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Recapping 2022

A sunny, sold out festival edition of INDIGO brought the Dutch games industry and their foreign peers together in-person for the first time in a while on June 17th 2022. The game business and showcase event featured a two track conference, business matchmaking and an online games showcase. The game that was unanimously selected by a professional jury as the winner of the INDIGO 2022 Award was News Tower by Studio Nul Games.

450+

On-site visitors

400+

Meetings

10

Hours of Talks

23

Games

850+

Online viewers

Hosts 2022

Martine Spaans

Martine Spaans

General Manager at Dutch Games Association; Owner at Tamalaki

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.

Arjan Terpstra

Arjan Terpstra

Video game writer & historian

Arjan Terpstra is a video game writer and historian, and content producer at video game art gallery Cook and Becker. He (co-) authored books on Pac-Man, Sonic, and has writer credits in Horizon Forbidden West and other titles.
Audra McIver

Audra McIver

Co-Founder of Plan of Attack

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.

Eric Bartelson

Eric Bartelson

Game Journalist - Editor in Chief at Premortem.Games

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.

speakers 2022

‘Rising global challenges to game creation’

Kate Edwards

Kate Edwards

Culturalization Innovator at Geogrify, CXO & Co-founder at SetJetters

In her talk, Kate discusses what game creators can do to be better prepared for defending their creative vision against intrusive local regulations.

Biography

With over 28 years of experience in games as a geographer and culturalization strategist, Kate Edwards has seen it all when it comes to geopolitical and cultural challenges that may be overlooked in game creation and can negatively impact a title’s release overseas. As more governments now extend their content policies beyond their borders, we’re seeing a sharp increase in content being rejected for not adhering to a single worldview. 

‘Leveraging External Development for Small Teams: Enabling your team to do what they do best’

Juney Dijkstra

Juney Dijkstra

Legacy Portfolio Manager at Paradox Interactive

 In this talk, Juney will be running through several case studies of expert partners she has leveraged over the course of her career, in the hopes of inspiring you to reframe your thinking: Every need you have is an opportunity to create truly collaborative, long term partnerships with experts you can learn from for years to come!

Biography

As the Legacy Portfolio Manager, Juney is responsible for exploring opportunities for the Paradox Interactive portfolio of games no longer in active development. She was formerly the Lead Producer at SOEDESCO Publishing, where she built the publishing pipeline & team for PC & console and supported the worldwide release of 50+ games digitally & at retail, while at the same time developing & running the in-house porting team. Prior to that, she obtained an MSc. degree in Game and Media Technology from Utrecht University, alongside organising and running mid to large scale events in the game development industry.

‘Creating the Many Faces of Horizon Forbidden West’

Arno Schmitz

Arno Schmitz

Lead Character Artist at Guerrilla

Arno will share how the incredibly high fidelity character faces in Guerrilla’s latest release Horizon Forbidden West – released for PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 – was achieved. Most importantly, he will discuss how to do all this to scale, so all faces in the Forbidden West’s open-world enjoy similar quality whilst keeping production efforts realistic. The talk will also highlight the many facets of the production pipeline and offer best practices to increase the realism.

Biography

Arno graduated in Game Architecture and Design of the Breda University of Applied Sciences and the Intensive Drawing Program at the Florence Academy of Arts. He contributed to the development of Killzone Shadow Fall, Horizon Zero Dawn, and its DLC the Frozen Wilds. He is currently working on Horizon Forbidden West.

’60 game design lessons in 30 Minutes’

Tj’ièn Twijnstra

Tj’ièn Twijnstra

Game Director at Story Giant Games

Tj’ièn will guide you through the opening minutes of his latest game Text Express and distill 60 lessons from the game’s First Time User Experience in 30 minutes. He’ll explain the reasoning behind some of the design decisions and how this small indie studio is trying to create a genre defining mobile Free-to-Play game that can compete with the biggest games on the market.

