Lisa-Skye
Lisa-Skye is a Melbourne-based writer, comedian, femme daddy drag queen and trade-hound. She first Got Into A Serious Thing with video games at age 9 with 'the future of computers', her trusty Amiga 500. That blossomed-slash-festered into periodic obsessive bursts of gaming well into her manchild 20s and now in her man-teenager 30s. Nowadays, she's all about the PS3. And the SNES when that gets too heavy. Stalk her on Twitter or FaceBook, 'thelisaskye'.
lisaskye.com.au | facebook.com/thelisaskye | @thelisaskye
Stephanie Andrews
Stephanie Andrews is an experimental digital media artist and educator specializing in 3D graphics, animation, and virtual worlds. She began her career at Pixar working on A Bug's Life and Toy Story 2, has a Master's degree in Art and Technology from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and is currently a Lecturer at RMIT. She is currently researching and developing techniques for using rapid prototyping technologies in games and alternative methods for using stereoscopic imaging in video and animation.
www.stephnet.org | @stephnet
Thomas Apperley
Tom Apperley, Ph.D. is a researcher of digital media technologies. His previous writing has covered digital games, mobile phones, digital literacies and pedagogies, and the digital divide. Tom is currently a Lecturer in Digital Ethnography at Monash University. He is the editor of the peer-reviewed journal, Digital Culture and Education, his book Gaming Rhythms: Play and Counterplay from the Situated to the Global was published by The Institute of Network Cultures in September 2010.
monuni.academia.edu/ThomasApperley | @T0MM7
Clem Bastow
Clem Bastow is a pop cultural commentator and occasional humorist who the good people of Los Angeles have adopted on a part-time basis. Her work appears in The Age, Sydney Morning Herald, Daily Life, and TheVine. She spends too much time on the internet and has won many awards for her preserves.
clambistro.tumblr.com
Jeffrey Brand
Jeff Brand is Associate Professor of Communication and Media at Bond University and Deputy Director of the Bond University Centre for Learning, Engagement, Androgogy and Pedagogy (LEAP). Jeff's research explores the social psychology of audiences, their use of interactive media and the content regulation imperatives that arise from presumed media effects. He is author of the Interactive Australia and Interactive New Zealand series of national computer games audience studies and of the book (with Prof. Mark Pearson), Sources of News and Current Affairs. His current work explores interactive media and computer game audiences with a focus on policy and serious games. Dr. Brand serves as consultant to the Australian Communications and Media Authority, the Australian Classification Board, the Special Broadcasting Service, the Interactive Games and Entertainment Association and he has recently served on policy advisory board for The Australian Law Reform Commission’s review of the National Classification Scheme.
www.bond.edu.au | @jbrandinoz
Paul Callaghan
Paul Callaghan is a freelance writer, developer, educator, and the director of the Freeplay Independent Games Festival.
www.freeplay.net.au | www.paulcallaghan.net | @paul_callaghan
Rick Chen
Rick Chen is an entrepreneur and a social change-maker with a strong focus on new media design. He has a keen interested in web-based technology, user interface design and innovative ideas that change people's behaviour. After graduating from the University of Sydney with a Masters in Digital Media design, Rick co-founded Australia's first crowdfunding platform Pozible which has helped lots of creative projects get off the ground.
pozible.com | - | @rickchenn
Christina Chen
Christina’s first game experience was Command & Conquer and she’s never looked back. Having a background in software engineering, she brought the advances in software development to gaming and found her happy place in free-to-play games. She was the producer on Zuma Blitz in the highly competitive Chinese market and worked on a number of other social and mobile games at PopCap. As Surprise Attack's free-to-play expert, Christina helps clients navigate this increasingly important business model, from initial strategy all the way through to launch, operation and management.
Jessica Citizen
Jessica Citizen founded Player Attack (alongside her partner Kingsley Foreman) in early 2010 to fill a niche in the current state of games media, and has spent the past couple of years bringing fans the most interesting, most ridiculous news in gaming via daily articles and a weekly vidcast.
www.playerattack.com | @dotarray
Dan Clayton
With his childhood roots in 90's hardcore shooter culture, Dan had a change of heart while studying game development at university. Now driven to develop small scope high innovation indie projects, Dan joined fellow graduates at Dime Studios to produce their iOS debut, Tasty Fish. Practicing at Dime as an artist, animator, designer, programmer and producer, Dan believes that the joy of life is you never stop learning. When Dan isn't melting his brain staring at a computer screen, he enjoys numbing it with cold beer and pointless conversations.
dimestudios.com | @rantbox_dan
Mike Cowap
Mike is an Investment Manager with Screen Australia where he works across the Multi-Platform Program. He previously 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.
www.screenaustralia.gov.au | @MikeCowap
Laura Crawford
Laura Crawford is a lecturer, consultant and PhD candidate across games, cinema and psychology. Her fields of expertise include the epistemology of the user relationship with screen violence and the psychology of attraction to fantastical violence. Laura has been gaming ever since she felt the warm, 8 bit embrace of the Commodore 64 at the tender age of seven. She stubbornly contends that Impossible Mission II was the best game ever created. Everyone else begs to differ.
@soulgirl76
Benjamin Dawe
Ben Dawe is a multi-disciplined designer with over a decade of experience in the entertainment industry both in Australia and overseas. This experience includes designing club flyers for Japanese Hip Hop in Tokyo, Shooting and editing music videos on the road across the US, interviewing bands for Beat, Brag and Time Out magazines and designing t shirts for stores across Melbourne. As a Senior Designer at Village Roadshow he has worked on such titles as The Dark Knight, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World and The Lord of The Rings trilogy. He is currently Media Designer at Firemonkeys, Australia’s largest games studio.
firemonkeys.com.au | @bjdawe
Christy Dena
Christy Dena is an emerging writer, designer and director. She has worked on many alternate reality games, including Nokia's Conspiracy for Good, Cisco's The Hunt, and ABC's Bluebird AR. She is currently developing a web audio adventure for tablet and desktop called AUTHENTIC IN ALL CAPS. Christy also works with theatre, film, TV and gaming creatives to expand their story or game into different artforms, and does education work to keep the money coming in. She struggles with the tension between how people perceive her and what she wants to do, but continues to do what she loves regardless.
www.UniverseCreation101.com | www.AUTHENTICINALLCAPS.com | @christydena
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 "Many Monkeys Development". A Melbourne Game Development house that received one of the Screen Australia Digital Ignition Grant for their first game "Feng Shui Master".
manymonkeysdev.com | @polymonkey
James Dominguez
James Dominguez, known to many by his online handle DexX, is a video game journalist, freelance writer, blogger, and podcaster. He got his start in video game writing in 2007 thanks to legendary games journalist Jason Hill's community blogging project Your Turn, on Fairfax Digital's Screen Play blog. Unpaid writing turned into paid writing, and upon Jason's retirement from games writing, James took up his mantle as lead writer and editor on Screen Play. James is a passionate advocate of video games as a legitimate cultural and artistic medium. He believes deeply in the artistic and emotional potential of interactivity, and foresees a time in the not-too-distant future when games will be the dominant form of storytelling in our culture.
www.theage.com.au/digital-life/games/blog/screenplay | @jamesjdominguez
Rebecca Fernandez
Rebecca Fernandez is the CMO of Convict Interactive, an independent game development studio based in Wollongong, NSW. She has a Masters degree in Computer Science, currently teaches programming at the University of Wollongong and is heavily involved with IGDA Sydney. Though her background is mostly in programming, as an indie Rebecca has had to wear many hats and has taken on the role of marketing and PR for Convict Interactive. They are currently working on their first PC release, Triangle Man.
www.convictinteractive.com | @chainedchaos31
Daniel Golding
Daniel Golding is an academic, critic, and cultural commentator. He is currently completing a PhD at the University of Melbourne on videogame space, as well as lecturing on games and digital media. Daniel also runs the Game On blog for Crikey.com.au, and is published regularly in outlets such as Hyper Magazine and PC PowerPlay.
dangolding.com | blogs.crikey.com.au/game-on | @dangolding
Andrew Goulding
Andrew Goulding is a multi-talented creative, having worked in positions of Design, Writing, Production, Programming and Business in his 10 year career at several studios in Australia and the UK. Andrew is currently Director of the multi-award winning game studio Brawsome, which has released the canine point and click adventure, Jolly Rover (PC/Mac - 2010), and the werewolf comedy puzzle adventure, MacGuffin's Curse (PC/Mac/iPhone/iPad - 2012), as well as providing contracting support on numerous titles in the casual game industry.
www.brawsome.com.au | @brawsome
Ian Gouldstone
Ian W. Gouldstone is a BAFTA-winning filmmaker and videogames designer. Together with David Surman, he founded the games and animation studio Pachinko Pictures. A native of New York, Ian has spent the last decade in London, and in 2010 relocated to Melbourne, Australia. He spends his time making games, films and animated content for a wide range of clients, and in 2007 won the BAFTA for his short animated film guy101. Most recently he has been working on a range of projects for clients including Chupa Chups, Pitchfork, and SBS.
www.pachinkopictures.com | @pachinkopix
Dan Graf
Dan loves designing experiences, cinematic storytelling, animating characters and developing videogames. He began animation and game design at age 10 with pixelated characters on a Commodore 64. He now works as a designer for Halfbrick (aussie creators of worldbeating iOS games Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride). Dan's background in feature film animation & story development lend unique perspective to his game design and creative direction. His goal is to make tight, focused games that engage your reflexes and immerse your imagination in character-driven journeys of discovery. In 2008 Dan founded the IGDA Sydney chapter - a local game development community. It's now over 1000 members & holds monthly indie showcase & networking events focused on building a thriving NSW games industry.
www.facebook.com/groups/38132449086/ | www.halfbrick.com | @DanGraf
Simon Groth
Simon Groth is a writer, editor and manager of if:book Australia, the Institute for the Future of the Book. His work has been shortlisted for major awards and published in Australia, the US and the UK. In 20120, Simon was co-editor of Off The Record: 25 Years of Music Street Press (UQP). This year, he was the lead writer (alongside Nick Earls, Steven Amsterdam, Krissy Kneen and others) for the 24-Hour Book: a project to write, edit and publish a book in both digital and print within a single 24-hour period.
