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Join INDIGO Talks for everything you want to know about game design, -business, -tech, -art, -marketing, and serious games.

INDIGO Newsletter

2024 Speakers

Arno Schmitz

Lead Character Artist - Guerrilla Games

Sonja van Vuure

2D Game Artist and Art Director - VUURIG

Francesco Siddi

COO - Blender

Masha Begovic

Senior Recruiter - abstraction

Jerome Ibanez

Founder - Midgard

Roy Theunissen

Solo Developer

Contact

Tom Jongens

Sales Manager

tom@dutchgamegarden.nl

TamTu Bui

Communications Manager

tamtu@dutchgamegarden.nl

JP van Seventer

Program Manager

jp@dutchgamegarden.nl

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Talk Details coming soon!

Speaker Bio

Arno Schmitz is the Lead Character Artist at Guerrilla. He graduated in Game Architecture and Design at the Breda University of Applied Sciences and later studied at the Florence Academy of Arts where he did the Intensive Drawing Program. After that he started as a Character Artist at Guerrilla where worked on games such as: Killzone Shadow Fall, Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West.

Outside of work he enjoys traditional figure drawing/sculpting and working on his personal work. Ranging from Fantasy Characters to 3D Portraits of his family members.

Talk Details Coming Soon!

Speaker Bio

With working on several games as an artist and art director, participating in the VAF committee and coaching students at HKU, Sonja never sits still.

With her company VUURIG she focuses on game art for indie games, b2b and casual games and is currently working on Lake Season’s Greetings and various unannounced game projects.

Talk Details Coming Soon!

Speaker Bio

With a background in industrial design, Francesco joined Blender in 2012 as a 3D artist and has been contributing to the project ever since in various roles, organizing events, designing and developing software and producing open movie projects.

Talk info coming soon!

Speaker Bio

Masha is Serbo/Canadian and moved to the NL about 10yrs ago to study. She's been working for about 5 years in scaling tech and product companies before moving to gaming, and currently works as Senior Recruiter at abstraction.

Talk Details Coming Soon!

Speaker Bio

Jerome Ibanez is the Founder of Midgard, a carbon measurement & reporting software for the game industry. His goal is to decarbonize 180 games in 2024 by helping game developers and gamers track their emissions during game development and gameplay, respectively. He believes that the game industry will play a huge role in helping solve the climate crisis in ways that the public don't expect. He previously founded ShopMe, a mobile self-checkout app for malls (backed by the City of Dubai). A true Gemini, Jerome equally enjoys playing games on the couch all day and competing in long distance triathlons.

Talk Details Coming Soon!

Speaker Bio

Roy Theunissen is an all-rounder, crazy scientist, shader wizard, rapid prototyper, Houdini evangelist, but most of all: a passionate independent game developer. I've had an eventful 10 years in the game industry:

Made hats and weapons for Team Fortress 2 for Valve
Made mobile titles for Bandai Namco & Netflix
Made a console title with Nintendo of Japan and Paladin Studios called Good Job™
Won Best Game Design and Best Game at the Dutch Game Awards 2021 for Good Job™

Since then, they've been working full-time as a solo developer since 2021 and doing freelance work from time to time.

INDIGO 2023 Host

Host Bio

Martine Spaans has worked in the games industry since 2006. She runs publishing label Tamalaki.com; a boutique F2P Mobile game publisher with a hands-on approach, specialised in Hidden Object, Match-3 and Simulation games. Tamalaki joined forces with partner-company FGL.com to broaden the casual F2P reach on mobile. Since 2021 Martine also helps FGL to publish games on Roblox and to bring several NFT projects to life. This year Martine joined the Dutch Games Association as General Manager.

INDIGO 2023 Host

Host Bio

Co-Founder of Plan of Attack, Audra has 20 years of video game PR under her belt, covering turf from San Francisco to New York and Madrid to Amsterdam. Audra’s focus hovers around client relations, corporate strategy / messaging and business development for large and small game development teams.

INDIGO 2023 Host

Host Bio

Editor-in-Chief of PreMortem.Games. Veteran game journalist for over 20 years. Started out in 1999 for game magazines (yes the ones made of paper) such as PC Zone Benelux, PlayNation and GameQuest, before co-founding Dutch industry paper Control Magazine.

INDIGO 2023 Host

Host Bio

Adinda van Oosten combined her bachelor's degree in China Studies with a degree in Game Design and Development. Leveraging this combination she landed a full time internship as a game designer at 宇峻奧汀(Userjoy) in Taiwan and at Pillogames in the Netherlands. After joining a Game Jam in Guangzhou she came to realize that she enjoyed teaching more than making games and continued her studies with a game design and research Master in Germany. She relocated to Asia again as a service learning tutor at 嶺南大學 (Lingnan University) in Hong Kong, managing her own courses and organizing the Global Game Jam at Lingnan University. In 2019 she started the channel "Acreates'' on Youtube with game development content and holds monthly interviews with Indie developers all over the world. Next to her digital teaching journey is she is also a teacher and a coach spreading her passion for game design.

