truna aka j.turner is the Brisbane IGDA Chapter auntie, game activist and researcher. She is dead keen on supporting a vibrant Aussie independent game community and has been involved in running a series of outreach programs to foster understanding about the medium (and business) of the game since 2004. Along with a number of partners in crime, truna is also responsible for the fabulous 48-hour game making challenge – now entering its fifth 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.
http://www.facebook.com/groups/igdaBrisbane
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 Social inclusion. Tom is currently a Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne. Tom’s book Gaming Rhythms: Play and Counterplay from the Situated to the Global was published by The Institute of Network Cultures in 2010.
http://www.culture-communication.unimelb.edu.au/study/mediacomm/staff/tom-apperley
Crystal is a florist who spent a lot of time playing games as a kid, then stopped for a while, then started again after she moved into a share house full of nerds with consoles. She now spends more time on her PS3 than working with flowers, and that’s a little embarrassing.
http://twitter.com/#!/xtaletje
Jason has worked at Wicked Witch Software in a design and programming role for five years, developing games such as Office Chair Deathrace (PC), Mascot Manor/Mania (DS) and the recently released AFL (Wii). His writing has been featured in Game Developer Magazine and on Gamasutra.com.
In his spare time he works on small games and prototypes, and attempts to distil the process of making a good game into four easy steps. He’s up to “Step 3. ????”.
http://www.twitter.com/Jason_Bakker
Luke has been playing computer games and table top role playing games for the last thirty years. Now as a parent, he is finding that he is constructively reappraising his hobby in the light of his children’s interest.
He occasional writes for Wired.com’s GeekDad blog, but apparently only when he is able to overcome his Minecraft addiction.
Professionally, he has been a railway signalman, a fruit picker, and a vocational teacher. He currently works as an ecological consultant for a major infrastructure project, as well as dabbling in hospitality.
Jeff Brand is Associate Professor of Communication and Media at Bond University where he coordinates subjects on Digital Media and Computer Games Industry and Policy. Jeff publishes and presents research on audiences emerging media and regulation. He is author of a series of reports in Australia and New Zealand on game audience demographics, behaviours and attitudes for the Interactive Games and Entertainment Association. He also conducts research for government and industry including for the former Office of Film and Literature Classification, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, and SBS Corporation. Currently he is serving on the Australian Law Reform Commission Advisory Committee for the National Classification Scheme Review.
http://epublications.bond.edu.au/jeff_brand/contact.html
http://www.twitter.com/jbrandinoz
Caleb Bridge has been a writer for five years but a video game connoisseur for much longer. In addition to the games, he loves the culture surrounding them and is fascinated by the video game development process, including the creativity and intelligence that go into this wonderful entertainment medium. He believes that video games are currently representing only a small part of their potential, but is very excited to see how the industry will move forward in the coming years.
Caleb has dabbled around the industry for many years and is currently working as a freelancer.
http://twitter.com/calebbridge
Ben started his software career building websites for the University of Colorado at Boulder. He then moved to consulting for clients such as Sony, and the BBC. Tired of the corporate life, he took a position at a company called Spydercam creating real-time motion control software. After five years at Spydercam, Ben produced a suite of tools that won him an Academy Award for Technical Achievement for his work on 3D Volumetric motion systems. In 2005 Ben moved to Australia to be with his wife and transitioned from the film industry into the games industry. He has since developed more than 15 iOS games and contributed chapters to a handful of iPhone development books including “Beginning Iphone Game Development” and “iPhone Advanced Projects”. Ben Joined the team at Tin Man Games in 2009 to help create the Gamebook Adventures series of games.
Alexander Bruce is the creator of Antichamber, an upcoming exploration puzzle game set within an Escher-like world. Antichamber has been showcased in major competitions around the world, received two nominations in the 2011 IGF, and was one of the Grand Prize Winners in Make Something Unreal, run by Epic Games. More recently, it was selected as one of the winners for the PAX10 Showcase for 2011, held at the Penny Arcade expo in Seattle.