www.futureofthebook.org.au | @ifbookAus
Paul Gurney
Paul is the Executive Director of Next Wave, having worked for the organisation since 2009, his current position, along side Next Wave's Artistic Director, is responsible for the overall strategic vision of the organisation. Since 2011 Paul has also volunteered his time as the Treasure on the Freeplay Board. Paul relocated from Perth in 2004 to undertake an internship at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) as part of his degree in Arts Management (Ba) from the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts. After graduating, Paul became part of the Exhibition Management Team at the NGV . During his time at the Gallery Paul worked on many large and small scale exhibitions including the Melbourne Winter Masterpieces series. In addition to the NGV, Paul volunteered as a board member for Seventh Gallery Inc, Fitzroy from 2005 to 2007. During this time Paul contributed to the Making Spaces publication and was also responsible for the Gallery’s Media and Communications strategies. Prior to arriving in Melbourne Paul worked at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art (PICA) as an administrator, Front of House staff and installation team member.
www.nextwave.org.au
Tim Hamilton
Tim Hamilton has been writing poetry, gaming and roleplaying (not necessarily simultaneously) for most of his life. As a poet, he has put out two chapbooks, written articles for the Melbourne Poets Union and recently had work published by Don't Look Down (AUS) and Concise Delight (USA). Behind the mic, he's a regular around Melbourne poetry gigs and has performed interstate and internationally.
tshamilton.com | @tshamilton
Jon Hayward
Jon Hayward was told many years ago that as he writes code, creates art and organises teams he should just focus and become a producer. As a result he now runs a small indie team called Game Pride in Perth with a focus on improving it's members skills in game development.
game.pride.id.au | @sonictail
Will Homan
Twice as dangerous and half as annoying as the Mario Kart weapon of the same name, Blue Turtle Shell are an acoustic pop culture rock band specializing in cleverly written songs inspired by the wonderfully geeky worlds of sci-fi, fantasy and videogames. With subject matter ranging from the plight of the forgotten console to man crushes on Doctor Who, the band's unique approach to songwriting is best saved for that last corner on the final lap.
Claire Hosking
Claire Hosking drew buildings for a few years (mostly apartments and hotels in China) until she took a short programming course and got interested in procedural design (spaces generated from coded instructions rather than by architects). Now she's an Art Intern for Kill Screen Magazine and would like to design your house, office space, library or crypt. Rapidly Prototyped and Digitally Fabricated, of course.
@hoskingc
Kate Inabinet
Kate Inabinet is an industry professional with over 10 years’ experience as a senior and principle animator for games, She has worked at respected Australian studios such as Atari, Ambience and Bluetongue and has 9 published games to her name. From 2006-2008 Kate contributed to Atomic MPC Magazine as an editorial writer where she published a monthly column titled “Geekette” that focused on the industry and surrounding issues. Kate has an active involvement in the education of a future generation of game developers. She studied at the ACT Academy of Interactive Entertainment in 1999, then returned to teach the Advanced Diploma of Game Development at the AIE Melbourne campus. Kate is currently lecturing at RMIT and is also making her way in the world of freelance animation.
Troy Innocent
Dr Troy Innocent is a world builder, iconographer and reality newbie. His artificial worlds – Iconica (SIGGRAPH 98, USA), and Semiomorph (ISEA02, Japan) – explore the dynamic between the iconic ideal and the personal specific, the real and the simulated, and the way in which our identity is shaped by language and communication. He has received numerous awards, including Honorary Mention, LIFE 2.0: Artificial Life, Spain (1999); Foreign Title Award, MMCA Multimedia Grand Prix, Japan (1998); First Prize, National Digital Art Awards, Australia (1995); and Honorary Mention, Prix Ars Electronica (1992). Innocent co-founded the digital arts collective cyber dada in 1989 and through pioneering works such as Idea-ON>! contributed to the Australian new media arts practice during the 90s. His most recent works are urban art environments: an interactive sculpture garden entitled Colony in the Melbourne Docklands and Urban Codemakers, an Alternate Reality Game that reinvents the history of Melbourne. Innocent is currently Senior Lecturer in Games and Interactivity, Faculty of Life and Social Sciences, Swinburne University, Melbourne. Innocent is represented by Hugo Michell Gallery.
troyinnocent.net | urbancodemakers.net | @_Troy_
George Ivanoff
George Ivanoff is a Melbourne author and stay-at-home dad. He spent much of his youth playing video games, particularly Space Invaders on his Atari, and now writes novels set in a computer game world where the characters have developed sentience. Check out his website: georgeivanoff.com.au
georgeivanoff.com.au | www.gamersquestbook.com | @George_Ivanoff
Morgan Jaffit
Founder of Defiant Development, a Brisbane based independent game developer who've been developing and publishing games for the last two years. Primarily focused on mobile development, and supporting new and upcoming developers. Defiant has published Heroes Call and Ski Safari for Android and iOS.
www.defiantdev.com | @morganjaffit
Darshana Jayemanne
Darshana is a writer and academic currently completing a PhD investigating relations between technology, narrative and ludic form.
@KickThousand
Simon Joslin
Simon Joslin, co-founder of The Voxel Agents, likes to design mechanic driven games with broad appeal and a unique gameplay twist. If you like Bejeweled Blitz or Triple Town he would like you.
thevoxelagents.com | @simonjoslin
Melissa Keil
Melissa Keil is a writer, obsessive book-buyer and confirmed nerd. She has at various times been a high school teacher, Middle-Eastern tour guide, waitress, and community theatre dog’s body. She is currently working as a children’s book editor. Her debut YA novel, Life in Outer Space, will be published in March 2013 by Hardie Grant Egmont.
melissakeil.com | @MissMisch77
Brendan Keogh
Brendan Keogh is a videogame critic, academic, and journalist from Melbourne. He writes extensively about videogames and videogame culture for a variety of local and international outlets including Edge, Hyper, Ars Technica, and Kill Screen. He is also a PhD student at RMIT University where his research aims to forward a discourse of videogame criticism that can account for the varied meanings that emerge between players and games.
critdamage.blogspot.com | @BRKeogh
Stefanie Kethers
Stefanie grew up in Germany, and board games have always been part of her life. She has fond memories of playing games like Monopoly, Canasta, Öl für uns alle, and Careers until dawn during family Christmas holidays. At university, she got drawn into role-playing and other fantasy-themed games. She also started to collect games, and her collection currently numbers over 700. From 1998 until 2003, Stefanie was co-manager of Luding (http://luding.org), a large, bilingual online database that links board and card games with game reviews on the Web. Currently, Stefanie is on the Boardgames Australia committee, and has been a member of the "Best International Game" (2008-2010) and "Best Children's Game" (2011) panels.
www.boardgamesaustralia.org.au/
Katie Keys
Katie Keys / tinylittlepoems is a thirty-something non-Indig Aussie Brit and Café Poet at Melbourne’s Rue Bebelons. A poet, writer, reviewer and arts manager, her writing has been published in anthologies, magazines and online in Australia and beyond.She tweets one tiny little poem each day @tinylittlepoems
www.twitter.com/tinylittlepoems | @tinylittlepoems
Jeremy Kool
Jeremy Kool is a 3D Artist living in Melbourne and working for companies around the globe. While he's not freelancing, he's working on his own projects. His latest work is an interactive adventure book for the iPad called The Paper Fox.
jkoolart.blogspot.com | thepaperfox.blogspot.com | @Jeremy11K
Trent Kusters
Writer and designer, Trent Kusters, is the creative director of Divisive Media and also the founder of game development collective League of Geeks. Since his background in multimedia and games journalism, Trent shipped multiple titles whilst design director at Torus Games (including work on licenses the likes of Scooby-Doo! and Pokémon), advises state and federal governments on game development, has lectured at numerous major universities, written on gaming culture and development for major publications, was named one of Australia's top young achievers in 2010, and is now serving his second term on the GCAP 2012 advisory board. Trent is also invested in the future of game development, fostering and mentoring up and coming developers and students, and contributing to the game development community wherever possible.
@trentkusters
Harry Lee
Harry Lee is an independent game developer passionate about play, puzzles, and surprises. His superpower is getting distracted easily. Harry studies medicine at Monash University and creates award winning games about circles and squares with his studio, Wanderlands. Meanwhile, at the Exertion Games Lab, he aims to violently collide his medical and ludic interests, and his research into the playful applications of electrical muscle stimulation is the beautiful lovechild of that curious union. In recognition of his crippling obsession with minimalist game design, Harry was awarded the Spirit of Youth Award for Interactive Gaming earlier this year.
harry-lee.com | wanderlands.org | @leehsl
Lawrence Leung
TV writer, comedian and doco maker. Lawrence has spoken about "Satire in Games" for Freeplay 2005, contributed game designs for Pop Up Playground and recently hosted TopGeek2.0 He is best known as the creator of two ABC1 comedy shows, ‘Lawrence Leung’s Unbelievable’ and the AFI-nominated ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’. He also wrote pranks for ‘The Chaser’s War On Everything’ and has toured his award-winning stand up shows to London, Edinburgh and the Sydney Opera House. Convinced that his life is one big Sierra quest game, Lawrence has hunted ghosts in Scottish castles, crashed freestyle rap battles in LA and once solved a Rubik’s Cube whilst skydiving before releasing his parachute (49seconds). His favourite game from childhood is on the Apple IIE.
www.LawrenceLeung.com | www.abc.net.au/tv/unbelievable | @Lawrence_Leung
Tracey Lien
Tracey Lien is an award-winning journalist and a Senior Reporter at Polygon. She has served as Associate Editor of Kotaku Australia, Online Producer at Fairfax, Field Reporter on ABC TV's Good Game, and her work has been published by The Sun Herald, AAP, Gamasutra, GamesIndustry International, HYPER, PC PowerPlay, NineMSN, and a bunch of other places. In 2010 she won the Walkley Foundation’s Media Super Student Journalist of the Year award, and in 2012 she won Best Games Journalist and overall Best Journalist at the Microsoft IT Journalism Awards. She also entered the Archibald Prize when she was 15 but did not win.
www.polygon.com | www.traceylien.com | @traceylien
Bryan Ma
Bryan is a game designer and producer, writes at thepretentiousgamer.com, and builds small interaction design/art projects. Previously Senior Game Designer at 2K Games's Shanghai studio, he has worked in the industry since 2006 on AAA, mobile, and social games for international and Asian markets. Previous projects included work on franchises such as Civilization Revolution and XCOM. Bryan also recently curated independent games exhibition Lunarcade Sydney, built a Winnitron indie arcade machine for Shanghai, sits on the theme committee for the Global Game Jam, and plays a lot of FTL.
