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Independent Game Artist
Programmer and Critic | |
| With game designs that explore complex and subtle aspects of the human condition, Jason Rohrer has bolstered the acceptance of games as a serious art form. His games have been shown at festivals and art exhibitions in Park City, Utah; Toronto and Montreal, Canada; Pittsburgh; Los Angeles; Seattle; and Lleida, Spain. His 2007 release, "Passage," received widespread industry and critical acclaim, with "God of War" creator David Jaffe calling it "one of the most emotional video games I've ever played" and Wired's Clive Thompson writing, "More than any game I've ever played, it illustrates how a game can be a fantastically expressive, artistic vehicle for exploring the human condition." Rohrer's 2008 release, "Gravitation," won the Jury Prize at IndieCade. Along with 27 other innovators, he was featured in Esquire's December 2008 "Genius Issue." |
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Team Fat
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| Since 1983, The Fat Man and Team Fat have created high-quality music, sound effects, voice and atmospheric pieces for games, film and television. Additionally, The Fat Man's participation in technical and aesthetic innovations has helped his clients advance the boundaries of game audio. With groundbreaking scores for "Wing Commander," "The 7th Guest" and "Putt Putt Saves the Zoo," and his unmatched body of work encompassing hundreds games on almost every platform, The Fat Man has become one of the most respected and influential forces in audio for games. |
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Art Manager
Harmonix Music Systems | |
| Jason Arnone has served in various artist roles at Harmonix for more than eight years. He currently manages the art department and is in charge of artists' professional development, project team management, recruiting and general artist happiness. He is credited on such titles as "Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80's," "Guitar Hero II," "Phase," "Karaoke Revolution" I, II and III, "Party," "EyeToy: AntiGrav," "Amplitude" and Frequency. Arnone also has played in electronic bands and VJs in Boston. |
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Senior Level Designer
Epic Games | |
| As senior level designer for Epic Games, Andrew Bains has worked on the bestselling and award-winning "Gears of War" video game franchise by brainstorming level ideas, shelling and meshing levels, and scripting gameplay. Prior to joining Epic in 2006, Bains worked for Treyarch, an Activision studio, where he helped ship "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2X," "Spider-Man 2," "Ultimate Spider-Man" and "Spider-Man 3." |
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Founding Partner, Persuasive Games
Assistant Professor, Georgia Tech | |
| Ian Bogost, Ph.D., is author of "Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism" (MIT Press, 2006), which recently was listed among "50 books for everyone in the game industry" by Next Generation magazine. He also has authored "Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames" (MIT Press, 2007), several other books and many other writings. A popular speaker, he is influential in the video-game industry and research community. |
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President
Zeitgeist Games | |
| A 10-year veteran of the game industry, Dustin Clingman has worked on a range of titles and platforms including PSX, iPhone, Flash, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii, PC and Java, as well as constructing "serious games" for the Naval Education and Training Command. In addition, Clingman is a course director for structure of game production at Full Sail University. His publications include "Get in the Game," "Beginning Math and Physics for Game Programmers," an IGDA "Quality of Life" whitepaper and "Practical Java Game Programming." He is a member of the International Game Developer's Association and a regular speaker at the Game Developer's Conference. |
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Game Designer and Writer
Red Storm Entertainment | |
The manager of design for Red Storm Entertainment and the Central Clancy Writer for Ubisoft, Richard Dansky has contributed to more than 30 published titles, including games in the "Splinter Cell," "Far Cry," "Rainbow Six" and "Ghost Recon" series. He is the author of five novels, including the critically praised "Firefly Rain." Dansky also spent four years working at White Wolf Game Studios, where he helped design and write more than 120 roleplaying game books.