Biography

Tj’ièn Twijnstra became a professional game designer after receiving his MA in game design and development in 2006. Since then he has helped with the release of over 25 published games while working at 5 different studios. Next to his current position as Game Director at Story Giant Games, Tj’ièn is also a mentor at Google’s Indie Game Accelerator program, helping indie teams reach their growth potential. Tj’ièn love for games has developed since his early childhood and he’s constantly fascinated about how they are able to create fun on a global scale. Researching and philosophizing about game design, writing and talking about fun all serve to better his understanding and increase his efficiency in creating the best games out there.

‘Quality over Quantity : A possible future for videogame events’

Leon Winkler

Leon Winkler

Director of Global Events at Ubisoft HQ

Leon is responsible for producing the biggest events in the video game industry. After a long career with many different types of jobs, he found his dreamjob at Ubisoft. Leon loves bringing people together through high quality events. In his talk he will share all of his experiences and views on how to bond with your community of players through live events.

Biography

With over 20 years of working experience, Leon has ventured into almost all areas of the entertainment industry before landing his dream job at videogame powerhouse Ubisoft. Leon started his career at the early age of 16 working as a busboy in a small venue in the Dutch town of Hoorn. Having a passion for R&B and Hiphop music, he managed to convince the manager of the venue to allow him to produce his first R&B and Hiphop party, which sold out. This was the start of a series of successful “urban” events in the northern parts of Holland.

During these parties and DJ-ing throughout Holland, Leon got in touch with the Dutch Hiphop and R&B community. This resulted in the idea of creating a TV show aimed at this specific audience that seemingly was untapped at that time. After working on the idea with his older brother and self-proclaimed “Hiphop-head,” the idea was turned into a television show treatment and a few months later the treatment was sold to music channel The Box.

For the next 2.5 years The BOX was the platform for which Leon, his older brother and a group of friends produced the TV show “Urban LifeStyle”. So at age 21 and with a TV show in the pocket, Leon thought he had made it big. Alas this was a premature thought as after 3 seasons the TV adventure came to an end unexpectedly which resulted in a bankruptcy of his company Urban Entertainment. On top of this unfortunate turn of events, there were some more personal developments that also contributed to this more dark period in Leon’s life. That being said, the positive side of this was that he had now time to graduate from college (University of Amsterdam) mastering in Media Sciences.

With both a Doctorate as well as a master’s degree and a healthy dose of youthful arrogance Leon expected to land a job in the entertainment industry without any effort. While in the end he found his dream job at Ubisoft, it took around 3 years of applying for jobs to find this specific opportunity (which almost made him quit many times). Now, over 15 years later, Leon is Director of International Events and leads a team of 8 professionals who all together are responsible for producing the biggest events in the videogame industry. On top of that he started the Black Game Pros initiative aimed at generating and fostering more representation and diversity in the videogame industry.

‘Even Tom Hanks thinks he’s a loser from time to time’

Scott Davidson

Scott Davidson

Art Director at Player Unknown Productions

Imposter syndrome has effected me throughout my entire life and I have developed some useful ways of coping. In this talk I will waffle on about my career in the games industry; The lows, the highs, the times I just thought about giving up and how I kept going.

Biography

Starting in 1997 Scott has been making games for 25 years. Some good, some bad and some truly terrible.

‘Rethinking Indie games as Adaptation’

Amanda Kruse

Amanda Kruse

Head of Business Development and Licensing at Good Shepherd Entertainment

Licensed games have long held a complex standing in the world of games but with the industry booming, the lines between mediums blurring, and successful cases proving themselves again and again, are we at the tipping point where the conversations change from business terms like “license” to the elevated art of adaptation?

Biography

A veteran entertainment executive across film, television, and games, Kruse oversees business development for Good Shepherd Entertainment, publisher behind the critically acclaimed JOHN WICK HEX, a strategy game by BAFTA award-winning game maker Mike Bithell. Formerly she oversaw Film and TV for Hivemind, the company behind Netflix’s The Witcher and Amazon’s The Expanse. Amanda co-founded Lionsgate’s games division in 2016, where she oversaw a robust slate of 40+ titles and integrations across genre’s including the narrative PC/Console game, POWER RANGERS: BATTLE FOR THE GRID, the survival horror game BLAIR WITCH. During her time at Lionsgate, she developed film adaptations of NARUTO, based on the wildly popular manga series, and BORDERLANDS, based on the hit video game franchise.