INDIGO 2023 Host

Host Bio

Throughout her career, Ellis Bartholomeus has been intrigued by the value of play. She graduated from the Design Academy in 1996 as a product designer and realized that to have audiences own a message they needed to interact with it. Since then, she has been designing play as a method/tool to amplify self-motivated learning and enable rich social interaction. Ellis has co-developed more than 75 games and playful interactive products on a wide spectrum of topics. After years of developing products, Ellis wrote Apply Play, a book on the art of play. She gives talks and facilitates workshops on the value and power of play and how to make a change while designing and driving intrinsic motivation. Her work has impacted groups around the world.

INDIGO 2023 Host

Host Bio

Sly Emenike is a Game Producer and Game Developer with 6+ years of experience. He works at Ronimo Games as a Game Producer, where they work on multiplayer games for consoles and PC. Apart from his work at Ronimo Games, Sly actively volunteers at the Dutch Game Awards and serves as an external reviewer at game development schools. He also co-founded the student association at HvA, where he aimed to improve student participation in the game industry

Bridging the Gap: Leveraging Cultural Understanding to Enter the Lucrative Japanese Gaming Market

Highlighting the trends, evolution, and opportunities in the gaming and entertainment industry in Japan, as well as the challenges and strategies for foreign companies looking to tap into the market.

Speaker Bio

Tomoe is a former producer and business manager in Square Enix HQ for 6+ years. She delivered multiple AAA+ titles, including Final Fantasy VII and VIII, to a global audience across various platforms. She later moved to CoolGames B.V. in Amsterdam, where she served as a manager leading the Japanese market and sales team for five years. There, she spearheaded numerous successful partnership deals with major publishers and platforms, such as Taito, Bandai Namco Entertainment, Yahoo! Japan, LINE, and Kakaotalk, resulting in an impressive 300-400% revenue increase for the Japanese market. In 2020, Tomoe established GozenGames B.V., which specializes in helping foreign gaming companies penetrate the Japanese market. With her extensive industry knowledge and expertise, Tomoe is an invaluable resource to international gaming companies seeking to expand into the lucrative Japanese gaming market.

Deloryan Taking the Leap: A Game Developer’s Inspiring Journey

Don't miss out on the chance to hear from one of the gaming industry'srising stars. Deloryan'stalk offers
a unique perspective on game development, as she shares her inspiring journey and empowers others to pursue their dreams.

Join us for an unforgettable experience that will leave you feeling motivated and inspired.

Speaker Bio

Deloryan Hommers isn’t your typical game developer.
Armed with a BSc. in Communication and
Multimedia Design, she brings a fresh perspective to game development.

During her studies, she created the horse management game Horse Reality, which was an immediate success after its release in 2018.
With a winning combination of determination and eagerness to learn, she earned a reputation in the gaming industry. As a woman-owned game studio, she’s passionate about empowering others to follow their dreams, regardless of their background. Join Deloryan on her quest to change the gaming world!

The HackShield Movement: changing the Game of Education

HackShield was released 5 years ago! How did we design a game for kids that is free to play and provides educational value? In this talk Gwen Kampen will share the thoughts and philosophy behind the (re) design of HackShield and how the whole team had to innovate in order to not just build a game, but a movement.

Speaker Bio

Gwen has more than 15 years of experience working in the game-industry in various game-design and development roles. She has been making games for entertainment and educational purposes and is a Senior Game Designer and Developer at Flavour.

From Ruff Prototype to Release: Key Insights from Developing Howl

How do you decide as a studio which game ideas to develop into full games? When is a game ready to ship? In this talk, Eline Muijres shares the lessons learned from developing Howl, a turn-based tactical folktale. You’ll learn about Mipumi’s internal greenlight process for original IP development, as well as turning an original concept into a polished game. Eline highlights how the team dealt with the challenges of balancing game development and building an IP, all the while staying motivated with an unhealthy dose of wolf puns.

Speaker Bio

Eline Muijres is Producer at Mipumi Games, where she works on work-for-hire projects (The Settlers Online) as well as original IPs such as The Flower Collectors and Howl. She has over 10 years of experience in the games industry, doing communications & production at indie studios and game incubator Dutch Game Garden. Eline advocates for better inclusion & representation in the games industry as a Board Member of the Games [4Diversity] foundation, organizing events such as game industry floats at the Vienna Pride and the Utrecht Canal Pride. She is 1st Vice Chair of the Austrian game development association PGDA, supporting Austrian games and game business.

A Retrospective From Space

Remco talks about the challenges faced while funding, developing and publishing From Space.

Speaker Bio

Remco co-founded Triangle Studios straight out of college in 2006. Recently, the company has shifted focus to the creation of original IP, resulting in the release of "From Space" across multiple platforms in 2022. Remco is most passionate about creating games that bridge a gap between generations.