@whoisbma
Andrew McClelland
Andrew plays an awful lot of computer games. Sometimes he worries that it is really disrupting his creativity. None the less he has performed in 14 consecutive Melbourne International Comedy Festivals and is a four-time veteran of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. He has twice been invited to perform at the New Zealand International Comedy Festival and is a past recipient of the Comedians’ Choice Award at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and the Jury Prize at the Sydney Comedy Festival. He's also has a sweet gaming PC that he built himself and is pretty good at not getting killed in DayZ.
www.facebook.com/andrewmcclellandgigs | @Andy_McClelland
Ben McKenzie
Ben is an actor, comedian, writer, feminist, rogue nerd and ginger. Described as ‘geek comedy’s patron saint’ (T-Squat Magazine) and ‘the anti-Hitler’ (Boxcutters), Ben has written, performed and produced comedy and theatre for over a decade. His shows include six Museum Comedy tours, the long-running Dungeons & Dragons-inspired improvised comedy show Dungeon Crawl, and appearances in The Bazura Project and Woodley for the ABC. He is also a founding member and Game Mechanic with live games collective Pop Up Playground, was recently published in the anthology Geek Mook (Vignette Press) and hopes to launch a new game discussion podcast, “Losing An Eye”, later in the year. He is the Production Manager for this year's Freeplay festival. Ben's favourite dinosaur is Stegosaurus.
labcoatman.com.au | shaolinpunk.net | @labcoatman
Richard McKenzie
Richard McKenzie has been a comedian since 2002, and a hardcore nerd since waaaay before that. He has performed stand-up, sketch comedy and impro across Australia, both solo and with The Anarchists Guild Social Committee. His awards include Best Comedy in the Melbourne Fringe Festival 2004 (Super Happy Robot Hour) and a Moosehead Award in 2006 (Digger). His previous nerd shows include Zombies 101, or, Why Grandma Had to Die, Mint Condition and Robot vs. World. He would like to tell you more but he has to get back to running screaming from zombies in DayZ.
Lynda Mills
Lynda Mills is the Creative Director of Cupco Games, a Melbourne based mobile app development studio. She has been in game development since graduation from Monash University with a Bachelor of Multimedia Systems, and she has spent most of those years at BlueTongue Entertainment working on the critically acclaimed de Blob titles. Lynda has a strong background in concept art, animation, interactive environments and game design, and has found her home in Cupco Games as an Independent Developer.
www.cupcogames.com | forgotten-hollow.blogspot.com.au/
Blake Mizzi
Industrial Designer by day, Game designer by night. When Blake's not designing oil pipelines for abroad - he's devising cunning game mechanics, devilish Ai systems to trap, ambush, surprise and challenge players. Blake's business background makes him the "number-cruncher" Director of the game development collective League of Geeks. And he's served his time over the last decade shipping 7 titles on multiple platforms with fond memories at Bluetongue Entertainment as a Level Designer; Cyberstep (Tokyo, Japan) as a Business Monkey; And Torus Games as Lead Game Designer.
www.leagueofgeeks.com/
Fiona Murray
After spending a few too many years in thoroughly uninteresting medical administration jobs, Fiona decided it was time to make the transition to the industry she has loved ever since she was seven years old, playing Ducktales on her neighbour's NES. At last year's Freeplay, Fiona was introduced to Chris Wright and jumped at the chance to join the newly formed Surprise Attack. She has provided administrative support to the rapidly growing team ever since.
www.surpriseattack.com.au | @TheCantorDust
Thuyen Nguyen
Thuyen Nguyen is currently the Personalisation and Apps Manager at Telstra Digital Media. He oversees various mobile downloadable content across the BigPond Mobile Portal including Tones & Pics, Callertones, and the BigPond App Shop. He was previously a Senior Games Designer at Transmission Games and Atari Melbourne House, developing titles including Transformers, Men in Black, AFL Premiership, and Heroes Over Europe. In his spare time he writes comics and develops DS homebrew games. His work has been featured on The Age, Kotaku, Joystiq, and Boing Boing.
Patrick O'Duffy
Patrick O’Duffy publishes textbooks by day and writes by night. Well, on weekends anyway. Previously working in the roleplaying games industry as a writer and designer, these days he focuses on writing and publishing short-form ebooks, including the social media crime novella THE OBITUARIST, and blogging about writing. He also plays a lot of video games, and occasionally writes about them, including the differences and similarities they have to other narratives and why so many of them treat women as scary mutants or as prize tokens.
www.patrickoduffy.com | @patrickoduffy
Conor O'Kane
Conor O'Kane is an independent game developer and lecturer at RMIT.
cokane.com | harpooned.org | droneswarm.com | shmup-dev.com | @conorokane
Caswal Parker
Caswal Parker is the Co-Owner and Lead Programmer of Camshaft Software a small independent studio in Melbourne. Caswal started Camshaft Software with his good friend Andrew Lamb, to create a unique title called Automation - The Car Company Tycoon Game. Caswal has been working on Automation for over 2 years, previously he was employed as a programming teacher at the Academy of Interactive Entertainment in both the Canberra and Melbourne campuses.
camshaftsoftware.com | automationgame.com/ | @CaswalP | @AutomationGame
Fee Plumley
Fee is a geek artist who will soon be driving around Australia in a modified Toyota Coaster. Equipped with a nomadic FabLab, she will be making & sharing geek art with Nomads in Residence & people they meet en route.
reallybigroadtrip.com | technoevangelist.net | @feesable
Andrew Pogson
Andrew Pogson has been working in the music industry for the past 13 years. He has had various roles including performer, lecturing at the Australian National University School of Music and currently as the Artistic Administrator of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. He was responsible for developing and producing the "Video Games Unplugged: Symphony of Legends" concerts for the MSO in April 2012. These concerts included over 10 world premiere performances of various video game soundtracks. One of the earliest pieces of music Andrew learnt to play was the theme to King's Quest 2, which he later found out was called "Greensleeves", and he has been hopelessly addicted to (the lost art of) Adventure Games ever since.
www.mso.com.au | www.videogamesunplugged.com.au | @JazzNerd
Harry Ravenswood
Harry is a Producer for ABC’s TV Multiplatform department, responsible for developing online portals and apps, as well commissioning and producing new games projects for the ABC and partners. He has over 10 years experience in the commercial games industry, holding Lead Game Design roles for studios including Sony London, Kuju/Headstrong and Krome Studios Melbourne. Harry has worked directly with and created new IP for Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony and continues to develop and release games in his own time .
Scott Reismanis
Since 2002 Scott Reismanis has been crafting video game websites including ModDB.com and IndieDB.com which were built with the aim of connecting developers with their fans. In 2009 Scott launched Desura.com a digital distribution store for PC gamers and later in 2011 IndieRoyale.com, a game bundle deals site.
www.desura.com | www.indieroyale.com | @scottreismanis
Emily Ridgway
Ms. Ridgway is best known for her critically acclaimed work as Audio Director, Sound Designer and Writer on Bioshock as well as her role as Music Director/Sound Designer at Double Fine Productions (Brutal Legend, Stacking, Costume Quest). With over 40 international game development awards to her name, Ridgway now lives in Australia where she manages the successful audio outsourcing company Emily Industries Pty Ltd. With a particular interest in highly creative and innovative titles, Ridgway is also working with many indie game developers to help create the next generation of cherished video game experiences. You can read more about her at www.emilyindustries.com or follow on twitter @emilyindustries
www.emilyindustries.com | @emilyindustries
Seon Rozenblum
Seon has been an Independent Games Developer since 2006 when he converted his Animation and VFX studio, Sector3, into fledgling Game Studio and by 2009 had shipped over 12 titles on both Desktop and iOS devices. In early 2009, Seon sold a controlling stake of Sector3 to Trickstar Games, but after 15 months Seon had the realisation that his true passion was as a self run Indie so he sold his remaining shares and started up his new venture – 3 Sprockets. In March 2012, Seon released Cubemen on Steam, Desura, Mac App Store and iOS App Store (iPad2+) and it instantly became a world wide hit, topping the charts in all of the major regions and hitting #1 game in Australia and top 5 game in 38 countries.
www.sprockets.com | cubementd.com | @3sprockets
Ruth Sancho Huerga
Ruth Sancho Huerga is a Melbourne based actor, writer and artist with more than 20 years of experience. She holds a Postgraduate in Digital Literature from the University of Barcelona and is recently doing Master by Research in Media & Communication at R.M.I.T University at the Exertion Games Lab. She is also a recipient of the Australian Endeavour Awards 2012. She is researching and experimenting on the use of bodily-selfexpression and theatre in play and digital game for children with illness and disabilities.
www.ruthsancho.com | http://morepoetryplease.blogspot.com.au/
Stephan Schütze
Stephan is the founder and co-owner of Sound Librarian and has turned his more than 12 years experience producing audio for the games industry towards producing commercial sound effects libraries and industry education and training. EA studios worldwide are one of many global customers of the Sound Librarian catalog and the company is currently developing the official training courses for the FMOD suite of audio products. Stephan is happiest when pointing microphones at things.
www.stephanschutze.com | @stephanschutze
Emily Sexton
Emily Sexton is interested in contemporary art that’s grounded in our more complex political and social challenges. Her experiments with the form of the 2012 Next Wave Festival demonstrated an ongoing interest in new contexts that bring people together; in the live experience and how this is changing. From 2008-10 Emily was Melbourne Fringe’s Creative Producer, creating a series of large-scale projects that showed her passion for interdisciplinary practice and art in public space. She’s also worked as an independent producer, in cultural development with City of Frankston and produced major events and festivals for Sydney University. Emily is a board member with Theatre Network Victoria, and regularly acts in a curatorial advisory capacity for festivals, public and private funding bodies across Australia. In 2011 she was a participant in the Australia Council’s inaugural Emerging Leaders Development Program, and named by The Age as one of Melbourne’s Top 100 most influential, creative and inspiring people. She’s a sometime host on 3RRR 102.7FM, occasional blogger (www.hyperpublics.wordpress.com) and can be found via @emsexton.
