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

Matthew Ball is the Managing Partner of Epyllion, an investment, investment advisory, and strategic advisory firm, as well as a Senior Advisor to KKR, Venture Partner at Makers Fund, Co-Founder of the Roundhill Ball Metaverse ETF (NYSE:METV), and an Occasional Contributor to The Economist. Ball’s 2022 book, The Metaverse, was a national bestseller in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and China, named one of the Best Books of the Year by Barnes & Noble, Hudson News, The Guardian, Fast Company, Politico, and Xinhua News Agency, and blurbed by the CEOs of Epic Games, Meta, Microsoft Gaming, Netflix, Sony, and Unity. Ball was previously the global Head of Strategy for Amazon Studios, a Senior Advisor to McKinsey, Director at The Chernin Group’s Otter Media, and an Executive at Accenture. He began his career as a full-time wildfire fighter.

Troy Batterberry is the founder and CEO of EchoMark, a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company pioneering a new standard in information protection. The company was founded on that trust is central to empowering everyone to do their best work. Troy brings years of product and technology experience, including 25 years at Microsoft, where he most recently served as a Corporate Vice President as the product leader of Microsoft Teams Meetings, Calling, and Events. During his tenure, Troy also played an integral role in the growth and success of marquee Microsoft products, such as Windows, Explorer/Edge, Bing, Xbox, and MSN. Before joining Microsoft, Troy held engineering positions at Sony and within the U.S. Department of Defense. Troy is driven by a long-standing passion for creating new experiences and products. In addition to his professional pursuits, Troy is a parent volunteer at his kids' schools, spends time volunteering for Boy Scouts, and also enjoys time outdoors boating, hiking, and running. He holds an M.S. in Information Systems from the University of Southern California and a B.S. in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from North Dakota State University.

Sharon Baylay-Bell is a global business leader with over 20 years of experience helping companies grow at the intersection of culture, technology, and business. She has held senior roles at Microsoft, where she received the Chairman's Award from Bill Gates, and at the BBC, where she served as Chief Marketing Officer and Executive Board Director. Her career spans global tech, media, and consumer businesses, with a focus on navigating cultural complexity to build brands that resonate across markets. She is currently the CEO of Testronic, a global provider of quality assurance and language services for the game industry.

Ander Bergstrom brings comprehensive understanding of the motion capture ecosystem from his experience as studio owner, producer, and technology vendor. As founder of Mocap Now, he built relationships with top-tier game studios before the company was acquired by StretchSense in 2020. His career includes roles as Senior Producer on Xbox's Advanced Technology Group at Microsoft and as animation producer on AAA titles including the UFC franchise at THQ. This diverse background gives him unique perspective on motion capture from multiple angles: creative demands, technical requirements, business considerations, and technology capabilities. Now serving as Market Director and Entertainment Sales Manager at Qualisys, he helps game developers, film studios, and educational institutions find motion capture solutions that fit their creative vision and production realities.

Travis Bradshaw is a Principal Product Manager at Xbox, leading the product team for creator onboarding and publishing pipelines for developers. His team builds the products that help developers get started, publish their games, and succeed on the platform. Previously, Travis was the product lead for PlayFab. Before Microsoft, he spent over a decade at id Software, where he led build and release infrastructure for the id Tech engine and live services for the DOOM and QUAKE franchises. He's passionate about making the leap from PC to Xbox as seamless as possible—ideally before the end of your workday.

Danny Chen is a Principal Software Engineer on the Xbox Performance Team at Microsoft. He works closely with game studios, hardware teams, and Core Windows OS and graphics teams to solve complex performance challenges spanning CPU, I/O, memory management, and platform‑level optimization. Danny has been a key driver of initiatives such as resource determinism, DirectStorage, HW accelerated decompression, and low latency asset‑streaming pipelines. His work empowers developers to build richer, faster, and more responsive game experiences.

Uthappa is the lead architect on the Microsoft Azure Gaming team that supports some of our most prominent gaming customers and partners. He specializes in enabling Azure cloud solutions for business-critical gaming workloads, whether they involve developing games on the cloud, using AI for game development, or hosting dedicated servers to reach millions of players worldwide.

Juniper is a Senior II QA Tester at Bethesda Softworks (ZeniMax Media, Inc.). She is a member of the QA union at ZeniMax and supported her union in winning the first collective bargaining agreement in a Microsoft subsidiary.