Playing with Emotions: Telling Great Stories in Games

Stories have the power to move us like nothing else and I will take you on a journey into the heart of storytelling in video games. With a deep love for stories, I'll explore why we tell stories and how they impact us in ways we never thought possible. Drawing on my own experience of creating emotionally engaging games, I'll share tips, tricks, and rules for crafting unforgettable stories that will touch players' hearts and leave them yearning for more. From finding inspiration to creating satisfying endings, this talk is a love letter to the art of storytelling in all its forms. No matter if you are an experienced storyteller, an amateur writer, a marketer or a studio head, as long as you see the value of telling good stories this talk is for you!

Speaker Bio

I'm Sebastiaan van Waardenberg, a storytelling junkie and one of the founders of Story Giant Games. As a studio director, creative director, (on/off) game designer, level designer and writer, I wear more hats than a magician at a children's party. But one of my favorite hats is my storycrafter's hat. Composing compelling characters, piecing together the perfect plot and creating immersive worlds is my passion, and I've poured that passion into games like "Heart's Medicine", the "Delicious" series and our latest game "Text Express" (Winner of Best Puzzle Game 2022). It is also the goal of Story Giant Games, where we focus on great emotional storytelling in games and we pride ourselves in creating characters you want to spend time with and worlds you want to live in. So if you like talking and listening to someone who loves stories, then I'm your guy! And I can't wait to share my love of storytelling with you, so hopefully one day I can experience your stories!

Managers, your team’s productivity is your responsibility!

The internet is full of neat little tips on how to get organized, make the best to-do list, and how to timebox your day in order to boost efficiency and maximize your productivity. What most of those articles do not mention however is that the environment in which you perform is more important than how you are set up inside that environment. No matter how organized your calendar, inbox, and Teams are, there is no way to get productive unless the environment allows you to be. In this talk, Jim Hendriks will talk about Systemic Productivity, what productivity actually looks like, why it’s the manager’s / producer's job to make the environment productive, and how this can be achieved.

Speaker Bio

Jim Hendriks has been working at Ubisoft Massive Entertainment for nearly 6 years. Most recently within the role of Associate Producer. He has a heart for video game production and is always eager to look for ways to improve the team and the processes, empowering teams to make the best games.

Stealing Character: How To Write For Big Marvelous IPs

How do you write your own version of a beloved character that has been portrayed by many authors and adored by millions of people? Join Keano Raubun as he shares his experience writing for Marvel's Avengers and provides valuable insights into writing established characters and making them yours. In this talk, Keano will offer practical advice and writing exercises to help capture character voice and tone, whether you're working on an established IP or creating original content.

Speaker Bio

Keano Raubun is a seasoned game developer with over a decade of experience in both modding and professional game development. With a strong background in game design, he has contributed to several AAA projects in both Game and Narrative Design capacity. Graduating from the Breda University of Applied Sciences in 2015, he broke into the game industry creating mods for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. He has since worked on high-profile titles such as Marvel's Avengers and the Dutch indie darling Action Henk. He is also obsessed with painting Warhammer miniatures.

A Retrospective: doing PCAP and high budget cinematics as an indie development team

With 'Deliver Us Mars', KeokeN Interactive took on a big challenge as an indie dev: to dive in headfirst into the world of performance capture, facial animation and cinematic film production of more than two hours of content. In this retrospective, I will go through our entire process and openly discuss what we achieved and what we learned from it. We will discuss some do's and don'ts, how to approach such a high budget productional element in terms of mindset and innovation.

Speaker Bio

For over ten years before Arkenbout's video game career started, he studied and worked in film and television in The Netherlands. Taking on every role on set, Arkenbout spent much of his professional career working on linear drama and comedy storytelling. Through acting, writing and directing, Arkenbout has steadily learned the craft of audiovisual storytelling from various different perspectives. A few years ago, Arkenbout pivoted to yet another perspective as he pursued to combine his passion for storytelling with his love for video games. Since 2019 Arkenbout has been working as the Narrative Director for KeokeN Interactive. Arkenbout was responsible for the narrative and cinematics for the narrative-driven puzzler/platformer Deliver Us Mars.

Games for better futures: understanding the game industry as imagination infrastructure

Joost will discuss how the game industry can be understood as imagination infrastructure, how it can help societies imagine better futures and live through what it means to try to achieve them. He will discuss a concrete example that he and his team are building – the game All Rise, a Phoenix Wright-meets-Citizen-Sleeper style of game that lets you take major fossil fuel corporations to court. Using this example, Joost will talk about how to connect games explicitly to activist movements and radical change.

Speaker Bio

Joost Vervoort is Associate Professor of Transformative Imagination at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University. His research team on games focuses on how the game industry might act as ‘imagination infrastructure’ – helping to open up societal imaginations around better futures and the struggle to achieve them. This includes breaking down barriers between commercial games and games for change; and connecting games explicitly to activist practices.