nextwave.org.au | @emsexton
Mare Sheppard
Mare Sheppard is one half of Metanet Software Inc., an indie game developer based in Toronto, and is a founding member of the Hand Eye Society, a Toronto-based coalition relating to video games. After graduating from the University of Toronto, Mare formed Metanet Software with Raigan Burns, who is similarly passionate about games, art, music, and many, many other things. Metanet incorporated in 2004, released N in 2005, brought N+ to consoles in 2008, and is now feverishly working on an update to N, two new games, 3 top-secret projects and a partridge in a pear tree. Mare fills her days doing half of everything at Metanet, and in her spare time enjoys creating Metanet's merchandise, playing video games, chilling with Toronto indies and encouraging more people to make and play games.
www.metanetsoftware.com | www.thewayoftheninja.org | www.officeyeti.org | www.selfawareproductions.com | @maresheppard | @metanetsoftware
Helen Stuckey
Helen Stuckey is a curator and researcher. Her recent curatorial practice has focused on the exhibition of videogames as cultural artefacts. At the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) she initiated, produced and curated the Games Lab (2005 – 2008) a dedicated exhibition space for exploring game culture. She is currently undertaking PhD research as part of the ARC Linkage Project - Play It Again: Creating a Playable History of Australasian Digital Games, for Industry, Community and Research Purposes addressing the need for institutional collecting and preservation solutions to document and preserve the history of early games and gaming cultures in Australia and New Zealand.
David Surman
David Surman is co-founder and creative director of Pachinko Pictures, a boutique game studio based in Melbourne. Pachinko's clients include Intel, Pitchfork, Chupa Chups, ABC Television, SBS, and many more.
www.pachinkopictures.com | @pachinkopix
Joe Tabor
With almost 20 years’ experience working in Australia and Canada for EA Montreal, Torus Games, IR Gurus and Infinite Interactive, Joe has gained considerable industry experience in a variety of roles, including Producer, Art Manager and Lead Artist. Currently the Director and owner of Fiasco Studios, Joe is working on two projects. Peleda, an online action adventure game for Vishus Productions and ABC and The Paper Fox, an iOS/Android interactive storybook with Torsion Fork Studio.
www.fiascostudios.com
Dewi Tanner
Dewi is a British video game producer, director and designer who cut his teeth at renowned Tokyo-based boutique studio NanaOn-Sha. Under the wing of industry legend Masaya Matsuura, he spearheaded a globally-oriented era at the company by forming ties with clients and suppliers across Europe, Asia and the U.S. This climaxed with him producing Haunt, a charismatic Kinect game funded by Microsoft Studios and co-developed with Zoë Mode in Brighton. He now works as a freelancer in Australia, connecting the finest talent with exciting opportunities irrespective of borders.
@dewitanner
Lubi Thomas
Lubi works as Senior Curator – digital media at QUT Brisbane. With over eight years of experience in development and delivery of digital media focused exhibitions and engagement programs. Lubi works locally, nationally and internationally on large-scale exhibition programs and a diverse range of digital focused creative projects. Lubi is responsible for developing the exhibitions and extensive public program schedules that scaffold the creative industries precinct program and is currently developing the program for The Cube, launching in 2013, to be located in the Science and Engineering Centre QUT. Lubi consults in this field (SLQ, TRI), is a ‘Peer’ for Australia Council for the Arts, and is delighted to be one of the 'Aunties'. Lubi also has an collaborative art practice - DavisThomas.
www.ciprecinct.qut.edu.au/ | www.thecube.qut.edu.au/ | @lubistuff
Vanessa Toholka
Vanessa Toholka is a knowledge management consultant with over twelve years experience working in online content and strategy. Currently working in the legal industry, she previously spent 5 years working in New Media and Digital Systems at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Vanessa is a radio broadcaster with Triple R's weekly technology and computing show - Byte Into It, and holds a Bachelor of Information Management (Hons) from Monash University. She is also a board member for the Freeplay Independent Games Festival.
@plasmov
Kim Vincs
Kim Vincs is the Director of the Deakin Motion.Lab, Deakin University’s motion capture studio and performance technology research centre. Recent motion capture credits include deer capture for Nocturnal Migration by Altv.fx, and sports capture for Big Ant Studios’ Rugby League Live 2. Kim is also a choreographer and interactive artist. She leads two Australian Research Council Discovery projects in dance technology, investigating the movement signatures of Australian dance artists (with Mathematician Dr Vicky Mak and Biomechanist A/Prof Richard Smith) and developing new visualization technologies for dance. She works with the Deakin Motion.Lab creative team, Daniel Skovli, Peter Divers, John McCormick and Rob Vincs, and with Deakin University’s Centre for Intelligent Systems Research at Waurn Ponds, to make performance works that explore new ways of using technologies such as motion capture, game engines, augmented reality, haptics and 3D stereographic visualization.
www.deakin.edu.au/motionlab
John Vine
John has been involved in the franchising and small business sector for over 25 years, holding senior positions with The Shell Company of Australia and South Pacific Tyres as well as working with clients in the food sector, service industries and the automotive area. Within the franchise sector he is a respected mentor to new franchisors, has managed national franchise groups, been a franchisee and run his own small business for 14 years. John regularly speaks on franchising and small business at seminars presenting comprehensive programs on behalf of the State Government in relation to Going into Business, Buying a Franchise and Selecting and Retaining the Right Staff. He is AFE (Accredited Franchise Executive) with the Franchise Council of Australia and has supported clients with Government Grant applications.
Nicholas Watt
Nic has worked as both a designer and artist on video games for over 12 years. Following a Lead Designer role at EA in London he moved to Sydney and formed Nnooo, an independent game development company focusing on digitally distributed software for home and portable consoles. Nnooo have successfully developed 6 new IPs since 2008 including Pop, escapeVektor, Spirit Hunters Inc and the lifestyle application range myLifeCollected.
www.nnooo.com | faceboook.com/nnooo | twitter.com/_Nnooo | youtube.com/nnooo | @Nnooo_Nic
Tim Webster
Tim Webster is one half of the design consultancy, Low Fat Love. He works from the Inspire9 coworking space in Richmond which is home to a number of young startups and game developers. Tim has crowdfunded his own forty screen video installation works, been a supporter of others' projects and is a passionate advocate for audience development and the potential of alternative funding models. He is the former director of the arts organisation, Bus Projects, and worked with the Australian Centre for the Moving Image during the Game On exhibition of 2008, producing public forums featuring the likes of game reviewer, Yahtzee, Pong creator, Al Alcorn and 8Bit documentary maker, Marcin Ramocki. Tim tweets about crowdfunding, self-education and entrepreneurship. You should follow him @timjwebster. Tim's favourite games were old text adventures and he has a substantial collection of old Sierra quests.
lowfatlove.net | timjwebster.com | @timjwebster
Sean M Whelan
Sean M Whelan is a writer of poetry, prose and works for performance. He co-produces the successful literary cabaret Liner Notes. He also works with musicians, performing regularly with The Interim Lovers and also electronic musician Isnod. His last book of poetry was titled Tattooing the Surface of the Moon. He occasionally likes to waste his time playing Angry Birds but doesn't personally have anything against pigs.
www.loveisthenewhate.blogspot.com | @seanmwhelan
Danielle Wilde
Danielle Wilde undertakes research through practice and practice through research to understand how technology might pair with the body to poeticise experience. Outcomes include artefacts and systems that provide frameworks for the body to perform into, to support embodied thinking through creatively engaged play. Many works privilege awkwardness to democratise engagement and enrich experiential outcomes. She holds the only Fine Arts, practice-led PhD undertaken with support from CSIRO, Australia; the 2011 Monash University Vice Chancellor’s Medal for Excellence for her PhD; was the inaugural Prime Minister’s Australia Asia Award Researcher at The University of Tokyo in Japan; and holds an MA in Interaction Design from the Royal College of Art, London. Currently based in Melbourne, Wilde publishes and exhibits widely, teaches, mentors and pursues research into embodied engagement, design innovation thinking, smart materials and play, with leading national and international research partners in art, technology, design, science and health.
www.daniellewilde.com | @daniellewilde
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.
www.alivetinyworld.com | @desensitisation
Chris Wright
Chris Wright is a veteran of video games marketing with more than 100 campaigns executed under his care for publishers including THQ, Microsoft, Sega, Capcom, Disney Interactive Studios and many more. Chris also spent two years as a member of Film Victoria’s Digital Media Assessment Panel, which assesses applications in respect of its Digital Media funding programs, providing recommendations to the Board for final approval. In September 2011, Chris set up Surprise Attack, a marketing agency focused on working with Australia's independent developers. One year on, it's grown from a one man band to a team of nine marketing specialists.
surpriseattack.com.au | @supattack
truna aka j.turner
truna aka j.turner is the Brisbane IGDA Chapter auntie, game activist and researcher. She is passionate about 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 entering its sixth 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 is into software culture, she 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.
igdabrisbane.org/
Leena van Deventer
Leena van Deventer is a freelance word herder and game developer based in Melbourne. Leena works for TinManGames and is currently writing two gamebook adventures, after editing the 7th gamebook in the GBA series, Temple of the Spider God. Leena was involved with Freeplay in 2011 as an Associate Producer and speaker, and is on the festival’s Program Advisory Committee in 2012. She has spoken at the “Cherchez La Femme” salon-style discussion evening on the topic of “Feminism and Games”, at the Forum as part of the Game Masters Exhibition at ACMI, and has been the games correspondent for Tech Talk Radio for over 100 episodes. Recently she started blogging her adventures exploring mental illness and depression in the world of The Sims 3, entitled “Sim, Interrupted”, and has begun writing a non-fiction book intended to counter the moral panic some parents are exposed to by the mainstream media about their children’s gaming habits. With pages and everything.