Between the constant development on Antichamber over the past two years, he has also traveled the globe to speak at conferences including the Tokyo Game Show and the GDC in San Francisco, and has also exhibited the game at major events such as E3, DICE and GDC China, among others.
He doesn’t have any spare time, because doing all of that is a hell of a lot of work for one person.
http://www.antichamber-game.com
http://www.twitter.com/Demruth
Paul is a freelance writer, designer, educator, and the director of the Freeplay Independent Games Festival.
http://www.twitter.com/paul_callaghan
With a background in computing and classical arts Eyal began his path in game development in a very unlikely place: The Israeli Intelligence. There, Eyal lead a creative department in developing computer based training applications for the IDF.
Eyal then moved to Melbourne where he started working with the local games industry as well graduating with distinction from RMIT with a BA in Games Design.
For the past few years, Eyal has been working as the creative director for Product Madness, a San Francisco based games company specializing in social networks. Eyal manages the creative team which is spread across Melbourne, San Francisco, London, Eastern Europe and India.
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 peoples behaviour.
Rick co-founded Australia’s first crowdfunding platform Pozible in 2010 which quickly become one of the major crowdfunding platforms world wide and has helped lots of creative projects get off the ground.
Alison Croggon is described by the Australian Book Review as “one of the most powerful lyric poets writing today”. She has published several collections of poetry, and has won the Anne Elder and Dame Mary Gilmore Prizes and was shortlisted for the Victorian (twice) and NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. Her most recent collection is THEATRE (Salt Publishing 2008). Previous collections include ATTEMPTS AT BEING and a New and Selected from Arc Publications, THE COMMON FLESH. She writes in many genres: she is the author of the critically acclaimed and popular YA series THE BOOKS OF PELLINOR and runs the influential review blog THEATRE NOTES (theatrenotes.blogspot.com), for which she won the 2009 Geraldine Pascall Prize for Critic of the Year. She has also written several works for theatre, including the operas THE BURROW and GAUGUIN with the composer Michael Smetanin.
http://www.twitter.com/alisoncroggon
Ben ‘Yahtzee’ Croshaw is a UK-born writer and professional video game critic, best known for Zero Punctuation, the weekly video game critique series that has been running on The Escapist (www.escapistmagazine.com) since 2007. Outside the day job he has acted as an indie game designer and game writer, and is the author of Mogworld, a gaming-themed novel published by Dark Horse Books. He lives in Brisbane.
http://www.twitter.com/yahtzeecroshaw
Described by his childhood piano teacher as “the worst student” she’d ever had, Andrew has forged a career making music and sound for a diverse range of media platforms. Having written music for film, television, and even making those cheesy polyphonic mobile phone ringtones, his first game soundtrack was for a Gameboy Advance title in 2006.
Since then, Andrew has grown up to be:
- a Nintendo sound specialist; writing for titles on the DS, DSi, and Wii
- an academic illusionist; lecturing at universities on music and sound
- a freestyle audio contortionist- hacking Microsoft Kinect hardware to make life more interesting.
He also has a track on the upcoming Game Music Initiative’s international game composers collaboration, One Big Album- which will be out on iTunes very soon!
http://twitter.com/#!/beat_therapy
Hamish Curry is the Education and Onsite Learning Manager at the State Library of Victoria. As a teacher with 14 years experience, in the UK, Japan, and six years coordinating a city campus in Melbourne, he understands the importance of engagement and creativity in stimulating learning. In his work at the State Library, information and technology go hand-in-hand with amazing collections and exhibitions, and an array of education workshops, online resources, and public programs using film and games to engage new audiences.
http://twitter.com/hamishcurry
Hugh Davies is an artist and producer whose creative works have been widely exhibited internationally. He is the Artistic Director of Analogue Art Map and is currently a research student in Media Philosophy at Monash University. He has presented and published papers on pervasive and alternate reality experiences and continues to explore the fuzzy between reality and fiction in a range of immersive experiences. Previously, Hugh was the regional producer at the ABC (Television Multiplatform Division), where he won the Australian Teacher of Media Award for Best Digital Education Tool. Hugh is currently working on the Darkest Puzzle, an alternate reality game concerning the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
http://analogueartmap.blogspot.com/
Lisa Dempster is the Director of the Emerging Writers’ Festival, and author of books The Melbourne Veg Food Guide and Neon Pilgrim.
