GDC 2023 Session Viewer

-, Jacobc.eth

Title: Founder

Company: HyperPlay

JacobC.eth is the founder of HyperPlay, a web3-native game launcher and aggregator of game stores. HyperPlay enables permissionless interoperability and great in-game experiences. Jacob previously lead operations and product strategy for MetaMask and is a lifelong gamer. Jacob also leads product for the Game7 DAO and the Mantle layer-2 blockchain with a gaming performance focus.

Aamodt, Lindsay Anne

Title: Head of Marketing

Company: Upland

Lindsay is the Head of Marketing at Upland Me, Inc. headquartered in Silicon Valley, California, with responsibility for performance marketing strategies, brand and content management, thought leadership and PR, and partnerships. Prior to joining Upland, Lindsay led the marketing efforts at Together Labs (formerly IMVU) where she fell in love with the self-empowerment, artistic expression, community, friendship, and entrepreneurship born out of virtual worlds and the earliest metaverses. Since then, she has become a champion for the future of web3 and its opportunities for the global market. Recently, she was nominated as one of the Most Inspirational Women in Web3 and the Metaverse by WOW3 and is also a member of Chief, a private network for women executives. Lindsay is a former professional figure skater with National and World titles earned during her career. She studied International Communications and Business at the Miami University of Ohio (Oxford, OH) and the American University of Paris (Paris, France).

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 Venture Partners, a globally leading venture capital firm with over $18 billion in capital under management and more than 500 investments across the U.S., Europe, and Asia—including Epic Games, Stability AI, and Snap. As an investor and board director, he helps emerging game studios and interactive technology companies with everything from strategy to hiring, sales and marketing, and financing. Moritz loves to partner with exceptional entrepreneurs, many of whom have been leading the creation of games like Fortnite, Call of Duty, League of Legends, Apex, Overwatch, Valorant, StarCraft II, and Warcraft III.

Previously, Moritz was a partner and management team member at BITKRAFT Ventures. He personally raised over $200 million and—together with the founders—scaled the firm to become the most active gaming VC and lead investor of 2020, 2021, and 2022 with more than 120 gaming, VR, AR, and web3 investments. Moritz led many of the funds’ marquee deals including Inworld AI, Theorycraft Games, Raid Base, Lightforge Games, Horizon Blockchain Games, and TRIPP—attracting 9-figure follow-on investments including from Sequoia, a16z, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Sony, Intel, Disney, Niantic, Qualcomm, HTC, Epic Games, Take-Two, and Riot Games.

Prior to joining BITKRAFT, Moritz was a Vice President at Goldman Sachs, where he built and co-led the firm's global gaming practice. Over the past years, he advised the world's leading gaming and technology corporations on over $300 billion in transaction volume across mergers & acquisitions, IPOs, venture capital, and other strategic transactions—including Dell’s $67 billion acquisition of EMC and IBM’s $34 billion purchase of Red Hat.

Moritz is a former professional gamer and #1 ranked player of Diablo II and was recognized among the ‘30 Under 30’ (Forbes) and ‘40 Under 40’ (Capital). He is a founding member of the World Economic Forum's Metaverse Initiative to build equitable, interoperable, and safe virtual worlds. His recent speaking engagements include the World Economic Forum, Forbes, New York Times, Harvard, Stanford, M.I.T., Goldman Sachs, and J.P. Morgan. Moritz holds an M.B.A. and M.A. from Stanford University.

Bettner, Paul

Title: Co-Founder & Co-CEO

Company: Wildcard

Paul Bettner is a veteran game creator and the founder and CEO of Wildcard, the games studio behind The Lucky’s Tale franchise and home to The Wildcard Alliance - a subsidiary of Playful focused on Web3 gaming for fun, not finance. Driven by a strong motivation to bring joy and entertainment to players around the world, Paul has spent his 20+ year career making some of the most popular games of the last several decades including Words with Friends and Age of Empires. Having been at the forefront of every big shift in gaming, from mobile games to VR, Paul is now betting big on Web3 as a way to ensure everyone in the game ecosystem – from spectators to collectors to players – equally benefits. From founding Newtoy, Inc. and Playful to launching Age of Empires at Microsoft Game Studios to creating the first prototypes for the Oculus VR platform – Paul’s penchant for entertainment has made him a key player in the evolution of the gaming industry.