grassisleena.com | @grassisleena
Lisa-Skye is a Melbourne-based writer, comedian, femme daddy drag queen and trade-hound. She first Got Into A Serious Thing with video games at age 9 with 'the future of computers', her trusty Amiga 500. That blossomed-slash-festered into periodic obsessive bursts of gaming well into her manchild 20s and now in her man-teenager 30s. Nowadays, she's all about the PS3. And the SNES when that gets too heavy. Stalk her on Twitter or FaceBook, 'thelisaskye'.
lisaskye.com.au | facebook.com/thelisaskye | @thelisaskye
Stephanie Andrews
Stephanie Andrews is an experimental digital media artist and educator specializing in 3D graphics, animation, and virtual worlds. She began her career at Pixar working on A Bug's Life and Toy Story 2, has a Master's degree in Art and Technology from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and is currently a Lecturer at RMIT. She is currently researching and developing techniques for using rapid prototyping technologies in games and alternative methods for using stereoscopic imaging in video and animation.
www.stephnet.org | @stephnet
Thomas Apperley
Tom Apperley, Ph.D. is a researcher of digital media technologies. His previous writing has covered digital games, mobile phones, digital literacies and pedagogies, and the digital divide. Tom is currently a Lecturer in Digital Ethnography at Monash University. He is the editor of the peer-reviewed journal, Digital Culture and Education, his book Gaming Rhythms: Play and Counterplay from the Situated to the Global was published by The Institute of Network Cultures in September 2010.
monuni.academia.edu/ThomasApperley | @T0MM7
Clem Bastow
Clem Bastow is a pop cultural commentator and occasional humorist who the good people of Los Angeles have adopted on a part-time basis. Her work appears in The Age, Sydney Morning Herald, Daily Life, and TheVine. She spends too much time on the internet and has won many awards for her preserves.
clambistro.tumblr.com
Jeffrey Brand
Jeff Brand is Associate Professor of Communication and Media at Bond University and Deputy Director of the Bond University Centre for Learning, Engagement, Androgogy and Pedagogy (LEAP). Jeff's research explores the social psychology of audiences, their use of interactive media and the content regulation imperatives that arise from presumed media effects. He is author of the Interactive Australia and Interactive New Zealand series of national computer games audience studies and of the book (with Prof. Mark Pearson), Sources of News and Current Affairs. His current work explores interactive media and computer game audiences with a focus on policy and serious games. Dr. Brand serves as consultant to the Australian Communications and Media Authority, the Australian Classification Board, the Special Broadcasting Service, the Interactive Games and Entertainment Association and he has recently served on policy advisory board for The Australian Law Reform Commission’s review of the National Classification Scheme.
www.bond.edu.au | @jbrandinoz
Paul Callaghan
Paul Callaghan is a freelance writer, developer, educator, and the director of the Freeplay Independent Games Festival.
www.freeplay.net.au | www.paulcallaghan.net | @paul_callaghan
Rick Chen
Rick Chen is an entrepreneur and a social change-maker with a strong focus on new media design. He has a keen interested in web-based technology, user interface design and innovative ideas that change people's behaviour. After graduating from the University of Sydney with a Masters in Digital Media design, Rick co-founded Australia's first crowdfunding platform Pozible which has helped lots of creative projects get off the ground.
pozible.com | - | @rickchenn
Christina Chen
Christina’s first game experience was Command & Conquer and she’s never looked back. Having a background in software engineering, she brought the advances in software development to gaming and found her happy place in free-to-play games. She was the producer on Zuma Blitz in the highly competitive Chinese market and worked on a number of other social and mobile games at PopCap. As Surprise Attack's free-to-play expert, Christina helps clients navigate this increasingly important business model, from initial strategy all the way through to launch, operation and management.
Jessica Citizen
Jessica Citizen founded Player Attack (alongside her partner Kingsley Foreman) in early 2010 to fill a niche in the current state of games media, and has spent the past couple of years bringing fans the most interesting, most ridiculous news in gaming via daily articles and a weekly vidcast.
www.playerattack.com | @dotarray
Dan Clayton
With his childhood roots in 90's hardcore shooter culture, Dan had a change of heart while studying game development at university. Now driven to develop small scope high innovation indie projects, Dan joined fellow graduates at Dime Studios to produce their iOS debut, Tasty Fish. Practicing at Dime as an artist, animator, designer, programmer and producer, Dan believes that the joy of life is you never stop learning. When Dan isn't melting his brain staring at a computer screen, he enjoys numbing it with cold beer and pointless conversations.
dimestudios.com | @rantbox_dan
Mike Cowap
Mike is an Investment Manager with Screen Australia where he works across the Multi-Platform Program. He previously 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.
www.screenaustralia.gov.au | @MikeCowap
Laura Crawford
Laura Crawford is a lecturer, consultant and PhD candidate across games, cinema and psychology. Her fields of expertise include the epistemology of the user relationship with screen violence and the psychology of attraction to fantastical violence. Laura has been gaming ever since she felt the warm, 8 bit embrace of the Commodore 64 at the tender age of seven. She stubbornly contends that Impossible Mission II was the best game ever created. Everyone else begs to differ.
@soulgirl76
Benjamin Dawe
Ben Dawe is a multi-disciplined designer with over a decade of experience in the entertainment industry both in Australia and overseas. This experience includes designing club flyers for Japanese Hip Hop in Tokyo, Shooting and editing music videos on the road across the US, interviewing bands for Beat, Brag and Time Out magazines and designing t shirts for stores across Melbourne. As a Senior Designer at Village Roadshow he has worked on such titles as The Dark Knight, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World and The Lord of The Rings trilogy. He is currently Media Designer at Firemonkeys, Australia’s largest games studio.
firemonkeys.com.au | @bjdawe
Christy Dena
Christy Dena is an emerging writer, designer and director. She has worked on many alternate reality games, including Nokia's Conspiracy for Good, Cisco's The Hunt, and ABC's Bluebird AR. She is currently developing a web audio adventure for tablet and desktop called AUTHENTIC IN ALL CAPS. Christy also works with theatre, film, TV and gaming creatives to expand their story or game into different artforms, and does education work to keep the money coming in. She struggles with the tension between how people perceive her and what she wants to do, but continues to do what she loves regardless.
www.UniverseCreation101.com | www.AUTHENTICINALLCAPS.com | @christydena
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 "Many Monkeys Development". A Melbourne Game Development house that received one of the Screen Australia Digital Ignition Grant for their first game "Feng Shui Master".
manymonkeysdev.com | @polymonkey
James Dominguez
James Dominguez, known to many by his online handle DexX, is a video game journalist, freelance writer, blogger, and podcaster. He got his start in video game writing in 2007 thanks to legendary games journalist Jason Hill's community blogging project Your Turn, on Fairfax Digital's Screen Play blog. Unpaid writing turned into paid writing, and upon Jason's retirement from games writing, James took up his mantle as lead writer and editor on Screen Play. James is a passionate advocate of video games as a legitimate cultural and artistic medium. He believes deeply in the artistic and emotional potential of interactivity, and foresees a time in the not-too-distant future when games will be the dominant form of storytelling in our culture.
www.theage.com.au/digital-life/games/blog/screenplay | @jamesjdominguez
Rebecca Fernandez
Rebecca Fernandez is the CMO of Convict Interactive, an independent game development studio based in Wollongong, NSW. She has a Masters degree in Computer Science, currently teaches programming at the University of Wollongong and is heavily involved with IGDA Sydney. Though her background is mostly in programming, as an indie Rebecca has had to wear many hats and has taken on the role of marketing and PR for Convict Interactive. They are currently working on their first PC release, Triangle Man.
www.convictinteractive.com | @chainedchaos31
Daniel Golding
Daniel Golding is an academic, critic, and cultural commentator. He is currently completing a PhD at the University of Melbourne on videogame space, as well as lecturing on games and digital media. Daniel also runs the Game On blog for Crikey.com.au, and is published regularly in outlets such as Hyper Magazine and PC PowerPlay.
dangolding.com | blogs.crikey.com.au/game-on | @dangolding
Andrew Goulding
Andrew Goulding is a multi-talented creative, having worked in positions of Design, Writing, Production, Programming and Business in his 10 year career at several studios in Australia and the UK. Andrew is currently Director of the multi-award winning game studio Brawsome, which has released the canine point and click adventure, Jolly Rover (PC/Mac - 2010), and the werewolf comedy puzzle adventure, MacGuffin's Curse (PC/Mac/iPhone/iPad - 2012), as well as providing contracting support on numerous titles in the casual game industry.
www.brawsome.com.au | @brawsome
Ian Gouldstone
Ian W. Gouldstone is a BAFTA-winning filmmaker and videogames designer. Together with David Surman, he founded the games and animation studio Pachinko Pictures. A native of New York, Ian has spent the last decade in London, and in 2010 relocated to Melbourne, Australia. He spends his time making games, films and animated content for a wide range of clients, and in 2007 won the BAFTA for his short animated film guy101. Most recently he has been working on a range of projects for clients including Chupa Chups, Pitchfork, and SBS.
www.pachinkopictures.com | @pachinkopix
Dan Graf
Dan loves designing experiences, cinematic storytelling, animating characters and developing videogames. He began animation and game design at age 10 with pixelated characters on a Commodore 64. He now works as a designer for Halfbrick (aussie creators of worldbeating iOS games Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride). Dan's background in feature film animation & story development lend unique perspective to his game design and creative direction. His goal is to make tight, focused games that engage your reflexes and immerse your imagination in character-driven journeys of discovery. In 2008 Dan founded the IGDA Sydney chapter - a local game development community. It's now over 1000 members & holds monthly indie showcase & networking events focused on building a thriving NSW games industry.
www.facebook.com/groups/38132449086/ | www.halfbrick.com | @DanGraf
Simon Groth
Simon Groth is a writer, editor and manager of if:book Australia, the Institute for the Future of the Book. His work has been shortlisted for major awards and published in Australia, the US and the UK. In 20120, Simon was co-editor of Off The Record: 25 Years of Music Street Press (UQP). This year, he was the lead writer (alongside Nick Earls, Steven Amsterdam, Krissy Kneen and others) for the 24-Hour Book: a project to write, edit and publish a book in both digital and print within a single 24-hour period.
