By day, Jason Bakker is a game developer at Wicked Witch Software, where he has programmed and designed numerous games across most major consoles and handhelds. By night, he is one third of a crack indie development team, currently working on Shadow Field, a sinister tactical strategy game for the iPhone. His writing has appeared in Game Developer Magazine and on Gamasutra.com. His favourite animal is the majestic water buffalo, or Bubalus bubalis.
http://twitter.com/Jason_Bakker
Starting his game development career at Micro Forté as a Game and Level Designer on Fallout Tactics, Ivan went on to work at German Crytek as their Senior Designer and then Lead Designer on what would become one of the talked about releases for 2004: Far Cry. Freeplay 2010 sees the rugged rogue Ivan return from the harsh development wilderness with a new venture, VagabondArmy.com, and a new adventurous tale regarding his current exploits undertaking a Master of Arts by Research at Sydney AFTRS. Not one to miss!
http://au.linkedin.com/in/ivanberam
Elliott Bledsoe is a Research Assistant with the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCi) and a Project Officer with Creative Commons Australia. He rants regularly about copyright, innovation, the internets, identity and politics, http://elliottbledsoe.com
www.twitter.com/elliottbledsoe
Cameron is one of the founders and lead programmer at ‘Maschine simulations’ who specialise in driver training and realistic racing games. He has been teaching at various games courses for 5 years, currently at Victoria University. Previous to that he worked in multimedia creating games and interactives for the education sector, usually using Flash. He also produces music and creates/performs music installations.
Brandon Boyer’s wild, pure, simple life has seen him acting as artist, programmer, and indie record label head, as well as writer, columnist and editor for outlets like Edge magazine, Gamasutra, Offworld and Boing Boing. He was recently named Chairman of the Independent Games Festival, the world’s largest and most influential yearly showcase of indie games, where he is leading the organization into its thirteenth year.
http://www.facebook.com/brandonnn
Ben Britten Smith has been writing software professionally for over 16 years. Much of this time was spent in the film industry where he was given an Academy Award for Technical Achievement for his work on suspended 3D camera control systems. In the past five years he has changed his focus from films to games. He is a freelance game developer who now works with Tin Man Games on the very popular Gamebook Adventure series of games and with Play Bit Studios on the Terracore Adventures games.
He has been involved with three technical books on game programming: “Beginning iPhone Games Development”, “iPhone Advanced Projects”, and “More iPhone Cool Projects” in which he wrote a chapter on getting started with Unity3D.
Ben has been using Unity3D for nearly four years now on games installed on iPhones to Facebook to huge industrial interactive installations.
http://www.twitter.com/benbritten
Alexander Bruce is a game designer who somehow fell into independent development, but went along with it anyway. Since 2006, Alex has been toying with novel game ideas in his spare time, mostly based around abstract mechanics that break away from traditional design conventions. After gathering some experience working within the Australian games industry, he decided to dedicate his final year of university to working on a more complete project. The result was Hazard: The Journey Of Life, a philosophical game set within a non-Euclidean world that breaks all the rules. After winning a number of awards and taking the game to conferences around the world, he is now finishing up development on a commercial version, which plans to release “soon”.
http://www.facebook.com/demruth
steve bull is co-founder and a core artist in pvi collective, a perth based, tactical media arts group. pvi collective make participatory artworks that are intent on the creative disruption of everyday life. every artwork aims to affect audiences on a personal and political level and is geared towards instigating tiny revolutions. the group make performances, exhibit in galleries and stage interventions in public and corporate spaces. in 2010, pvi were commissioned by the the biennale of sydney to create their first mobile augmented reality project, transumer, a site based intervention which encourages audiences to clandestinely take over their city and create networks revealing strategies for a modern day insurrection.
Javier Candeira works in the intersection between art, technology and business. In his native Spain he has taught videogame design at Elisava Art School in Barcelona and Open Source licensing at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, written about videogames and digital culture for Rolling Stone, presented a TV program on digital culture on Canal Satélite Digital, curated the videogame section of Art Futura Festival, and developed an interactive TV chat platform for Universal’s Calle 13 channel.
His art-game installation “El rei de la casa” was shown at the Palau de la Virreina in Barcelona. He also contributes to the indie gaming community by translating games into Spanish, including Tale of Tales’s The Graveyard, Robert Yang’s Radiator series and Increpare’s Mirror Stage.
