Freeplay 2020 Speakers

Eris Alar (they/them) has been making tabletop games since 2014. Eris has worked with non-profits and businesses to develop 5 games with educational messages. Their most recent project is “It Takes a Village”, being developed for The Salvation Army.

Session: Why So Serious: Games as More than Entertainment?

Amber (alias, she/her) is a game artist/generalist, she organises a women and non binary in games community hangout in a country where LGBTQ identities are illegal, which is why she is presenting herself as a duck for the round table session.

Session: Making Space: Empowering Underrepresented Voices

Nick Argall (he/him) is an organization engineer at Hybrid Simulations Pty Ltd. His recent work includes clinical skills games for Ballarat Hospital, and a Human Resources card game for Alfred Health

Session: Why So Serious: Games as More than Entertainment?

Stephanie Boluk (she/her) plays, makes, and writes about games at the University of California, Davis. She is a co-author of Metagaming, co-creator of metagames like Triforce: The Topologies of Zelda, and cast member on the Every Game in This City podcast.

Session: Rituals of Play in a Global Pandemic

Paul Callaghan (he/him) was co-director and then director of Freeplay from 2009 until 2012. His work includes projects with ACMI, State Library Victoria, the National Gallery of Victoria, British Council, Now Play This, the V&A, BFI, and others. He is currently Coordinator Arts and Creative Industries at the City of Port Phillip.

Session: Directors of Freeplay: Looking Back

Michelle Chen (she/her) is a game developer and PhD student from the Philippines and Taiwan. She is also a Women in Games Ambassador.

Session: Rising SEA, South East Asian Gamedev Gathering
Session: Making Space: Empowering Underrepresented Voices

Ben Chong Xue Ren (they/he/she) is a nonbinary, bisexual Malaysia Chinese game designer and academic, best known for their tabletop working titles like Heart & Lightning, MONOLOCK and more. Their games explore themes such as intimacy, relationships, queerness, rebellion and magic. Ben pulls their inspiration from experiences with identity and community, as well as genres like romance, surrealism, mystery, horror, and more! When not making games, Ben lectures at UOWM KDU University. They also run their very first mentorship with Malaysian designers in the Analog Dreams program.

Session: RPGSEA, Seas of Design Communities

Jess Cockerill (they/them) is a writer and artist based in Naarm/Melbourne. Jess’s creative practice explores tensions between the nonhuman world and Western understandings of science, folklore, technology, queer and neurodivergent experiences. They take animated media very seriously.

Session: Playful (Voiceworks Reading Night)

Riley Frances Daisy (she/her) writes poems about grappling with the very small things in her day-to-day which constantly affront her by existing. She is an alumna of Express Media’s digital toolkits program and sometimes enjoys making ASCII art or writing, but she has currently been focusing her energies on none of that and only on animal crossing.

Session: Playful (Voiceworks Reading Night)

Bonnie Dalton (she/her) is the Music Industry Liaison at the Victorian Music Development Office, where she works with with artists and the businesses that support them, to foster sustainable music industry careers and partnering with music organisations and businesses. Prior to the VMDO, Bonnie worked predominantly as an artist manager but also across events, production, and programming. 

Session: Indie Bands × Indie Devs: a pilot project

Daniella (alias) is a game-art generalist working on an independent horror series.

Session: Making Space: Empowering Underrepresented Voices

Steve Dee (he/him) is a freelance game designer who also publishes under his own company Tin Star Games. He has worked on games such as Betrayal at House on the Hill, Vampire: The Requiem and all four editions of Warhammer, his work for which has won him several awards.

Session: Why So Serious: Games as More than Entertainment?

James Elliott (he/him) is an immersive experience designer working as a designer and manufacturer of puzzle-based narrative adventures for The Puzzlemaker. He works to implement strategies that educate players, activate spaces, and inspire play.

Session: Why So Serious: Games as More than Entertainment?

Federico Fasce (he/him) is a game designer from Italy. After working as a creative technologist for VR at the Guardian, he now leads an Independent Games degree at Goldsmiths, London. He’s a strong advocate of personal games and he believes that getting more people into games is the only way to push this form of expression forward. Once someone has said he’s eclectic like a Pearl Jam album. He likes it. Channeling pure Aquarian energy, Fede is constantly excited about something. Even before morning coffee.

Session: Belonging to a Game World

Marie Claire LeBlanc Flanagan (they/them) is an artist interested in the spaces between people and is currently in Montreal. 

