide career advancement opportunities for underrepresented voices through education, mentoring, and financial support.

After falling into game development totally by accident in 1990, Jeff's first commercial credit came while he was still a university student. After graduating in 1995, he had a three decade career in game development working both for independent developers and for studios owned by Electronic Arts, Sony, and THQ. Since 2022 Jeff has worked at NVIDIA Corporation, starting off as a Python tools programmer and now managing a team and leading a project as part of NVIDIA's Omniverse engine initiative. Jeff created and has moderated the Technical Artist Roundtables at GDC for two decades. He also created the Technical Artists Bootcamp, now the Technical Artists Summit, in 2010. Jeff has served on the GDC Advisory Board since 2009.

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.

Emory is a Group Product Manager on Discord Quests. He's building advertising products that are authentic to Discord's user-centric principles while also enabling advertisers to reach passionate gamers in engaging ways. After building his first few games in Macromedia Flash (pre-Adobe!) back on middle school library computers in the early 2000s, Emory's entire professional career has been about games. He has over a decade of experience at various indie game studios, AAA developers like Activision (Call of Duty) and Electronic Arts (The Sims), and the game software company Unity.

Kadet Kuhne is the Assoc. Audio Director at Firaxis Games for Civilization VII, with over 20 years experience in sound for games, film, and media art. Kadet has worked as an AR/VR Audio Lead at Meta, Sound Director at Illumix, Senior Sound Designer at Anki, Audio Lead at Telltale Games, and for various companies such as Electronic Arts, Konami, and Skybound contributing to 30+ games across full production cycles. Kadet holds a Master's in Music Composition from CalArts, and taught game and film audio courses at University of California San Diego, California College of the Arts, and Art Institute of CA - SF.

Paul is an award-winning executive and creative leader whose career spans the globe, establishing him as a leading figure in innovation and advocacy within the games and interactive entertainment industry. As the President of Arrival, Paul is the driving force behind the company’s global operations, fueling strategy, content development, and creative pipelines across teams in Los Angeles, Seattle, and the UK.   Prior to leading Arrival, Paul served as SVP Interactive Worldwide at Formosa Group and was Senior Audio Director at Xbox Game Studios. He has managed extensive AAA teams and pipelines for industry giants including Activision, EA, SEGA, Ubisoft, PlayStation Studios, Electronic Arts, LucasArts, 2K Games, Nintendo of America, Harmonix, and many more.     His portfolio includes credits on some of the industry’s most successful properties, including the God of War franchise, The Last of Us franchise, Halo, Call of Duty, Genshin Impact, Resident Evil, Fortnite, Borderlands 3, Sunset Overdrive, Forza Motorsport 5, Iron Man 2, and BioShock 2. Paul and his teams have achieved global recognition, winning multiple MPSE Golden Reel Awards, DICE Awards, G.A.N.G. Awards, SXSW Awards, BAFTA Awards, and Golden Joystick Awards. In 2023, Paul was honored with the prestigious Game Audio Network Guild Lifetime Achievement Award at the Game Developers Conference.   A passionate advocate for the industry, Paul served a six-year term as President of the Game Audio Network Guild (G.A.N.G.)—the world’s largest organization of game audio professionals. As an active member of the Board of Directors, he helped originate the industry-first Program Partnership Initiative, the Guild Scholarship Award, and the worldwide advisor network. He was also a founding member of G.A.N.G. 's Pro Branches, including the Interactive Entertainment Sound Developers (IESD) and the Voice Actor Coalition (GVAC).   Paul is also a patent holder, having co-invented a first-of-its-kind Pre-Cognitive Interactive Music System with Microsoft colleague Robert Ridihalgh. An active speaker, he has conducted master classes and panels at MIT, Yale University, Berklee College of Music, Georgia Tech, SIGGRAPH, GDC, and the GRAMMY Soundtables.   Paul holds a BM and MM with summa/highest distinction from the world-renowned New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. A jazz and classical musician of twenty-five years, he has performed and recorded with legends such as Mick Goodrick, John Abercrombie, Clark Terry, George Russell, Cecil McBee, and Bob Moses.