‘Why Cryptogames and tokenomics in gaming can be a source for innovation’

Omar Ramirez

Omar Ramirez

Product Manager at Merit Circle

Lots of P2E games out there right now are in their infancy. Yet they are valued more than a normal AAA studio. What if you could merge fun and tokenomics in one? Disrupting the industry properly can benefit us all.

Biography

Having a 12 year career in the gaming industry from his own studio to working in adtech for mobile gaming (Chartboost) Omar now works at Merit Circle as the Product Manager for the Gaming Platform where gaming is at is core. Merit Circle enables people to play fun, innovative games with complex in-game economies that reward players for their hard work.

‘From the snowy hills of Umeå to world domination – Zordix’s journey in becoming an international gaming powerhouse’

Martijn van Doorn

Martijn van Doorn

Business Development Director at DDM

Martijn van Doorn (DDM) will be interviewing Matti Larsson, the original founder & CEO of Zordix, who is currently responsible for all Innovation and New Business at the Zordix Group. In this fireside chat, Martijn and Matti will talk about the history of Zordix, Matti’s ambitions in growing the company to an international level, the hurdles and the challenges that came with this growth as well as his key take-aways and advice for other gaming companies, sharing similar ambitions.

Biography

With 10 years’ experience, Martijn van Doorn is a highly respected executive and advisor in the game industry. Martijn has been with DDM for 10 years and as Business Development Director, is responsible for their European clients and initiatives. He oversees the European markets, for which he is responsible for the servicing of clients, new business development, cross-territory dealmaking and rolling out new services that are designed to provide even greater benefits to both the company and clients, such as DDM’s Investment Services, which aids both developers and investors with equity investment and M&A. Martijn has a background in game development, having started out as a producer at Green Hill but quickly moving into business development, where his real passion lies. It wasn’t long after that change when Green Hill was acquired by DDM and he was tasked with building up DDM’s European clientele, finding new business and advising clients on complicated business deals to advance their company’s strategies.

Matti Larsson

Matti Larsson

Director of Innovation and New Business at Zordix

Martijn van Doorn (DDM) will be interviewing Matti Larsson, the original founder & CEO of Zordix, who is currently responsible for all Innovation and New Business at the Zordix Group. In this fireside chat, Martijn and Matti will talk about the history of Zordix, Matti’s ambitions in growing the company to an international level, the hurdles and the challenges that came with this growth as well as his key take-aways and advice for other gaming companies, sharing similar ambitions.

Biography

Matti Larsson from Umeå, Sweden, is a veteran of over 25 years in leading positions in the videogame industry, as well as a driven entrepreneur, full of new ideas and solutions. He made his first games on an Apple II computer in 1977 and studied computer science at the university of Umeå in the 90s before entering the games industry. Matti is the founder and largest shareholder in Zordix AB (publ). As CEO he has been the driving force behind Zordix´success and has brought the company cross one billion SEK in turnover and 200 employees in 7 countries to be a strong global group in videogames. He is currently board member and director of innovation and new business. Matti´s long term vision from the current strong position in videogames into the future is to create a wider group in entertainment. Creating, enjoying and sharing those magic moments, with the slogan: – It’s all about the Magic!

‘building machines for a better future in ‘horizon’

Maxim Fleury

Maxim Fleury

Lead Asset Artist, Machine & Weapons Team at Guerrilla

This presentation breaks down the process of creating and building the iconic machines seen in the ‘Horizon’ franchise. You will get insight in the complete machine asset pipeline at Guerrilla from a technical and organisational perspective. In addition to looking at the technical part of the process, Lennart and Maxim will also expand on the production side, evaluate what it takes to manage a creative team and detail the role of outsourcing in this process.