Creating a Living World in 'Horizon Forbidden West'

This talk is about how we improved the living world experience for Horizon Forbidden West. After we released Horizon Zero Dawn in 2017, one of our goals for the sequel was to showcase the tribes and their cultures even better in the world of Horizon. In order to do so, we required a whole new approach to our world and NPC development process. We will explain the thought processes and philosophy behind what we think makes a believable game world and what steps we took to implement it in Horizon Forbidden West

Speaker Bio

Espen Sogn is the Lead Living World Designer at Guerrilla and has been with the company over 17 years. With a strong multi-year background in Cinematics Animation, he switched to Living World Design during Horizon Forbidden West’s development and is still leading that team now. Espen has been involved in both Killzone and Horizon franchises, with the most recent release being Horizon Forbidden West (2022).

Streamlining Art Production with Procedural Substance Tools and AI

In this talk, Käy Vriend will discuss how procedural substance tools, specifically the Substance suite, can speed up the art production process. The Substance suite includes Substance Sampler, Substance Painter, and Substance Designer, which can be used to create seamless scan-like materials, smart materials that conform to any mesh, and tools that save time on modeling or sculpting. Käy will showcase some of the possibilities that studios currently have with the Substance suite and explore how AI can be integrated to further streamline workflows and enhance procedural tools.

Speaker Bio

Käy is a highly skilled and accomplished material artist with extensive expertise in Substance software. He has earned numerous awards for his work and is recognized as one of the top Substance artists in the world. In addition to his creative talents, Käy is also a sought-after consultant, coach and mentor, helping studios of all sizes to build and grow their capabilities. He is deeply passionate about finding and creating synergies to contribute to the success of the games, film, and design industries.

5 Reasons Why Your Game Pitches Suck! (and how to fix them)

As the Head of the department responsible for evaluating all games that are being considered for publishing at MY.GAMES, Nic and his team have gathered a short list of the main reasons why games don’t get picked up. Exclusively at Indigo he will share the most impactful reasons and how to make sure your next pitch does get picked up by the publisher of your dreams!

Speaker Bio

Nic describes himself as a gaming industry marketing veteran who keeps finding ways to turn his hobbies into his job. The last example of that was when he turned his compulsive game buying & playing habits into a job by becoming the person who leads the Game Evaluation efforts at MY.GAMES. In his role Nic and his team evaluate pitches and early builds for dozens of games each month. At INDIGO he wants to share some of the things he's learned from that experience and he looks forward to the opportunity to find even more games to evaluate in the near future!

Creature Design for IP Development

Head Crabs and Xenomorphs and Creepers, oh my! Creatures combine real world animals and fantastic ideas. While some creatures are just forgettable cannon fodder to the player, others are key pillars to the appeal and success of an IP. Using examples from media and her career, Molly Heady-Carroll will take you through her methods of designing memorable creatures designed for purpose and how they can maximize the potential of your IP.

Speaker Bio

Molly Heady-Carroll has 10 years experience in games and animation as a Creature Designer for projects such as "Tangledeep", "Zenibeasts" and "Hammerwatch". She is also the co-founder of games studio Arcane Circus and a creature design instructor at the HKU.

The 5G Platypus: A most unlikely career in GameDev

One person’s story on how they went from gamer to game developer in the most roundabout way possible. How they found their dream, admitted and committed to it, in spite of a perceived complete lack of talent. The personal transformation from a somewhat odd mixed bag of tastes, jack of all trades master of none to an even more odd mixed bag, jack of all trades master of none. In spite of all the terrible advice they got, okay some of it was kinda good. How they had no other choice but to flee to Poland. Twice. About all the stops in between, and how they found themself breaking rules left right and center along the way. How they went from Gwydion to Garrett to Geralt to Guerrilla to Geralt.

Speaker Bio

Dennis Zoetebier (1980) is a Game and Quest Designer from The Netherlands. He has worked on the critically acclaimed games Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Horizon: Zero Dawn, as well as its DLC, the Frozen Wilds and finally Horizon: Forbidden West. He has always been enamored by the enormous potential for emotional engagement the interactive medium of video games harbors through meaningful choice, unique for this form of entertainment. Graduated from Utrecht School of the Arts in 2007 with a thesis investigating whether emotions like dread, glee, melancholy, sadness and despair could be instigated through gameplay alone, Dennis has remained fascinated with this aspect of video games and is looking for it in everything he plays. He currently is employed by Fool's Theory, working on The Witcher Remake and lives in Bilthoven, The Netherlands.

From Pixels to Powerhouses: Cultivating Company Culture in the Games Industry, One Step at a Time

Whether you're just starting out or a well established studio, the right company culture is key to ensuring a productive, exciting and memorable employee experience. With a positive CC ranking higher and higher in importance on retaining and attracting talent, it's important to build a strong foundation when it comes to your own culture. But where do you start? We'll talk about the small but mighty areas you can focus on to create the right culture, when it can play negatively when it comes to hiring, and when culture can play a role in disengaged teams.