Regan Mandryk is a Canada Research Chair in Digital Games and Professor of Computer Science at the University of Victoria, Canada. In her research, she innovates games that offer social connections and emotional benefits for players, and combats what undermines those benefits (e.g., toxicity, obsessive passion). Regan teaches game design and player experience evaluation, and led Canada’s first graduate program on games user research. She regularly gives keynotes and presentations at game and technology conferences. She has consulted with various game companies, (e.g., Electronic Arts, Tencent Games, Ubisoft, Roblox), game incubators (e.g., Execution Labs), and indie studios, as she is passionate about making academic research actionable for players, policymakers, and industry professionals.

Sonia Mokhtari is a French-American composer and sound designer, recognized as one of the few women leading audio and composition in the video game industry. Based in San Francisco since 2010, she currently works full-time at Take-Two/Zynga, specializing in audio design and music composition for live mobile games. Her previous experience includes roles at Meta, VGW, CALM, and Electronic Arts (The Sims). Sonia's background combines rigorous musical training—including classical, jazz, and world music—with advanced studies in composition and sound design for film, television, and games at Berklee College of Music. She brings a rich, diverse musical palette to her game audio work, blending orchestration with adaptive sound design to create immersive player experiences. In addition to her professional work, Sonia teaches at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and actively mentors emerging talent through programs like Genheration and Reel Stories. She is a passionate advocate for diversity and inclusion in the gaming and audio industries. A member of SACEM, Sonia composes for games, films, and interactive media, continuously pushing creative and technical boundaries in game audio.

Trevor Moore is a Principal Account Manager at Amazon Web Services. Trevor currently leads the relationship between AWS and Electronic Arts, where he partners across EA’s Entertainment, Experiences, and CTO-organization to help them build, scale, and operate high-performance player experiences in the cloud. With deep expertise in cloud infrastructure, strategic account leadership, and digital transformation, Trevor works closely with developers and business leaders to align technical innovation with long-term growth. He is excited to share insights at the Game Developers Conference on how cloud technologies are shaping the future of game development.

Joe Newman has spent a decade in the video 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 children's safety with preserving their rights and the privacy and security of their personal information at scale. At k-ID, Joe develops automated compliance solutions for the next generation of online services, seeking to provide meaningful global compliance while empowering children everywhere.

Cheryl Platz is an internationally renowned interaction designer, author, and actress best known for her work on cutting-edge games, products and platforms including Amazon's Alexa, the Echo Look, the Sims family of games, the Riot Games platform and 2XKO, Marvel Strike Force, and Microsoft's Azure platform. She is the host of Enduring Play: A Game Development Podcast and author of The Game Development Strategy Guide: Crafting Modern Video Games That Thrive (Rosenfeld Media, 2025). She is currently Creative Director for the Game Studio at The Pokémon Company International, focused on Pokémon TCG Live - past employers include Riot Games, Scopely, Electronic Arts/Maxis, Amaze Entertainment/Griptonite Games, Microsoft, Amazon, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Cheryl is also a repeat adjunct faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University's Masters of Entertainment Industry Management program, teaching the craft of video game design and production. Cheryl's first book, "Design Beyond Devices: Creating Multimodal, Cross-Device Experiences" (Rosenfeld Media, 2020), is the design manual for technologists who aspire to get a little bit closer to the starship bridge of their dreams – or just build better responsive websites, games, and cross-channel experiences.

Mihai Pohontu is the CEO of Amber, a game development agency headquartered in Bucharest, Romania. Previously Mihai was VP of Emerging Platforms at Samsung, working to build the developer ecosystem around the company's product line. Prior to joining Samsung, he oversaw Product Operations at Disney Interactive, a team of 600+ staff distributed across 9 locations around the world. While at Disney, Mihai founded the Partners group, delivering a portfolio of co-development and licensing projects, leveraging Disney properties and franchises to deliver high-quality entertainment created by external studios and publishers, such as the top 50 grossing game "Frozen Free Fall". Prior to Disney, Mihai was the VP and General Manager of Central Development Services at Electronic Arts, overseeing operational teams supporting 18 development studios on 3 continents. He founded and was the General Manager of EA Romania, one of the largest game development studios in Eastern Europe.