Currently Javier lectures on Digital Curation in the RMIT games program, and is the videogame curator for the Espacio Futuro space at Intermediae Matadero Madrid. “Inner Life”, the current exhibition at Espacio Futuro, elaborates on videogames as a medium for psychological introspection. It will be open to the public until January 2011.
http://candeira.com/ (Portfolio site)
http://pixeltopia.net/ (Videogame Writing – in Spanish)
Mike has been a Development Manager with Screen Australia and a Project Manager with the Australian Film Commission since 2005, with responsibilities across animation, digital media, feature film, television series and documentary. Prior to this, Mike worked with the animation studio Monkeystack, where he produced 2D/3D animation and VFX for television commercials and shorts, and mobile phone content, documentary, websites and games. As Manager of Industry Development at the South Australian Film Corporation, Mike was responsible for programs and initiatives designed to strengthen South Australia’s film, television and digital media industries. Prior to emigrating from the UK in early 2003, Mike was coordinator of the short film initiatives and related training at the UK Film Council. Mike took this position after working for a number of years in independent feature film and television production in the UK.
Hugh Davies is an artist, producer and Artistic Director of Analogue Art Map whose creative works have been widely exhibited internationally. He is currently a research student in Media Philosophy at Monash University. He has presented and published papers on pervasive and alternate reality games and continues to explore the fuzzy line between reality and fiction in a range of immersive experiences. Previously, Hugh was the regional producer at the ABC (Television Multiplatform Division), where he won the Australian Teacher of Media Award for Best Digital Education Tool. Hugh continues to work as a consultant with the ABC Innovation Department.
http://analogueartmap.blogspot.com/
Christy Dena specializes in the design and production of trans/cross-media projects. She designs, writes and directs transmedia projects and is developing her own creative projects and web services. She creates alternate reality games, is currently writing a short animation and consults on transmedia franchises. Her clients include Nokia Finland, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Wieden + Kennedy, Australia Council for the Arts, Australian Film Festival, Australian Film, Television and Radio School. Christy has given keynotes at Power to the Pixel, London Film Festival and the First International Conference on Cross-Media Interaction Design in Sweden. She co-wrote the Australian Literature Board’s Writers’ Guide to Making a Digital Living.
Christy wrote the first PhD on ‘Transmedia Practice’. She has published chapters on cross-media in numerous industry and academic books. She has given presentations on the design of cross-media projects to companies and organisations worldwide such as Nokia Finland; Microsoft Research; O’Reilly Media; Australia Council for the Arts; AIMIA; Film Australia; Australian Film, Television and Radio School; Australian Broadcasting Corporation and many more. She has spoken at numerous industry festivals and events worldwide. Her mentoring clients include the UK-based cross-media lab for filmmakers Pixel Lab; theIndigenous Crossover Lab, the Australian Literature Board’s Story of the Future initiative; AFTRS’ Laboratory of Advanced Media Production; and others. She began working in theatre as a writer and performer in comedy cabarets touring under the Melbourne Comedy Festival; and as a digital producer of special effects for television commercials, CD-Roms and websites in the mid 1990s.
Christy has a PhD in Transmedia Practice from the School of Arts, Letters and Media (University of Sydney); Postgraduate Diploma in Creative Writing from the School of Creative Arts University of Melbourne; and Bachelor of Arts (Visual and Performing Arts) from Monash University.
For the last 10 years Matt’s been making games. Starting at Krome Studios on the TY franchise, Matt moved to Pandemic to pursue a passion in Tech Art. By the start of 2009 he was the Principle Tech Artist for Team Alpha at Pandemic. It was at that time when he became one of the “lucky” few to be there when EA shut the doors.
At the beginning of this year Matt started at Griffith University and took on the role of convenor of Games Design. At the same time Matt became the producer for the serious game “Alternator” for the ABC. And in an effort to die of stress he’s started his doctorate in procedural art content for games.
http://www.vimeo.com/polymonkey/videos
http://www.flickr.com/photos/polymonkey/
During 14 years of practising, studying and promoting all aspects of human-centred design, Ash Donaldson has been the:
- First Australian federal court expert witness in human-computer interaction
- Representative Australian expert, developing human-centred design International standards for ISO
- Chair of the Australian human-computer interaction conference, OZCHI
- Inaugural World Usability Day leader for Sydney
Ash currently acts as Principal for his company, Produxi Consulting: designing better user experiences.
http://twitter.com/ashdonaldson
http://au.linkedin.com/in/ashdonaldson
Alistair splits his time between developing games and world domination. He fills the roles of programmer, producer, designer and semi-controversial blogger (at doolwind.com). He has released games for PC and Xbox360 over the past five years. Alistair is now an indie developer where he runs Bane Games, a Brisbane based game development studio working on an unannounced superhero collectible RTS game for PC.