Speaker Bio

Niki is People & Development Director at Stellar Entertainment, and works between their UK and Utrecht offices. She's passionate about all aspects of the people experience and has over 10 years experience in HR, L&D, recruitment and HR business strategy. Niki has worked with Stellar since late 2021, and in that time has forged a new way for the People function, navigated two office moves with returns to the office from remote, a full company rebrand, and grown the company from 21 to 54 developers - with no public projects to shout about, safe to say it's been a busy time! She is also a proud Women in Games Ambassador and mentor for other HR professionals in the games industry.

Game Changers: Empowering Diversity and Inclusion in the Gaming Industry

Role models like Lara Croft (Tombraider) and Aloy (Horizon) are few and sparse in the gaming industry. Looking at the 100 top-selling and major games released since 2017, nearly 80% of main characters are males, while nearly 55% are white. Let that sink in. Is this really representative of the players or the world we live in? If you want to do a better job and work together towards: • Better representation of characters; • Unlocking creative and innovative stories (without the cultural appropriation); • AND representation of employees; then this talk is for you. Lasting and meaningful change is a journey. Let's do this together by combining our efforts, one stone at a time.

Speaker Bio

Ashmita, driven by an inclusive vision, left the corporate world where she worked for a decade. With Sparkling Gems, she guides organizations as a seasoned strategist and expert in the realms of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). Ashmita aspires to unlock the true potential of individuals from various backgrounds. Embracing her role as both a gamer (since the age of 8) and a DEI advocate, Ashmita endeavors to shape a future where gaming thrives as an inclusive space, empowering all gamers to be seen, recognized, and cherished.

Gaming is Training

Grendel Games biggest adventure in Serious Games was their keyhole surgery training game Underground, which was scientifically proven to transfer the technical skills of laparoscopic surgery in a fun way. As we revisit surgical training with our latest project, we’ve been looking at the perception gap in our customer base and how we can show them that “Gaming is Training”. To do this we’ve been exploring the scientific evidence that looks at the benefits of gaming across a wide range of cognitive, developmental, perception changes and technical skills challenges. So come and join us as we look at how gaming and game play shape human development and learning from birth to death.

Speaker Bio

Glyn Burtt studied cognitive neuroscience before completing his medical degree and then subsequently becoming a surgeon. He left surgery behind and spent twelve years in the Medical Device industry in sales, marketing, training, education and clinical science roles. While at Boston Scientific he met the Grendel Games team and they worked on two projects together, one to train the technical skills of laser prostate surgery (Neon Conduit) and another that is designed to change the perceptions of doctors on the significance to patients of quality-of-life side effects of radiation treatment for prostate cancer (that one was codenamed Dr Poopy Pants). He liked the team so much , that a year ago, he came to Leeuwarden to join the team as a medical subject matter expert and business development lead for the medical side of the business.

From Free-2-Play to Play&Own

Hate it or love it, NFT's and crypto are not going away any time soon. Part of the criticism is the hyped culture and scams. But what if you could play a part in forming this industry and change it into a sustainable way of interacting with digital property? With FGL we set our first steps into web3 2 years ago and we’d like to share with you want we’ve learned.

Speaker Bio

Mind Games: How Cognitive Biases Shape User Experience in Gaming

Join us for a thought-provoking exploration of user experience in gaming. We will delve into the ten cognitive biases that significantly influence player perception and engagement. From skeuomorphism and the singularity effect to Hick's Law and Fitts's Law, discover how these biases change how your players interact with your game. Whether you're a game developer, enthusiast, or simply curious about the intersection of psychology and gaming, don't miss this opportunity to uncover the secrets of creating immersive user experiences.

Speaker Bio

Jill is a game director, game designer and studio coach. Right from the start, she'll help a concept take shape, and directs it towards a clear purpose. She's a one-stop creative shop, offering workshops, mentoring, and hands-on design. At DAE Studios, she coaches startups to succeed and grow globally.

Better Adaptive Music for Starship Troopers

For the last 15 years, Kejero has been on a mission to improve adaptive music techniques. Forget about fading stems and switching tracks on the beat. With his 'Better Adaptive Music' approach, the instruments adjust their playing style in realtime, and they start and stop playing in a natural way, as if everything is performed live. In this talk, Kejero shows how a truly seemless adaptive soundtrack can utterly elevate the gaming experience to a new level. And how to break down an incredibly ambitious idea and achieve a AAA result on an indie budget.

Speaker Bio

Kejero (www.kejero.com) has written music for film, tv and games. His passion for adaptive music led to the 'Adaptive Music Adventures' series on YouTube, and eventually to the design of his custom Better Adaptive Music system. He's currently founding a new game studio and working on an exciting new game that will combine his love for adventure, classic cartoons and music.

99 problems but Management ain’t one

You run an indie studio, great! You are dealing with money issues, deadlines, production delays, demanding publishers, getting the team aligned on the studio’s vision. How do you cope with all that? By being an efficient manager, dealing with problems head-on and don’t build any management debt. We are here to share lessons from our own management journeys and provide you with the four essentials you need to do to get ahead of the game.