Steve Rabin is a Principal Software Engineer at Electronic Arts in the Performance Technology Group and a 30-year game industry veteran, specializing in game AI, CPU optimization, and game development tools. He has worked on games for Microsoft, Activision, Nintendo, and Electronic Arts. He has 16 issued patents on the Wii Remote (5 patents), Data Visualization and Analysis of Code (9 patents), In-Store Nintendo Kiosk, and Augmented Reality. Steve was the chief editor of the Game AI Pro series, the AI Game Programming Wisdom series, Introduction to Game Development, and an author in the Game Programming Gems series. Steve founded and organized the GDC AI Summit from 2009 to the present. He also teaches Game AI and Data Visualization within the Computer Science department at the DigiPen Institute of Technology since 2006. Steve holds a master's degree in Computer Science and an undergraduate degree in Computer Engineering, both from the University of Washington.

For the past decade Inmar has been a character artist at Electronic Arts. He has worked across many platforms in his professional journey. His humble beginnings were on Facebook games, then through mobile, and now on Console and PC. He has helped establish new IPs like Supreme Heroes and Age of Champions as well as partnering with established IPs like Star Wars, Dragon Age, and the Sims. Although Inmar is currently a character artist, he has spent most of his career as a generalist. He is a problem solver and has filled the position of a one-man art team on multiple projects.

Carl got his start in games in 1994. Carl has worked at small and large companies alike from a buyer and a service provider perspective, most notably Michael Crichton's Timeline Entertainment, Nvidia, Electronic Arts and his current role as Senior Director of External Development at Zynga. In this Business Operations role, he has built a worldwide organization which facilitates all of Zynga's external development and partner relations involving Art, Engineering, Audio, UI/UX, Co-Dev, QA, Localization/LQA, Narrative, UA and Marketing/Publishing. In addition, Carl helps coordinate and facilitate M&A integrations for Zynga and its subsidiaries.

Brian Schmidt is one of the early pioneers of the game audio industry. The 2008 recipient of the Game Audio Network Guild's Lifetime Achievement Award, and 2017 inductee into the Pinball Expo Hall of Fame, Brian has been creating game music, sounds and cutting-edge technology for more than 35 years. With a credit list of over 140 games and a client list including Electronic Arts, Zynga, Microsoft, Sony, Capcom, Sega, Data East, Namco and many others. Brian has used his combined expertise and experience in music composition, sound design and his deep technical knowledge to further the state of the art in game audio and his music has been featured in TV, Film and in the CD-set, Legends of Game Music. Brian began his career in game audio in 1987 as a composer, sound effects designer and music programmer for Williams Electronic Games in Chicago - writing music and creating sound effects for pinball machines and coin-operated video games. While there, he was the primary composer of the iconic video game NARC and lead composer and audio lead for Black Knight 2000. His main theme from NARC was later recorded and released by The Pixies. In 1989, Brian left Williams and became one of the industry's first independent game composers, where he worked on such games as John Madden Football, the Desert Strike Series, Mutant League Football and the award-winning Crueball. Other credits include Guns and Roses Pinball, where he worked closely with Slash to create a truly interactive Rock and Roll game experience. In 1998, Brian was recruited by Microsoft to lead the direction of game audio technologies. While there, he joined the then-fledgling Xbox organization as the primary architect for its audio and music system. Brian has been credited with bringing Dolby Digital Surround Sound to interactive gaming through his efforts at Xbox (where he also created the original Xbox startup sound).Through his ten-year tenure at Microsoft, Brian continued to drive and advance game audio technologies through tools such the award-winning XACT (Xbox Audio Creation Tool); the first-of-its kind tool to provide interactive mixing for video games. Brian was also responsible for the overall audio system of the Xbox 360 game system, including the XMA audio compression format, winner of the G.A.N.G Best New Technology award and finalist in IGDA's Best new technology category. Brian currently works as a consultant to the video game industry working with companies large and small. Brian is the creator of GameSoundCon, the industry's largest conference dedicated to composing video game music and video game sound design. Brian is a frequent and in-demand speaker on game audio and game audio technologies, having given literally hundreds of educational and inspirational talks at events all over the world. Events such as the Game Developers Conference, Microsoft's Gamefest, Sega Devcon, and the Audio Engineering Society Conference, SiGraph and esteemed institutions such as Yale University, Northwestern University and Digipen have invited Brian to share his knowledge and insight into the industry. Brian received undergraduate degrees in music and computer science from Northwestern University in1985, where he created the first dual degree program between the School of Music and the Technological Institute. He went on to complete his Masters in Computer Applications in Music in 1987, where portions of his thesis work was published in the prestigious Computer Music Journal and presented by invitation to the AES special conference on Audio Technology. Brian currently serves as President of the Game Audio Network Guild (G.A.N.G.), a position he was elected to in 2012; sits on the advisory board of the Game Developer Conference; is a former steering committee member of the Interactive Audio Special Interest Group (ia-sig) of the MMA; and has been a featured keynote speaker at GDC, Project BBQ and the Montreal Interactive Games Summit (MIGS).