http://www.lisadempster.com.au
http://twitter.com/#!/lisadempster
Christy is Director of Universe Creation 101, and when not developing her own projects, she works as an experience designer and writer on transmedia projects, and consults on the expansion of films, TV shows, alternate reality games and performance projects around the world. Recent finished projects she has worked on include Cisco’s global alternate reality game The Hunt with No Mimes Media; Tim Kring, The company P & Nokia’s Emmy-nominated global alternate reality experience Conspiracy for Good; and ABC’s alternate reality drama Bluebird AR. Christy co-wrote the Australian Literature Board’s Writer’s Guide to Making a Digital Living, wrote the first PhD on Transmedia Practice, and curated Transmedia Victoria. She is currently developing a web-driven comedy drama www.AuthenticinAllCaps.com.
http://www.UniverseCreation101.com
http://www.AuthenticinAllCaps.com
http://www.twitter.com/christydena
Matt is the convenor of the Games Design program at Griffith University. He’s been working in the games industry for the last 11 years. Most recently he lead the team for the ABC game Alternator. And for the last six months has been amassing an awful lot of gps data.
Daniel Donahoo writes for Wired.com’s GeekDad blog and the Huffington Post. He is the author of books tackling child development, media and technology. As the Director of Project Synthesis he has introduce LEGO robotics into schools, facilitated RPG for kids and is raising three geeklet gamers of his own.
Craig has been in the games industry since the Super Nintendo was the most powerful gaming system yet devised. He’s worn company shirts from most major Australian games companies (the Torus bowling shirt being the best) and worked on almost every console (the Philips CD-i being the worst). He’s now working on games he loves with people who are awesome, so he’s either living some kind of Inception or things might actually be getting really good.
http://twitter.com/#!/blitzkreeeg
National Affairs Correspondent, New Matilda
Arts columnist, Crikey
Fellow, the Centre for Policy Development
http://twitter.com/#!/beneltham
Dr Sean Fabri is an actor, a teacher, and a doctor, and his work often requires him to be all three at the same time. In his medical career, his focus is primarily on improving systems, supervising, supporting, and solving problems for junior doctors who are new to working in Australian medicine. He is a corporate trainer in the managerial areas of recruitment, training, and supervision, and a corporate facilitator for innovation and problem solving company Inventium.
Sean has decades of experience in the theatre, with a focus on improvisation, an artform which is equal parts acting, storytelling, and instant fearless creativity. He has taught and performed both in Australia and abroad, and is acclaimed as an expert in the field. His philosophy is that having fun actually matters, so it’s something to take to with enthusiasm.
Farbs is obsessed with video games. He spent ten years developing them in the traditional studio environment, but this didn’t scratch his development itch. His development itch developed. Soon he started making games outside studio hours, creating freeware experiments and releasing them to the internet. This came to a head one day when he released a game announcing his resignation. Now Farbs never leaves his house, and makes video games morning, noon, and night.
Projects Farbs has worked on include:
- The Captain Forever series
- ROM CHECK FAIL
- PlayPen
- Indie Kombat
- A thing which he can’t talk about quite yet but is awesome
- XCOM (the new one)
- Games Farbs was credited on but honestly had nothing to do with include:
- Bioshock
Farbs is somewhat trained as a programmer, but flings himself at all disciplines of game development with great enthusiasm and varying levels of success.
www.twitter.com/#!/FarbsMcFarbs
http://plus.google.com/113569309073748760002
Steve Fawkner is currently the Design Director at EA/Firemint, but is probably better known for his 21 years at the helm of Infinite Interactive, creating hit series such as Puzzle Quest, Warlords and Warlords Battlecry. A veteran of the games industry with over 2 decades of experience, Steve is still as passionate about games today as he was when he discovered his first Space Invaders Arcade Machine all those years ago. When he’s not in the office creating games, Steve’s hobbies include sitting at home creating more games, sitting at other people’s homes playing games, and sitting in cafes thinking about games.
