Christian Allen
Christian Allen is an experienced and BAFTA award-winning game designer and creative director. Having contributed to major AAA game franchises at companies such as Ubisoft, Bungie, and WB Games, Christian also founded and led an independent game development studio, Serellan LLC, and has worked on titles that shipped on consoles, PC, mobile, and VR. Christian has also served as a consultant on many different game, movie, and transmedia properties. In his current role as an Evangelist at Epic Games, Christian works to support indie and smaller game development studios in North America, while speaking on both game development and enterprise topics related to the Unreal Engine and the Epic Games ecosystem.
Brook Burgh
Brook is an autistic and queer developer making tiny games and procedural animations in PICO-8. She released Pushamo last year at SIEGE, where it won the Best Design and Most Fun awards! Her other creations include Flags For Friends, Overstimulated, and Breadwinner VR.
Over the course of 25 game jams across 6 years, she has acquired a specialized skill set perfect for making small games efficiently; even coming in first place in such competitions as the CoolMath Game Jam and the Capturing Science contest.
During the day, Brook works as a programmer at Blue Mammoth Games.
Sandee Chamberlain
Sandee M. Chamberlain grew up in Southern California and obtained her BFA in the Entertainment Arts with a concentration in Animation at California State University, Fullerton. She has worked professionally as an Animator, Storyboard Artist, Illustrator and in Technical Direction. She moved to Atlanta, Georgia in 2007 – to attend Savannah College of Art and Design for her Master level studies in Animation (MA) and Illustration (MFA). She has been teaching at the college level for almost two decades and continues to be curious about the future of entertainment arts while keeping current with technological advances in this field of study. Sandee has always had a fascination with moving imagery and has a passion for teaching commercial arts. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Animation & Illustration and the Coordinator of the Digital Animation Program at Kennesaw State University in the School of Art and Design. Her work has been shown in national as well as international galleries and film festivals.
Kat De Shields-Moon
Kat De Shields’s first taste of gaming came from watching her parents play Myst together. Ever since, she’s been an avid gamer with a deep love for eccentric and heartfelt indie games. After a few years as a newspaper journalist, she entered the marketing and PR world working for nonprofits, publicly traded companies, and small businesses. Her first role in the gaming industry was Communications Manager for GameSkinny followed by a social media marketing role for Novy Unlimited. Currently, she works as PR manager for Schell Games. Kat has a BA in Journalism from Hampton University and an MFA in Writing from SCAD.
Andrew Greenberg
Best known for his work on roleplaying and computer games, Andrew Greenberg runs the Georgia Game Developers Association and Georgia Esports League. He chairs the DeKalb Entertainment Commission and SIEGE conference. Greenberg has credits on more than 100 game products.
Rob Hassett
Rob Hassett is a lawyer with Business Law Partners/Hassett Law Group in Atlanta. Rob’s firm helps creative entrepreneurs start, grow and protect their businesses. Rob previously co-authored the volume on interactive media and Internet law of the leading treatise on drafting contracts for the entertainment industry. He has taught many classes in the professional education program at Georgia Tech. He is co-chair of the SIEGE Investment Conference.
Liam Hislop
Liam is currently a Senior Producer at Hi-REZ Studios, working on Rogue Company. Before that he was a Digital Game Producer at Scientific Games in Alpharetta, and a Project Manager at Bohemia Interactive Solutions in Orlando FL. Before that he led the Final Project classes in the Game Development program for Full Sail University for 13 years. His focus has been on building teams, production processes, and improving project communication. In his spare time, he loves to spend time visiting all of the waterfalls in Georgia and spending time with his family. When he’s not doing those things, he is currently working towards his Doctorate in Business.
Simon Hoffiz
Simon Hoffiz is an architect with a deep curiosity about the topic in general of “design”. Simon moved to Atlanta in 2014 after finishing his master’s program in architectural design from Puerto Rico and has been working in the hospitality industry designing hotels. Simon became a design professor at KSU School of Architecture this year, working towards becoming involved in KSU’s Game Design & Development program and having joint ventures between these two departments.
Simon started his deep dive into game design in 2017, in which he has collaborated in multiple freeware games and game jams since. After years of rigorous and enthusiastic independent studying and diving into the game design/dev scene and conferences, Simon is starting to break out and sharing his thoughts and unique perspective on game design. Simon also composes music for video games and other media under the handle Numinous Cry Project. See Simon’s full portfolio over at simonhoffiz.com.
Blane Humphries
Blane is a Bay Area-based Account Supervisor at TriplePoint PR with experience in games public relations, freelance journalism, and corporate communications. He has managed PR campaigns ranging from AAA blockbusters to indie titles that have incorporated crisis communications components. Blane studied Public Relations at Georgia Southern University, where he graduated with honors in 2012.
You can connect with him on LinkedIn here – https://www.linkedin.com/in/blanehumphries/
Justin M. Jacobson
Justin M. Jacobson, Esq. is an Entertainment and Esports attorney in New York City. He is a professor of esports business and law at University of North Carolina Wilimington, Manager of Ford Models’ Esports and Gaming talent division and author of “The Essential Guide to the Business & Law of Esports & Professional Video Gaming.”