Session: Making Space: Empowering Underrepresented Voices

Cyril Focht (he/they) is an independent developer who recently finished a master’s in computational media from UCSC, where his focus was in interactive narrative. The year since he graduated has been spent living on the road, connecting more deeply with people who have been physically distant in his life, and using those experiences to inform his design practice.

Session: Compassion as a Game Design Practice

Dr. Dan Golding (he/him) is a Senior Lecturer in Media and Communication at Swinburne University and the host of Screen Sounds on ABC Classic. Dan was the director of Freeplay from 2014-2017, and made the soundtracks to Untitled Goose Game (2019), Push Me Pull You (2016), and The Haunted Island (2018).

Session: Directors of Freeplay: Looking Back

Rory Green (they/them) is a writer, coder and zinemaker living on unceded Gadigal land. Rory’s work has been published in Plumwood Mountain, the Lifted Brow and Rabbit, and as part of Running Dog’s poetry micro-residences in 2019. They are currently online editor at Voiceworks.

Session: Games as Digital Literature
Session: Playful (Voiceworks Reading Night)

Gwen Guo (she/her) is a co-founder and creative director of Imba Interactive, a game audio services studio based in Singapore. She is also the chairperson of Singapore Games Guild, a non-profit association aimed at advocating and promoting locally-made games and game creators. Other previous game community experiences include contributing as Secretary of IGDA Singapore also kickstarting Game Audio Singapore.

Session: Rising SEA, South East Asian Gamedev Gathering

Jonny Hopkins (he/him) is a game programmer, tech artist, and maker of Alt Ctrl Things. He is a graduate of University of California, Davis and currently resides in New York.

Session: Getting Over It: Game Design in Bouldering

Lujayn Hourani (they/them) is a writer, editor, and arts worker based in Naarm. Their work has been published in Overland, Meanjin, The Lifted Brow, Going Down Swinging, and Voiceworks, among others.

Session: Games as Digital Literature
Session: Playful (Voiceworks Reading Night)

Rami Ismail (he/him) is the Business & Development Guy at Vlambeer, a Dutch independent game studio known best for Nuclear Throne, Ridiculous Fishing, LUFTRAUSERS, Super Crate Box, GUN GODZ and Serious Sam: The Random Encounter.

Session: Rituals of Play in a Global Pandemic

Georgia Kartas/Saint Jorge (she/her) is a writer and performer whose work centres on the occult, feminism and sustainability. In 2018 her first novella was published in The People’s Library, Tasmania, and she completed an artist residency at Centre Pompadour, France. She has performed at One On One, the Emerging Writers’ Festival, Nayri Niara, the Digital Writers’ Festival, the Students of Sustainability Conference, and Dark Mofo. She also co-curates Thin Red Lines, a quarterly performance poetry showcase in Naarm/Melbourne. Her poetry has appeared in Baby Teeth Journal and the Lifted Brow.

Session: Robot Dragon

Helen Kwok (she/her) is a multimedia artist and designer with an interest in creating immersive and memorable experiences at the intersection of art, design, games and play. Helen considers herself a bit of a creative chameleon, having created award-winning e-learning resources, playful installations, experimental games, music visualisations and urban play activations. She was a WA Young Achiever Awards finalist, and is currently studying a Master of Animation, Games and Interactivity at RMIT University.

Session: Being a Playful “In-Betweener”

Harry Lee Shang Lun (李尚倫, he/him) is an antidisciplinary artist with a background in medicine and commerce. He is the director of PlayReactive, a Melbourne-based studio making bold interactive experiences, from museum exhibitions to immersive theatre. His artistic practice centers games and play as a way to explore complex systems, transform public space, and strengthen communities. Shang Lun’s interests include ecological economics, freestyle wrestling, a cappella vocal ensembles, hiking, and tea.

Session: Directors of Freeplay: Looking Back
Session: Getting Over It: Game Design in Bouldering

Patrick LeMieux (he/him) plays, makes, and writes about games at the University of California, Davis. He is a co-author of Metagaming, co-creator of metagames like Triforce: The Topologies of Zelda, and cast member on the Every Game in This City podcast.

Session: Rituals of Play in a Global Pandemic

Aaron Lim (he/him) is a designer of tabletop games, previously in Melbourne and now based in the Klang Valley in Malaysia. He mainly designs and publishes small tabletop RPGs on itch.io, but also works on card and boardgames and very bad wordplay.

Session: Neither Here Nor There – Designing Far From Home

Ian (he/him) is a videogame developer living in Melbourne, with an interest in small-scope, experimental designs. He regularly release small non-commercial projects, but has also self-published several award-winning commercial games. He has a background in computer science and often uses generative techniques and self-made tools.