He is fanatically pragmatic, focussing on emergent gameplay and simple interfaces. With over ten years of software development experience he has recently become a Certified Scrum Master.
Andrew Drage is an author and games designer who also has an honours degree in zoology, bio-statistics and philosophy, a certificate IV in computer game programming, and over ten years experience as a database analyst/developer.
He has published one fantasy-ish novel entitled “Evermore: An Introduction”, available Australia-wide, and is currently sitting on another completed manuscript, a horror-fantasy novel entitled “The Dark Horde”.
Currently he is the principal editor and tester for the Gamebook Adventures series produced by Tin Man Games for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad; for which he is also due to commence writing a sci-fi series shortly.
He is also currently designing and writing for two other indie projects in Melbourne, and over the years has designed hundreds of games; role-playing games, board-games and ‘physical’ games.
www.facebook.com/people/Andrew-Drage/735689825
Anna is the representative for Australian Gamer based in Melbourne and often visits Melbourne studios for exclusive coverage of local developers and has been writing to provide reviews, event coverage and features for the site since 2006. She has also been involved in previous events of Freeplay and the E-Games Expo. Her favourite games usually are either Strategy or of the Role Playing genres though currently her love of the developer, Bioware, has kept her spending her time waiting to be given a beta key to the next instalment of Star Wars: The Old Republic. She often writes insightful and interesting commentary on the games industry and female positions with in it, as well as great reviews of more obscure games.
He shut the main gates and fastened them with a chain. And suddenly, Farbs’ giant game factory became silent and deserted. The chimneys stopped smoking, the machines stopped whirring, and from then on, not a single game was made. Not a soul went in or out, and Mr Farbs disappeared completely.’
‘Months and months went by,’ Grandpa Joe went on, ‘Then something astonishing happened. One morning, columns of white smoke were seen coming out of the the tall chimneys! People stared. “What’s going on?” they cried. “Someone’s lit the furnaces! Mr Farbs must be opening up again!”
‘But that’s absurd!’ cried Charlie, ‘Who is Mr Farbs using to do all the work? Hasn’t someone asked him?’
‘Nobody sees him any more. He never comes out.’
(Excerpt from Captain Forever and the ROM CHECK FAIL Factory)
Also by this author:
Fishie Fishie Fifty (XBLIG)
PlayPen (web)
Indie Kombat (web)
Alan Gibb is the manager of the creative industries sector within the Department of Innovation, Industry and Regional Development. Alan is tasked with promoting investment and trade activities within the Multi-Media industry in Victoria.
Alan has lived in Victoria for 2 years and most recently managed the Northern European team in for the Scottish Government based in London for 18 years.
Prior to working in Government Alan has held industry roles in publishing and retail.
Brad is the Digital Media Manager at Film Victoria. Film Victoria has directly supported the digital media industry in Victoria for over 10 years, investing in the development of Victorian games titles, along with online and mobile projects.
When not gaming, Brad sits on the board of the Victorian Mobile Industry body (Mobility Vic) and the Victorian chapter of the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association (AIMIA). In previous lives Brad produced radio, built a motion capture studio, developed websites, video blogged music festivals, built multiple animation studios and a bunch of other things you’d expect from someone who grew up connected to his Macintosh Classic.
http://au.linkedin.com/in/bradgiblin
Michelle has been exploring design in its many forms for over ten years. Her passion for people, social change and experimenting has been the driving force for her career. With a foundation in industrial design, her study, project experience and knowledge of business, evolved to focus on Service Design.
In April 2010, Michelle co-founded Neoteny Service Design. Her belief that good design changes lives, is at the heart of her commitment to Neoteny and the Service Design movement in Australia.
Michelle has led multi-disciplinary teams, in Australia and internationally, on a variety of projects including a web application and touch screen device for Telstra, an online student service for the University of NSW, various services with Westpac, community engagement initiatives with Artbank, and data-visualisation for the not-for-profit Beyond Zero Emissions.
Michelle has a passion for presenting and regularly contributes to the design community. Michelle has taught and lectured at various design schools including Limkokwing (Malaysia), UTS, RMIT and Melbourne University.
Michelle is keen to learn and share, and looks forward to meeting you at Freeplay this year.
www.twitter.com/@MichelleGilmore
David manages online and interactive for ABC Children’s TV pre-school (ABC for Kids) and school-aged (ABC3) audiences. The new ABC3 channel was launched in December 2009 and is the top-rated destination for Australian kids aged 6 to 12 years. Children’s interactive content and services are produced internally and through external commission, co-production and acquisition.
