
TALKS
on-site @ Dotslash utrecht | June 17th, 09:30 – 17:30
Lectures, panels, and interviews on everything concerning game business and development during our live conference! The conference is hosted on-site this year at Dutch Game Garden’s home: the Dotslash Campus in Utrecht. All talks will also be available digitally after the event in our vault.
speakers 2022
‘Rising global challenges to game creation’

Kate Edwards
Culturalization Innovator at Geogrify, CXO & Co-founder at SetJetters
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
Legacy Portfolio Manager at Paradox Interactive
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
Lead Character Artist at Guerrilla
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
Game Director at Story Giant Games
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
Director of Global Events at Ubisoft HQ
‘Even Tom Hanks thinks he’s a loser from time to time’

Scott Davidson
Art Director at Player Unknown Productions
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
Head of Business Development and Licensing at Goodshepherd Entertainment
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
Product Manager at Merit Circle
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’

Maarten de Koning
Executive Vice President at Digital Development Management
Maarten de Koning (Partner, 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, Maarten 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 more than 15 years experience, Maarten de Koning is a highly respected executive, entrepreneur and advisor in the game industry. As Partner and Executive Vice President, Maarten has been with DDM since 2013 when he merged his own agency into the company.
He oversees the European and Asian markets, for which he is responsible for the expansion and servicing of clients, new business development and laying the groundwork for 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.
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 worldwide scale.

Matti Larsson
Director of Innovation and New Business at Zordix
Maarten de Koning (Partner, 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, Maarten 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
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
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
CEO at Amplifier Game Invest
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
Business Analyst at Amplifier Game Invest
Biography
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‘VAF co-development support: giving (Dutch) developers creative and financial gain’

Youri Loedts
Head of Gamedepartment at VAF (Flanders Audiovisual Fund)
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
Lawyer at Leopold Meijnen Oosterbaan Advocaten
Biography
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‘After The Fall insights: Bleeding edge VR Development at Vertigo Games’

Trevor Blom
Technical Director 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
Trevor Blom has led Vertigo Games’ technical teams since the company’s early days. In between development, he likes to exchange VR knowledge with peer developers and anyone with a pair of ears. Hot topics are the tricks we use to get our games’ features performing from high- to low-end machines.

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.

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?
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In the months leading up to INDIGO 2022 you'll receive a monthly update on the TALKS conference program, new DISCOVER showcasers, and new companies and publisheres on the MEETTOMATCH platform.

CONTACT

Krista Hendriks
Communications Manager
Reach out to me for more info about INDIGO 2022, press and interview requests!
Please contact me via krista@dutchgamegarden.nl.
Got another question? Contact us through the form below or check the Frequently Asked Questions.

Tom Jongens
Sales Manager
Looking to promote your company, services, or game towards game industry professionals?
Reach out to me then and we'll set up a call! tom@dutchgamegarden.nl.

JP van Seventer
Program Manager
I'm looking for people who have professional knowledge to share about gamedevelopment or business and want to be part of a leading gameconference in the BENELUX.
Let's have a chat!
Please contact me via jp@dutchgamegarden.nl.