Speaker Bio

Martijn van Zwieten is a business coach and consultant, helping ambitious games industry leaders to build better companies. Armed with 13 years of games industry experience and an executive MBA degree, he helps founders and executives implement the structures and processes they need to grow and succeed on their own terms.

99 problems but Management ain’t one

Speaker Bio

Vincent has run his own game studio for 6 years, and prior to that worked as a management consultant for various companies, implementing all kinds of management frameworks to improve business operations.

ReAction: A VR-game to help prevent youth knife violence

Knife violence amongst teens is a growing issue in the Netherlands. ReAction was developed together with the youth care organization MEE & de Wering, to make youth aware of the risks and dangers of carrying a knife. We will talk about some interesting game design challenges in creating a believable experience. We will explain how we connected the game to deeper issues related to status, bullying, peer pressure and social media. We will also tell more about what it means to work with teens to co-create storyline, voiceovers and motion capture. ReAction was featured in the Telegraaf and in the Jeugdjournaal and is now being used at primary and secondary schools and youth centers across the Netherlands.

Speaker Bio

Roger’s passion is in creating experiences and games that make a difference. He loves Virtual Reality as it’s able to bring the story and experience closer to the player. He has explored that in both single and multiplayer games. Together with his business partner Nikita Kayal he has been creating games experiences for Healthcare, Education, Business and Arts.

Future Of Game Education

Preach what you Practice. Introducing game studio NeoN Origins - Powered by Mediacollege Amsterdam, where we’re running a hybrid game studio with a 20-man team composed of game development students, educators and professionals. With a co-creation approach that emphasizes mentorship and apprenticeship over traditional classroom teaching, students gain hands-on experience and intrinsic motivation, while building an awesome game-service with us. Join our talk to see how we transform students to reliable young development professionals in the span of one year. Expect: talent & personal development, game education inspiration, and a new way to approach game development.

Speaker Bio

Alex Kentie was co-founder and creative director at Gamistry. He co-developed and shipped multiple mobile games such as Munch Time and Gold Diggers (both multi-million download and featured games on iOS). He also worked on bigger game projects for PlayStation 4 and PC (Steam) and has 20-plus years of experience as a Game Artist and Designer and 15 years as a lecturer in the game development field.

Future Of Game Education

Speaker Bio

Berend Weij was co-founder and technical director of ‘’Mijn naam is Haas’’. Alongside his team he worked and published multiple mobile, tablet, and pc games such as five CD-Roms of ‘’Mijn naam is Haas’’. The game also won several game awards such as the prestigious Dutch Game Award. Berend is a veteran game and software developer who has worked in the field for over 24 years. He also worked as a lecturer for more than 10 years.

Look Mom, I (almost) made it in the Games Industry. The Roller Coaster Journey of a BizDev.

People to me: “What exactly is your job?” Me to People: “Well, do you have half a day so I can explain?” And even half a day probably wouldn’t be enough… So, please come along with me on this Roller Coaster Journey of ups and downs, highs and lows, ebbs and flows, but most of all, filled with stories, anecdotes and, by all means, people! And so the journey began…

Speaker Bio

Katleen Evers, Senior Business Developer Director, entrepreneurial driven and with proven abilities to create, maintain and enhance cross-continental and cross-level client relationships. With over 15 years of experience in the Games Industry and in expanding businesses, projects and teams, and as the public speaker, judge, mentor, and gamer, Katleen will quench your thirst for knowledge and expertise.

Fireside chat with Ralph Egas, abstraction Games

Ralph Egas, co-founder of abstraction in Valkenswaard, will be interviewed about running a AAA development company from the South of The Netherlands, balancing co-development services for titles such as Dune with developing original in-house technology-driven IP. He will also reflect on the current state of game technology, the creation pipeline and share his insights on Ai, Blockchain, and finding AAA talent in the Dutch ecosystem.

Speaker Bio

My passion for gaming started way back with the venerated Commodore 64 and Amiga consoles. I honed my programming skills in the industry for many years, but the desire for autonomy and creative freedom was always there. The ability to experiment, try new things, and break boundaries is what truly excites me. I couldn't do that in a strict corporate environment, so in 2007 I established abstraction. Now we're a company with over 100 staff members. We've quickly become known as a top-tier development studio, co-developing original IP together with high profile partners like Funcom, Paradox, Mythical Games, BioWare and 343 Industries. As CEO, my goal is to make sure all our projects adhere to our core values, giving rise to creativity, and game-play excellence. We’re gamers making games for our peers, we know how important every detail needs to be. With all the experience and wisdom gathered along the way, abstraction is now well-prepared and ready to build their own original game content.

Growing your game studio with venture capital: a blessing or a curse?