David was previously Head of Multimedia at Antenna Audio (Discovery Communications) – a mobile content producer and distributor in the arts and cultural heritage sector – after several years in the UK producing online content, learning and games.
Daniel Golding is currently undertaking a PhD in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. His research underlines a spatial logic of videogames, drawing on a number of cross-disciplinary theories of space, architecture, and cultural consumption. Recently, Daniel has been tutoring and lecturing in the fields of cinema, culture, videogames and digital media at a tertiary level.
Andrew Goulding is a game developer with 4 years commercial development experience and 2 years freelance development experience. In his short career, Andrew worked at 4 games companies in Australia and the UK before starting his own company – Brawsome, to provide contract game development support and devote more time to making the kind of games he really wants to play. Andrew recently released his first major original game, a point and click adventure by the name of Jolly Rover, on Steam and various other digital distributors. Andrew recently realised that his purpose in life is to explore comedy in games, and he’s now trying to find a way to get paid to explore this most difficult and noble of pursuits.
http://www.brawsome.com.au/JollyRover
http://www.twitter.com/brawsome
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jolly-Rover/302892718921
http://brawsomegames.wordpress.com/
Ian W. Gouldstone is an animation director, designer, and co-founder of Pachinko Pictures. A native of New York, Ian has spent the last decade in London, and has recently relocated to Melbourne. He spends his time making films and animated content for a wide range of clients, and in 2007 won the BAFTA for his short animated film guy101. More recently he has been working on a range of projects for clients including Microsoft Game Studio, GameCity, and Vogue Japan.
Dan grew up reading stories, watching movies and playing games – his childhood was filled with what he calls “designed experiences”. He created his first games using “ShootEmUp Construction Kit” on Commodore 64: composing 8bit music, designing levels and animating pixelated characters in hi-def 160×200 in 16 glorious colours…
When Dan finished school, courses in game design didn’t yet exist so he worked on indy games (like “Dystopia”) and freelanced as a CG artist while he travelled and studied writing, communication design and digital filmmaking.
Fast-forward to today and Dan has a fun job in a digital film studio (www.DrDStudios.com) with plans to branch out into games. In the meantime he founded the Sydney chapter of the IGDA community – where he can share his love of game development with heaps of like-minded people and run big annual events like GameJam Sydney 2011 – coming in January!
KlickTock Pty Ltd is an independent game development company located on a sheep farm in rural Australia. KlickTock was established in 2009 by Matthew Hall, a veteran of the Australian game development industry. Matthew is game developer who’s been dreaming about games since… forever. He started programming games at the age of seven and he has previously been employed at Australian developers Tantalus Interactive, Tantalus Asia and Big Ant Studios. His varied career includes positions as Programmer, Designer, Artist, Associate Producer, Producer and Chief Technical Officer.
http://www.facebook.com/klicktock
Ben is a designer with a technical background spanning 10 years. After making himself a transformers suit out of wood when he was 8 years old, Ben committed his efforts to a variety of playful and nerdy pursuits. As a result, this year he co-founded Neoteny Service Design alongside Michelle Gilmore. Neoteny means ‘the retention of juvenile characteristics in adult life’ and Ben is now focused on Human Centred Design in his work and play with Neoteny.
He started his working career as a ‘gene-jockey’ at the University of California after completing degrees in biochemistry and commerce. Ben has lead and been part of teams both in Australia and abroad for clients including Intel, Microsoft, Xbox, Coca-Cola, Jack Daniels, Suncorp and Object Gallery. Ben is a problem solver with a fervent support for evolving what it means to ‘design’.
His passion for experimenting and testing ideas is at the heart of his work with Neoteny. He’s looking forward to the live prototyping workshop at Freeplay this year and meeting lots of people from the gaming and design communities.
Peter Henry is a Gameplay Programmer working at Infinite Interactive in Melbourne. In his time there he has worked on five titles across multiple platforms, including Lead Gameplay Programmer on “Puzzle Chronicles”.
Peter’s first taste of games programming was using Visual Basic in high school, and he was instantly hooked. Prior to working at Infinite, Peter completed a Bachelor degree in Computer Science at RMIT University, followed by an Advanced Diploma of Game Development at the Academy of Interactive Entertainment.
http://au.linkedin.com/in/peterhenry108
Claus Höfele specializes in software for embedded systems, such as mobile phones and game consoles. He is currently an Engine Programmer for Team Bondi in Sydney and writes regularly about software development; most recently in the books More iPhone Cool Projects (Apress) and Game Programming Gems 8 (Course Technology PTR).
http://twitter.com/claushoefele
Ted has been intrigued with the ability for computers to act as a medium for artistic expression and creative storytelling. After graduating from Duke University with a B.S. in Computer Science and a certificate in Neuroscience, Ted obtained a Master of Entertainment Technology at Carnegie Mellon University in 2004.
