Alan Gershenfeld
Alan is President and Co-Founder of E-Line Media, a leading publisher of games that engage and empower. Previously Alan was member of the executive team that rebuilt game publisher Activision from bankruptcy into an industry leader. He has spoke on games, learning and social impact all over the world. Alan currently serves as a Founding Industry Fellow at the Center for Games and Impact at Arizona State University. He is on the Board of FilmAid International and Advisory Boards for PBS Kids Next Generation Media and Joan Ganz Cooney Center (Sesame Workshop). He is former Chairman of Games for Change.
Alex Hutchison
Alex Hutchinson is a Creative Director at Ubisoft Montréal. Most recently he directed Far Cry 4, Assassin’s Creed III and Army of Two: The 40th Day, which have so far sold over 20 million copies and picked up various awards along the way including a few from the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, a Game Award and the odd BAFTA. He was previously Lead Designer on Spore and The Sims 2 and has written for mags like Edge, GamesTM and PlayNation, and spoken at GDC, DICE, E3, MIGS.
Alexander Ocias
Alex makes games that change people, games that show people they’re not alone.
As an independent game developer he created a short story called ‘Loved’ that people think is pretty good.
He’s worked on Happy Feet 2, augmented reality games, educational games for the ABC and ESA, games for change for ANSTO and NDARC, and also as an installation artist.
He has a vision for games as journeys that are genuinely personal, non-disposable, and engines for creating empathy.
Amani Naseem
Amani Naseem is a designer and researcher from the Maldives based in Copenhagen and Melbourne. She works in transdisciplinary groups to create experimental games that have been shown at international exhibitions, conferences and festivals including Playpublik and the Venice Biennale. As a member of the Copenhagen Game Collective, she has been involved in promoting game culture by organising game jams and curating workshops and events among the Indie Games scene in Copenhagen. Amani is one of the co-founders of w00t Copenhagen Play Festival and is currently a PHD student at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia.
Amy Fredeen
Amy Fredeen is of Inupiaq heritage and served as Lead Cultural Ambassador for the Never Alone game. She currently serves as the CFO at E-Line and as the Executive Vice President/CFO of Cook Inlet Tribal Council (CITC), an innovative nonprofit providing educational and social services to Alaska Natives in the Cook Inlet Region of Alaska. Amy holds several other active roles including the President/Chair for the Board of International Funders for Indigenous Peoples, serves on the Board of Directors for Cook Inlet Native Head Start and the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts and is an active member of Rotary.
Andrea Hasselager
Andrea Hasselager is a cross media artist working in the fields of experimental games and art. She invented Game Girl Workshop, a global workshop concept, teaching teenage girls how to make computer games. She also co-created Lyst Summit, a conference and game jam that celebrates Love, Sex and Romance in games, and in her company The Lovable Hat Cult, she is currently working on an existential game for the Ipad. She is a passionate indie game developer, focused on games pushing the boundaries. For the the 55th Venice Art Biennale, she created the street game ‘The Hunt for the Yellow Banana’, and in Denmark she developed the country’s first public art space for Digital Art, DIAS.
Andrew Brophy
Andrew Brophy is a game designer based in Melbourne who attempts to provoke certain emotions with his work using humour, bizarre stories and a lurid visual style.
Outside of making games, he is also responsible for starting Braingale – a collective of artists and designers.
Barbara Kerr
Barbara Kerr is a writer for Rebel Quill Games and a QA/logic editor as well as a Bioware fangirl and dating sim tragic. She is always on the lookout for games that give a good balance between fragging and shagging.
Bennett Foddy
Bennett Foddy is the author of a number of games including his well-known series of four-letter web games QWOP, GIRP and CLOP. His work has been shown at MoMA New York and at the Pulse Art Fair and in dozens of other museums and festivals around the world. He teaches game design at NYU’s Game Center.
Brendan Keogh
Celia Pearce
Celia Pearce is a game designer, artist, curator teach and writer. She is the co-founder and Festival Chair of IndieCade and holds a position as an Associate Professor of Game Design at Northeastern University in Boston. She also co-founded Ludica, a woman’s game collective. She is a 30 plus year veteran of the game design and theme park industries, and has worked as a consultant for Walt Disney Imagineering, Universal Parks, Iwerks Entertainment, and Sony. She is the author of numerous articles and books including Communities of Play (MIT Press 2009).
Chad Toprak
Chad Toprak makes weird games that tend to require elaborate setups or hardware (Mega Rumble Jumble, dualcyon, Turnover, Cart-Load-O-Fun & Bubble Popper). He is a PhD candidate at RMIT where he writes about the New Arcade movement. Chad also co-directs Melbourne’s videogame curator duo Hovergarden, and is dedicated to crafting unique and memorable experiences. Rumour has it that Chad really likes sour worms.