Amber Johnson
Amber Johnson is an Associate Professor in Simulation and Game Development at Wake Tech Community College. She has worked in the game industry as an artist and level designer since 2007. She began teaching at Wake Tech in 2014, developing curriculum that utilizes modern game asset creation techniques. She currently teaches courses in digital art, game programming, photogrammetry, tech art, and VR. On top of teaching, she does freelance work in photogrammetry and 3d renderings. She is also PI on an NSF ATE grant that is focused on creating courses to teach emerging technology in video games.
https://sketchfab.com/Lief3D
https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/3450549.3464416
Timothy Johnson
COO and Technical Director, Gallium Studios. Timothy is a veteran game developer and engineer with a penchant for rapid development and networked games. As Technical Director for WB Games, Timothy shipped DC Legends, WestWorld, and Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. As an indie developer he developed fun games for Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, and self published titles. Timothy’s technical philosophy of specialized libraries and micro-services allow for games to be spun up and iterated on quickly, allowing design teams room to play and pivot in a controlled chaos manner.
Robin Koman
Lead Designer, & Lead Storyteller, Story Tonic
Robin Koman is a designer, author, and educator dedicated to the idea that games and literature can prompt positive social change and still be entertaining and engaging. Robin is a regular speaker on the topic of game design, including presentations on diversity, accessibility, narrative design and storytelling, and game design education. Her recent research has focused on blending diversity and accessibility in the topic of gerontoludic design: designing play experiences for older adults.
Anatoly Lubarsky
Founder, x2line
Anatoly has been a professional software developer since 2000, mostly working for startups and as R&D manager for a company developing information security products. Since 2010 he has run his own indie game developer studio, creating role playing and puzzle games for mobile (iOS, Android) and HTML5 platforms.
A.B.Osborne
A.B. Osborne is the lead Animation Professor at Augusta University. He designed and runs courses in the animation degree program, the BFA in Art – Animation Concentration. As a creative professional, A.B. is a director and animator who has worked on video games, short animated films, medical visualizations, and augmented & virtual reality projects for audiences all over the globe. In his personal work, A.B. explores threats to our valuable ecosystems by creating stylized and experimental interpretations of flora and fauna.
Brad Merritt
Director of Game Design, Cartoon Network
In his 18+ years at Cartoon Network (now WarnerMedia), Brad has developed dozens of games in a variety of roles such as programmer, game designer, and studio director. As design director, he’s collaborated with internal and external teams on hundreds of web, mobile, and console games.
On the side, Brad makes indie games where he does everything but music. He’s terrible at music.
Ian Russell
Multi-award winning and nominated British Voice Actor. Winner Best Performance (Gaming) One Voice Awards 2021. Known in the games industry for Payday2, Warhammer Inquisitor, Chernobylite, Road Redemption, Obra Dinn, Endless Space2 etc. https://www.british-voiceovers.com/gaming-voice
Speaker at both VO Atlanta 2021 and One Voice Dallas 2021
Ian Schreiber
Ian Schreiber started working in the game industry in the year 2000, first as a gameplay programmer and then quickly transitioning to systems designer and eventually university professor. He has co-authored two books on game design, has produced a free online course on game design (gamedesignconcepts.wordpress.com) and another on game balance (gamebalanceconcepts.wordpress.com), and is a co-founder of Global Game Jam, the largest game creation event in the world.
Wes Wilson
Kevin Bacon needs 7 degrees, Wes usually only needs 4. Having worked in podcasting, content creation, streaming and events for over a decade, he’s likely worked with or entertained people far closer than you’d expect. His portfolio includes running conventions across the southeast, creating gaming and variety video content on almost every major platform, hundreds of hours interviewing industry professionals, and building connections across all strata of creatives in fandom. Be sure to let him know what exciting project he should pick up next!
Walter Woods
Walter Woods is an independent game developer and professor at SCAD. In another life he was an architect, and brings that passion and sensibility into his designs. The upcoming “Imperfect” will be Walter’s second published title. https://linktr.ee/Imperfectgamedev
Allie Young
CEO Axis Replay
Entrepreneur Allie Young is the CEO and Founder of Axis Replay, the first-of-its kind entertainment and event facility for video games and esports. Axis Replay exists to provide gamers and their friends with a fun and social in-person gaming and entertainment experience that enables them to build stronger connections.
An avid video gamer since her 20s, she used her knowledge of the sales and marketing industry along with her passion for gaming to create Axis Replay with the goal to bring gamers together. Allie brings the understanding, leadership, and organization to her role as CEO to ensure the success of Axis Replay. With a knack for building strong relationships and collaboration, she is a visionary with a unique perspective on impactful experiences and thinking outside the box.
Prior, Young was the CEO and Founder of Alcovy Media where she was responsible for building the sales team, operations, strategic growth, and development. During Young’s tenure at Alcovy Media, she built the company serving clients like Capitol Records, the US Army, and the Essence Festival along with successful political campaigns for SPLOST, eSPLOST, workforce initiatives, with strong results in event marketing.