Having worked as a programmer at Intel, Microsoft, Evans & Sutherland, Maxis/Electronic Arts, Bluetongue/THQ, and Lucasarts he has always wanted to create programs that people enjoy using. His shipped titles include: The Sims: Bustin Out, The Urbz: Sims in the City, Nicktoons: Unite!, Nicktoons: Battle for Volcano Island, Thrillville, and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Ted is currently a Senior Games Programming teacher at AIE, while working on indie games projects in his spare time.
Dr Troy Innocent is a world builder, iconographer and reality newbie. Since 1989, he has been constructing languages and evolving artificial worlds. He has received numerous awards, including Honorary Mention, LIFE 2.0: Artificial Life, Spain (1999); Foreign Title Award, MMCA Multimedia Grand Prix, Japan (1998); and Honorary Mention, Prix Ars Electronica (1992). Innocent is currently Senior Lecturer, Department of Multimedia & Digital Arts, Monash University, Melbourne.
Morgan is a regular speaker both locally and internationally on game development process and the new opportunities interactive entertainment offers. He is on the advisory boards for several of Australias most exciting new interactive projects, merging talent from the fields of traditional media with seasoned game development professionals.
One of Australia’s leading game developers, Morgan has developed a number of critically and comercially successful games over his decade in the industry. He has shipped millions of units across every major platform with games that run the gamut from the casual to hardcore markets.
Morgan began his career in Australia, working with Irrational Games (now 2K Marin) before moving to North America to work with major studios such as Relic and Ubisoft before returning to Australia to work with Pandemic/EA as the Lead Designer for their Brisbane Studio.
Since early 2009 Morgan has focused on assisting traditional media companies to make the transition to devleoping their IP for game platfroms, consulting on projects that advance the possibilities of games as a narrative and educational form.
Most recently he has formed Defiant Development, a Brisbane based game development studio that focuses on building cutting edge games and transmedia IP for the modern, mature gaming market.
Simon Joslin develops iPhone, iPad and Android games as a Voxel Agent. The Voxel Agents are best known for their chart topping series ‘Train Conductor’, which was named iPhone Game of the Year 2009 by diygamer.com and selected as part of Apple’s ‘Highly Addictive Games’ list in 2010. Simon previously worked on DS, PSP and GBA games, took part in gameplay visualisation projects and participates in the yearly 48 Hour Game Making Competition. He dreams of becoming a cyberpunk.
http://twitter.com/thevoxelagents
http://facebook.com/thevoxelagents
Tom Killen is a founder of The Voxel Agents, an indie team focused on producing very high quality casual games for a broad audience. At The Voxel Agents, Tom has produced the acclaimed “Train Conductor” series including the chart topping “Train Conductor USA”.
Prior to The Voxel Agents, Tom worked at Hoodlum Active to develop the Emmy Award winning “LOST Find815” and multiple BAFTA winning online interactive projects such as “Primeval Evolved” and “Spooks Online”, among other great projects. These online-community driven projects are what inspire Tom to explore the social potential of mobile gaming.
www.twitter.com/thevoxelagents
www.facebook.com/thevoxelagents
A storyteller from a young age, Trent Kusters found his place in game design after a colourful career. A background in multimedia, writing and games journalism culminated in Trent landing at Torus Games, where he now oversees Torus’ design interests. In his time at Torus, Trent has been intimately involved with some of the company’s most ambitious titles, including Monster Jam: Urban Assault, Kid Adventures: Sky Captain, Scooby-Doo and the Spooky Swamp and much more.
Trent is also an active member of the Australian development community, invested in assisting education of our future game developers, on the committee for the Melbourne IGDA chapter and a regular speaker on design and development.
John and Mark Lycette, formed Lycette Bros. in 1997. Together they create a broad range of digital media including: interactive products, installations, animations and iPhone Apps. The Lycette Brothers work is widely regarded and continues to be exhibited and awarded around the world.