Chris Johnson
Chris is an independent game designer who is currently developing Expand, a meditative exploration through a shifting circular labyrinth.
Chris is based in Adelaide, Australia and has been involved in running The Indie Games Room at AVCon, regular public play testing events, indie game nights and workshops for new game designers. Previously he worked as a lecturer in computer science at the University of Adelaide and as a pipeline developer at Rising Sun Pictures.
Christy Dena
Christy Dena is an award-winning writer-designer-director who creates playful stories. With her team of sub-contractors under her company Universe Creation 101, Christy has created a web audio adventure called AUTHENTIC IN ALL CAPS, a digital installation for The Cube called Robot University, an installation and browser-based game for Experimenta called Magister Ludi, and many other live games, locative apps, and ARGs for companies such as Cisco and Nokia. She is Senior Lecturer in Games at SAE Creative Media Institute, and co-directs an international lab for storytellers working in tech called Forward Slash Story.
Cory Davis
Full bio forthcoming
Emma Graham
Emma has been creating online video content over the past 6 years, totaling near 4 million video views across her various YouTube channels. Playing video games from an early age, creating content focused around gaming under the alias ‘EmmaExegames’ seemed like the perfect fit. Emma also works full time as a PR Ninja at Surprise Attack.
Francis Fitzgerald
I have a bachelor in Games Design, ran a small company for 1 – 2 years and am currently doing my next degree in Computer Science majoring in Software Engineering.
I was diagnosed with depression at 15/16, realised I had Anxiety at the age of 19/20 then Bipolar at 23 as well as Borderline Personality Disorder. Currently I am working on a game on depression as well as a medication reminder app. I’m also pushing forward for more awareness and acceptance of Mental Health as a real disease. I’m still in and out of hospital but hope by sharing my stories I can help others.
Otherwise I have a keen interest for Architecture, am a 3D modeller and like to play the occasional game when I get the time.
Helen Berents
Helen Berents is a lecturer in the School of Justice at the Queensland University of Technology. Her research explores ways of engaging with conflict-affected young people and strategies for everyday peacebuilding. More broadly, she is interested in peace and conflict studies, theories of childhood, human rights and social justice, and feminist discourses of marginalization.
Holly Gramazio
Holly is a game designer and curator. She makes games that usually have some physical element – for example, Hotel Room, an installation in a hotel room where you play in both the physical room and a digital recreation; or Games for Places, site-specific physical games for a series of locations across East Durham.
Hugh Davies
Hugh is a media researcher and practicing artist. He works as senior lecturer in Media: Screen and Sound at LaTrobe University and is deputy director of the Centre for Creative Arts. In 2014, Hugh completed a practice based Phd investigating transmedia and serious games. He maintains a board position with the Freeplay Independent Games Festival and on the advisory Committee for Channels Festival of Video Art.
James Mielke
Full bio forthcoming
Kate Raynes-Goldie
Dr. Kate Raynes-Goldie has been creating phygital and mixed platform games for education, community engagement, social change and just plain fun since 2007. She is the Founder of Games We Play and the Director of Games and Interactive at FTI. Her work has been featured at Indiecade (San Francisco), Come Out and Play (New York), the National Theatre (London), Playpublik (Berlin), Fresh Air (Melbourne) and the TIFF Sprockets (Toronto) and she has spoken at SXSWi, TEDxPerth and PAX Australia.
Kate just finished a narrative driven escape room for the State Library of Western Australia (memori.org.au) and is currently working on an augmented card game with Weerianna Street Media in the Pilbara to help Ngarluma kids learn more about their culture.
Katharine Neil
Full bio forthcoming
Katie Williams
Katie Williams is a freelance gaming journalist writing about the intersection of interactivity, technology, and culture. She is Kill Your Darlings’ 2015 gaming and tech columnist, and she contributes to numerous other print and online gaming publications. In 2013, she was Co-Director of the Freeplay Independent Games Festival. Currently based in Silicon Valley, Katie misses Melbourne coffee a lot.
Laura Crawford
Laura Crawford is a lecturer in Games and Interactivity at Swinburne University of Technology. She is also a consultant and PhD candidate in the area of attraction to screen violence. She publishes in this area, and speaks frequently at conferences nationally and internationally on this topic. She is heavily involved in Melbourne’s games community, speaking at and facilitating events and discussions pertaining to violence in games, independent game design and social issues within the industry. Her favourite game remains Impossible Mission II. Eight year old would have Laura approved of this, though she also wore leg warmers so there’s no accounting for taste.
