Speakers - SGDA 2021 Summit

STUDENT GAMES FESTIVAL | 2021 SPEAKERS

ALL

ART

DESIGN

PRODUCTION

WRITING

ENGINEERING

AUDIO

TALKS

Art Panel

Time: Saturday, May 29th, 10:00 AM

Matt Hansen

Art Director at Obsidian Entertainment

Matt Hansen is a project art director at Obsidian Entertainment for titles in the Pillars of Eternity and The Outer Worlds properties. His background is in concept art, illustration, and graphic design. He is currently directing the Avowed Project.

Nina Modaffari

Concept Artist at EA/Maxis

Nina Modaffari is a concept artist currently working at EA / Maxis on The Sims 4. She received her BFA in Game Design at Laguna College of Art and Design. Before working at EA, she was previously a concept artist at BonusXP and has done contract works for clients such as Hi-Rez Studios, Obsidian Entertainment and CryptTV.

Sadie Boyd

2D Environment Artist at Arkane Studios - Austin

Sadie Boyd is a 2D Environment Artist at Arkane Studios - Austin with around 8 years of industry experience, ranging from Quality Assurance to Environment Art. She is passionate about helping future developers into the industry and making the transition as smooth as possible.

Ashley Lyons

Lead VFX artist at Gearbox Software

Ashley is currently the lead vfx artist at Gearbox Software with his most recent shipped title being Borderlands 3, and previous shipped titles being Battleborn and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel. His first games industry job as was on the Dungeons and Dragons Neverwinter MMORPG at Cryptic Studios. Ashley attended undergrad at Virginia Commonwealth University where he received a Bachelors of Fine Arts. Afterwards, he attended the graduate program at Digital Media Arts College where he received an MFA in animation and visual effects, which spring boarded his entry into a career as a visual effects artist for the past decade. He is also currently an adjunct professor for at Richland County College in Dallas, TX, where he teaches a class in advanced visual effects techniques.

Game Design Panel

Time: Saturday, May 29th, 12:00 PM

Tiffany Tarampi

Level Designer II at Treyarch

Tiff is a Level Designer at Treyarch in Santa Monica, California. She originally joined the studio as an Intern and grew into a Level Designer role, driving team development initiatives in addition to shipping Multiplayer content for Black Ops 3, Black Ops 4, and most recently Black Ops Cold War. She graduated from USC in 2016 with a BM in Pop Music Performance and a Minor in Game Design and Management. In her spare time, Tiff is an avid learner, constantly looking for ways to level up (pun-intended) her skills as a creative.

Kayd Hendricks

Senior Area Designer at Obsidian Entertainment

As an Area Designer, Kayd’s job is to holistically look at a given area space in a game, and populate it with the objects, scripts, encounters, battles, and physical geometry of the gameplay space. Primarily, he is responsible for creating the structure of moment-to-moment gameplay from an experiential perspective, thinking about how players play games, and how to make the spaces in which they are playing fun, and engaging.

Kyle Turchik

Senior Technical UI Designer at High Moon Studios

As a Technical UI Designer, Kyle acts as a bridge between design and engineering. He works with designers to develop UX solutions that support gameplay features, identifies technical requirements for designs, and works with engineers to architect and implement UI systems. Kyle has worked on the Call of Duty titles Modern Warfare, Warzone, Black Ops Cold War, and an untitled 2021 game at Infinity Ward and High Moon Studios. Kyle is also a former co-founder of SGDA and President of the Game Design & Development Club at Cal Poly Pomona.

Production Panel

Time: Saturday, May 29th, 2:00 PM

Erin Ahern

Producer at Obsidian Entertainment

Erin K. Ahern started at Obsidian in 2018 and has worked on Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire DLCs, The Outer Worlds, and The Outer Worlds DLC’s. Her main tasks as a producer are to track and schedule department progress over the course of development, run strike teams, coordinate localization and VO efforts, as well as any other areas that need production support.