www.futureofthebook.org.au | @ifbookAus
Paul Gurney
Paul is the Executive Director of Next Wave, having worked for the organisation since 2009, his current position, along side Next Wave's Artistic Director, is responsible for the overall strategic vision of the organisation. Since 2011 Paul has also volunteered his time as the Treasure on the Freeplay Board. Paul relocated from Perth in 2004 to undertake an internship at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) as part of his degree in Arts Management (Ba) from the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts. After graduating, Paul became part of the Exhibition Management Team at the NGV . During his time at the Gallery Paul worked on many large and small scale exhibitions including the Melbourne Winter Masterpieces series. In addition to the NGV, Paul volunteered as a board member for Seventh Gallery Inc, Fitzroy from 2005 to 2007. During this time Paul contributed to the Making Spaces publication and was also responsible for the Gallery’s Media and Communications strategies. Prior to arriving in Melbourne Paul worked at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art (PICA) as an administrator, Front of House staff and installation team member.
www.nextwave.org.au
Tim Hamilton
Tim Hamilton has been writing poetry, gaming and roleplaying (not necessarily simultaneously) for most of his life. As a poet, he has put out two chapbooks, written articles for the Melbourne Poets Union and recently had work published by Don't Look Down (AUS) and Concise Delight (USA). Behind the mic, he's a regular around Melbourne poetry gigs and has performed interstate and internationally.
tshamilton.com | @tshamilton
Jon Hayward
Jon Hayward was told many years ago that as he writes code, creates art and organises teams he should just focus and become a producer. As a result he now runs a small indie team called Game Pride in Perth with a focus on improving it's members skills in game development.
game.pride.id.au | @sonictail
Will Homan
Twice as dangerous and half as annoying as the Mario Kart weapon of the same name, Blue Turtle Shell are an acoustic pop culture rock band specializing in cleverly written songs inspired by the wonderfully geeky worlds of sci-fi, fantasy and videogames. With subject matter ranging from the plight of the forgotten console to man crushes on Doctor Who, the band's unique approach to songwriting is best saved for that last corner on the final lap.
Claire Hosking
Claire Hosking drew buildings for a few years (mostly apartments and hotels in China) until she took a short programming course and got interested in procedural design (spaces generated from coded instructions rather than by architects). Now she's an Art Intern for Kill Screen Magazine and would like to design your house, office space, library or crypt. Rapidly Prototyped and Digitally Fabricated, of course.
@hoskingc
Kate Inabinet
Kate Inabinet is an industry professional with over 10 years’ experience as a senior and principle animator for games, She has worked at respected Australian studios such as Atari, Ambience and Bluetongue and has 9 published games to her name. From 2006-2008 Kate contributed to Atomic MPC Magazine as an editorial writer where she published a monthly column titled “Geekette” that focused on the industry and surrounding issues. Kate has an active involvement in the education of a future generation of game developers. She studied at the ACT Academy of Interactive Entertainment in 1999, then returned to teach the Advanced Diploma of Game Development at the AIE Melbourne campus. Kate is currently lecturing at RMIT and is also making her way in the world of freelance animation.
Troy Innocent
Dr Troy Innocent is a world builder, iconographer and reality newbie. His artificial worlds – Iconica (SIGGRAPH 98, USA), and Semiomorph (ISEA02, Japan) – explore the dynamic between the iconic ideal and the personal specific, the real and the simulated, and the way in which our identity is shaped by language and communication. He has received numerous awards, including Honorary Mention, LIFE 2.0: Artificial Life, Spain (1999); Foreign Title Award, MMCA Multimedia Grand Prix, Japan (1998); First Prize, National Digital Art Awards, Australia (1995); and Honorary Mention, Prix Ars Electronica (1992). Innocent co-founded the digital arts collective cyber dada in 1989 and through pioneering works such as Idea-ON>! contributed to the Australian new media arts practice during the 90s. His most recent works are urban art environments: an interactive sculpture garden entitled Colony in the Melbourne Docklands and Urban Codemakers, an Alternate Reality Game that reinvents the history of Melbourne. Innocent is currently Senior Lecturer in Games and Interactivity, Faculty of Life and Social Sciences, Swinburne University, Melbourne. Innocent is represented by Hugo Michell Gallery.
troyinnocent.net | urbancodemakers.net | @_Troy_
George Ivanoff
George Ivanoff is a Melbourne author and stay-at-home dad. He spent much of his youth playing video games, particularly Space Invaders on his Atari, and now writes novels set in a computer game world where the characters have developed sentience. Check out his website: georgeivanoff.com.au
georgeivanoff.com.au | www.gamersquestbook.com | @George_Ivanoff
Morgan Jaffit
Founder of Defiant Development, a Brisbane based independent game developer who've been developing and publishing games for the last two years. Primarily focused on mobile development, and supporting new and upcoming developers. Defiant has published Heroes Call and Ski Safari for Android and iOS.
www.defiantdev.com | @morganjaffit
Darshana Jayemanne
Darshana is a writer and academic currently completing a PhD investigating relations between technology, narrative and ludic form.
@KickThousand
Simon Joslin
Simon Joslin, co-founder of The Voxel Agents, likes to design mechanic driven games with broad appeal and a unique gameplay twist. If you like Bejeweled Blitz or Triple Town he would like you.
thevoxelagents.com | @simonjoslin
Melissa Keil
Melissa Keil is a writer, obsessive book-buyer and confirmed nerd. She has at various times been a high school teacher, Middle-Eastern tour guide, waitress, and community theatre dog’s body. She is currently working as a children’s book editor. Her debut YA novel, Life in Outer Space, will be published in March 2013 by Hardie Grant Egmont.
melissakeil.com | @MissMisch77
Brendan Keogh
Brendan Keogh is a videogame critic, academic, and journalist from Melbourne. He writes extensively about videogames and videogame culture for a variety of local and international outlets including Edge, Hyper, Ars Technica, and Kill Screen. He is also a PhD student at RMIT University where his research aims to forward a discourse of videogame criticism that can account for the varied meanings that emerge between players and games.
critdamage.blogspot.com | @BRKeogh
Stefanie Kethers
Stefanie grew up in Germany, and board games have always been part of her life. She has fond memories of playing games like Monopoly, Canasta, Öl für uns alle, and Careers until dawn during family Christmas holidays. At university, she got drawn into role-playing and other fantasy-themed games. She also started to collect games, and her collection currently numbers over 700. From 1998 until 2003, Stefanie was co-manager of Luding (http://luding.org), a large, bilingual online database that links board and card games with game reviews on the Web. Currently, Stefanie is on the Boardgames Australia committee, and has been a member of the "Best International Game" (2008-2010) and "Best Children's Game" (2011) panels.
www.boardgamesaustralia.org.au/
Katie Keys
Katie Keys / tinylittlepoems is a thirty-something non-Indig Aussie Brit and Café Poet at Melbourne’s Rue Bebelons. A poet, writer, reviewer and arts manager, her writing has been published in anthologies, magazines and online in Australia and beyond.She tweets one tiny little poem each day @tinylittlepoems
www.twitter.com/tinylittlepoems | @tinylittlepoems
Jeremy Kool
Jeremy Kool is a 3D Artist living in Melbourne and working for companies around the globe. While he's not freelancing, he's working on his own projects. His latest work is an interactive adventure book for the iPad called The Paper Fox.
jkoolart.blogspot.com | thepaperfox.blogspot.com | @Jeremy11K
Trent Kusters
Writer and designer, Trent Kusters, is the creative director of Divisive Media and also the founder of game development collective League of Geeks. Since his background in multimedia and games journalism, Trent shipped multiple titles whilst design director at Torus Games (including work on licenses the likes of Scooby-Doo! and Pokémon), advises state and federal governments on game development, has lectured at numerous major universities, written on gaming culture and development for major publications, was named one of Australia's top young achievers in 2010, and is now serving his second term on the GCAP 2012 advisory board. Trent is also invested in the future of game development, fostering and mentoring up and coming developers and students, and contributing to the game development community wherever possible.
@trentkusters
Harry Lee
Harry Lee is an independent game developer passionate about play, puzzles, and surprises. His superpower is getting distracted easily. Harry studies medicine at Monash University and creates award winning games about circles and squares with his studio, Wanderlands. Meanwhile, at the Exertion Games Lab, he aims to violently collide his medical and ludic interests, and his research into the playful applications of electrical muscle stimulation is the beautiful lovechild of that curious union. In recognition of his crippling obsession with minimalist game design, Harry was awarded the Spirit of Youth Award for Interactive Gaming earlier this year.
harry-lee.com | wanderlands.org | @leehsl
Lawrence Leung
TV writer, comedian and doco maker. Lawrence has spoken about "Satire in Games" for Freeplay 2005, contributed game designs for Pop Up Playground and recently hosted TopGeek2.0 He is best known as the creator of two ABC1 comedy shows, ‘Lawrence Leung’s Unbelievable’ and the AFI-nominated ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’. He also wrote pranks for ‘The Chaser’s War On Everything’ and has toured his award-winning stand up shows to London, Edinburgh and the Sydney Opera House. Convinced that his life is one big Sierra quest game, Lawrence has hunted ghosts in Scottish castles, crashed freestyle rap battles in LA and once solved a Rubik’s Cube whilst skydiving before releasing his parachute (49seconds). His favourite game from childhood is on the Apple IIE.
www.LawrenceLeung.com | www.abc.net.au/tv/unbelievable | @Lawrence_Leung
Tracey Lien
Tracey Lien is an award-winning journalist and a Senior Reporter at Polygon. She has served as Associate Editor of Kotaku Australia, Online Producer at Fairfax, Field Reporter on ABC TV's Good Game, and her work has been published by The Sun Herald, AAP, Gamasutra, GamesIndustry International, HYPER, PC PowerPlay, NineMSN, and a bunch of other places. In 2010 she won the Walkley Foundation’s Media Super Student Journalist of the Year award, and in 2012 she won Best Games Journalist and overall Best Journalist at the Microsoft IT Journalism Awards. She also entered the Archibald Prize when she was 15 but did not win.
www.polygon.com | www.traceylien.com | @traceylien
Bryan Ma
Bryan is a game designer and producer, writes at thepretentiousgamer.com, and builds small interaction design/art projects. Previously Senior Game Designer at 2K Games's Shanghai studio, he has worked in the industry since 2006 on AAA, mobile, and social games for international and Asian markets. Previous projects included work on franchises such as Civilization Revolution and XCOM. Bryan also recently curated independent games exhibition Lunarcade Sydney, built a Winnitron indie arcade machine for Shanghai, sits on the theme committee for the Global Game Jam, and plays a lot of FTL.