Session: A Bushwalk in Red Desert Render

Jess Marcotte (they/them) is a game designer, writer, and PhD candidate at TAG lab. They are the lead co-organizer for QGCon and a former co-director for Critical Hit Montreal.

Session: Making Space: Empowering Underrepresented Voices

Rin Mcbeath (he/him) is a game developer and producer from Perth. He works with Let’s Make Games as secretary and director of Perth Games Festival.

Session: Making Space: Empowering Underrepresented Voices

Melissa McGlensey (she/her) is a Melbourne-based comedian and writer. In addition to being a regular contributor to The Betoota Advocate and Reductress, Melissa is also a company member of Soothplayers: Completely Improvised Shakespeare and the director of Melbourne’s Completely Improvised Potter.

Session: Video Chat Games Adapted From Improv Comedy
Session: Rituals of Play in a Global Pandemic

Fabian Mora (he/him) is a Melbourne based game developer, 3D artist, and animator, whose works primarily focus on creating novel, experimental, and engaging user experiences. Fabian’s professional practice spans across multiple genres including 3D audiovisual, and hybrid animation. With a background in mechatronics engineering, Fabian developed a game called ‘Tower UuuP’, an audio-reactive local-multiplayer game which utilizes alternative controllers to provide an innovative game-play experience.

Session: Finding a Place in the Industry

Sithe Ncube (she/her) has been an active member of the African game development community since 2013 beginning with organizing community events in her hometown Lusaka, Zambia. She hopes to see more Africans benefit from the global game development industry. Sithe is currently directing a project called prosearium.net with the goal to document 1000 African women and their contributions to games.

Session: Making Space: Empowering Underrepresented Voices

Katharine Neil (she/her) began her development career at Melbourne House in 1998 and since then has alternated between roles in design, programming, audio and narrative design. Her credits span a variety of game genres ranging from racing games to third-person shooters and management sims, on a range of console and handheld platforms. Her extra-curricular activities have included directing the social impact game Escape From Woomera in 2003, co-founding Australia’s annual independent game developers’ conference Free Play in 2004, and completing a PhD researching tools for game design in 2015.

Session: Directors of Freeplay: Looking Back

Uyen Nguyen (she/her) is a Melbourne-based animator, designer and filmmaker investigating the playful potential of sound in animation, games and interactive media. She has been conducting soundwalks in Melbourne and exploring the various ways in which found sounds can inform improvisational 2D animation and gameplay. Uyen has showcased her works in Vietnam, Finland, United States, Japan and Australia.

Session: Listening and Sounding as Play

Trina Pagtakhan (she/her), or known on the internet as “Ichicko”, is an award winning game artist who renders food in the virtual space. Currently finishing her degree in Game Art through the De La Salle-College of St. Benilde, Philippines.

Trina is part of Meowfia: behind the turtle conservation mobile game “Turtle Tale”; and Chikon Club with the social media commentary on Philippine interactions around food preparation “Putahe ng Ina Mo”. She loves strawberries, Animal Crossing, and sleeping.

Session: Taste of Home: Food as Love Language

Pamela Punzalan (she/they) grew up rolling dice & wanting to design video games, went for teaching & the academe instead, left, stumbled into legal stuff for real estate, pushed community spaces for women & LGBTQIA+ folks in Manila, then dove into tabletop game design, editing, and sensitivity consultation. She loves to design things that look at the strange, the intimate, and the queer. Has worked on Spire, Sina Una, Rookwood, and various other ttrpg projects.

Session: RPGSEA, Seas of Design Communities

Kalonica Quigley (she/her) is a 3D artist and game developer. She’s worked on numerous Melbourne-made games including Dead Static Drive, Untitled Goose Game and Wayward Strand. She recently collaborated with Jason Bakker to create the experimental driving game Need 4e+9 Speed.

Session: A Bushwalk in Red Desert Render

Brigitta Rena (she/her) is a game artist from Surabaya, Indonesia. One of the co-founders of Mojiken Studio, creator of She and The Light Bearer and A Raven Monologue. Rena understands that by making a video game, she could easily communicate any of her personal thought and unspoken words. In her spare time, she is a part-time fangirl, coffee lover, and nature enthusiast.

Session: Rising SEA, South East Asian Gamedev Gathering

Cecile Richard (they/them) is a graphic designer, illustrator, zine maker and game designer living in Melbourne. Their personal work often revolves around memory, connection and belonging. They like birds and AFL.

