Year: 2013

The Gotland Game Conference is proud to announce the following speakers, distinguished experts and brilliant thinkers who will be delivering keynotes and featured presentations.

• Sheri Graner Ray (Where Do We Go From Here)
  … is the Studio Design Director with Schell Games and has been designing computer games since 1989. She is author of the book, “Gender Inclusive Game Design – Expanding the Market” and is the game industry’s leading expert on gender and computer games. In 2005 she was awarded the IGDA’s Game Developer’s Choice award for her work in gender and games.
• Heidi McDonald (Narrative as a Tool for Inclusiveness)
  … is the Women in Gaming Rising Star Award Recipient for 2012. Specializing in Narrative Design, McDonald invented the ICING Model to help narrative designers write more satisfying NPC Romances. McDonald is a Game Designer at Schell Games in Pittsburgh.
• Tom Abernathy (Diversity Means Dollars)
  … is a writer/narrative designer at Microsoft Studios, and the mind behind titles like Halo: Reach, Saboteur and Destroy All Humans! Tom will show you that diversity equals more units sold and more money in the bank, and how to achieve that in real world production environments.
• Pernilla Alexandersson (Creating Equal Cultures)
  … is one of Swedens foremost gender equality experts, CEO and founder of Add Gender. Her areas of expertise are business strategy, creativity and innovation with a focus in the field of gaming. Her interest in the gaming industry is not a coincidence: She has been a gamer since childhood and therefore she herself has a desire to create a competitive and creative industry where everyone’s talents and experiences are utilized.
• Amanda Lange (Community Through Communication)
  … is the Online Community Manager for GameSprout at Schell Games in Pittsburgh. She is an alumni of Bowling Green State University and of Michigan State University, where she worked on serious games for learning and research and wrote her masters thesis on games and storytelling. She is an active games critic, and staff contributor to www.tap-repeatedly.com.
• Will Bonner (Safe by Design)
  … is looking into the fact that most of our social networks, game lobbies, forums and websites are not built with an understanding that they can be used as tools for harassment. He aims to change that, and present both technical and social measures to create safe(r) spaces – both in game and in the surrounding game communities.
• Derek Burrill (Watch Your Ass!: Masculinity, Play and Games)
  … studies performance and movement in digital games, as well as the cultural and artistic impact of video and computer gaming. Pulling from all of these topics to trace the cultural connections between videogames, masculinity, and digital culture.
• Andrea Hasselager (Game Girl Workshop Palestine)
  … Andrea created Prince$$ of the Hood, a 3D single-player game for young women raising the topic of over-consuming fashion brands. Prince$$ got selected for FuturePlay, a conference about the future in computer games in Canada. She’s currently at the Pervasive Media Studio, where she’s making a preventive alternate reality game about human trafficking. The game is targeted to 14 to 15-year olds.
• Sara Lempiäinen & Tobias Sjögren (Girls Just Want To Have Fun)
  … works at Stardoll – a social gaming experience for young women from around the world and the largest teen community site in the world! The company is well known for their focus on personal development and representation.
• Jenny Brusk (Creating Equal Cultures)
  … is a teacher at the game education at Högskolan i Skövde. She was recently awarded the Anna Lindh Committee’s grant for her work with gender equality in the Swedish computer industry.
• Annika Bergström (Creating Equal Cultures) is an Alumni from Gotland, currently working as a games researcher and program coordinator for the education at Södertörns högskola. From 2004-2007 she ran Super Marit; a project to inspire- and create inroads for female game creators, and to increase the variety of games available.
• Åsa Roos (Creating Equal Cultures)
  … is a game designer and outspoken feminist, with more than 13 year in the industry. When not designing AAA titles at Avalanche Studios, she participates as industry advisor, teacher and most recently on the board of directors for the vocational Futuregames in Stockholm.
• Thor Rutgersson (Creating Equal Cultures)
  … is a writer and non-formal adult education organiser with a passion for gaming in general and Nintendo in particular. For several years, Thor worked as national project leader for ABF:s music study circles in Sweden (mostly rock and pop bands) and dealt with several projects on gender equality within popular music. He believes there are many similarities between the male dominated music scene and the male dominated world of game development. Thor has also written for Club Nintendo Magazine and currently operates the gaming blog nintendo-och-livet.se