Bryan, Kwame

Title: CTO / Lead Developer, Prospectors NFT and Gaming Engineering

Company: ChainSafe

Kwame Bryan is an accomplished mobile and blockchain game developer from Toronto, Canada. With a passion for developing cutting-edge games, Kwame has made a name for himself in the gaming industry, establishing a solid track record of success. 

Kwame is the Lead Developer of the highly acclaimed Prospectors NFT game, recently launched on the SKALE network. Under his leadership, the game surpassed 10,000 transactions in the first week of a closed private beta, showcasing his exceptional expertise in the field and ability to create sound blockchain game mechanics.

In addition to his work on Prospectors NFT, Kwame is also a core developer at ChainSafe, where he plays a vital role in developing web3.unity, an SDK for building web-powered games in Unity3D. His contributions to the platform have helped position it as a leading solution for developers seeking to create engaging, interactive games for web3 and mobile platforms.

Twitter: @ElijahNomad 
GitHub: https://github.com/kbryan
Discord:  kwame#6442

Cengiz, Ezgi

Title: Senior Product Manager, MetaMask SDK

Company: Consensys

I'm Ezgi, Senior Product Manager at ConsenSys, where I lead the development of the MetaMask SDK. Prior to joining ConsenSys, I spent 5 years at Twitter, where I worked on building ad mediation SDKs for mobile apps and games. Web3 represents a massive opportunity for game developers to create new and innovative games that can change player ownership and how they interact with games. With the MetaMask SDK, we aim to provide game developers the wallet support they need to build the next generation of games and cater to players with all the exciting benefits of the web3 ecosystem.

Twitter - https://twitter.com/ezgicengiz
Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ezgi-cengiz-3a501324/

DiCarlo, Julian

Title: Head of Growth US

Company: NodeReal

Julian is a seasoned crypto professional with more than five years of experience in the industry. He holds a degree in Economics with a focus on econometrics and began his career as a data analyst while exploring his passion for crypto through research and investments. Julian eventually transitioned to full-time work in crypto, founding an incubation lab focused on web3 projects and later leading business development efforts in the US for Transak, a fiat-crypto suite of APIs. Driven by his passion for the Web3 ecosystem, Julian joined NodeReal to spearhead growth in the US market. He is dedicated to leveraging his extensive experience and knowledge of the space to support projects in building truly revolutionary web3 applications.

Ivanov, Stefan

Title: Art Director

Company: Stealth Meta Wear

Stefan Ivanov is a game developer with 14 years of experience. He’s worked and collected knowledge throughout his career working at companies like Ubisoft and Electronic Arts, taking on different positions – from Technical Artist to Art Director. In the last couple of years, he’s been improving and developing art pipelines for content creation in games, finding ways to push content to the next level for VR, AR and Web3.

Johannsson, David

Title: CEO/Founder

Company: Blocklords

David Johansson is the CEO of MetaKing Studios and creator of BLOCKLORDS. A passionate gamer and industry veteran, David has held numerous creative and production roles on games including Crusader Kings, Liberators, and League of Angels before turning his focus toward building out BLOCKLORDS in 2018.

John, Roby

Title: CEO and CoFounder

Company: SuperGaming

Roby is the CEO and CoFounder of SuperGaming. SuperGaming has created popular mobile games MaskGun, Silly World, and Tower Conquest, while investing in building its own game engine for running hyper-scale, real-time multiplayer games that include the official PAC-MAN game that have been played by over 400 million players worldwide. Today Roby and his team are building Indus - a new Battle Royale themed in the Indus Indo Futuristic universe that will be available later this year and recently launched Tower Conquest Metaverse Edition (tcme.io), their first Web3 Game.

Kieltyka, Peter

Title: CEO and Co-Founder

Company: Horizon

Peter builds successful companies, assembles teams from scratch, and ideates, architects and delivers powerful products to market. A key contributor to the Ethereum ecosystem and many open source stacks and libraries, Peter’s contributions are used by thousands of Internet companies, including Cloudflare, Heroku, MongoDB, Fastly, 99Designs, and many others. Prior to Horizon, Peter was co-founder and CTO of Pressly (acquired by Vision Critical) where he architected a rich communications hub for business communities like Rogers, Scotiabank, Deloitte, and Accenture. Before Pressly, Peter was co-founder and CTO at NuLayer (acquired by Score Media and Gaming), a software development company, where they built theScore sports app, which is in the Apple Hall of Fame and remains #5 in the App Store’s sports category after more than a decade. Now, Peter leads Horizon and drives web3 adoption by creating elegant architecture, tools and products that are easy and enjoyable for developers and end users.