Session: Games as Digital Literature
Session: Playful (Voiceworks Reading Night)
Session: Indie Bands × Indie Devs: a pilot project
Session: Freeplay Z•O•N•E: Mini-gig with Cable Ties

Aimee Smith (she/her) is a full-time voice actress and frequent guest coach teaching Australians how to get involved with voicing in video games. She’s the voice of over 100 video game characters, including Freedom Planet (Milla) and Levelhead (MAYA) on the PS4, and Mobile Legends (Freya) and Crush Crush (Tessa, Sirina) on mobile.

Aimee has talked at pop-culture conventions, conferences, libraries and schools in the past, and loves to give a unique perspective on the video game industry.

Session: Mock Voice Over Auditions

Duncan Soo (he/him) is a sound designer/composer from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He has worked alongside game companies such as Gameka and Ammobox Studios to record and design sound effects for their games. Duncan is also one of the co-organizer for Game Audio Malaysia (GAMY). During his personal time, he likes to cycle and visit climbing gyms.

Session: Rising SEA, South East Asian Gamedev Gathering

Dietrich Squinkifer (they/them) has been making games as an art practice for almost 20 years and also works as a freelance diversity consultant. They currently live in Montreal.

Session: Making Space: Empowering Underrepresented Vocies

Carly Stone (they/them) is a non-fiction writer using experimental forms to challenge distinctions: subject-object, body-environment, cockroach-god. Their essays have appeared in Voiceworks, The Lifted Brow and on The Lifted Brow’s Experimental Non-Fiction Prize shortlist. Carly is also the founding director of Talkbox: a spoken word night for emerging writers in Melbourne. They study philosophy and literature at the University of Melbourne but they don’t really know who Hegel is, and now worry that they’re in too deep to ask.

Session: Games as Digital Literature
Session: Playful (Voiceworks Reading Night)

Sarah Ticho (she/her) has spent her career working across the interdisciplinary arts as a producer, curator and researcher. She is the founder of Hatsumi, a research and design studio that works at the intersection of arts, health and immersive technology to develop experiences that challenge how we think and feel about the world and imagine the future of health and wellbeing.

Session: Immersive Art as Therapy

Ida Toft (they/them) is a media artist and a PhD candidate at Concordia University in Tiotia:ke (Montreal) Artistically, they have been interested in games and game-like sculptures for more than a decade. Ida was a co-director of Critical Hit and a member of Copenhagen Game Collective.

Session: Making Space: Empowering Underrepresented Voices

Chad Toprak (he/him) is an independent curator and award-winning experimental game designer. He is the director of Freeplay, ½ of videogame collective Hovergarden and curator of the Contours exhibition. He was named in Develop Pacific’s inaugural 30 Under Thirty list for 2018 and was a recipient of the 2014 IGDA Scholars program and the 2020 Game Devs of Color scholarship. Chad is a first generation Turkish-Australian Muslim immigrant.

Session: Welcome to Freeplay 2020
Session: Directors of Freeplay: Looking Back

Maize Wallin (they/them) is a rep from Game Workers Unite Australia, a mod of NonbinaryZone, an audio freelancer in videogames, and a keen advocate for small regional industries, and small businesses.

Session: Making Space: Empowering Underrepresented Voices
Session: Indie Bands × Indie Devs: a pilot project

Tegan Webb (she/her) is a writer, zine and digital art maker from Melbourne. Her work has appeared in various publications including Ibis House and Scum Mag, in her own self published zines and on her itch.io page. She writes mostly about strange creatures who have a lot of feelings and tweets sometimes.

Session: Robot Dragon
Session: Zine Making Workshop

Marcus Westbury (he/him) is the founding CEO of a not for profit social enterprise that has redeveloped the former Collingwood TAFE into a new cultural precinct Collingwood Yards. Marcus is a serial starter of things, prior to his current role he was a founder or co-founder of Renew Newcastle, Renew Australia, This Is Not Art and Free Play. In his other life he has also been a columnist for The Age, the author of “Creating Cities” and the writer and presenter of the ABC TV series Bespoke and Not Quite Art.

Session: Directors of Freeplay: Looking Back

Douglas Wilson (he/him) is a co-owner of Die Gute Fabrik, a games studio based in Copenhagen, Denmark. He has worked on a number of award-winning videogames including Johann Sebastian Joust, Sportsfriends, and Mutazione. Douglas now lives in Melbourne, Australia, where he is a Lecturer at RMIT University, teaching and researching game design.

Session: Video Chat Games Adapted From Improv Comedy
Session: Rituals of Play in a Global Pandemic