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.

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.

A.J. Fairfield has been working on graphics at Mojang Studios for over 8 years, focused on elevating the rendering capabilities of the game. Prior to Mojang he contributed to the development of D3D12 and PIX at Microsoft. Physical accuracy and real-time rendering have been his passion for years, and working at Mojang has provided him with the opportunity to deliver exciting visual experiences to gamers on practically every modern platform.

Ed Fries created his first video games for the Atari 800 in the early 1980s. He joined Microsoft in 1986 and spent the next ten years as one of the developers of Excel and Word. In 1996 he left the Office team to pursue his passion for interactive entertainment and created Microsoft Game Studios. Over the next eight years he grew the team from 50 people to over 1200, published more than 100 games including more than a dozen million+ sellers, co-founded the Xbox project, and made Microsoft one of the leaders in the video game business. In 2004, Ed retired as a Microsoft Vice President and began working as a board member and advisor with entrepreneurs in the video game business as well as serving on the board of several non-profit organizations including the International Game Developers Association Foundation and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. In 2019 Ed and Kelly Wallick launched 1Up Ventures, a venture fund to support independent game developers. Since then, 1Up Ventures has made more than 80 investments in game development companies around the world.

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.

Sam has spent his career leading teams and companies across the video game industry. He has successfully built and sold three game studios, including two in the medical games space. Before his foray into games for doctors, Sam was CEO of Funtactix, the studio behind mobile and social F2P titles for top-tier Hollywood franchises such as The Hunger Games, Mission: Impossible, and Narcos. He previously led the DirectX graphics team at Microsoft, where he drove the development and standardization of GPU capabilities across Xbox and the global hardware ecosystem. Sam began his career as an animator at LucasArts and has served on graphics and gaming advisory boards for Intel, AMD, Microsoft, Khronos, and others.

Henry Golding is a 15+ year games industry veteran with broad experience in gameplay, tools, and test automation. He has helped some of the biggest live service games in the world restructure their development processes to ship frequent updates safely and cost effectively. Henry specializes in leveraging modern technical practices to pave the way for sustainable and humane game development – eliminating the need for crunch and fostering an environment where creativity and innovation flourish. With experience at industry-leading companies including Microsoft, Mojang, Rare, Epic Games, and now Netflix, he has been instrumental in transforming how game development teams approach quality and testing. Henry has worked to raise awareness of the benefits of test automation in games for many years - speaking at conferences (GDC, Develop) on podcasts, sharing resources via the Game Automated Testing Resource Hub (bit.ly/gathub) and the Game Devs Can Test channel on YouTube. He also mentors and coaches industry practitioners.

Shawn leads the Direct3D team at Microsoft, guiding the evolution of the company's core graphics platform for game developers and real‑time applications.

Joshua Howard is the COO of OtherSide Entertainment, a studio focused on building original immersive sims, as the founders have been doing for many years. His focus extends beyond creating great games; he fosters positive team cultures, cultivates future leaders, and prioritizes employee well-being as the foundation for exceptional player experiences. Joshua's experience spans leadership roles in companies like Microsoft, Crytek, and Big Fish. He actively consults, coaches, and writes on leadership and management within the video game industry. A passionate board gamer himself, Joshua believes the principles of game design can be effectively applied to real-world management challenges.

Brandon Huffman is the founder and managing partner of Odin Law and Media, a boutique firm dedicated to serving video game, technology, and media clients. With over a decade of experience advising developers, publishers, and high-growth companies, Brandon has negotiated complex deals across publishing, licensing, M&A, and IP strategy, including transactions opposite major industry players like Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Tencent, and Netflix. He also serves as general counsel to the International Game Developers Association (IGDA). Brandon is known for helping studios navigate legal and business challenges from formation through financing and exit, and for scaling Odin's practice into a nationally recognized leader in games industry law.