Laurens Rutten founded CoolGames in 2010 in the Dutch Game Garden in Utrecht. CoolGames is now a profitable studio with almost 50 game professionals operating from the Herengracht in Amsterdam. In his session, Laurens will talk about how raising venture capital can help grow your company from an ambitious but immature start-up doing mini-games for the web, to an internationally active scale-up with big game development budgets. He will address the benefits of bringing professional investors on board, without disregarding the downsides of giving up some control as a result. In particular Laurens will talk about many of the potential pitfalls when your growth is also externally financed. To prevent you from making the same mistakes that he did.

Speaker Bio

Laurens founded CoolGames in 2010 with the aim to enable instant mobile gameplay outside of the traditional app-stores. He is a serial entrepreneur at the cross-roads of content & technology. Before CoolGames, he founded two other companies in the mobile entertainment industry. With CoolGames, Laurens closed game partnerships with many leading studios and platforms, including Zynga, EA, Rovio, Hasbro, Bandai Namco, Snapchat, Microsoft and Facebook. Besides his role at CoolGames, Laurens is also a Board member of the Dutch Games Association (DGA) and is a regular speaker at conferences and industry events about ‘post app-store’ channels and HTML5 game development.

Fireside chat with Ralph Egas, Abstraction Games

Ralph Egas, co-founder of Abstraction in Valkenswaard, will be interviewed by JP van Seventer (Managing Director Dutch Game Garden) about running a AAA development company from the South of The Netherlands, balancing co-development services for titles such as Dune with developing original in-house technology-driven IP. Ralph will also reflect on the current state of game technology, the creation pipeline and share his insights on Ai, Blockchain, and finding AAA talent in the Dutch ecosystem.

Speaker Bio

JP van Seventer is the managing director at Dutch Game Garden. JP has been a game industry professional for 20+ years, with a vision for optimizing the international success of aspiring and experienced game development companies. He has been a pioneer within the global game incubation/acceleration space since 2008 with the launch of Dutch Game Garden. JP maintains an extensive global network of game industry leaders and development professionals to serve the needs of the game companies. Within the Dutch national network of creative industry and economic development has (had) several advisory roles towards national and local government. JP has experience with games on all leading platforms ranging from mobile, console, PC, tablet, browser-based, custom platforms, and VR/AR/XR in his extensive career. JP has a background in Industrial Design, Mechanical engineering and started his career as a game designer, 3d artist, and level designer.

Generative AI, don’t be scared, it’s just a tool.

We all thought AI would first come for truck and taxi drivers first, but last year it came for highly creative roles first and people got scared. But having spent time with AI like GPT, Stable Diffusion and Midjourney I have found they are amazing at somethings but very bad at others and in all cases require human imagination and vision to direct and collaborate. So in this session we can explore some of those strengths and weaknesses together and hopefully you will come to the same conclusion I have. That they are collaborative tools that can help us all.

Speaker Bio

Starting in 1997 Scott is a veteran of console and PC development. For the past 3 years he has been focused on building emergent systems and leveraging Machine Learning to build massive persistent worlds.

Changing the way you trust content

Trusting information online is rapidly becoming a big challenge for companies. How can you prove the provenance of images and online documents, how can you see whether someone has tampered with your files and how can you prove you have made art, worlds, characters, or other assets for your game? Hugo Smits will share tips and a solution to combat misinformation and distinguish between Human and AI generated content.

Speaker Bio

Hugo Smits is the founder of Verify and the inventor of the fingerprint technology. Before starting Verify Hugo worked in the videogame industry developing cutting edge technology for Nintendo DS and Nintendo 3DS games. Hugo has won numerous awards for his achievements in the videogame industry, including a Dutch Game Award.

What's new and upcoming for Unreal Engine in 2023

Arjan, who is Product Director on Unreal Engine's development team at Epic Games, will go over the headlines for what's upcoming for Unreal Engine development in 2023 and beyond, and will touch on the new UEFN product and opportunities it brings for Dutch developers.

Speaker Bio

Arjan Brussee created Jazz Jackrabbit 1&2 with Cliff Bleszinski and published by Epic Megagames in 1994. From that he co-founded Guerrilla Games (acquired by Sony in 2005) where he worked on all the Killzone titles and early production on Horizon Zero Dawn. He joined EA in 2012 to work on various entries in the Battlefield series, and left in 2014 to found Boss Key Productions where he shipped Lawbreakers. Late 2017 he returned to Epic Games. He's now heading up Product Management for Unreal Engine.

Storytelling with volumetric Video: Reimagining a classic 90's puzzler in VR

Speaker Bio

Paul has been active in the game-industry for more than fifteen years, working on console titles, applied games and now VR. He has been a writer, game designer, director and producer. And sometimes he’s all at once. At Vertigo Games he is currently working on The 7th Guest VR, a passion project. In his free time he draws comics and confuses his cat Glottis.

How a Motion Designer created a prototype that allows you to explore the entire world in 3D

I'm going to talk about how I created a small prototype in one week that allows you to explore the whole world in 3D, with the power of AI. I'll also talk about how game engines, like Unreal Engine, unexpectedly entered my world as a Motion Designer and leveled up my work.