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Game Designer
Savannah College of Art and Design | |
| Chris Dodson has been designing games as a hobby since he was 12 years old. He has a Bachelor of Fine Arts in illustration from Georgia State University and a Master of Fine Arts in interactive design and game development from SCAD. Dodson began his game career as an artist and game designer for Imagine Role Playing, and in 1999 he became an owner of and lead game designer for Legynds Atlanta. He now is an interactive design and game development professor at SCAD-Atlanta, and his most recent design work focuses on bringing concepts from non-digital games and LARPs into video games. |
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Employee of anonymous defense contractor | |
Victor Jimenez works for a large, faceless defense contractor that does not permit its name to be uttered without proper clearance. This contractor has engaged in a large number of simulation-related projects that, regrettably, also can't be mentioned without proper clearance. Jimenez has been a member of the IGDA since 2002 and has attended GDC since 1999.
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Outsourced Art Production Manager
Anonymous Startup | |
| Jon Jones is a seven-year game industry veteran and has been a contract artist for 10 years. Recognized as an expert on art outsourcing, he speaks at many industry events and maintains a popular blog devoted to helping other studios build and manage successful outsourcing departments. Most recently, Jones was the art production manager at NCsoft on the critically acclaimed, free-to-play casual MMO "Dungeon Runners." He single-handedly established a new art pipeline and built an entire art department on outsourcing, turning around a troubled project and helping the game garner an 89 percent review score from PC Gamer. Prior to joining NCsoft, Jones was a key member of the art team at Ready at Dawn on the award-winning, multi-million-selling PSP title "Daxter." |
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President
Orbus Gameworks | |
| Darius Kazemi runs Orbus Gameworks, a company that builds gameplay data metrics tools to help developers keep track of what their players are doing in-game. Before Orbus, he did gameplay metrics at Turbine Inc. for MMORPGs including "Dungeons & Dragons Online" and "Lord of the Rings Online." He is also a technology officer for the IGDA Education SIG and a committee member for the Boston Postmortem, and he spends a good deal of his free time giving advice on how to break into the game industry. |
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Lead Level Designer
CCP | |
| Tim Lindsey is the lead level designer at CCP and a professor at the Art Institute of Atlanta. He has nearly 12 years of experience building worlds for games as both an environment artist and a level designer. He began his career building environments for many of Sony's "X" sports titles, including the classic "Cool Boarders 3" for the PSI. In 2003, he joined Bethesda Softworks, where he handled the design and creation of the "Oblivion" planes and scripted and rigged many of the environment actors in the world. Starting in 2006, he worked with Hi-Rez Studios and the Global Agenda Team to build their environment and level design departments. He is now building a level design team and assisting in the design of the worlds within the "World of Darkness." |
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| David joined Firaxis as a rookie game developer in 2008, after completing his Master of Fine Arts degree in game development at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Ga. Prior to this he worked as a freelance graphic artist and virtual world developer for Second Life and There.com as well as numerous print and web publications. |
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Lead Designer
Big Huge Games | |
| After graduating from Duke University in 1993 with degrees in English and Spanish, Mark Nelson quickly realized he had achieved the rare distinction of being unemployable in two languages. After a series of unfulfilling jobs, he joined Bethesda Softworks in 2000, becoming a designer on "The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind," and he remained with the company for six years. His design credits also include the "Morrowind" expansions "Tribunal" and "Bloodmoon" and the award-winning "The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion." Most recently, he served as the lead designer on the "Shivering Isles" expansion. One of his designs was named the 36th "Greatest Gaming Moment Ever" by PC Zone magazine. In 2007, Nelson joined Big Huge Games as the lead narrative designer on their upcoming RPG. |
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Freelance Concept Artist
Comic Book Creator | |
| Mia Paluzzi is an avid gamer and artist who holds B.F.A. and M.F.A. degrees in sequential art from SCAD. She started her career while still a student and has worked with publishers Iris Print, Walker Publishing and Tokyopop. Her comic publications include "Paintings of You," "Skydrop," "Cross+Check," "Coin-Operated Boy" and "The Twilight Zone." Paluzzi serves as a sequential art professor at SCAD and is working on a new series, "Aegis," as well as game concept art and comics for Red Planet Universe. |