Biography

Maxim started his career in 2000 doing television and commercials as a generalist. From 2008 he worked as a generalist freelancer for a couple of years before moving to London in 2011 to work on movies at DNEG. He started as a modeler but quickly moved on to asset lead, build lead and finally build supervisor on various shows. In 2016 he made the move to ILM. Here he worked as model lead on shows like Ready Player One and Avengers: Infinity War. After spending a year as asset supervisor at MPC he moved back to Amsterdam in 2019. To fulfill his dream of working on games at Guerrilla. He uses his experience to help the Robot and weapon team to build assets for ‘Horizon Forbidden West’.

Lennart Franken

Lennart Franken

Senior Asset Artist, Machine & Weapons Team at Guerrilla

This presentation breaks down the process of creating and building the iconic machines seen in the ‘Horizon’ franchise. You will get insight in the complete machine asset pipeline at Guerrilla from a technical and organisational perspective. In addition to looking at the technical part of the process, Lennart and Maxim will also expand on the production side, evaluate what it takes to manage a creative team and detail the role of outsourcing in this process.

Biography

Lennart started his career in 2006 as an intern at Guerrilla and quickly landed a job at the environment art team working on Killzone 2. A couple of years later he made the move to the UK to work at Codemasters. After some experience abroad he came back to Guerrilla a year later to help finish Killzone 3. For this project he was part of the skybox/vfx team. He then moved to the asset art team to work on future projects including the machines of ‘Horizon: Zero Dawn’ and ‘Forbidden West’. Being part of multiple teams within Guerrilla has given him broad knowledge of the tools and pipeline used at Guerrilla.

‘why vc, project funding and publishers suck’

Per-Arne Lundberg

Per-Arne Lundberg

CEO at Amplifier Game Invest

Amplifier Game Invest’s Per-Arne Lundberg and Tim Glaus share their insights on Using Equity to set You and your studio up for a sustainable long term success

Biography

Per-Arne has been working in the game industry since early 2000. As founder of Sweden Game Arena and The Game Incubator he has supported numerous startups and studios in their pursuit for funding and investments. Since 2017 he is the CEO of Amplifier Game Invest.

Tim Glaus

Tim Glaus

Business Analyst at Amplifier Game Invest

Amplifier Game Invest’s Per-Arne Lundberg and Tim Glaus share their insights on Using Equity to set You and your studio up for a sustainable long term success

Biography

Tim has been working in the finance industry in various roles over the last few years. Recently he was engaged in enhancing market access and tradability of shares of SMEs and in supporting start-ups in the gaming industry. Since 2021 he is the head of acquisition at Amplifier Game Invest.

‘VAF co-development support: giving (Dutch) developers creative and financial gain’

Youri Loedts

Youri Loedts

Head of Gamedepartment at VAF (Flanders Audiovisual Fund)

In this talk, Youri Loedts, Head of Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF) Game Department, explains how the new VAF co-development call is beneficial to Flemish ánd Dutch game developers. Both in a creative and financial way. Game lawyer Olivier Oosterbaan adds useful IP-advice from a legal perspective.

Biography

Youri was a journalist and editor-in-chief for the Dutch version of the Official PlayStation Magazine for 13 years. He was also the editor-in-chief of the website PlayStationPure and wrote about music, movies and games for several publications like P Magazine, DVD Extra, TeVe-Blad and others. He also wrote and video edited for the TV show Gamepower on JIM TV. He traded in journalism for marketing and was a lead creative for several marketing agencies, where he worked for top clients like Netflix, Fox, Warner Bros., Ubisoft, PlayStation, Xbox and many more. In 2018 he started working at VAF as their first Head of the games department.

Olivier Oosterbaan

Olivier Oosterbaan

Lawyer at Leopold Meijnen Oosterbaan Advocaten

In this talk, Youri Loedts, Head of Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF) Game Department, explains how the new VAF co-development call is beneficial to Flemish ánd Dutch game developers. Both in a creative and financial way. Game lawyer Olivier Oosterbaan adds useful IP-advice from a legal perspective.