Daniel Golding is currently undertaking a Phd in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. His research underlines a spatial logic of videogames, drawing on a number of cross-disciplinary theories of space, architecture, and cultural consumption. Daniel tutors and lectures in the fields of cinema, culture, videogames and digital media. He also regularly writes for Hyper Magazine, and has been recently published in Kill Your Darlings journal and interviewed on 774.
Andrew Goulding has been a professional game developer since 2002 working in the areas of QA, Programming and Production at 4 games companies in Australia and the UK.
Andrew started Victorian based independent game studio Brawsome in 2008 with the intention of creating funny story based games, such as those that fall into the point n click adventure category. Brawsome has since developed the award winning Jolly Rover (PC/Mac) and is currently developing MacGuffin’s Curse (PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad) as well as contracting on a number of successful casual game titles.
Paul is the Director of Marketing & Community Management at Bubble Gum Interactive, an independent children’s entertainment studio based in Sydney Australia. Paul leads the marketing and engagement efforts for Little Space Heroes, Bubble Gum’s upcoming virtual universe for kids. In this innovative and safe online multiplayer game kids create their own space hero and explore a galaxy full of fun and adventure. Little Space Heroes is slated to start closed beta in September 2011 with full global launch shortly thereafter. Paul has worked in the digital and entertainment industries for over ten years and has an MBA from the Australian Graduate School of Management and a Bachelors degree in Commerce from the University of Wollongong.
http://www.bubbleguminteractive.com
http://www.littlespaceheroes.com
Simon Joslin is the Creative Director of The Voxel Agents, an independent studio in Melbourne who have made tracks with their original ‘Train Conductor’ series on iPhone and iPad. He has also delivered titles on DS, PSP and GBA. Simon is on the board of the Game Developer Association of Australia and would happily argue with you that there’s never been a better time to go indie!
www.facebook.com/thevoxelagents
www.twitter.com/thevoxelagents
Lord Mulletdulla (AKA Ryan Keable), joint ruler of Anomalous Interactive, heralds from the internal flames of South Melbourne. Spawned into the games industry in 2008 as a designer for Pandemic Studios in Brisbane he has since gone on to unlock many achievements in the industry including two console releases (Sabotuer and WiiAFL) and one iPhone release (Slingshot Justice). With every release his powers grow, enabling him to spend more skill points transferred across his multi-talented disciplines of Design, QA, Production and Art.
http://www.anomalousinteractive.com
http://www.twitter.com/AnomalousInt
The Voxel Agents create chart topping games for the iTunes store. Their hit title, Train Conductor, has been the #1 game around the world, repeatedly featured on iTunes, and has 4.5 million players worldwide. Tom Killen is deeply engaged in the Melbourne games community. In addition to creating totally rad iOS games at The Voxel Agents, he assists with the Melbourne IGDA, runs game jams, and participates in game dev events around Melbourne.
A life long fanatical gamer and caffeine zealot, Leigh is a Melbourne based researcher and lecturer who focuses on computer game players, usability, ludic theory and audio/visual design. His current research is focused on MMORPG players and motivations, though he is also in the process of developing a touch screen platformer. In a previous life he developed Flash applications, websites and was (is) obsessed with music, sound recording and sound effects.
Ben has been working professionally in the Australian games industry since 2002, working in the roles of QA and design at 2 games companies. Ben’s experience has primarily been in the area of game design, starting in level design and moving onto design for new game concepts, with an original published iPhone game – Neonscape, under his belt. He joined Brawsome as a contractor in 2009 where he demonstrated his considerable skill and passion for developing characters, writing dialog and coming up with unique and interesting puzzles. Ben is a tireless game developer and player, and a walking Wikipedia of game knowledge. Prior to his career in the games industry Ben worked as a game journalist and regularly attends international game conferences, through which has developed an impressive network of industry luminaries. Ben is extremely pro-active about finding interesting games and exploring unique ideas.
