Roger E. Pedersen has been designing, producing, and programming games for over 20 years for companies such as CBS Software, Gametek, Hi-Tech Expressions, Merit Software, Villa Crespo Software, Acclaim Entertainment, Phantom EFX, Walker Boy Studio, 3D Open Motion, Hypnotics, Merit Industries, Slingo, Digital Embryo, Cellufun, Health Teacher, Brand Games and Game Trust. His cumulative title sales have surpassed 60 million copies on over 90 titles for multiple platforms including the personal computer, video consoles, location-based, Internet, arcade, and hand-held. He is also the author of award-winning articles for Gamasutra.com, GameDev.net, and Gignews.com. Roger E Pedersen has a Masters (summa cum laude ) in Video Game Production from the University of Advancing Technology.
SCOTT MILLER is a
Founded Apogee and 3D Realms, and helped create Wolfenstein 3D, Duke Nukem, Rise of the Triad, Shadow Warrior, Max Payne, and Prey -- six game IPs that are still alive and well. His expertise is in IP creation, transmedia properties, gameplay hooks (for example, bullet-time and portals), and storyverse design. Miller is still deeply involved with numerous game projects, such as the recently announced Bombshell game.
RICHARD EPCAR is one of the hardest working actor/directors in show business, having voiced over 300 characters in Games, Animation and Anime.Best known as the voice of BATOU in Ghost in the Shell, The JOKER in several Batman games including Injustice: Gods Among Us (This year’s Fighting Game of the Year!) and Ansem in Kingdom Hearts. He has also been in Saints Row as Cyrus Temple, Skyrim (Game of the Year!), Call of Duty: Black Ops, and many more.RICHARD has voice directed many games including:Arkham Origins, Dead Island: Riptide, Blue Dragon, Shadow Hearts II, Star Ocean 2, Enemy Territory Quake Wars, Unreal Tournament 3, Jackass, Smackdown Vs. Raw, and Dead Head Fred to name a few.http://www.richardepcar.com/
ELLYN STERN is a classically trained actress, voice actress, director and writer, whose career spans from film, to television, to stage. Ellyn is widely known for her voice work and the wide range of characters she has played. Some games you’ve heard her in are ‘True Crimes, Hong Kong’, ‘Shadow Hearts II’ – as Veronica Vera and other characters. ‘Blue Dragon’ as Marumaru & Jiro’s Mom, ‘Family Guy’, ‘Sylpheed’, ‘Abby’, ‘Galarians’, ‘Inherit the Earth’, ‘Aero Wings I & II’, ‘Jade Cacoon’, ‘Fighting Spirit’, ‘Lupin the Third’. She also directed these games ‘Jade Cacoon’, ‘Aero Wings I and II’, ‘Super Magnetic Neo’ and ‘Galerians’.http://ellynstern.com/
Shahed Chowdhuri is a Senior Technical Evangelist for Microsoft and a
public speaker in the DC Metro area. In his spare time, he builds indie
games and dev tools via OnekSoft Games and OnekSoft Labs. He is also the
founder of multiple game development groups on Facebook: Xbox One Indie
Devs, Unity Indie Devs and Construct 2 Indie Game Developers. You can
find him blogging at http://WakeUpAndCode.com [1] and tweeting via
@shahedC and @OnekSoftGames.
Lindsay Grace is a professor,
game designer and researcher. He directs the AU Game Lab and Studio.
His game designs have received awards and
recognition from the Games for Change Festival, Meaningful Play
Conference , ACM SIGGRAPH Digital Arts Community and others. He has
published more than 25 papers, articles and book chapters on games in
the last 5 years. His creative work has been selected for showcase in
more than seven countries and 12 states. Lindsay’s career includes
teaching 81 courses over 10 years and more than 30+ presentations in
Asia, the Americas and Europe. As the former Armstrong Professor at
Miami University, he lead a top 25 game design program as ranked by
Princeton Review. There he also founded the Persuasive Play Lab, a
studio and research group for the production and analysis of games to
change people’s interests, activities and opinions. In 2013 his game,
Wait, was selected for the 10th Anniversary Games for Change
Festival’s Hall of Fame, as one of the 5 best games for social impact
in the last decade. Lindsay has served industry as an independent
consultant, web designer, software developer, entrepreneur, business
analyst and writer.