Kukka, Elizabeth

Title: Vice President of Business Operations

Company: ChainSafe Systems

Elizabeth (Liz) Kukka is Vice President of Business Operations at ChainSafe Systems, one of the only blockchain R&D firms with a multi-chain perspective. ChainSafe is home to mission-critical infrastructure spanning web3.unity, an open-source library connecting games built with Unity to the blockchain, as well as an NFT minter and in-game marketplace. Web3.unity makes it super easy to build a blockchain-enabled game from scratch or add blockchain/NFT capabilities to an existing game. With an open, developer-first approach, we're building the future of gaming alongside our community. Liz leads multiple facets of operations within ChainSafe Gaming driving successful partnerships, acquisitions and funding. She is deeply entrenched into the world of gaming and is enthusiastic about building phenomenal experiences, co-creation opportunities for gamers, and enabling studios to realize the full potential of web3 gaming. Liz is passionate about business growth and brings over a decade of experience and expertise as an operator, investor, and mentor. She speaks internationally on blockchain, cryptocurrency, women in tech, future technology, and investing. Before joining the world of blockchain, she was Head of Operations at Plug & Play Tech Center, one of Silicon Valley's earliest and most respected tech accelerators. There, she supported startups in Healthcare & Wellness, Insurance, and Risk & Fraud and expanded the Sunnyvale office to 6 additional global locations.

Kyurkchiev, Momchil

Title: Chief Strategy Officer

Company: CleverTap

Momchil is the Chief Strategy Officer at CleverTap. Recognized as Founder of the Year by the Central European Startup Awards, he is a visionary evangelist leader passionate about building relationships and culture. He is also a leading expert on user retention and mobile marketing, sharing expertise as a TEDx speaker and industry thought leader. Prior to CleverTap, Momchil was the Chief Product Officer of Leanplum, the mobile marketing platform company he co-founded in 2012. As the CEO of Leanplum, he grew the company to 100+ employees and $20M+ in revenue. Before founding Leanplum, he was a software engineer at Google. Momchil likes to spend time outdoors with his family, mountain biking, reading about history, and exploring the frontiers of Web3.

Laidacker, Aleissia

Title: Head of Product & Technology

Company: Open Meta

Aleissia Laidacker is a Product & Technology Director with over 20 years of experience in the Immersive Technology space. She is a leader in AR/XR, where she was Head of Developer Experience at Magic Leap. Working with numerous partners to find creative and technically innovative ways of pushing the boundaries of interactions and storytelling using Augmented Reality. She led as the Global Director of Creative Technology at The Mill working with teams to build world-class Experiences and Branded-Content for AR, XR, Virtual Worlds and LBEs. She currently works with a number of startups, focused on building the future Open Metaverse through technologies such as Web3, Blockchain and XR. She currently leads as Head of Product and Technology with the Open Metaverse Association. And is a Metaverse Strategist for Mona. Previous to working in the XR space, she worked in Game Development for over 10 years. Having led the Technology, Gameplay and AI Direction on some large game franchises such as Assassin’s Creed at Ubisoft.

Lau, Kit

Title: Co-founder

Company: D.G.Pals

Co-founder of multiple game studios and an indie-game Incubator, Kit is a game enthusiast who has spent 9 years building gaming studios and gaming products. Having built revenue positive gaming studios in the traditional gaming space, Kit and his partners have ventured into the web3 gaming space, developing games, ecosystem platforms, and exploring new business models that may spur the indie-game scene to new heights.

Levy, Ethan

Title: Host

Company: Deconstructor of Fun, Founder in Stealth

Ethan Levy is a 20 year veteran game designer and producer who has contributed to over 80 shipped games across every genre and platform. He has worked at companies including EA, BioWare and Pandemic Studios and N3TWORK as a monetization and LiveOps specialist. For 3 years, Levy ran top monetization consulting firm FamousAspect, where he worked with 50 clients including Activision, 2K, Pocket Gems & Jam City on top selling and top grossing hits across console, PC and mobile. In his 7 year stint at N3TWORK, he served as Lead Designer for hit game Legendary: Game of Heroes and Executive Producer for the Tetris brand. In 2022 he struck on his own to serve as co-founder of a stealth, Web3 startup, and to host podcasts and write for the industry leading Deconstructor of Fun blog.