Leena van Deventer
Leena van Deventer is a writer, game developer, and teacher. She has worked on apps for the Australian Bureau of Statistics, and Melbourne Writers Festival, and currently works in the game design degrees at Swinburne University and RMIT University, teaching interactive storytelling.
Liam Esler
Liam Esler is a freelance producer, writer and designer who has worked with companies such as Beamdog (Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition and others), Obsidian Entertainment (Pillars of Eternity) and Surprise Attack. He is the co-chair of the IGDA LGBT SIG and one of the event conveners for the Australian game developers’ conference GCAP (Game Connect Asia Pacific). He is a passionate advocate of minority and queer representation in games, and how games can be used to change behaviour and perception. He lives in Melbourne with his partner and their two cats.
Luke Miller
Luke Miller is an indie game developer from Melbourne. He is the creator of My Ex-Boyfriend the Space Tyrant, a gay-themed adventure game and is currently working on a sequel, Escape from Pleasure Planet.
Maize Wallin
Maize Wallin is a Melbourne based composer (technically educated at VCA), a curator and creator of live art shows. While working predominantly with dancers and visual artists (highlights being CONJUNCT) In the past she has run the Game Art Melbourne Exhibition, Glitchmark’s Holograph unconference and music instrument videogame series, CTRL_Coda. Most recently co-directing Encounters, a large scale public art installation by Microsoft Social NUI lab and VCA.
Maize has done extensive work in prominent Melbourne galleries and museums, such as Fort Delta and the Ian Potter Museum of Art, she also works regularly as a composer for theatre, film and games.
Malcolm Ryan
Dr Malcolm Ryan has been teaching game design since 2006 at the University of New South Wales and Macquarie University. He is currently conducting a research project investigating the design of ethical gameplay.
In his spare time he designs games in his one-man studio, Words On Play. His first published game is The Road — an ethically challenging zombie survival game set in the Australian outback. He is fascinated by games with emergent, ethically engaging storytelling.
Marcus Westbury
Marcus Westbury was once one of the founders of Freeplay. Today he does Renew Newcastle and Renew Australia. He is the author of Creating Cities a crowd funded book to be released mid year and is presenting a TV series on ABC1 later this year called Bespoke.
Mariam Asad
Mariam Asad is a *cough*-year PhD student in the Digital Media program researching activist technology use and digital urban planning practices. In another life, she wrote about poetry and videogames. In this life, she rides bikes, plays her music way too loud, and talks a big game about Big Buck Hunter.
Matthew Gatland
Matthew Gatland makes games and runs game events.
He’s one third of Pop-Up Arcade, a group that brings local videogames to a diverse local audience using cardboard arcade cabinets and hand-painted computers.
Natasha Katopodis
Natasha is a provisional psychologist and psychology researcher. She is currently conducting research into the psychological experiences and resistance strategies used by same-sex attracted women when they are faced with sexism and homophobia. Natasha has a particular interest in feminist and oppression sensitive psychology.
Prescription Pixel
Prescription Pixel is a lover of games with an interest in mental health in the gaming community.
She has spent two years engaging with the YouTube and livestreaming communities to promote independent gaming.
Rae Johnston
Rae Johnston is a Dharug woman and descendant of the Wiradjuri people, and is passionate about the preservation of Indigenous culture. Rae is a video game and technology writer, TV & Radio presenter. She hosts tech regular segments on Channel Nine’s MORNINGS, writes for Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker and has given a TEDx talk about the positive benefits of video games.
Rev. Nikki Coleman
Revd. Nikki Coleman teaches Military Ethics and Bioethics at the Australian Defence Force Academy (UNSW,Canberra) and the Australian National University. She enjoys gaming, but isn’t very good at it (someone has to suck), so sees herself mainly as cannon fodder – but loves to escape into a different world for a short time.
Sarah Schoemann
Sarah Schoemann is the founder of Different Games Conference and a doctoral student in Digital Media at Georgia Tech. Her research on interactive tech and games investigates the implications of accessible media and tech as tools for personal expression and social critique within various communities of practice. She is interested in considering the ways the work of individual creators and communities can speak to broader issues of equity and social justice, both online and off.
Siobhan Reddy
Full bio forthcoming
Snow McNally
Snow is an independent designer, writer and queer advocate.