Biography

Olivier Oosterbaan is a partner with the Dutch law firm Leopold Meijnen Oosterbaan. Olivier helps game companies large and small, negotiating for fair and clear publishing contracts that protect developer IP. Client say: “True gaming specialist in the Netherlands.” When 12 years old, Olivier already pointed out differences and similarities between Activision’s Atari 2600 titles and their clones, at a high resolution of 160 x 192 pixels.

‘After The Fall insights: Bleeding edge VR Development at Vertigo Games’

Pepijn van Duijn

Pepijn van Duijn

Game Designer at Vertigo Games

Join us in a multi-disciplinary session about how we blaze technical, design and art trails at Vertigo Games. Building upon the critical acclaim of Arizona Sunshine, we’ll show you how we pushed our boundaries even further and developed After The Fall – a cross platform, high end, high quality VR co-op shooter with a thriving community.

Biography

When he was 12 years old, Pepijn van Duijn aspired to be a game designer and has worked on it ever since. After the Creative Media & Game Technologies at Breda University of Applied Sciences, he’s worked on Space Engineers at KeenSWH before joining Vertigo Games, and generally gets all his satisfaction in life from making solid designs. His interests range from ancient Chinese poetry to Dyson Spheres, and reads a copious amount of books but says he somehow just becomes dumber instead of smarter?

Shanice Lapierre Armande

Shanice Lapierre Armande

3D/Environment Artist at Vertigo Games

Join us in a multi-disciplinary session about how we blaze technical, design and art trails at Vertigo Games. Building upon the critical acclaim of Arizona Sunshine, we’ll show you how we pushed our boundaries even further and developed After The Fall – a cross platform, high end, high quality VR co-op shooter with a thriving community.

Biography

Shanice Lapierre Armande studied Game Architecture and Design, and combines that with her love for horror and sci-fi to bring the post-apocalyptic worlds to life! She’s dutch-born but lived on a caribbean island called Antigua for 19 years! She also loves birds and Bioshock.

Peter Deurloo

Peter Deurloo

Game Director & Lead Design at Vertigo Games

Join us in a multi-disciplinary session about how we blaze technical, design and art trails at Vertigo Games. Building upon the critical acclaim of Arizona Sunshine, we’ll show you how we pushed our boundaries even further and developed After The Fall – a cross platform, high end, high quality VR co-op shooter with a thriving community.

Biography

Peter’s ties with Vertigo Games go all the way back to the 80s, playing Commodore 64 games loaded from a cassette tape together with the company’s CEO.
With 16 years of professional AAA game dev experince under his belt, Peter has touched almost all facets that game development has to offer. 
After having worked as a game director on Crystal Dynamics’ Avengers game, he has now joined Vertigo Games, committed to push the boundaries of AAA gaming within VR.

‘The story behind We Were Here: INDI-GO your own way!’

Lucia de Visser

Lucia de Visser

Managing Director at Total Mayhem Games

Five years ago, I was broke, worked 80 hours a week, was very new to the Game Industry and had a dream. And then, we won INDIGO 2017 and launched our first commercial game … Now, five years later, at INDIGO, I am back, running a company of 40 developers. How did this dream turn into a successful studio? This talk is a brief journey of hurdles, pitfalls and all things that lead to the ‘We Were Here’-series as we know it today.

Biography

Lucia de Visser is Managing Director and one of the six co-founders of the indie game studio Total Mayhem Games, best known for their hit series ‘We Were Here’. Before graduating, she created a small title called ‘We Were Here’, which was an overnight success on the gaming platform Steam. With a vastly increasing fanbase asking for more and her dream to set up her gaming studio, she convinced the top 5 of her fellow students to start a company and further develop the world of ‘We Were Here’. Five years and four games later, Total Mayhem Games is one of Europe’s fastest-growing indie studios, with recognition from all over the industry and the globe.

‘How to find & attract great people without using a recruiter’

Enrico Heidelberg

Enrico Heidelberg

Senior Recruiter at Riot Games

Enrico Heidelberg will help you with a framework to define who you need, where to find them, and how to attract talent in today’s challenging market. After years of recruiting for international game studio’s Enrico will share tips and tricks to benefit small and medium game studios. Bring your questions and let’s make it as relevant for ongoing talent challenges.