@whoisbma
Andrew McClelland
Andrew plays an awful lot of computer games. Sometimes he worries that it is really disrupting his creativity. None the less he has performed in 14 consecutive Melbourne International Comedy Festivals and is a four-time veteran of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. He has twice been invited to perform at the New Zealand International Comedy Festival and is a past recipient of the Comedians’ Choice Award at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and the Jury Prize at the Sydney Comedy Festival. He's also has a sweet gaming PC that he built himself and is pretty good at not getting killed in DayZ.
www.facebook.com/andrewmcclellandgigs | @Andy_McClelland
Ben McKenzie
Ben is an actor, comedian, writer, feminist, rogue nerd and ginger. Described as ‘geek comedy’s patron saint’ (T-Squat Magazine) and ‘the anti-Hitler’ (Boxcutters), Ben has written, performed and produced comedy and theatre for over a decade. His shows include six Museum Comedy tours, the long-running Dungeons & Dragons-inspired improvised comedy show Dungeon Crawl, and appearances in The Bazura Project and Woodley for the ABC. He is also a founding member and Game Mechanic with live games collective Pop Up Playground, was recently published in the anthology Geek Mook (Vignette Press) and hopes to launch a new game discussion podcast, “Losing An Eye”, later in the year. He is the Production Manager for this year's Freeplay festival. Ben's favourite dinosaur is Stegosaurus.
labcoatman.com.au | shaolinpunk.net | @labcoatman
Richard McKenzie
Richard McKenzie has been a comedian since 2002, and a hardcore nerd since waaaay before that. He has performed stand-up, sketch comedy and impro across Australia, both solo and with The Anarchists Guild Social Committee. His awards include Best Comedy in the Melbourne Fringe Festival 2004 (Super Happy Robot Hour) and a Moosehead Award in 2006 (Digger). His previous nerd shows include Zombies 101, or, Why Grandma Had to Die, Mint Condition and Robot vs. World. He would like to tell you more but he has to get back to running screaming from zombies in DayZ.
Lynda Mills
Lynda Mills is the Creative Director of Cupco Games, a Melbourne based mobile app development studio. She has been in game development since graduation from Monash University with a Bachelor of Multimedia Systems, and she has spent most of those years at BlueTongue Entertainment working on the critically acclaimed de Blob titles. Lynda has a strong background in concept art, animation, interactive environments and game design, and has found her home in Cupco Games as an Independent Developer.
www.cupcogames.com | forgotten-hollow.blogspot.com.au/
Blake Mizzi
Industrial Designer by day, Game designer by night. When Blake's not designing oil pipelines for abroad - he's devising cunning game mechanics, devilish Ai systems to trap, ambush, surprise and challenge players. Blake's business background makes him the "number-cruncher" Director of the game development collective League of Geeks. And he's served his time over the last decade shipping 7 titles on multiple platforms with fond memories at Bluetongue Entertainment as a Level Designer; Cyberstep (Tokyo, Japan) as a Business Monkey; And Torus Games as Lead Game Designer.
www.leagueofgeeks.com/
Fiona Murray
After spending a few too many years in thoroughly uninteresting medical administration jobs, Fiona decided it was time to make the transition to the industry she has loved ever since she was seven years old, playing Ducktales on her neighbour's NES. At last year's Freeplay, Fiona was introduced to Chris Wright and jumped at the chance to join the newly formed Surprise Attack. She has provided administrative support to the rapidly growing team ever since.
www.surpriseattack.com.au | @TheCantorDust
Thuyen Nguyen
Thuyen Nguyen is currently the Personalisation and Apps Manager at Telstra Digital Media. He oversees various mobile downloadable content across the BigPond Mobile Portal including Tones & Pics, Callertones, and the BigPond App Shop. He was previously a Senior Games Designer at Transmission Games and Atari Melbourne House, developing titles including Transformers, Men in Black, AFL Premiership, and Heroes Over Europe. In his spare time he writes comics and develops DS homebrew games. His work has been featured on The Age, Kotaku, Joystiq, and Boing Boing.
Patrick O'Duffy
Patrick O’Duffy publishes textbooks by day and writes by night. Well, on weekends anyway. Previously working in the roleplaying games industry as a writer and designer, these days he focuses on writing and publishing short-form ebooks, including the social media crime novella THE OBITUARIST, and blogging about writing. He also plays a lot of video games, and occasionally writes about them, including the differences and similarities they have to other narratives and why so many of them treat women as scary mutants or as prize tokens.
www.patrickoduffy.com | @patrickoduffy
Conor O'Kane
Conor O'Kane is an independent game developer and lecturer at RMIT.
cokane.com | harpooned.org | droneswarm.com | shmup-dev.com | @conorokane
Caswal Parker
Caswal Parker is the Co-Owner and Lead Programmer of Camshaft Software a small independent studio in Melbourne. Caswal started Camshaft Software with his good friend Andrew Lamb, to create a unique title called Automation - The Car Company Tycoon Game. Caswal has been working on Automation for over 2 years, previously he was employed as a programming teacher at the Academy of Interactive Entertainment in both the Canberra and Melbourne campuses.
camshaftsoftware.com | automationgame.com/ | @CaswalP | @AutomationGame
Fee Plumley
Fee is a geek artist who will soon be driving around Australia in a modified Toyota Coaster. Equipped with a nomadic FabLab, she will be making & sharing geek art with Nomads in Residence & people they meet en route.
reallybigroadtrip.com | technoevangelist.net | @feesable
Andrew Pogson
Andrew Pogson has been working in the music industry for the past 13 years. He has had various roles including performer, lecturing at the Australian National University School of Music and currently as the Artistic Administrator of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. He was responsible for developing and producing the "Video Games Unplugged: Symphony of Legends" concerts for the MSO in April 2012. These concerts included over 10 world premiere performances of various video game soundtracks. One of the earliest pieces of music Andrew learnt to play was the theme to King's Quest 2, which he later found out was called "Greensleeves", and he has been hopelessly addicted to (the lost art of) Adventure Games ever since.
www.mso.com.au | www.videogamesunplugged.com.au | @JazzNerd
Harry Ravenswood
Harry is a Producer for ABC’s TV Multiplatform department, responsible for developing online portals and apps, as well commissioning and producing new games projects for the ABC and partners. He has over 10 years experience in the commercial games industry, holding Lead Game Design roles for studios including Sony London, Kuju/Headstrong and Krome Studios Melbourne. Harry has worked directly with and created new IP for Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony and continues to develop and release games in his own time .
Scott Reismanis
Since 2002 Scott Reismanis has been crafting video game websites including ModDB.com and IndieDB.com which were built with the aim of connecting developers with their fans. In 2009 Scott launched Desura.com a digital distribution store for PC gamers and later in 2011 IndieRoyale.com, a game bundle deals site.
www.desura.com | www.indieroyale.com | @scottreismanis
Emily Ridgway
Ms. Ridgway is best known for her critically acclaimed work as Audio Director, Sound Designer and Writer on Bioshock as well as her role as Music Director/Sound Designer at Double Fine Productions (Brutal Legend, Stacking, Costume Quest). With over 40 international game development awards to her name, Ridgway now lives in Australia where she manages the successful audio outsourcing company Emily Industries Pty Ltd. With a particular interest in highly creative and innovative titles, Ridgway is also working with many indie game developers to help create the next generation of cherished video game experiences. You can read more about her at www.emilyindustries.com or follow on twitter @emilyindustries
www.emilyindustries.com | @emilyindustries
Seon Rozenblum
Seon has been an Independent Games Developer since 2006 when he converted his Animation and VFX studio, Sector3, into fledgling Game Studio and by 2009 had shipped over 12 titles on both Desktop and iOS devices. In early 2009, Seon sold a controlling stake of Sector3 to Trickstar Games, but after 15 months Seon had the realisation that his true passion was as a self run Indie so he sold his remaining shares and started up his new venture – 3 Sprockets. In March 2012, Seon released Cubemen on Steam, Desura, Mac App Store and iOS App Store (iPad2+) and it instantly became a world wide hit, topping the charts in all of the major regions and hitting #1 game in Australia and top 5 game in 38 countries.
www.sprockets.com | cubementd.com | @3sprockets
Ruth Sancho Huerga
Ruth Sancho Huerga is a Melbourne based actor, writer and artist with more than 20 years of experience. She holds a Postgraduate in Digital Literature from the University of Barcelona and is recently doing Master by Research in Media & Communication at R.M.I.T University at the Exertion Games Lab. She is also a recipient of the Australian Endeavour Awards 2012. She is researching and experimenting on the use of bodily-selfexpression and theatre in play and digital game for children with illness and disabilities.
www.ruthsancho.com | http://morepoetryplease.blogspot.com.au/
Stephan Schütze
Stephan is the founder and co-owner of Sound Librarian and has turned his more than 12 years experience producing audio for the games industry towards producing commercial sound effects libraries and industry education and training. EA studios worldwide are one of many global customers of the Sound Librarian catalog and the company is currently developing the official training courses for the FMOD suite of audio products. Stephan is happiest when pointing microphones at things.
www.stephanschutze.com | @stephanschutze
Emily Sexton
Emily Sexton is interested in contemporary art that’s grounded in our more complex political and social challenges. Her experiments with the form of the 2012 Next Wave Festival demonstrated an ongoing interest in new contexts that bring people together; in the live experience and how this is changing. From 2008-10 Emily was Melbourne Fringe’s Creative Producer, creating a series of large-scale projects that showed her passion for interdisciplinary practice and art in public space. She’s also worked as an independent producer, in cultural development with City of Frankston and produced major events and festivals for Sydney University. Emily is a board member with Theatre Network Victoria, and regularly acts in a curatorial advisory capacity for festivals, public and private funding bodies across Australia. In 2011 she was a participant in the Australia Council’s inaugural Emerging Leaders Development Program, and named by The Age as one of Melbourne’s Top 100 most influential, creative and inspiring people. She’s a sometime host on 3RRR 102.7FM, occasional blogger (www.hyperpublics.wordpress.com) and can be found via @emsexton.