Writer and designer, Trent Kusters is the founder of design and development collective League of Geeks. Since his background in multimedia and games journalism, Trent has shipped multiple titles whilst Lead Designer at Torus Games, has consulted state governments on game development, lectured at almost every major university and college in Victoria, written articles on gaming culture and development for major publications, was named one of Triple J’s “25under25 and smashing it” for 2010, and is on the advisory board for GCAP 2011.
Trent is also invested in the future of development, fostering and mentoring students and contributing to the game development community wherever possible.
Yangtian is a very passionate artist has a love of drawing and animation. She came to Australia from her home country of China to study and to pursue her creative ambitions. Yangtian is currently working as the lead artist at The Voxel Agents, which is an independent game studio focuses on iOS games.
http://tiantian1008.deviantart.com
Kieran is a freelance game programmer who becomes an independent developer by night, specializing in small games using Unity.
He has had a hand in the development of several games including Pandemic Studio’s “Destroy all Humans 2″, the ABC’s serious game “Alternator” and Strange Loop’s upcoming independent game “Vessel”.
Sayraphim Lothian is one half of visual theatre company Terrible Company and has worked with theatre in decay, Three To A Room, Eagle’s Nest amongst many others over the years. She has also curated many exhibitions around Melbourne including Totem, Dolls With Souls at Fed Square, and her work is held in collections of the National Gallery of Victoria and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Sayraphim is now working with Coney on a number of projects, she currently works as the Public Programs officer for a local museum and has a Grad Dip in teaching.
http://www.sayraphimlothian.com
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sayraphim-Lothian/222558481106738
http://www.twitter.com/sayraphim
Coming up from a largely poverty stricken fine arts career, nowadays Rob works in New Zealand as a games designer for Sidhe Interactive (respectively their casual/social label PikPok). Prior to his exodus Rob also designed for The Voxel Agents, Blendo Games, Tantalus Media, Tripswitch and anyone else willing to feed and clothe him. Additionally Rob has written for the ABC, worked with games projects at the ACMI and dabbled as an international academic. Rob spends the rest of his time on video art and generally being a cosmopolitan nerd.
David is a 12 year veteran of the games industry , working on every major console since the Dreamcast. Included in his 15 released games is the multi million selling, PS3 launch title, Motorstorm.
Ben McKenzie is an actor, scientician, comedian, feminist, improviser, geek, voiceover artist, gamer, presenter, nerd and ginger. ‘One of Melbourne’s Kings of Geek Comedy’ (Chortle AU), Ben has written and performed comedy science lectures as the Man in the Lab Coat, Museum Comedy tours in Melbourne and Sydney, sketches for The Anarchist Guild Social Committee and political stand-up for Political Asylum. He is also one of the creators of Channel 31 variety show Planet Nerd and monthly improvised Dungeons & Dragons show Dungeon Crawl. Ben’s favourite dinosaur is Stegosaurus.
Andrew McMillen is a freelance journalist based in Brisbane, Australia. His work has been published in Rolling Stone Australia, The Weekend Australian, Qweekend, Mess+Noise, The Vine, The Big Issue, triple j mag, The Courier-Mail, Australian Penthouse, IGN Australia and BrisbaneTimes.com.au.
He was first published in Brisbane street press Rave Magazine in June 2007. His first passion was writing about music, which has since been superseded by an interest in pursuing feature journalism – although he’s still a regular live music reviewer.
Andrew co-organised the independent music conference UnConvention Brisbane in 2010 and 2011. He was the Queensland ambassador for National Young Writers’ Month 2011, where he was charged with coordinating three public events in Brisbane and his hometown of Bundaberg. These events – which featured notable writers and journalists such as John Birmingham, Matthew Condon and Trent Dalton – were attended by a combined total of 200 young Queensland writers.
Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller directs the Exertion Games Lab (exertiongameslab.org) at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) in Melbourne, Australia. The Exertion Games Lab investigates the design of exertion games, these are digital games that require physical effort, in order to understand the opportunities of combining technology, play and the human body; in short, where gaming and sports meet. This research is situated within a broader interaction design agenda that supports people’s values such as an active and healthy life. Floyd has most recently been a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Stanford University, having worked on the topic of exertion games now across four continents, including at organizations such as the MIT Media Lab, Microsoft Research, Media Lab Europe, Fuji-Xerox Palo Alto Laboratories and Xerox Parc. Previously in Australia, he has worked at the University of Melbourne and the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), where he led the Connecting People team of 12 researchers.
http://www.twitter.com/exertiongames
Luke Muscat is a lead designer at Halfbrick, and the creator the smash-hit iPhone games Fruit Ninja and Monster Dash. In earlier projects he has worked as lead designer on DS and PSP games, with popular licenses such as Marvel and Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Over the past 18 months, Halfbrick games under Luke’s direction have been downloaded over 35 million times.
Thuyen Nguyen was a professional games designer who worked at several Melbourne games studios, all of which (by sheer co-incidence) no longer exist. His credits cover a wide range of genres, with titles including Transformers, AFL Premiership, Le Mans 24 Hours, and Heroes Over Europe. Now working outside the industry, his homebrew games and apps development has been featured on Kotaku, Joystiq and Destructoid.
http://multiple-option.blogspot.com
Conor O’Kane is an independent game developer and lecturer at RMIT university.
Henrik Pettersson is a fearless games warrior with Viking heritage. While on a journey of digital loot and plunder, he travelled from Sweden and arrived on the sunny shores of Australia and decided that this was the place to explore his passion for games. He recklessly ventured forth and designed the hit indie game “Up Down Ready” which won the Freeplay “Best Game Design” award. After this mighty victory he joined The Voxel Agents.
http://www.thevoxelagents.com/agentlogs/
Ben Pobjie is a writer and comedian who currently writes about TV for the Age, politics for New Matilda, and whatever pops into his head anywhere else he can find. He’s the author of the books Superchef and Surveying the Wreckage, co-host of the podcast Gather Around Me, and a father of approximately three.
http://www.twitter.com/benpobjie
Trevor Powell has fourteen years experience as a programmer in the local game industry, making games for the PlayStation 2, PSP, Dreamcast, Wii, XBox 360, and PlayStation 3. During those years, he has worked for Melbourne House, Atari, Krome Studios, Iron Monkey Studios, and as an independent developer.
http://twitter.com/#!/vectorstorm
Scott Reismanis is an entrepreneur and the founder of DesuraNET, a network of websites focused on the development and distribution of PC games which includes ModDB (and later IndieDB). Today ModDB is the largest website for players and developers who want to create and play something different, counting over 2.5 million unique visitors each month with 500,000 registered developers.
In 2009 he launched Desura a digital distribution service for PC gamers. Desura provides an ”app store” like interface, with free and paid for content from publishers, available for gamers to buy and play.
Matthew Riley is a lecturer in Animation and Interactive Media at RMIT whose interests include games, realtime technologies, design, data visualisation, generative art and networked media.
He has exhibited in Australia and internationally and his work has been featured in publications such as IdN Magazine, HOW magazine, Architectural Review and RealTime Arts. He has spoken at venues and events such as the Net Zapping Festival in France, The London College of Printing, Japans NHK and The Australian Centre for the Moving Image.
Dr. Jens Schroeder’s research interests mainly lie in the history of digital games and the roles they play in different societies. A field he first explored in his German Masters thesis which explored the history of digital games in East Germany and how they helped to support the regime. In 2005 he moved to Australia to acquire his Master in Arts and Media from Griffith University. His doctoral thesis deals with the differences in perception of mass media in Germany and Australia and how these differences relate to modes of distinction. The thesis is the first social history of gaming in both countries. Jens acts as the Academic Coordinator for the Sydney campus of Qantm and lectures in game design.
