Industry Talks

Leene is an indie game developer, artist and graphic designer from Estonia, known mostly for her work at Placeholder Gameworks as creative lead on the game Death and Taxes. She is really excited about everything indie, coherent visual styles, putting the fun into marketing, meaningful game ideas, and cats. Her goal in life is to see people vomit rainbows from looking at her art when she's 80.

Thorsten S. Wiedemann is founder and artistic director of A MAZE.. Under this label, he produces and curates international festivals, exhibitions and workshops at the intersection of games, games culture, digital arts and playful media. With A MAZE. / Berlin, he created international festivals to present arthouse games, playful media and alternative games culture. He generates new and controversial formats (e.g. A MAZE. Magazine, A MAZE. Pop-ups, A MAZE. / SPACE, A MAZE. Train Jam) and provides room for experimentation and exchange. Since 2012, Thorsten has established the A MAZE. Awards, which go to artistic games in six categories. His focus is on the interdisciplinary and diverse discourse about the media of the 21st century, and in filling the gaps between playful media, art and technology. During his Disconnected performance, he also spent 48hrs immersed in virtual reality! Thorsten currently he lives and works in Berlin.

You probably know Oleg (Olle) from his work at Unity or King, now you gotta love him as the founder of http://Gamedev.Camp – an educational online camp for game developers

Faezeh is a game designer, writer and storyteller with a passion for games that leave a meaningful impact on us. As part of the indie team Team Lucky Dice, she has helped to create and publish several games on itch.io since 2015, as well as designing board games and writing interactive stories, including "A Rejection Story".

Aley is an interactive playable experience designer who focuses on creating immersive AR/VR and mixed reality experiences. He believes in the power of harnessing skills and knowledge from various fields, that all knowledge is interconnected, and a multidisciplinary education can provide access to different paradigms and mindsets that can help in gaining distinctive perspectives on the world. Motivated by these beliefs, he pursued a double major in Computer Engineering and Graphic Design, as well as a minor in Mathematics, at the American University in Cairo (AUC), Egypt. He then went on to earn an MA in Independent Games and Playable Experience Design at Goldsmiths University, London, UK. My work revolves around exploring the accessibility of knowledge in relation to power. I consider myself as an emotional designer and I try to channel my personal experiences, thoughts and emotions in my projects. Aside from design and technology, I am an independent musician. I have been working for a couple of years now on my debut arabic album which is called "Rasayel - رسايل" set to be released in 2022.

Paweł Szarzyński is a director, animator, graphic designer and co-founder of the Kilku design collective. He previously served as head of animation and post-production at Saatchi and Saatchi, and has worked with companies such as Prodigious, FCB, National Geographic and the Discovery Channel. A winner of European Design Awards and the Polish Graphic Design Award, he has taught at the Warsaw School of Photography and Graphic Design.

Discussion moderator. A veteran technology journalist and avid games fan, creator of podcasts and radio shows.

In his professional life, Karolis is a software engineer at a large company. His free time is dedicated to creating indie games, such as Desert of Vice, Ladderhead and upcoming Strange Aeons.

Ole Wendorff-Østergaard has wide experience in co-production and film finance from films such as “Antichrist” by Lars von Trier, “The Model” by Mads Matthisen, and “Another Day of Life”. From 2007 to 2010, Ole was a financial producer at Zentropa in Denmark. Ole has co-produced with the following countries: France, Spain, Belgium, Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, UK, Hungary and Germany. After moving to Poland in 2008, he started up Zentropa International Poland and worked as Delegate Producer for Platige Image until the completion of the animated feature “Another Day of Life”. The film premiered in the official selection of Cannes 2018, and won the Audience Award at San Sebastian IFF, as well as European producer of the year Cartoon Movie. Another Day of Life also won the EFA's European Animation Film award. Ole is currently back in Denmark, where he works at the Danish Film Institute as producer for fiction film, and production consultant for the Public Service Fund, which supports TV series.

In 2008, Antanas graduated from the Vilnius Academy of Fine Arts with a Master of Arts. His diploma was based on Lithuanian mythological beings (mitologija.lt). Antanas' filmography includes "Copy of Paste" (2006), a humorous movie about computer icons living their lives in a computer world and "Nebaigta pasaka" (Unfinished Story, 2007), about the massive die-off of a beehive. He worked with his professor Ilja Bereznickas, on the movie Cyber Pirate. He is currently working on the movies "Vaikystes dienorastis" (director and animator) and "The Vanishing of the Bees"(artist, animator). Antanas worked for a number of commercials, including those of national TV channel, Baltijos TV, for the 2005/2006 season. He also made video installations for local pop-group Saulės Kliošas for their participation at the national Eurovision Contest.