Liao, Rebecca

Title: Co-Founder & CEO

Company: Saga

Rebecca Liao is Co-Founder and CEO at Saga, a Web3 protocol for launching the next 1000 chains in the multiverse. The Saga platform allows developers to take a single tenant VM and automatically launch it on a dedicated blockchain, complete with fully provisioned validators and an optimally incentivized security structure. She is also a Co-Founder, Advisor and former COO at Skuchain, a currency agnostic blockchain for global trade and a World Economic Forum Tech Pioneer for 2019. In 2020, the World Trade Organization named Skuchain one of the top three blockchain companies in trade and supply chain finance. Under her leadership, Skuchain’s platform grew to $5 billion+ in annual volume. She is currently Advisor to Sommelier Protocol, where she is designing their DAO to optimize for governance, platform growth & regulatory compliance. She is also a Fellow at the Stanford Program in Law, Science and Technology, where she produces and hosts the #global-public-policy podcast. She was a member of President Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, advising on China, technology and Asia economic policy. She also served on Secretary Clinton’s foreign policy team for her 2016 presidential campaign, responsible for Asia trade and economic policy. Prior to Skuchain, Rebecca was Director of Business Development and Head of Asia at Globality, Inc., a Softbank-backed B2B unicorn for AI-powered procurement of professional services. She began her career as an international corporate attorney at Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP and Fenwick & West LLP. She represented clients in Asia, North America and Europe across a variety of industries, including Internet, mobile, semiconductors, enterprise software, energy, advertising technology, consumer technology and finance. Her work focused on domestic and cross-border transactions, including mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, private equity investments, venture financings, debt financings and public offerings of debt and equity. She also regularly advised public and private companies on corporate governance and securities law compliance. Rebecca is also a writer and China analyst. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic, Nikkei Asia, The National Interest, Bloomberg View, n+1, Democracy Journal, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Times Literary Supplement, Chinafile, The Diplomat, Huffington Post, Dissent Magazine, The New Inquiry, the LA Review of Books, The China Story Journal, Tea Leaf Nation, San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Classical Voice. She regularly comments on China for Politico, Deutsche Welle and Channel NewsAsia and has also appeared on HuffPost Live and SiriusXM Radio. A graduate of Stanford University, where she studied Economics, and Harvard Law School, she serves on the Board of Advisors of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) and is a Co-Chair of the Brookings Society. In the wake of rising anti-Asian hate, she co-founded, chairs and serves as an Executive Producer at The ACTION Project, a creative agency of Asian American Academy and Emmy Award-recognized creatives and leaders in entertainment, law, technology, business, education, and journalism leveraging our creative talent to shape the national narrative around our diverse community. She is also on the Board of Directors of Words Without Borders, Voices of Music and the Wagner Society of Northern California. She is also a member of the National Committee on US-China Relations. Rebecca is a jazz and opera singer and tweets at @beccaliao.

Maier, Domenik

Title: CEO and Co-Founder

Company: iBLOXX and 0xBattleGround

Markou, Gregory

Title: Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer

Company: ChainSafe Systems

Gregory Markou is the Co-Founder & CPO at ChainSafe. A developer by trade, Gregory spent his early career focused on Ethereum protocol development, and currently focuses on improving the UX of game development for web3.

Nagata, Kohji

Title: Co-Founder and Head of Game Development & Design at Parallel Studios

Company: Parallel Studios

Kohji Nagata is a game developer and co-founder of Parallel Studios based out of Toronto, Ontario. He has spent most of his life working on and obsessing over games and game design, largely in the table top and card game space. Before becoming a game designer he spent 15 years developing and innovating in the cloud computing space. He is currently Head of Game Design at Parallel studio where he looks to bring gamers and gaming industry into the Web3 space.

Paglia, Luke

Title: COO

Company: AMGI Studios

Luke Paglia, Chief Operating Officer at AMGI Studios, oversees the coordination and execution of the My Pet Hooligan franchise including the free-to-play multiplayer PvP, PvE game 'The Rabbit Hole' currently in Alpha release. The game blends the animation style of Zootopia with the chaotic nature and action of games like Grand Theft Auto. Luke ensures that the AMGI team is delivering world-class animation for The Rabbit Hole at record pace so the Hooligan crew can battle, brawl and rampage their way to overthrow the evil Meta ZuckBot in one of the most hotly anticipated web3 game launches of 2023.

