2025 Speakers
Kyle Holdwick, Lead Gameplay Engineer, thatgamecompany
Kyle Holdwick grew up as a console kid playing video games in the 1990s and early 2000s. He was incredibly moved by some of the fantastic stories and worlds in games during those years and they left a lifetime impression on him. From his youth onward he knew he wanted to develop games that would move people in the same way. In 2008 he attended DigiPen Institute of Technology in pursuit of a programming degree specializing in creating video games. During his time there he worked within small student teams on many award-winning student games, including the ascii farming simulator Sowlar (IndieCade), the 3D poetic experience Solstice (Days of Wonder Night), and the futuristic racing game Nitronic Rush (IGC, IGF Honorable Mention). After graduating in 2012 he went on to form an indie game studio, Refract Studios, with two of his classmates. They worked together on the spiritual successor to Nitronic Rush called Distance and successfully launched it on Steam in 2018. During the development of Distance Kyle worked on an in-game race track editor that was released for players to create their own tracks. This process kicked off Kyle's love for User Generated Content and inspired him to realize video games can be so much bigger and more interesting with players' creations. Kyle joined thatgamecompany in 2017 to pursue his interest in creating story driven games that are focused on moving people emotionally. Upon first joining the studio he was a Gameplay Engineer focused on adding creature interactions to Sky: Children of the Light. This quickly grew into him holding many responsibilities and ultimately becoming the Lead Gameplay Engineer in 2021. Today he is focused on leading the UGC initiatives as well as generally directing the gameplay feature development of Sky.