Matt Ditton

Matt Ditton is a long time member of the Australian game development scene. He’s  worked at Krome, Pandemic, Defiant and Griffith University and has been an Artist, Programmer, Educator and Producer. Matt also works in the field of interactive installations and his most recent work with Rezon8 – “Curious Creatures” became the headline act at this years Vryfees festival in South Africa.

This year saw Matt start his own company, “Many Monkeys Development”, a Melbourne Game Development house that received a Screen Australia Digital Ignition Grant for their first game “Feng Shui Master”.

He’s hoping to at some point have a good lie down.

Kate Inabinet
Kate Inabinet is an industry professional with over 10 years’ experience as a senior and principle animator for games, and an active involvement in the education of a future generation of game developers. She has worked at respected Australian studios such as Atari and Bluetongue and has 9 published games including the high profile titles Transformers Armada and De Blob franchise. From 2006-2008 Kate contributed to Atomic MPC Magazine as an editorialist where she published a monthly column title “Geekette” that focused on the industry and surrounding issues.

During the course of her career Kate has both presented on her experience and sat as a panel member at Freeplay, AGDC, RMIT, Atomic Live and GDAA, and her career has been featured in various media including The Canberra Times, Cleo Magazine, Creative Australia Magazine, Desktop Magazine, Atomic MPC Magazine, Burst Magazine, JJJ Radio, Nickelodeon’s Sarvo, Sunrise Morning Show and BTN.

Kate studied at the Academy of Interactive Entertainment (AIE) in Canberra and since 2010 has been teaching the Advanced Diploma of Game Development at the AIE Melbourne campus.  Kate also provides mentorship through the Smith Family for young people interested in becoming a part of the games industry.

Tom Killen

Tom Killen and The Voxel Agents are about making fun and he’s been making fun since he first made a game as an eight year old with an exceptionally loose grasp of Basic. Now older and somewhat better at making games, Tom and The Voxel Agents have been creating casual iPhone games in Melbourne since early 2009.

The process of creating games drives him even more than games themselves and so Tom is a frequent participant of Game Jams around Australia. Tom loves indie games and game jams so he supports the local game development community by assisting IGDA Melbourne to put on monthly developer nights, jams, and industry celebrations.

Michael Theiler

After completing a Masters degree in Sound Design, Michael enjoyed a brief stint working as a Quality Assurance/Documentation Specialist at Fairlight.  He spent his days at large format audio consoles, testing EQ curves, outboard effects implementation and the like.  This experience was sought by Team Bondi, so a transfer to the games industry eventuated.  LA Noire was in the early stages of development when Michael joined their Quality Assurance department, seeing it grow to become a landmark game.  When an opportunity in their sound department opened up, Michael grabbed it, joining Peret Von Sturmer, and became the audio team responsible for  creating the sound of LA Noire.

This collaboration, due to complementary skillsets and a shared creative vision, was a successful and enduring partnership, ultimately leading to the founding of Kpow Audio, a studio specialising in sound design and audio implementation for games.

A year on and Kpow Audio is picking up steam under the direction of Michael and Peret. They have a handful of mobile titles under their belt, and work on Stoic’s beautiful The Banner Saga continues.

Katie Williams

Katie Williams is a freelance games journalist and critic. She contributes regularly to HYPER, PC PowerPlay, GameSpy, and Kotaku AU. She also maintains a personal blog, Alive Tiny World, in which she documents the way game worlds echo or intersect with our own. She tweets at @desensitisation.