Coming up from a largely poverty stricken fine arts career, nowadays Rob works in New Zealand as a games designer for Sidhe Interactive. Prior to his exodus Rob also designed in Melbourne for The Voxel Agents, Tantalus Media, Tripswitch and anyone else willing to feed and clothe him. Additionally Rob has written for the ABC, worked with games projects at the ACMI and dabbled as an international academic. Rob spends the rest of his time on video art and generally being a cosmopolitan nerd.
hacker & performing artist, Nancy moves across the gaps, straits and channels of contemporary art from game-pad mods, to soldering in the hackspace, and customizing her own platforms on the WWW. Alongside her artistic practice influenced by Dada & postdramatic theatre, Nancy is a key figure in innovative projects that engage creatively with the free software movement. Founding member of the notorious Moddr_artlab@WORM Rotterdam (that generates projects like the infamous Web 2.0 Suicide Machine), developer of /etc Eclectic Tech Carnival, international hack lab [home brewed since 2002], and has recently introduced Miss Despoina’s Hackspace to Hobart.
In a performative manner, she explores how information systems are having a fundamental impact on our embodiment, our being in the world. Recently she contributed her research about this vital crossover contributing to the publication FLOSS+Art (London: Mute Publishing).
She often appears under name sister0 and is represented by SUBOTRON hands-on electronic game culture – electric Ave Vienna. http://subotron.com/
http://www.facebook.com/sister0
Sam Mayo is currently working as QA Manager and Producer at Infinite Interactive. He has shipped a couple of games across all major platforms, and is currently working on Puzzle Quest 2.
After finishing his degree at the end of 2008, Sam quickly scored a QA analyst job at Infinite Interactive in early 2009. Six months later he’d worked his way up to the position of QA Manager, then recently began work in production. While he enjoys constantly waging war with incompetent publisher QA teams as QA Manager, his destiny is to one day blow up the Sun… I mean, concentrate solely on production work.
Sam has a massive man-crush on Ellis from Left 4 Dead 2.
http://www.infinite-interactive.com/
http://au.linkedin.com/in/sammayo
http://www.facebook.com/sam.mayo
Sally Mazak has over 15 years experience in the Graphic Design and Illustration world. She is Australia’s only certified Artist’s Way at Work facilitator. She has actively researched and experimented with living the principles of The Artist’s Way and The Artist’s Way at Work since the 90s in her professional roles.
In the early 00’s, Sally flew to the USA to train as an AWAW facilitator with Mark Bryan, the co-founder of the original Artists Way workshops with Julia Cameron. After the intensive training she brought the Artist’s Way at Work back to Australia to be shared via workshops, seminars and events. Having personally practiced these AW techniques, Sally passes this first-hand experience to her clients as a specialist creativity coach. She guides people around Australia to: understand themselves better as Creative personalities; define and free themselves from the blocks that hold them back; and clarify/attain their creative goals.
As an active Creative, Sally has achieved many of her own dreams and goals such as: writing/illustrating greeting cards for The Ink Group and John Sands, published a children’s book, selected for national poster project viewed at Qantas terminals, art directed many graphic design projects, selected for top 20 in the Koko Black drawing competition 2 years in a row (free chocolate is a good motivator). You can see samples of her work at www.salmaz.com
http://www.wix.com/imagineworkshops/Imagine-Workshops-Coaching
Chris McCormick is a hacker, musician, and game developer. He has been working as a freelance software developer since the start of the millennium for clients in Perth, Melbourne, and London. He’s been making video games since he was a kid, and is currently getting the game Infinite8BitPlatformer ready for release. http://infiniteplatformer.com/ He really enjoys a good microbrew.
http://infiniteplatformer.com/
Christian McCrea is a designer, lecturer and essayist and currently works in the Games and Interactivity program at Swinburne University of Technology. He has been writing on art and design for a decade in print and online publications around the world, and has served some time in the research mines. He feels that tomfoolery will figure heavily in his future and perhaps finally lead to his lifelong ambition of establishing an Office of Cavalier Attitudes.
Helen Nicholson produces community programs at the Powerhouse Museum. Earlier this year the Powerhouse Museum offered a suite of programs and experiences designed to engage not only the computer game community but the almost 5,000 people who visited that weekend. At the heart of these programs was The 80s are back exhibition and the result was that ‘play was everywhere’ in the Museum. On shoestring budgets and with limited resources the education and public programs developed by cultural institutions can extend visitor experiences and learning beyond exhibitions.
Conor O’Kane has worked in the games industry since 1999, as an artist at Funcom in Dublin, and a lead artist at Tantalus in Melbourne. He has been credited on over 10 released games on various console, computer and handheld platforms. He began developing his own games independently in 2007. He is currently developing games for iPad and teaching at RMIT university.