Chris Gore is a comedian and writer who was a regular on G4TV’s Attack of the Show. He is the founder of Film Threat, the author of several movie books, writer/producer of the feature comedy My Big Fat Independent Movie and his podcast is PodCRASH with That Chris Gore.Chris currently co-hosts Geektime with Ralph Cirella each Friday on SiriusXM Howard 101. There he provides news and commentary from the world of geekdom.Chris’ latest project is a comedy album/book titled “Celebrities Poop” which can be purchased exclusively on celebritiespoop.com.
Christopher Totten is the Game Artist in Residence at American University's Game Lab and holds a Masters Degree in Architecture with a concentration in digital media from the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. Chris is the co-chair of the Washington, DC chapter of the International Game Developers Association, working with local indies to create a strong development community. He is the founder of Pie For Breakfast Studios, a Washington, DC area indie game company and has done work as an artist, animator, level designer, and project manager. Chris has written articles featured on Gamasutra, Game Career Guide, and other publications and is a frequent speaker at game industry conferences such as GDC China, East Coast Game Conference, Games For Change, and the Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA.) He is the author of An Architectural Approach to Level Design, published with CRC Press/AK Peters in 2014 and Game Character Creation in Blender and Unity, released by Wiley Publishing in the summer of 2012.
Amanda Lange is a Technical Evangelist with Microsoft in the Philadelpha/Baltimore area. She is a game developer, 3D artist, and critic and a staff writer at http://www.tap-repeatedly.com. In the past she has worked on projects with Michigan State University and Schell Games, and she also does independent research about how players and games interact. She writes interactive fiction and loves to play just about anything out there! Her real passion is connecting other people with the resources that they need to learn about game development and create their own games, with a recent focus on Unity and Microsoft platforms.
Brad MacDonald is a native of Kalamazoo who has been designing, illustrating and animating professionally since 1989. He's worked as a political cartoonist, comic book illustrator, animator, product designer, web developer, stuntman, lead artist, art director, video blogger and author. Past clients have included Large Animal Games, MTV Networks, Sci-Fi Channel, LEGO, Tommy Hilfiger, NFL, Nascar, Microsoft, The Gap, Sony Records, RCA Records, Epitaph Records, CNBC, The LA Galaxy, the nu-metal band Disturbed, Nickelodeon and more.
Since 2000 he has been the Lead Artist or Art Director for over 100 mobile, social and PC downloadable games for Large Animal Games. His blog, Tools not Rules, is a living document of lessons he’s learned as a professional visual designer.
Christopher Spivey is a NYC-based producer and designer of social and
serious games and the Director of Production at Classroom, Inc., an ed-tech nonprofit. For the last decade he’s been making innovative and accessible games for Facebook, mobile, and the web for clients including Disney, Maxis, Ubisoft, CBS, Discovery Networks, Science Channel, A+E Networks and more.
His serious games have received the notice and support of organizations such as the U.S. Department of Education, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Carnegie Corporation.
His most recent projects include a children’s educational media initiative for iPad and iPhone to build reading and math skills for children ages two through eight, and Classroom, Inc's _After the Storm_,a rigorous and engaging workplace learning game designed to the Common
Core reading and writing standards for middle schoolers.
Belinda Van Sickle is the President/CEO of GameDocs specializing in strategic and marketing consulting. She started her video game career in 1997 at Activision. She has worked on advertising, marketing and strategy for Activision, Disney, Microsoft, Sony, Warner Bros., Vivendi, Blizzard, Konami, Midway, Capcom, LucasArts, DARPA and other AAA, mobile, social and serious game developers and publishers. Belinda also serves as CEO of Women in Games International, leading WIGI's efforts to promote and encourage women's achievement in the video game industry.