Perrin Kaplan is a global marketing and communications executive known for her award-winning work in emerging tech, entertainment, and gaming. She is a principal of Zebra Partners, which opened doors following her role as vice president of marketing and communications, as well as company spokesperson, growing Nintendo's corporate brand and overseeing notable global phenomena such as the Wii; Pokémon; DS; and the brand ambassador movement. Kaplan's clientele includes innovative companies and brands, from indies to Fortune 500s, such as Meta/Facebook, Intel, Microsoft, Sony Pictures VR, DreamWorks, Aspyr, Reddit, Qualcomm, Gearbox, Samsung, NCSOFT, Wizards of the Coast, and many more. She started in the newsroom at Seattle's NBC affiliate with stints in political communications. Considered one the best in her field, Kaplan is profiled in several books (Women in Gaming: 100 Professionals of Play, The Ultimate History of Video Games, Volume 2: Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, and the Billion-Dollar Battle to Shape Modern Gaming, Console Wars), articles and documentaries and is an active speaker for top events and organizations. She has been honored for her continued roles in female leadership growth. Perrin also serves on board and strategic advisory roles for Women In Games International (WIGI), GamesBeat, and Didimo Inc., as well as formerly for VidCon.

Austin leads the PIX team at Microsoft. He has worked on PIX, Microsoft's debugger and profiler for DirectX, for over a decade.

Anran Li is an Engineering Manager & Product Lead at Riot Games, working on their fighting game 2XKO. She started her career as a Software Engineer at Microsoft, where she helped ship Halo 5, Halo Wars 2, and Halo Infinite. Anran first became a leader while working at Twitch, helping streamers make a living doing what they love, on eSports, Subscriptions, Bits, and Emotes. Anran is a product-minded engineering leader, with technical speciality in around game systems and online services. Anran's personal mission is to help demystify games and tech, and make it more welcoming for underrepresented groups. She volunteers with organizations like the IGDA Foundation, AIAS DICE Foundation, and UCLA. She has also been a speaker at PAX, San Diego Comic Con, Game Access, and SINFO conferences.

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.

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.

A 30-year game-industry veteran, Long was CEO of Neon, where he led Shrapnel, the first AAA Web3 game. Long led Xcloud at Microsoft and games at HBO. He has produced 32 games, on every platform from SEGA Genesis to META Quest.

Andy McCalib is a Principal Architect at Microsoft focused on developer tooling, cross-platform SDKs (including PlayFab), and Xbox game development. Over ~15 years in the game industry, he has helped teams ship Xbox Game Studios titles, and previously led developer support for PlayFab, helping creators integrate services and iterate quickly. More recently, Andy shipped the PlayFab Game Saves feature to enable cross-progression, and at GDC he'll share practical, first-step guidance on getting a PC game running on Xbox in as little as a day using the latest Partner Center and GDK onboarding improvements.

Max is the engineering manager for Microsoft's Silicon, Graphics, Media and AI Group, where he leads teams working on the hardware and software that power modern graphics, AI and media experiences on Windows.

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.

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.

Gary Riley is the Lead Character Artist at Raven Software, working on the Call of Duty franchise.  I’ve been in the industry for 17 years and worked for Rare Ltd, Ubisoft, Ninja Theory and now Activision/Microsoft.

Richard Rouse III is a creative director, designer, and writer 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 Homeworld: Vast Reaches, 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.

TreaAndrea M. Russworm is the Microsoft Endowed Chair and Professor of Interactive Media and Games at the University of Southern California. Russworm is the author of Blackness is Burning; she is a co-editor of the collections Gaming Representation and Theorizing Tyler Perry; and she is a Series Editor of Power Play: Games, Politics, Culture (Duke University Press). Along with Samantha Blackmon, she is a co-founder of the public humanities project The Black Games Archive. Since 2016 Russworm has served as the founder and director of the Radical Play Lab, a community-based game design and research lab.

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).

Ryan Scott (a.k.a. "Morello") is a game design and product leader currently serving as a Senior Product Director at 2K. He has over a decade of experience in design leadership, spanning deep gameplay design, team leadership, and organizational design. Previously, he was Lead Agent Designer on VALORANT at Riot Games and served as a Lead Designer on League of Legends, after earlier roles at Microsoft and ArenaNet. He's also known for applying product strategy to live-service challenges, with a focus on what makes games thrive over time.

Robert Shearer is a Corporate Vice President at AMD, leading Advanced Architecture and ISV engagement within the Computing & Graphics organization. He is responsible for aligning silicon architecture, software, and ecosystem partnerships to drive platform‑level differentiation across client, graphics, and AI portfolios. Robert brings deep leadership experience at the intersection of hardware and software, with a proven track record of building and scaling high‑impact technical organizations and translating architectural vision into commercial results. Prior to AMD, he held senior leadership roles at Meta, Microsoft, and IBM, where he led silicon and system architecture initiatives from concept through production. Robert holds more than 150 issued patents and is recognized for fostering durable, forward‑looking platform strategy.