http://www.twitter.com/jensschroeder
With over a decade of experience in the games industry, Stephan Schütze now focuses on his own company Sound Librarian. Creating sound effects libraries, audio based games and apps and audio educational resources is the ongoing work of Schütze’s focus on highlighting the importance of quality audio
http://www.facebook.com/SoundLibrarian
http://www.twitter.com/stephanschutze
Aaron Charcoal Styles is an independent game developer. After working as a professional on three successful games as a designer, fate intervened to push him towards independent development. In the intervening three years he has developed eight games and numerous prototypes, over a variety of platforms. His games have been featured in many places, including print magazines in Russia, blogs in America and competitions in China.
http://twitter.com/#!/Charcoal
Lead Designer with over 10 years of game design experience. Rose out of the primordial design soup at Atari Melbourne House to work on Men In Black: Alien Escape (PS2/ GC), Grand Prix Challenge(PS2), Transformers(PS2) and Test Drive Unlimited(PS2). Evolved into a Lead on Heroes Over Europe (PS3/ 360) at Transmission Games. Reached a higher level of consciousness at Big Ant designing AFL Live (PS3/ 360).
Joe is the Director of Melbourne-based game developer, Fiasco Studios. Fiasco is currently working on ‘Peleda’, a new online game, based on a world created by Nathan and Luke Jurevicius (‘Scarygirl’, ‘Figaro Pho’).
With 11 years 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 Lead Artist, Art Manager and Producer.
Drew Taylor has a passion for videogame culture and a broad range of experience in international games publishing, marketing and journalism. He has over ten years experience as a film and game reviewer and features writer, was responsible for the game culture magazine JumpButton, and frequently experiments with games writing and design across a variety of mediums.
Since 2005 Lubi has curated The Block New Media Exhibition Space located at QUT Precincts, Brisbane. Lubi has been working locally, nationally and internationally on large-scale new media programs and on a diverse range of digital media creative projects. She is responsible for developing the exhibitions and the extensive public program schedules that scaffold both the program and engage with the Precinct’s local communities and emergent creative community hubs. Since 2007 Lubi has developed an ever-growing curatorial intern program, working with both under and post graduate students, with a curatorial focus on the digital media terrain. Lubi consults in this field; is a ‘Peer’ for Australia Council for the Arts; is currently on a research consultancy at State Library of Queensland (SLQ), and has her own collaborative art practice: DavisThomas.
http://www.ciprecinct.qut.edu.au
Vanessa describes her job differently whenever she’s asked. Current explanations include: techno librarian, digital producer, knowledge management consultant, and woman friday. She currently works for a law firm, but previously spent five years working in New Media & Digital Services at the ABC.
Vanessa is also a volunteer broadcaster at community radio station Triple R, and contributes to the Byte Into It program. At various times in her misspent youth, Vanessa has known the key combo to Chun-Li’s butterfly-kick, where the secret levels are in Super Mario Bros, and how to recognise luxury cars just from their dashboard design – thank you Test Drive. Her modest gamer ambitions are to play Tetris without dreaming about it afterwards, and to achieve a save-free ascension in NetHack.
Leena van Deventer is a games writer from Melbourne that confesses she “frolics through life looking for ways to be playful”. Preferring to associate herself more with the term “play-er” than “gamer”, she calls play the thread that has constantly weaved itself through her life. Leena was previously the Indie Games Section Editor at Resolution Magazine in the UK before their merge with BeefJack.com, and currently works freelance writing both for and about games. She is also the games correspondent for Melbourne’s Tech Talk Radio, and an Associate Producer at Freeplay this year. She feels being a parent has sharpened her own views on games and play as the honesty of children cuts through even the greatest intentions and the best-laid-out plans.
Wicked Witch Software is a development studio creating fresh and exciting games for the world market. Wicked Witch Software dedicates itself to creating the best game experiences for the players by embracing and contributing to the art form.
Wicked Witch Software is set up in the outer eastern suburbs of Melbourne Australia. Founded in 2001, Wicked Witch designs and works on original game concepts while developing games under contract for other developers and publishers. Acquiring talented people, Wicked Witch has successfully created its own development pipelines and environment using all the latest PC and game console technology.
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