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Rickwood Music | |
| Chris Rickwood earned a Bachelor of Music in music theory from Furman University and a Master of Music in music composition from the University of North Texas. In 2006, Associated Production Music hired him as part of a team of composers tasked with writing a new version of the Monday night football theme "Heavy Action." Rickwood serves on the advisory boards for the Game Audio Network Guild, the International Game Developers Association Atlanta chapter and Atlantic International University's game design program; the advisory committee for the Art Institute of Atlanta's game art and design program; and the board of directors for the Georgia Game Developers Association. His current projects include unannounced titles from Atari and the Cartoon Network. |
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Game Designer
Free Rule Design | |
Ian Schreiber is a game designer and programmer who has spent more than a decade in the industry and a lifetime playing games. He has worked on numerous games, including titles for the Marvel Universe, Star Trek, WWE and Playboy brands. He also worked on "Chron X," the first online collectible card game, and has developed serious games to train salespeople at two Fortune 500 companies. Schreiber works with academia through the International Game Developers Association's Education SIG to build bridges between the development and academic communities. In August 2008, his first book, "Challenges for Game Designers," co-authored with Brenda Brathwaite, was released through Cengage Learning. He consults through Free Rule Design, a game design concept house, and teaches game design at both SCAD and Columbus State Community College.
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Savannah College of Art and Design | |
John Sharp is an interaction designer, graphic designer and educator. He has been involved in art and design for over twenty years in a variety of media: interaction design, games, print, motion graphics, and radio and club DJing. Today, John is a professor in the Interactive Design and Game Development department and the Art History department at the Savannah College of Art and Design-Atlanta. John is also a partner in Supercosm, where he helps clients entertain, educate and organize interactive experiences. His work has been recognized by ID Magazine, the Art Director's Club and the Webby Awards.
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Game writer | |
Lee Sheldon has written and designed 18 video games, including a successful series based on Agatha Christie's novels. Other titles include the award-winning "The Riddle of Master Lu," "Dark Side of the Moon," "Wild Wild West: The Steel Assassin" and the early alternate reality game "The Light Files." He has worked on massively multiplayer worlds for companies such as Cyan ("URU: Ages Beyond Myst") and Disney ("Disney's Virtual Kingdom"), as well as an experimental multiplayer X-Box project for Microsoft. His book "Character Development and Storytelling for Games," published by Cengage/Thomson Learning in 2004, is used as a primary textbook in game design programs throughout the world. He also is a contributor to the recent books "Game Design: A Practical Approach" (Charles River Media), "Second Person" (MIT Press) and "Visual Storytelling" (Cengage/ Wadsworth).
Sheldon has served as a consultant for an online multiplayer world for the University of California at Berkeley, a single-player game for the University of Southern California, and "Danger Game," a TV show in development for the Sci-Fi Channel. A professor at Indiana University, he leads the design of his narrative-driven virtual world Londontown. Before his career in video games, Sheldon wrote and produced more than 200 popular television shows, including "Star Trek: The Next Generation," "Charlie's Angels" and "Cagney and Lacey." As head writer of the daytime serial "Edge of Night," he received a nomination for best writing from the Writers Guild of America. In addition, Sheldon twice has been nominated for Edgar awards by the Mystery Writers of America, and his first mystery novel, "Impossible Bliss," was re-issued in 2004. He is writing his second novel, "The Keys."
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| Markus Sheldon works in Account Management, Talent Procurement, and Project Management for Vectorform, an award winning interactive marketing firm based outside of Detroit. Having graduated from Lawrence Technological University with degrees in Architecture and Digital Arts, Markus has always had a keen eye for design, and a passion for providing thoughtful solutions that can ultimately benefit society. Because of this, Markus currently works in new business development to engage various verticals on developing solutions for the multi-touch platform. From working with clients to develop the big ideas, to finding the talent to produce the final solution, Markus has been involved in many areas of multi-touch development. |