Terry Paton is a passionate Flash game developer who first started coding at age 11 on the ZX Spectrum. Over 6 years ago he set himself a goal to make a 100 personal games, to date he’s made over 95 and dozens more for clients. ␣
Terry started work in 1995 as a pre-press Mac Operator. In his spare time he began playing with Flash eventually making a Career change to become a Flash Developer in 2003. He has worked for companies including: Creata, The White Agency & Soap Creative.
Terry has run terrypaton.com for over six years which hosts not only his own Flash games, but others that he likes too. He also sketches, paints & draws, makes music, plays games, jogs regularly and tweets a lot.
Since mid 2009 Terry has spent most of his days making his own games which attract sponsorships, licensing and occasionally doing contract work.
http://twitter.com/terrypaton1
Fee Plumley had no choice but to work in the creative industries from the moment her mother (an illustrator) advised her not to. Things started reasonably enough in the UK Theatre circuit as a Stage Manager/Prop Maker, but on graduating from a BA in Theatre Design & Technology (1995) she became curious about this new fangled thing called ‘the internet’. An MA in Interactive Multimedia Production (1997) kick-started a transition into media arts which, rather than leaving any one artform behind, actually attempted to incorporate as many as possible.
Fee has since combined her love for performance and media arts, producing innovative interactive events for clients including Douglas Rushkoff (Ecstasy Club, Manchester 1997) and the Manchester Literature Festival (The Burgess Project, Manchester 2006). Described as a “Techno-Evangelist”, she has curated public screen content (GMI, London, 1999 & BBC Bigger Picture, 2004), enabled community webcasting (Superchannel.org 1999-03) and has been a speaker and a juror at several international arts gatherings (ISEA, Banff New Media Institute, AIMIA & BAFTA) and educational establishments.
Previously known for encouraging people to be creative with their mobile phones through the-phone-book Limited (UK), Fee continues to techno-evangelise as the Digital Program Officer at the Australia Council for the Arts.
http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au
www.twitter.com/artsdigitalera
Neil Rennison is Creative Director for Melbourne based, Tin Man Games currently bringing Gamebook Adventures to the iPhone and iPad. Neil also runs Fraction Studios, a small art oursourcer who have worked on titles such as the Need For Speed, Tiger Woods and Sims series.
Cam has a Bachelor of Laws degree from Flinders University in South Australia. While at University, he studied film production which led to him working at the South Australian Film Corporation.
Before joining Marshalls & Dent Cam worked as an independent producer on live action short films and animation projects and has had films screened at film festivals both nationally and overseas. Cam has also produced original content intended for mobile phone delivery.
As part of his practice at Marshalls & Dent, Cam acts for several independent games studios around Australia. He is interested in games development across a variety of platforms including DS, iPhone and Android, and in all digital media projects intended for mobile phone delivery.
Seon has been running Sector3 Games since 2007 and has been creating and self publishing a range of titles on OSX, Windows, Online and iDevices.
Seon recently sold a controlling stake of his company to Trickstar Games, and now has expanded his development platforms to include XBox 360, PS3 and Wii and is soon to release the first of his original Indie titles on these platforms.
Malcolm is a lecturer in the School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of New South Wales where he teaches game design and directs the games research group. He has written papers on game design education and in 2009 ran a workshop at GDC on this topic (where he was thrilled to meet Sid Meier and finally ask about that ‘interesting choices’ quote). In his personal research, he is developing games with health outcomes in optometry and stroke rehab, while in his spare time he enjoys performing as an itinerant clown and sculptor of balloon butterflies.
http://blogs.unsw.edu.au/gameslab/
http://wordsonplay.wordpress.com
Adam “Atomic” Saltsman created Flixel, Gravity Hook, Fathom, Canabalt, Trashpaint, and the Flash Game Dojo. With his climbing buddy Eric, Adam co-founded Semi Secret Software, a successful and independent iPhone game company. He spends most of his time in Austin, Texas with his lovely wife and pug dogs, and mains Dhalsim and Ibuki.
Director and sound designer for Sound Library, Stephan Schütze has worked in the games industry for over 10 years. His award winning score for Jurassic Park operation genesis was the first fully orchestral game score recorded in Australia.
Stephan has developed games in almost every genre for all major platforms.
Currently his time is spent growing the largest on-line sound library in Australia to support the education and advancement of audio production as well as teaching and presenting at many of Australia’s leading institutions. He is easily recognisable as he is seldom seen without an array of microphones in his grasp.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sound-Library/107364395956418
John is a games industry exile now making mobile augmented reality games. His clients have ranged from a top 40 band to a chamber orchestra, from a large telco to a museum. But mostly he attempts to remain focused on his making own independent augmented reality game.