Based in Brighton, Jeff has made a name for himself in the game industry working on high-calibre, critically acclaimed titles such as Alan Wake 2 (at Epic Games Publishing) and the Forza Motorsport series (at Microsoft Game Studios). He is currently design director for Mythwright Publishing and design lead on Out of Words. Jeff is a meticulous and creative game designer, with a wide range of projects under his belt in both scope and style.

Jane Tian is the global lead of Qualcomm Game Developer Technologies. She oversees DevTech requirements, product planning, go to market execution, and game developer community outreach. Jane has over 15 years of experience in gaming-graphics and mobile platform technology planning, partnership management, including driving global efforts at companies such as ByteDance, Oppo/OnePlus, and Microsoft.

I am the Head of Growth at Photon Engine, focusing on Gaming Developers and Founders. We are the leading multiplayer gaming service for online developers reaching over 1.4B players monthly. Previously, I led Microsoft Azure PlayFab engagement initiatives for game developers and publishers. This role was a continuation of Microsoft's 2018 acquisition of PlayFab, the live game operations and game services cloud for games that I grew in Europe and abroad as a general manager until the acquisition. I built studios for Unity Technologies and Ubisoft and mentored multiple gaming studios, which I love to do. Before joining the gaming industry, I produced and directed many projects for corporations, private and public organizations worldwide. Led departments and pushed the limits for U.N.E.S.C.O., Marketel McCann, Cossette, and others. Won multiple awards for interactive online projects, founded two more companies and worked on some of the most amazing experiences ever put on the web. I am passionate about creating innovations that augment interactions, blending business success with new technologies that enhance creativity.

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.

Matthew Weise is a narrative designer and writer whose work bridges the worlds of games and traditional entertainment. He spearheaded the story development of Disney's Fantasia: Music Evolved for Harmonix Music Systems, architected the choice-design for the interactive film The Jury Room by Oscar-winning director Barry Levinson (Rain Man, Good Morning Vietnam), co-designed and directed the game prequel to the Christopher Nolan produced sci-fi film Transcendence, and has performed similar roles on projects for Microsoft, Red Bull, Eko, PBS, and The National Ballet of Spain. His IGF-nominated The Snowfield, an emotion-driven immersive experience set during WWI, was developed while he was Game Design Director of MIT's GAMBIT Game Lab, an initiative that mixed games and research in innovative ways. His current company, Fiction Control, provides narrative design services for film, television, and games. He is currently working with Rocket Ride on an unannounced project for a major entertainment IP.

"Brady Woods is a product leader at Xbox with over 15 years of experience across gaming, media, and technology. As a leader in the Gaming Commerce Platform & Experiences organization at Microsoft, she guides a global team of product managers responsible for the commerce foundations that power Xbox transactions, multidevice purchase flows, data infrastructure, and creator‑facing marketplace capabilities. Her work focuses on empowering game creators to reach players everywhere, innovate on business models, and drive sustained commercial success across the Xbox ecosystem. Before joining Microsoft, Brady held pivotal product and business leadership roles in entertainment and production, partnering with studios like Marvel and Netflix to advance modern content creation workflows. Across her career, she has championed the intersection of technology, consumer behavior, and creator enablement—shaping platforms that help creators engage audiences and build thriving, scalable businesses.

Sonali Yadav is a Partner Group Product Manager for Gaming AI at Xbox, leading product and strategy at the intersection of AI, games, and player delight. She shapes how AI meaningfully improves and enhances the experiences of players and creators. Previously, Sonali was a founding leader of Microsoft’s small language model efforts, including the Phi family, helping enable a new class of efficient, powerful AI. Earlier, in the Office of the CTO, she drove cross‑company initiatives across AI and consumer products and helped scale Microsoft’s product‑led growth practice. Sonali is passionate about building great products that empower gamers and developers.

Haiyan Zhang is General Manager of AI Innovation and Science at Xbox. She was formerly Chief of Staff to the CEO of Microsoft Gaming and was Senior Director of Innovation at Microsoft Research Cambridge. An innovation and technology leader, Haiyan has spent the past 20 years working hands-on in software engineering, AI, user experience, hardware R&D, cloud platforms, design thinking and blue-sky envisioning. She continues to push the boundaries of where technology can transform people's lives for the better.