Caleb Diaz

Producer at Obsidian Entertainment

Caleb is a Producer for many titles at Obsidian. His day to day deals involves wearing many hats to assist his teams from scheduling deadlines to working with outsourcing studios. He is an avid pop culture buff that loves to get to know his teammates to help foster a great development environment.

Dr. JC Lau

Producer at Harebrained Schemes

Dr. JC Lau is a producer at Harebrained Schemes with experience in empathetic game production, localization, and advocacy. She often speaks on issues of diversity and inclusion at industry events such as GDC and PAX Dev, and her work has been featured on podcasts and in various academic and professional publications. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Seattle chapter of the International Game Developers Association, and Global Game Jam. Her prior careers include being a family lawyer and a professor of moral and political philosophy.

Larry Colvin

Producer at Phoenix Labs

Larry Colvin is a producer with almost 8 years of experience in the games industry working on titles like Borderlands 2, League of Legends, and Dauntless. He has spent most of his career supporting teams with their 2D and 3D art pipelines, as well as narrative assets like character bios and short stories. He is currently working with a design and engineering team on Dauntless at Vancouver based Phoenix Labs.

Narrative Design Panel

Time: Sunday, May 30th, 10:00 AM

Jay Turner

Senior Narrative Designer at Obsidian Entertainment

Jay Turner is a Senior Narrative Designer at Obsidian, where he writes stories, creates dialogue, and develops characters and lore in the Pillars of Eternity setting. Jay began his game development career at BioWare, where he worked on such titles as Jade Empire, Dragon Age: Origins, and Mass Effect 2.

Tori Schafer

Senior Narrative & Content Designer at Proletariat Inc.

Tori is a writer and narrative/content designer with a strong background in epic fantasy MMORPGs, competitive games, and award winning diverse character representation. She has always had a passion for games with thought provoking narratives and memorable characters. It’s been the realization of a lifelong dream to be able to write for games and create stories that resonate with players in a way that so many great games have resonated with her.

Anne Toole

Freelance Writer

Anne Toole is a freelance writer of games, comics, series, animation, and live action. She wrote for the Writers Guild Award-winning game HORIZON ZERO DAWN and the Emmy-winning live action digital series LIZZIE BENNET DIARIES. She also created the digital series ALLES LIEBE, ANNETTE.

Engineering Panel

Time: Sunday, May 30th, 12:00 PM

Aurélie Le Chevalier

Associate Programming Director at Quantic Dream

Aurelie Le Chevalier is a Programming Director with almost 10 years of experience in games. She started her career at Ubisoft Montreal where she worked on 'Rainbow Six', 'Child of Light', and 'For Honor'. She then went to Thunder Lotus, the studio behind the recent success 'Spiritfarer', to build up a second internal team for a new secret project. After bringing the project to a solid point, she's now moving to Quantic Dream's brand-new Montreal studio to work on another unannounced project.

Rebecca Vessal

Gameplay Programmer at Double Fine Productions

Beca is a Gameplay Programmer working on Psychonauts 2 at Double Fine Productions. She created custom level specific, global gameplay systems, NPC, animal AI, and boss systems for Psychonauts 2. Before working at Double Fine, Beca specialized in mobile games and apps development with notable companies such as PlayFirst and Apple. In her spare time, she likes to play with her dogs, eat delicious food, explore new places, play video games, and hangout with her friends and partner.

Jonathan Burke

Gameplay Technical Director at Sony Santa Monica Studio

Jonathan Burke is the Gameplay Technical Director at Sony Santa Monica Studio. During his time in the industry, he has worked on a variety of engineering systems ranging from low-level engine systems to high-level gameplay systems at studios such as Obsidian Entertainment, Bethesda Game Studios and Sony Santa Monica. He received his BS in computer science from California State University Fullerton. Shipped titles include: God of War(2018), Fallout 76, Fallout 4, Fallout New Vegas, South Park: The Stick of Truth, Alpha Protocol, and Armored Warfare.