Austin Wintory
Grammy-nominated and two-time BAFTA-winning composer Austin Wintory diverse career has straddled the worlds of concert music, film, and video games. In 2012, Austin’s soundtrack for the hit PlayStation3 game Journey became the first-ever Grammy-nominated videogame score, also winning two British Academy Awards, a DICE Award, a Spike TV VGA, and IGN’s “Overall Music of the Year,” along with five Game Audio Network Guild awards, and a host of others. Austin’s next major game undertaking was The Banner Saga, featuring America’s premiere wind ensemble The Dallas Wind Symphony, and an all-star trio of soloists (Malukah, Peter Hollens and Taylor Davis). Austin’s film work includes the Sundance-winning films Captain Abu Raed and Grace, along with over 45 other feature films such as A Little Help (starring Jenna Fischer), The River Why (starring Zach Gilford and William Hurt) and Standoff (starring Laurence Fishburne and Thomas Jane).
Matt Hall
Matt Hall has been making games professionally for the last 15 years and, since 2008, has been running a micro studio from regional Victoria called KlickTock. Matt has four App Store #1 games: Doodle Find, Little Things, Little Things Forever and, most recently, Crossy Road.
Andy Sum
Andy Sum is one-half of Hipster Whale, the studio responsible for the viral smash hit, Crossy Road. He also runs a Melbourne based studio called Jigxor, where he created the PC title Dungeon Dashers. Andy regularly participates in game jams, creating experimental games such as GAME OF THE YEAR: 420BLAZEIT.
Claire Hosking
Claire studied and practiced architecture for the last 10 years, exploring digital cities, procedural design, urban and virtual spaces, and doing a little game-making on the side.
Maya Violet
Maya is a developer, educator, and trans activist, currently working for Voxel Agents.
…and more to be revealed.
Multiplicity Jam Public Talks
Eugenia Flynn
Eugenia Flynn is a Tiwi, Larrakia, Teo Chew Chinese and Muslim woman living and working in Melbourne. She works with Indigenous, refugee, asylum seeker and migrant communities through arts and culture to create change and is a writer of literary non-fiction, fiction and poetry. She is currently the Centre Coordinator of the Wilin Centre for Indigenous Arts and Cultural Development, Faculty of the Victorian College of the Arts and Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, The University Of Melbourne.
Jessamy Gleeson
Jessamy Gleeson is a passionate young feminist who both works in and researches social media, feminism, online activism, and gender studies. She is currently undertaking a PhD at Swinburne University with a specific focus on feminist activism. However, outside of this she also teaches communications practice, assists in the organising of feminist campaigns and events, and works within social media for a number of businesses.
Neda Rahmani
Full bio forthcoming
Nur Shkembi
Nur Shkembi is a Melbourne based contemporary Muslim artist, curator and writer and is the Art Director at the Islamic Museum of Australia. Much of her interest has been in the cultural development of minority communities through the Arts with a focus on the presence of Australian Muslim artists in the dominant discourse. She holds a Masters in Community Cultural Development from the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA & MCM), University of Melbourne.
Lauren Clinnick
Lauren is a marketing maven in the games and tech industry. She loves strange games driven by story and emotion, and is drawn to innovation in all forms.
Josh Cousins
Josh Cousins is a recent graduate of RMIT’s bachelors program in Architecture, currently undertaking his masters. His architectural work has a focus on residential design, and he has carried out work for a number of local firms. Josh has had a strong interest in the design of games and games spaces since his involvement in the design and development of a live action game and gaming space, ‘the Whistler’, as well as a recent involvement in CTRL_coda . These project introduced him to the diverse games design culture of Melbourne as well as a broader range of design disciplines.
Liam Esler
Liam Esler is a freelance producer, writer and designer who has worked with companies such as Beamdog (Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition and others), Obsidian Entertainment (Pillars of Eternity) and Surprise Attack. He is the co-chair of the IGDA LGBT SIG and one of the event conveners for the Australian game developers’ conference GCAP (Game Connect Asia Pacific). He is a passionate advocate of minority and queer representation in games, and how games can be used to change behaviour and perception. He lives in Melbourne with his partner and their two cats.
Katie Gall
Katie has a background in narrative fiction, publishing and public relations. She is variably over-enthusiastic, unapologetic and passionate about games.
She strongly believes that games are the foremost creative medium of our time and wants to see them given the respect and admiration they deserve.
Despite struggling to finish any of her steam library her passion for purchasing games has continued unabated.
David Harris
David Harris has been a lover of games for many years and comes to creating them via the world of acting, clowning, theatre and psychology. David trained and learned his craft with the physical theatre group The Dig Collective, experimenting with audiences, plunging them into a world of psychology, theatre and game. His work includes the sell-out shows ‘The Game’ and ‘Help Me,’ both heavily influenced by psychological experiments that attempt to wrench the audience out of their seats and force a deep level of introspection upon them. David is currently working on a post pandemic game for Melbourne University’s Mudfest.