Speaker Bio

I'm a Technical Artist specializing in Motion Design, and I've been incorporating Game Engines into my workflow for the past 7 years. The lines between game development and motion design have been steadily blurring, creating an exciting time to be working in the motion design field. The use of real-time technology has greatly enhanced my work and allowed me to reach new creative heights. As a freelance Motion Designer and Technical Artist, I'm constantly seeking for new innovations and tools to expand my creativity.

Cloud Games Panel

Speaker Bio

Mehdi’s professional career started in the music industry as a sound engineer which then evolved into film making and video game design development through academia where he oversaw research theses for undergraduate students to eventually represent the educational groups industry relations. After a short stint as an independent consultant for various music and gaming organizations, Mehdi became a video games agent whose mission was to bring in revenue for 12 studios around the world deriving from work for hire, co-development opportunities, as well as publishing and funding of projects. For the past 2 years plus he has been heading gaming business development at i3D.net, a game hosting company part of the Ubisoft group actively working with developers and publishers alike as well as Cloud Gaming companies.

Minecraft serious game: building a digital twin of the Netherlands

The science centre GeoFort build the whole of the Netherlands in Minecraft: 1.000 buillion Minecraft blocks! Every house, all the roads, the rivers and even the trees are in this digital 3D world. This is not a silly game: it is a serious game! In this environment young people can easily participate in designing new sustainable buildings or landscapes. In the nearby future they will also be able to experience flooding scenarios in this digital twin of the Netherlands. GeoFort is a science centre where children from 4 till 104 years can explore many themes dealing with the future of our planet by playing games. GeoFort turns the theme 'planetary health' into a challenging game...

Speaker Bio

Willemijn studied cartography and GIS at the University of Utrecht and obtained her master degree in 1996. Since 2006 she is founder and CEO of the science center GeoFort. Her passion is to inspire people about the future of the planet earth. GeoFort has won two international prizes, because of the special way visitors are involved. She made a success formula for this educational attraction using 3 senses: Sense of Fun, Sense of Experience and Sense of Urgency.

Midgame Fund - money for indies, by indies

Midgame Fund is a collective of Dutch game developers funding Dutch games for €10k – €150k. In this informal lunch session, organiser and game designer Adriaan will explain how the fund and its agreement work, share some tips and examples of pitch decks, and will answer any questions you may have.

Speaker Bio

Adriaan de Jongh is a Dutch game designer best known for his work on the indie game hit Hidden Folks, a hand-drawn interactive searching game. He is also an active member of local and global game developer communities and an investor in games through Indie Fund and Midgame Fund. He founded the latter in 2021 and currently organizes the fund with Martine Spaans.

From 90’s Indie Legend to Global Triumph: Fireside Chat with Engine Software CEO Ivo Wubbels on 25 Years of Video Game Prowess.

In this fire side chat, we delve into the incredible journey of Engine Software, a ~25-year-old video game development studio that started as a 90's indie legend and rose to global triumph. In this captivating conversation with Engine Software CEO Ivo Wubbels, we'll explore Engine’s road to success and how they overcame various pitfalls and challenges as a studio.

Speaker Bio

With more than 15 years experience, Maarten de Koning is a highly respected executive, entrepreneur, and advisor in the games industry. As Partner and Executive Vice President, Maarten has been with DDM since 2013 when he merged his own agency into the company. With a background in investment management and game development, Maarten co-founded the Green Hill production house, which would subsequently be acquired by DDM. It was at Green Hill that Maarten established his principles for starting an agency, which were to provide business development, effective product management and consultation to video game developers. Maarten began his career in the industry as a game producer and is a certified Scrum Product Owner and Scrum Master. He serves as an active board member and advisor for multiple startups, industry funds and game industry conferences. He is also still a shareholder in Mardelli, a family investment firm that invests and manages assets on a world-wide scale.

Cloud Games Panel

Speaker Bio

Gaming entrepreneur since 2006. Started life in a game development role as co-founder of (Eximion) with distrubution technology to help distribute it's games. In 2009 we pivoted to a technology company (Kalydo) to license smart download technology to companies around the globe (China, USA, South America, Europe). Since 2014 I am the co-founder and CEO of Utomik the pioneer in subscription gaming and I have helped in developing it to a service with 1400+ games in one subscription. The company has a B2B(2C) approach. The platform has been developed with patented smart progressive download technology for Windows, but has now transformed into a cross platform hybrid gaming platform leveraging cloud gaming technology combined with native windows play, allowing players to play on PC, Mobile (Android) and TV (Samsung, LG) in one seamless experience. Use the best option where needed to get the best user experience. This was a massive undertaking of which I am proud for both my own role in helping this materialize and even more proud of all the team members and partners. I love helping people grow. I love to innovate and execute on innovation. I love to learn from others and experiences. And I love the art of gaming and bringing those experiences to more people around the globe. And much more.