Biography

Enrico Heidelberg is a Dutch freelance recruiter and has been recruiting in the Gaming industry since 2010, having worked for Spil Games and GameHouse among others. Since 2016 Enrico has been involved with Riot Games, currently focused on remotely building the Riot Games studio in Singapore. Enrico is a strong believer of being embedded in the teams he’s recruiting for, acting as a business partner, and selling the employer brand as one of the team, not as an external agency.

‘Panel Company Culture’

Sacha Blom

Sacha Blom

Marketing & Recruitment Coordinator at Paladin Studios

Explore with this industry panel how studios can maintain and improve a game company culture where creation can happen in a friendly space combining people of diverse backgrounds, culture and experience.

Biography

Sacha Blom is the Marketing & Recruitment Coordinator at Paladin Studios as a support to the People & Culture team. In 2021 she won the Dutch Game Award for inclusion for her graduation project on inclusive hiring practices. She is still actively working on diversity and inclusion within Paladin and the Dutch game industry as a whole.

Kate Edwards

Kate Edwards

Culturalization Innovator at Geogrify, CXO & Co-founder at SetJetters

Explore with this industry panel how studios can maintain and improve a game company culture where creation can happen in a friendly space combining people of diverse backgrounds, culture and experience.

Biography

With over 28 years of experience in games as a geographer and culturalization strategist, Kate Edwards has seen it all when it comes to geopolitical and cultural challenges that may be overlooked in game creation and can negatively impact a title’s release overseas. As more governments now extend their content policies beyond their borders, we’re seeing a sharp increase in content being rejected for not adhering to a single worldview. 

Leon Winkler

Leon Winkler

Director of Global Events at Ubisoft HQ

Explore with this industry panel how studios can maintain and improve a game company culture where creation can happen in a friendly space combining people of diverse backgrounds, culture and experience.

Biography

With over 20 years of working experience, Leon has ventured into almost all areas of the entertainment industry before landing his dream job at videogame powerhouse Ubisoft. Leon started his career at the early age of 16 working as a busboy in a small venue in the Dutch town of Hoorn. Having a passion for R&B and Hiphop music, he managed to convince the manager of the venue to allow him to produce his first R&B and Hiphop party, which sold out. This was the start of a series of successful “urban” events in the northern parts of Holland.

During these parties and DJ-ing throughout Holland, Leon got in touch with the Dutch Hiphop and R&B community. This resulted in the idea of creating a TV show aimed at this specific audience that seemingly was untapped at that time. After working on the idea with his older brother and self-proclaimed “Hiphop-head,” the idea was turned into a television show treatment and a few months later the treatment was sold to music channel The Box.

For the next 2.5 years The BOX was the platform for which Leon, his older brother and a group of friends produced the TV show “Urban LifeStyle”. So at age 21 and with a TV show in the pocket, Leon thought he had made it big. Alas this was a premature thought as after 3 seasons the TV adventure came to an end unexpectedly which resulted in a bankruptcy of his company Urban Entertainment. On top of this unfortunate turn of events, there were some more personal developments that also contributed to this more dark period in Leon’s life. That being said, the positive side of this was that he had now time to graduate from college (University of Amsterdam) mastering in Media Sciences.

With both a Doctorate as well as a master’s degree and a healthy dose of youthful arrogance Leon expected to land a job in the entertainment industry without any effort. While in the end he found his dream job at Ubisoft, it took around 3 years of applying for jobs to find this specific opportunity (which almost made him quit many times). Now, over 15 years later, Leon is Director of International Events and leads a team of 8 professionals who all together are responsible for producing the biggest events in the videogame industry. On top of that he started the Black Game Pros initiative aimed at generating and fostering more representation and diversity in the videogame industry.

Scott Davidson

Scott Davidson

Art Director at Player Unknown Productions

Explore with this industry panel how studios can maintain and improve a game company culture where creation can happen in a friendly space combining people of diverse backgrounds, culture and experience.

Biography

Starting in 1997 Scott has been making games for 25 years. Some good, some bad and some truly terrible.