Alessandro Sestini is a research scientist at SEED, the research and development lab within Electronic Arts. His work focuses on the application of deep reinforcement learning (RL), inverse reinforcement learning, imitation learning, and large language models (LLM) to game AI and playtesting. Alessandro contributed to the game AI landscape, helping develop LLM-based agents for the new Battlefield game and, more recently, developing the new RL-based movement system of the goalkeeper in EA Sports FC 26. Alessandro has published several academic papers and given several talks about the intersection between machine learning and video game development, helping researchers and practitioners in adopting such technology. Prior to joining SEED, Alessandro obtained his PhD with honorable mention in Smart Computing and Computer Engineering from Università degli Studi di Firenze

Jeff began his career as an art intern at MicroProse in 1997. 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 independent studio in Quebec City called Yellow Brick Games where the focus is on creating new innovative gameplay and original IPs starting with their debut title that launched last year, Eternal Strands.

Bio Jeff is a Fellow & Vice President leading Technology Partnerships at Electronic Arts. With 30 years of professional game dev experience and 57 credits across 46 shipped titles spanning both AAA and indie studios, Jeff has built his career around engineering excellence, technology strategy, and hands-on problem solving. He is known for approaching hard problems from unconventional angles, applying deep technical thinking to bridge business needs and technology capabilities, and still brings a builder's mindset to every partnership. During his 27+ years at EA, Jeff has driven the company's global technology partnerships in alignment with EA's broader technology strategy. He works closely with the C-suite, central platforms, studios, and senior technology leaders to identify non-obvious opportunities, translate emerging technologies into practical use cases, and turn complex constraints into meaningful outcomes for teams. His work focuses on developing and strengthening strategic relationships from implementation through executive levels with technology companies ranging from early-stage startups to some of the world's largest, all in service of helping EA teams create world-class games players love.

Pasha Sol is a Motion Capture Supervisor at Electronic Arts, where he supports performance capture production for a wide range of AAA titles across the company as part of EA Create Capture. With over a decade in games and a background in acting and optical physics, he brings both a performer’s insight and technical perspective to the craft. His work focuses on building robust capture pipelines, supervising on set, and guiding teams through complex production challenges.

Neville Spiteri is the co-founder and CEO of Wevr, an award-winning interactive content studio, named “Top 10 Most Innovative Companies” in AR/VR by Fast Company. Neville is credited on critically acclaimed franchises in film, video games, and immersive media. He has been at the forefront of interactive content throughout his career, most recently as Executive Producer on “The Blu”, a multi-award-winning virtual ocean experience, “Harry Potter VR” with Warner Brothers, and “Gnomes & Goblins”.   Prior to Wevr, Neville was a Producer and Senior Development Director at Electronic Arts where he led technology and game production teams including the Medal of Honor franchise. He previously served as Technical Director and Digital Effects Supervisor at Digital Domain and Square Enix. Neville started his career at Wavefront Technologies (now Autodesk) as a graphics software engineer. 

Eleanor Todd is the founder and CEO of Fablegate, an AI-native game and game services startup reinventing interactive storytelling. Previously, she was Chief Creative Officer at Microfun Ltd, a Sequoia-backed mobile studio, VP of Product at Disney Interactive, and a Creative Director at Maxis / Electronic Arts.

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.