Trisha Hershberger is an actress/
model/host/gamer/techie/cosplayer/avid lover of all things geek, who also sometimes blogs. You may know her from the hit Youtube channels Sourcefed or SourcefedNERD or from her vlog series The Naked Truth. www trishahershberger.com
Rebecca Hawk A few times a year Becky ascends from the ocean depths of her aquatic kingdom to attend conventions and flounce around in colorful costumes. Her first convention was Nekocon 2001. Since then, she has judged masquerade competitions and hallway costume contests at Katsucon, Otakon, Nekocon and several others. She has also done cosplay promo events for Funimation, Anniplex, and Interrobang Studios. Becky attended Baltimore City Community College for apparel patternmaking, followed by Cinema Makeup School in L.A. She has done costuming or makeup for a number of live productions, films and events around the east coast including; Kings Dominion, Run for Your Lives zombie 5k, Cinestyle media group, and various theaters. She also performs as a “princess for hire” and face painter for several Baltimore/DC based entertainment companies. Becky also vends cosplay accessories and other crafts under the name “Hawk Designs”. Visit here facebook page at facebook.com/beckytakacosplay
Sande Chen is a writer and game designer whose work has spanned over 10
years in the industry. She is the co-author of the book, Serious Games:
Games That Educate, Train, and Inform. Her game credits include 1999
IGF winner Terminus, 2007 PC RPG of the Year The Witcher, and Wizard
101. She has spoken at conferences around the world, including the Game
Developers Conference, SxSW Interactive, and the Serious Games Summit D.C.
Michelle Menard is a Unity instructor for Code in the Schools, a game designer, consultant, and founder of Artemic Games (Artemic.com). Previously she has worked at Zynga East as a systems designer, and at Firaxis Games as a writer/designer, associate producer, and even for a brief stint as a backup programmer (you can thank her for all the broken achievements in Civilization V). When not attempting to finish her latest game, she procrastinates by breaking various body parts on her spinning wheel, making Pokemon catch-rate charts in Excel, and working on the Board of Directors for the Baltimore Computer Game Wizards. Michelle holds an M.F.A. in Game Design and Development from the Savannah College of Art and Design, and a double B.A. from Brown University in Applied Mathematics and Music., and the Serious Games Summit D.C.
Kri Buemi Cole
Category Analyst in the food industry by day, learning business development, PR, finance, marketing and event planning for a video game startup by night.
Consulted for PlayFirst, publisher of Diner Dash on expansion into international markets.
Participated in her first Global Game Jam this year and led a team of three to complete the challenge. One of only a handful of women at our site, and the only woman to lead a team.
Co-host of regular Indie Games Nights for northern NJ and NY area developers.
MBA, Monterey Institute of International Studies
BA, Sociology/Chinese, The College of Wooster
and the Serious Games Summit D.C.
Aujang Abadi co-founded SRRN Games in 2009, under the belief that gaming represents the next medium of art. He was the director and writer of SRRN's award-winning iOS RPG Ash. He has since helped grow SRRN into an established studio, collaborating with leading publishers such as Southpeak, KONAMI, and Sony Computer Entertainment America.
Benjamin Cole
15 year veteran of the video game industry.
Founded PXLPLZ, which has published 4 titles and contributed to many other projects. Leading a team of artists, programmers, designers and interns.
Seven years in Silicon Valley as a producer of console titles for Namco Bandai games, and developing online games for Gaia Online.
As a producer, dabbled in everything from programming and sound design to financing and marketing of games.
Started as an artist for IKnowThat.com, an educational software company
Pittsburgh Art Institute degree in Computer Animation
Trey Reyher is the Technical Director of a Serious Games team at Booz Allen Hamilton. Since 2007, he has managed the development of games, virtual environments, and novel user interfaces for research, educational, and entertainment objectives. He currently serves as the chair for the Washington, D.C. chapter of the International Game Developers Association and as a member of the Serious Games Showcase and Challenge planning committee. His previous work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology involved the production of games designed to investigate research goals related to neuroscience, human-computer interface, and economics. He also worked at Demiurge Studios as a producer on titles like Mass Effect: Pinnacle Station, Shoot Many Robots, and an unreleased title for the Emotiv EPOC headset.
William Michael Cunningham a hard working, unusually creative economist, social investing advisor, and policy analyst. Inventive, original, productive. Exceptional versatility and adaptability · Superlative communication and presentation skills · Dedication and drive as a professional. In 1996, 1998, 2003 and 2006, I warned the Federal Reserve and the SEC about the possibility of system-wide economic and market failure. I work with start-ups, small business owners, pension funds, and activists. I am the author of The JOBS Act: Crowdfunding for Small Businesses and Startups - http://www.amazon.com/The-JOBS-Act-Crowdfunding-Businesses/dp/143024755X.