nextwave.org.au | @emsexton
Mare Sheppard
Mare Sheppard is one half of Metanet Software Inc., an indie game developer based in Toronto, and is a founding member of the Hand Eye Society, a Toronto-based coalition relating to video games. After graduating from the University of Toronto, Mare formed Metanet Software with Raigan Burns, who is similarly passionate about games, art, music, and many, many other things. Metanet incorporated in 2004, released N in 2005, brought N+ to consoles in 2008, and is now feverishly working on an update to N, two new games, 3 top-secret projects and a partridge in a pear tree. Mare fills her days doing half of everything at Metanet, and in her spare time enjoys creating Metanet's merchandise, playing video games, chilling with Toronto indies and encouraging more people to make and play games.
www.metanetsoftware.com | www.thewayoftheninja.org | www.officeyeti.org | www.selfawareproductions.com | @maresheppard | @metanetsoftware
Helen Stuckey
Helen Stuckey is a curator and researcher. Her recent curatorial practice has focused on the exhibition of videogames as cultural artefacts. At the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) she initiated, produced and curated the Games Lab (2005 – 2008) a dedicated exhibition space for exploring game culture. She is currently undertaking PhD research as part of the ARC Linkage Project - Play It Again: Creating a Playable History of Australasian Digital Games, for Industry, Community and Research Purposes addressing the need for institutional collecting and preservation solutions to document and preserve the history of early games and gaming cultures in Australia and New Zealand.
David Surman
David Surman is co-founder and creative director of Pachinko Pictures, a boutique game studio based in Melbourne. Pachinko's clients include Intel, Pitchfork, Chupa Chups, ABC Television, SBS, and many more.
www.pachinkopictures.com | @pachinkopix
Joe Tabor
With almost 20 years’ experience working in Australia and Canada for EA Montreal, Torus Games, IR Gurus and Infinite Interactive, Joe has gained considerable industry experience in a variety of roles, including Producer, Art Manager and Lead Artist. Currently the Director and owner of Fiasco Studios, Joe is working on two projects. Peleda, an online action adventure game for Vishus Productions and ABC and The Paper Fox, an iOS/Android interactive storybook with Torsion Fork Studio.
www.fiascostudios.com
Dewi Tanner
Dewi is a British video game producer, director and designer who cut his teeth at renowned Tokyo-based boutique studio NanaOn-Sha. Under the wing of industry legend Masaya Matsuura, he spearheaded a globally-oriented era at the company by forming ties with clients and suppliers across Europe, Asia and the U.S. This climaxed with him producing Haunt, a charismatic Kinect game funded by Microsoft Studios and co-developed with Zoë Mode in Brighton. He now works as a freelancer in Australia, connecting the finest talent with exciting opportunities irrespective of borders.
@dewitanner
Lubi Thomas
Lubi works as Senior Curator – digital media at QUT Brisbane. With over eight years of experience in development and delivery of digital media focused exhibitions and engagement programs. Lubi works locally, nationally and internationally on large-scale exhibition programs and a diverse range of digital focused creative projects. Lubi is responsible for developing the exhibitions and extensive public program schedules that scaffold the creative industries precinct program and is currently developing the program for The Cube, launching in 2013, to be located in the Science and Engineering Centre QUT. Lubi consults in this field (SLQ, TRI), is a ‘Peer’ for Australia Council for the Arts, and is delighted to be one of the 'Aunties'. Lubi also has an collaborative art practice - DavisThomas.
www.ciprecinct.qut.edu.au/ | www.thecube.qut.edu.au/ | @lubistuff
Vanessa Toholka
Vanessa Toholka is a knowledge management consultant with over twelve years experience working in online content and strategy. Currently working in the legal industry, she previously spent 5 years working in New Media and Digital Systems at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Vanessa is a radio broadcaster with Triple R's weekly technology and computing show - Byte Into It, and holds a Bachelor of Information Management (Hons) from Monash University. She is also a board member for the Freeplay Independent Games Festival.
@plasmov
Kim Vincs
Kim Vincs is the Director of the Deakin Motion.Lab, Deakin University’s motion capture studio and performance technology research centre. Recent motion capture credits include deer capture for Nocturnal Migration by Altv.fx, and sports capture for Big Ant Studios’ Rugby League Live 2. Kim is also a choreographer and interactive artist. She leads two Australian Research Council Discovery projects in dance technology, investigating the movement signatures of Australian dance artists (with Mathematician Dr Vicky Mak and Biomechanist A/Prof Richard Smith) and developing new visualization technologies for dance. She works with the Deakin Motion.Lab creative team, Daniel Skovli, Peter Divers, John McCormick and Rob Vincs, and with Deakin University’s Centre for Intelligent Systems Research at Waurn Ponds, to make performance works that explore new ways of using technologies such as motion capture, game engines, augmented reality, haptics and 3D stereographic visualization.
www.deakin.edu.au/motionlab
John Vine
John has been involved in the franchising and small business sector for over 25 years, holding senior positions with The Shell Company of Australia and South Pacific Tyres as well as working with clients in the food sector, service industries and the automotive area. Within the franchise sector he is a respected mentor to new franchisors, has managed national franchise groups, been a franchisee and run his own small business for 14 years. John regularly speaks on franchising and small business at seminars presenting comprehensive programs on behalf of the State Government in relation to Going into Business, Buying a Franchise and Selecting and Retaining the Right Staff. He is AFE (Accredited Franchise Executive) with the Franchise Council of Australia and has supported clients with Government Grant applications.
Nicholas Watt
Nic has worked as both a designer and artist on video games for over 12 years. Following a Lead Designer role at EA in London he moved to Sydney and formed Nnooo, an independent game development company focusing on digitally distributed software for home and portable consoles. Nnooo have successfully developed 6 new IPs since 2008 including Pop, escapeVektor, Spirit Hunters Inc and the lifestyle application range myLifeCollected.
www.nnooo.com | faceboook.com/nnooo | twitter.com/_Nnooo | youtube.com/nnooo | @Nnooo_Nic
Tim Webster
Tim Webster is one half of the design consultancy, Low Fat Love. He works from the Inspire9 coworking space in Richmond which is home to a number of young startups and game developers. Tim has crowdfunded his own forty screen video installation works, been a supporter of others' projects and is a passionate advocate for audience development and the potential of alternative funding models. He is the former director of the arts organisation, Bus Projects, and worked with the Australian Centre for the Moving Image during the Game On exhibition of 2008, producing public forums featuring the likes of game reviewer, Yahtzee, Pong creator, Al Alcorn and 8Bit documentary maker, Marcin Ramocki. Tim tweets about crowdfunding, self-education and entrepreneurship. You should follow him @timjwebster. Tim's favourite games were old text adventures and he has a substantial collection of old Sierra quests.
lowfatlove.net | timjwebster.com | @timjwebster
Sean M Whelan
Sean M Whelan is a writer of poetry, prose and works for performance. He co-produces the successful literary cabaret Liner Notes. He also works with musicians, performing regularly with The Interim Lovers and also electronic musician Isnod. His last book of poetry was titled Tattooing the Surface of the Moon. He occasionally likes to waste his time playing Angry Birds but doesn't personally have anything against pigs.
www.loveisthenewhate.blogspot.com | @seanmwhelan
Danielle Wilde
Danielle Wilde undertakes research through practice and practice through research to understand how technology might pair with the body to poeticise experience. Outcomes include artefacts and systems that provide frameworks for the body to perform into, to support embodied thinking through creatively engaged play. Many works privilege awkwardness to democratise engagement and enrich experiential outcomes. She holds the only Fine Arts, practice-led PhD undertaken with support from CSIRO, Australia; the 2011 Monash University Vice Chancellor’s Medal for Excellence for her PhD; was the inaugural Prime Minister’s Australia Asia Award Researcher at The University of Tokyo in Japan; and holds an MA in Interaction Design from the Royal College of Art, London. Currently based in Melbourne, Wilde publishes and exhibits widely, teaches, mentors and pursues research into embodied engagement, design innovation thinking, smart materials and play, with leading national and international research partners in art, technology, design, science and health.
www.daniellewilde.com | @daniellewilde
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.
www.alivetinyworld.com | @desensitisation
Chris Wright
Chris Wright is a veteran of video games marketing with more than 100 campaigns executed under his care for publishers including THQ, Microsoft, Sega, Capcom, Disney Interactive Studios and many more. Chris also spent two years as a member of Film Victoria’s Digital Media Assessment Panel, which assesses applications in respect of its Digital Media funding programs, providing recommendations to the Board for final approval. In September 2011, Chris set up Surprise Attack, a marketing agency focused on working with Australia's independent developers. One year on, it's grown from a one man band to a team of nine marketing specialists.
surpriseattack.com.au | @supattack
truna aka j.turner
truna aka j.turner is the Brisbane IGDA Chapter auntie, game activist and researcher. She is passionate about 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 entering its sixth 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 is into software culture, she 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.
igdabrisbane.org/
Leena van Deventer
Leena van Deventer is a freelance word herder and game developer based in Melbourne. Leena works for TinManGames and is currently writing two gamebook adventures, after editing the 7th gamebook in the GBA series, Temple of the Spider God. Leena was involved with Freeplay in 2011 as an Associate Producer and speaker, and is on the festival’s Program Advisory Committee in 2012. She has spoken at the “Cherchez La Femme” salon-style discussion evening on the topic of “Feminism and Games”, at the Forum as part of the Game Masters Exhibition at ACMI, and has been the games correspondent for Tech Talk Radio for over 100 episodes. Recently she started blogging her adventures exploring mental illness and depression in the world of The Sims 3, entitled “Sim, Interrupted”, and has begun writing a non-fiction book intended to counter the moral panic some parents are exposed to by the mainstream media about their children’s gaming habits. With pages and everything.
grassisleena.com | @grassisleena