Audio & Sound Design Panel

Time: Sunday, May 30th, 4:00 PM

Jayvon Rymer

Sound Designer at Riot Games

Jayvon Rymer is a sound designer at Riot Games on the Champions team for League of Legends. Prior to Riot Games, Jayvon has worked at Digital Hearts USA as a QA tester and as a Studio Assistant/Assistant Engineer at No Excuse Studios (Interscope Records). Jayvon is a Berklee College of Music alumnus and enjoys watching anime, playing video games, and making music.

Daniel Kim

Sound Designer at Riot Games

Daniel is a sound designer on League of Legends at Riot Games, working on the PIE (Player Immersion and Experiences) initiative. He enjoys creating new sound effects for cosmetics such as skins, little legends and accessories, and has helped establish League's skin thematics like Space Groove, Ruined, Psy Ops, Spirit Blossom and more.

Kareem Shuman

Technical Dialogue Designer at Bungie

Kareem started off as an indie sound designer for the Wii U title Sportsball. He then moved into QA with a focus in audio and worked on titles such as Guild Wars 2 and Halo 5 before joining Bungie. Now his work centers on the implementation and sound design of dialogue in the Destiny 2 universe.

Shauny Sion Jang

Audio Designer at Microsoft Mixed Reality Team

Shauny Sion Jang is an audio designer for games and media and has been working in game audio professionally since 2016. She has shipped games with Mojang (Microsoft), Nintendo, 8th Shore, and Rootless Studios. In addition to her work on games she works with Audiokinetic as a freelance technical translator to help grow the Korean Wwise community. Recent credits include Minecraft Jurassic World, Minecraft Earth, Snipperclips Plus, Super Mario Maker For Nintendo 3DS, 8 Doors, and others.

Student Talks

Luke Piazza

Student’s Guide to Showcasing Games

Time: Saturday, 11AM on the Summit Discord.

Learn tips and ticks on how to successfully get your game showcased at a game dev conference.

Sean O’Connor

It’s Dangerous to Go Alone: The Importance of Long-Term Student Collaboration

Time: Sunday, 11AM on the Summit Discord.

Join Sean as he discusses the importance of collaborating with your fellow student developers, and steps you can take to create a portfolio ready summer project with your student teams. Feel free to talk about your own collaborative development experiences in the open conversation meeting!

Blind Squirrel Talks

Anna Nguyen

Defining A Producer

Time: Saturday, 4 PM.

Anna Nguyen is a Senior Producer at Blind Squirrel Games with 15 years of experience in production on development teams. She has a wealth of knowledge from working on a wide variety of project types for original IP, licensed IP, and remasters on a wide array of platforms for console, hand-held, VR, mobile, and PC. The goal of the talk is: Removing some mystery behind what a producer is. Delving into the various responsibilities of production and how they guide development. Ideal for those interested in pursuing a career as a producer or anyone curious about what producers do.

Jim Rivers

Don't Give Me a Reason to Reject You: A Recruiter's Perspective

Time: Sunday, 2PM.

Jim Rivers is a Senior Recruiter at Blind Squirrel Games. He began his profession as a Career Services Advisor for the Art Institute of Orange County. Since 2008, he has worked exclusively in the gaming industry, working his way up to Senior Recruiter with Blind Squirrel Games. Jim has a diverse background in staffing and recruiting with experience in full-cycle recruitment, employment improvement, best hiring practices, sourcing candidates both domestic and abroad, college relations, community work, and convention planning. Jim prides himself on being a committed recruiter but also a teacher. In addition to his extensive background, he is an enthusiastic speaker who focuses on teaching the fundamentals of career development to both college graduates entering the workforce for the first time and anyone in need of a refresher course or assistance. Jim Rivers talks about best practices on how to get recruited into the games industry. What to do, what not to do, and advice on resumes and interviewing for college students looking to enter the field.