TALKS

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

INDIGO Newsletter

INDIGO Vault

Speakers

Tomoe Haga

Founder - GozenGames B.V.

Deloryan Hommers

Founder - Studio Deloryan

Gwen Kampen

Senior Game Designer - Flavour

Eline Muijres

Producer - Mipumi Games

Remco de Rooij

Founder / CEO - Triangle Studios

Sebastiaan van Waardenberg

Founder / Writer - Story Giant Games

Jim Hendriks

Associate Producer - Massive Entertainment [A Ubisoft Studio]

Keano Raubun

Senior Narrative Designer - Rude Robot Studios

Raynor Arkenbout

Narrative and Cinematics Director - Keoken Interactive

Dr Joost Vervoort

Associate Professor of Transformative Imagination - Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development

Espen Sogn

Lead Living World Designer - Guerrilla

Käy Vriend

Material artist/Consultant - Meta Oculus Studios (Camouflaj) & Freelance

Nic van 't Schip

Head of Game Evaluation - MY.GAMES

Molly Heady-Carroll

Freelance 2D Artist for Games & Animation, Co-Founder of Arcane Circus

Dennis Zoetebier

Design Director - Fool's Theory

Nicola Head

People & Development Director - Stellar Entertainment Software

Ashmita Krishna Sharma

Founder and DEI Strategist - Sparkling Gems

Glyn Burtt

Business Development - Grendel Games

Martine Spaans

General Manager - DGA, Owner - Tamalaki

Jill Vanparys

Game designer & UX/UI designer - Freelance & Studio coach - DAE Studios

Kejero

Composer - Kejeor

Martijn van Zwieten

Business coach/consultant - Martijn van Zwieten

Vincent van Gils

CEO - Grumpy Owl Games

Contact

Krista Hendriks

Communications Manager

krista@dutchgamegarden.nl

Tom Jongens

Sales Manager

tom@dutchgamegarden.nl

JP van Seventer

Program Manager

jp@dutchgamegarden.nl

Or contact us here!

Newsletter

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latest INDIGO News!

INDIGO Newsletter

Partners

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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

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.

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!

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.