Michael Ryan Skolnik is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Multimedia at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. His work centres on games as a site for tactical performance art interventions as well as on the narrative and performative qualities of games.
Michael will be talking about the narrative possibilities of Sleep is Death, a game that he will be modifying as a part of his doctoral thesis project.
Helen Stuckey is the director of the Games Program at RMIT. Her recent curatorial practice has focused on the exhibition of videogames as cultural artefacts. She was the Games Curator at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image where she produced and curated the Games Lab, a permanent exhibition space dedicated to exploring game culture. She is a judge of the Independent Games Festival and curates the Best of the Independent Games Festival for ACMI. She was a curatorial advisor on the Gameworld exhibition for Laboral Centre for Arts and Creative Industries, Spain.
David is an animator and designer, and co-founder of Pachinko Pictures. Now based in Melbourne Australia after migrating from the UK, over the past 10 years he has worked in many different creative environments. As an animator, David worked in the theatre, producing projected works that interacted with the stage and performers. As a concept and story artist, he have assisted in the development of commercials, animation and games — creating characters, stories and action for a wide range of clients, including Microsoft Game Studios, Michelin and the Nike company. David also teaches animation technique and storytelling at Swinburne Design.
truna aka j.turner is the Brisbane IGDA chapter auntie, game activist and researcher. She is dead keen on supporting a vibrant Aussie independent game community and has been involved in running a series of outreach programs to foster understanding about the medium (and business) of the game since 2004. Along with a number of partners in crime, truna is also responsible for the fabulous 48 hour game making challenge – now in its fourth year. She believes that the game is an extraordinary powerful form of media and that more people should be exploring and extending its potential.
truna writes about the nature of the game interface, its fun, flaws, foibles and [f]antasmagorias … she believes design is power, and game design more so. Her favourite game of all time is American McGee’s Alice.
http://pinksofa.making-games.net/
http://twitter.com/igdaBrisbane
Deane Taylor has worked in Animation since 1978 as a production designer and writer/director. From Popeye, The Flintstones and Smurfs to Cow and Chicken, Ren and Stimpy and Yakkity Yak.
He has designed for several animated feature films in 2D and CGI winning a number of industry awards. Most notably the Hollywood ASIFA Annie Award as the Art Director on the Oscar nominated, Tim Burton’s Nightmare before Christmas.
He continues to work in the industry as a concept artist and production designer, recently involved in the development of an animated feature with Monty Python’s Terry Jones, called Adam, the serpent, and EVE.
Paul is a Lecturer in game design and development at La Trobe University. His current research efforts focus on game design and development methodologies. After working as a research engineer at Computer Associates for 2 ½ years, he realised video games were his calling, and is currently lecturing subjects over a wide range, from game design to advanced graphic rendering technologies.
Activities outside of work include playing games, as well as creating and supporting ‘Project XNA’, a program which supports high schools in adopting games development as a part of their curriculum.
Nathan is currently Art Director at Visceral Games | EA Melbourne.
Although his background is in industrial design, he worked predominately as a graphic/3d designer in UK & Singapore before moving into game development in the late 1990s. His key motivation is working with like-minded, motivated & creative people across all disciplines to realise a complete game with a strong & emotive visual style.
Vincent Trundle is the AV Curriculum Designer at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. He develops Screen Education programs and focuses on the technical possibilities and practicalities. He is also dedicated to encouraging the exploration and understanding of video games running numerous education programs at ACMI including Schools Summit for the Australian Game Developers Conference, Game Girls – a full day game industry career focused day, Machinima Workshops, and launched both the video game creation category and machinima category of Screen It! – ACMI’s national screen based competition.
Chris is a designer and producer in the local Melbourne indie scene. Working with other talented devs to create fun games for platforms like Facebook.
http://www.indiedb.com/games/terracore-adventures
http://twitter.com/DesignerWatts
Glenn has been developing games commercially for over 6 years and has worked as a Engine Programmer on many well known game titles such as Viva Pinata: Party Animals and Scene It: Box Office Smash. Glenn quit commercial games development at the end of 2009 and now has started his own company Unbelievable Games focusing on high quality small indie games.
Marcus Westbury is a broadcaster, writer, media maker and festival director who has been responsible for some of Australia’s more innovative, unconventional and successful cultural projects and events – including being one of the founders of Freeplay in 2004. He has also worked across a range of media as a writer, producer, director and presenter covering fields as diverse as culture, art, media, urban planning, sport and politics.
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