Pathak, Parth

Title: General Manager, Polygon Supernets

Company: Polygon

Parth Pathak is the General Manager of Polygon Supernets @ Polygon Labs. Polygon Supernets is Polygon’s industry-leading application-specific (dedicated) blockchain solution that is powering the world’s leading gaming, entertainment and enterprise giants for their Web3 ecosystems. Parth is a lifelong passionate gamer: he started modding games from the age of 9, which brought him into computer science. He is a Deep Tech product builder with prior CTO experience in creating startups and R&D leadership - across AI SaaS, Fintech, Geospatial tech, in Singapore, Netherlands and India.

Poulson, Jennifer

Title: VP, Portfolio Games

Company: Immutable

Jennifer leads Immutable Games Studio's initiative to identify and partner with external game studios to deliver the next generation of web3 games. With the goal of bringing true digital ownership to anyone that plays games, Immutable will partner with a diverse lineup of titles over the coming years. Having started in the gaming industry 18 years ago, Jennifer was most recently Head of Publishing Partnerships APAC at Riot Games, where she helped expand the company's publishing presence in the region and launch its new slate of games. Previously, she served as SVP Marketing at BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment Asia, where she oversaw the long-term IP strategies for the company's many properties. Prior to that, she spent her career at communications consultancies and was Deputy Managing Director of Hill+Knowlton Strategies Thailand and held roles with Ogilvy in Los Angeles where she represented Square Enix, as well as Edelman in Tokyo where she represented Microsoft Xbox. Jennifer is fluent in Japanese and dotes on her two rescue cats in her spare time.

Qiang, Ella

Title: VP Ecosystem & Partnerships

Company: Cronos Labs

Ella Qiang is VP of Ecosystem & Partnerships at Cronos Labs. Cronos is a public Layer 1 blockchain that interoperates with both Ethereum and Cosmos ecosystems. It is backed by Crypto.org, Crypto.com and more than 400 Dapp developers, and ecosystem partners. Ella is a veteran in the web3 industry since 2016. She was Director of Partnerships at Stellar Development Foundation, followed by various roles in investment, advisory and DeFi. Ella has a background in banking and corporate finance, and holds an M.B.A. from UCLA Anderson School of Management.

Ryan, Sean

Title: CEO

Company: AQUA.xyz

Sean is a senior technology operator and Partnerships executive with extensive global experience in Online Payments & Blockchain, Gaming & Metaverses, E-commerce & Marketplaces, Ad Networks, Developer Ecosystems, and SAAS platforms.

Sean has been the CEO at AQUA.xyz for the past year with an aim to build a Player-first marketplace for the growing web3 gaming community, preceded by nearly 11 years as the VP and Director of Games and Platform Partnerships at Facebook.

Sanders, Michael

Title: Co-founder & Chief Storyteller

Company: Horizon Blockchain Games

Michael is Co-founder & Chief Storyteller at Horizon where they're making web3 easy, fun, and powerful for users and builders. Horizon is the creator of Sequence, the all-in-one developer platform + smart wallet that makes building web3 games and apps easy; and, Skyweaver, the premiere web3 trading card game. 

Vendette, Angelic

Title: Global Head of Marketing

Company: Alo Yoga

Recently named Forbes 2022 Most Entrepreneurial CMO, and CMO to Watch by Business Insider, Angélic Vendette has been creating award winning campaigns on the brand, retailer, and agency sides for the past 15 years. Prior to joining Alo Yoga as chief marketer, Angélic has held marketing strategy and leadership roles at LVMH, Sephora, Holt Renfrew, and Stitch Fix. Curious and entrepreneurial at heart, Angelic is currently focused on shaping conversations around the future of Retail. Innovation, web3, emerging platforms, and community drive her.

Yong, Zhen Yu

Title: CEO, Co-Founder

Company: Web3Auth

Zen (Zhen Yu) Yong is the CEO and Co-Founder of Web3Auth, the leading non-custodial auth infrastructure that enables Web3 wallets and applications to provide seamless user logins to both mainstream and native Web3 users. Formerly from Visa and Accenture, Zen embarked into the world of decentralised finance, blockchain and Web3 as he saw the potential for innovation and progress. He is passionate about empowering users through self custodial ownership of assets, and is a firm believer in making the process as secure, seamless and convenient as possible. Zen built one of the first cross chain bridges (Peace Bridge), and worked on different Ethereum Foundation projects researching off chain scalability before culminating in the establishment of Web3Auth. His vision is to provide the best UI and UX for all users by leveraging the familiarity of Web2 processes and social logins, without compromising on safety or security.