Rosie Leverton
Rosie is currently undertaking a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Dance) at the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA). She completed her Royal Academy of Dance Advanced examination in 2013, training at Steps Performing Arts School with Rachelle Kellett and Angela Hill. Rosie is interested in the creation of performance art involving integration of dance and other art forms such as film, visual projection and sound.
Meghann O'Neill
Meghann O’Neill seamlessly transitions between games reviewer, music teacher and composer, when she is not combining all three.
Tom Penny
Tom is a new media artist, digital media academic and PhD student at RMIT University. His practice involves 3D imaging, design and games technology. He has taught in fine art and design at Curtin, Monash and RMIT Universities. He has shown work in exhibitions and conferences in Australia. His PhD thesis and project “Critical Affection†investigates how play can be critiqued whilst also functioning as a critical tool in contemporary digital cultures by artists and everyday users.
http://www.tompenney.com.au
https://rmit.academia.edu/TomPenney
http://www.metaversenails.com
Louis Roots
After working in mobile games for a couple of years in Europe I returned to Perth to open SK Games, a small development studio focusing on social games and events.
Since opening in early 2013, we have run our games, and curated others, at events around Australia including game conventions, art exhibitions, music festivals, fringe festivals, various bars and many, many backyard parties.
Maize Wallin
Maize Wallin is a Melbourne based composer (technically educated at VCA), a curator and creator of live art shows. While working predominantly with dancers and visual artists (highlights being CONJUNCT) In the past she has run the Game Art Melbourne Exhibition, Glitchmark’s Holograph unconference and music instrument videogame series, CTRL_Coda. Most recently co-directing Encounters, a large scale public art installation by Microsoft Social NUI lab and VCA.
Maize has done extensive work in prominent Melbourne galleries and museums, such as Fort Delta and the Ian Potter Museum of Art, she also works regularly as a composer for theatre, film and games.
Nathan Cocks
A freelance games journalist for over ten years, Nathan has written for publications such as PC Powerplay, Hyper, Games.on.net and Official Playstation Magazine. These days Nathan spends his time exploring the worlds of analogue gaming, losing badly at Netrunner and rambling in a disconcerting fashion on his podcast The Fourth Player.
Mark Morrison
Mark Morrison is the gnome treasurer for Campaign Coins, a Melbourne games company making real metal coins for tabletop gaming. He has written and edited scenarios for Call of Cthulhu and other tabletop roleplaying games, and has also designed and scripted digital games for Robot Circus, BlueTongue THQ and Atari Melbourne House. He teaches game writing at Swinburne University, and every Tuesday he hosts the board games meetup Godzilla Games at Izakaya Chuji Japanese restaurant.
Melissa Rogerson
Melissa grew up playing board and card games and forgot to ever stop. These days, she also researches them and the people who play them for her PhD. She is the Tabletop Manager for PAX Australia, Co-Chair of Boardgames Australia, and an Admin on Boardgamegeek.com. She often claims not to play digital games, which is a bit of an exaggeration. She has a gaming husband, two gaming children and two non-gaming cats.
Trent Kusters
Game designer and writer, Trent Kusters, is the founder of game development collective League of Geeks, chair of the Freeplay Independent Games Festival, lecturer at the Victorian College of the Arts and industry advisor to RMIT and DiGRA Australia.
Giselle Rosman
Giselle wears many hats. She is Chapter Leader of Melbourne’s IGDA (International Game Developers’ Association) Chapter, on the Board of Global Game Jam and runs the Melbourne site. She’s passionate about local indie game development and has recently started working with Hipster Whale, creators of hit title ‘Crossy Road’.
Giselle is based at The Arcade, a co-working space for indie game developers, and is passionate about creating inclusive spaces for game developers and encouraging more women to get involved in game development.
Lawrence Leung
Lawrence is an award winning stand-up comedian, screenwriter and documentary maker.
Leena van Deventer
Leena van Deventer is a writer, game developer, and teacher. She has worked on apps for the Australian Bureau of Statistics, and Melbourne Writers Festival, and currently works in the game design degrees at Swinburne University and RMIT University, teaching interactive storytelling.
Vanessa Toholka
Trent Kusters
Game designer and writer, Trent Kusters, is the founder of game development collective League of Geeks, chair of the Freeplay Independent Games Festival, lecturer at the Victorian College of the Arts and industry advisor to RMIT and DiGRA Australia.
Helen Stuckey
Helen Stuckey is a media arts curator and researcher in Australia. Her recent curatorial practice has focused the cultural significance of videogames and their collection and exhibition within the gallery.