The Party Is Full: Inside the Games Industry

Emer Tanciatco is a senior game art leader and consultant with nearly two decades of experience guiding art production across some of PlayStation’s most recognised titles. Over more than 16 years at Sony Interactive Entertainment, he worked as a Lead Artist and later Art Supervisor, helping teams establish pipelines, visual standards, documentation, and co-development workflows across internal stu...

Shobek is a Classic World of Warcraft streamer best known for his immersive, anime-influenced roleplay and his deep love of WoW. He grew up gaming from the Sega Dreamcast era into Vanilla WoW, and after years of dreaming about it, he went all in on streaming in 2016, committing his entire twenties to the craft. The breakthrough took time, roughly seven years of living lean and refining his voice,...

Dead Space creator Glenn Schofield on building unforgettable horror, surviving AAA development, and why he's betting on AI.Glenn Schofield is one of the most influential creative leaders in modern video games, with a career spanning art, production, studio leadership, and game direction. He's best known as the creator and executive producer of Dead Space, one of the most celebrated horror...

Shahar Sorek and Francisco “Sandi” Montaño represent two complementary sides of the modern gaming creator economy: the platform-builder and the breakout creator. Sorek is the Chief Marketing Officer at Overwolf, the Tel Aviv-based “guild for in-game creators” that helps developers, modders, and UGC creators build, distribute, and monetize in-game apps, mods, and player-made experiences. In his rol...

Matt Gordon is a veteran graphics and systems engineer whose career spans some of the most technically ambitious areas of modern gaming and interactive technology. Starting as a graphics programmer at PlayStation before joining Microsoft, Matt played a key role in graphics emulation, GPU optimization, and the foundational architecture behind xCloud game streaming. His work helped bridge Xbox hard...

Hannes Seifert is a veteran game developer and executive whose career spans nearly four decades across some of the industry’s most influential studios and franchises. Starting with his first Commodore 64 game in 1987, Hannes went on to co-found neo Software, which later became Rockstar Vienna following its acquisition by Take-Two Interactive. Over the years, he has held leadership roles across Roc...

Rachit Moti is the founder and CEO of Accord, a platform helping game studios turn Discord conversations into actionable player insight. Over the last several years, he has worked closely with game developers and online communities to better understand how player sentiment, feedback, and behavior shape live service games. His work focuses on bridging the gap between fast-moving player communities...

Scott Hartsman is a veteran game developer and executive whose career spans nearly four decades of online worlds and MMORPGs. Beginning in the era of text-based MUDs in the 1980s, Scott went on to hold key leadership roles on landmark online games including EverQuest, EverQuest II, RIFT, Trove, and ArcheAge. He served as Technical Director on EverQuest and EverQuest II before becoming Executive Pr...

David Fried, also known as DesignerDave, is a veteran game and narrative designer best known for his work at Blizzard Entertainment during one of its most influential eras. Starting in quality assurance, he quickly moved into design, contributing to titles like Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition and Diablo II before stepping into level and campaign design on Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and Warcraft...

In this TPIF roundtable, three experienced leaders break down how the role has evolved beyond “just communication.” Evan Berman (Bungie, Destiny), Linda Carlson (Everquest, Trion Worlds), and Stephen Reid (BioWare, SWTOR, PlayStation, 2K) bring decades of experience running MMO and live service communities at scale. Together, they explore why community management today looks more like governance t...

Leon Beilmann, also known as LAxemann, is a senior sound designer and composer working with Bohemia Interactive, where he has spent the past several years shaping the audio experience of large-scale military sandbox games like Arma Reforger and the upcoming Arma 4. His work spans the full spectrum of game audio, from field recording and sound design to system implementation and scripting within th...

Colan Neese is a gaming industry insights and strategy leader who has spent his career helping companies understand how games are discovered, played, and sustained. He currently works across Screen Engine and mindGAME Data, where he leads commercial and strategic efforts to turn complex market and audience data into clear, actionable insight for game studios of all sizes. Previously, Colan held se...

Bastien Gerner is a Foley artist, sound designer, and educator with more than a decade of experience creating immersive audio for films, television, and AAA video games. After working across the film sound industry and spending several years as a Senior Foley Artist at Ubisoft Düsseldorf, Bastien developed a reputation for crafting highly detailed, custom sound effects that bring worlds and charac...

Demo Akuro is a game trailer and cinematic director specializing in high-impact, in-engine storytelling for games. With a background in both creative direction and hands-on production, he has built a reputation for blending gameplay and cinematic techniques into cohesive, emotionally engaging trailers. His work spans capture, editing, sound design, and real-time cinematics, often created within en...

Ahmpy is a World of Warcraft streamer best known for his leadership in the Hardcore WoW scene, where high stakes gameplay and permadeath redefine what it means to succeed in an MMO. As a guild leader and strategist, he has been at the forefront of world first Hardcore raiding, coordinating large groups of players through meticulous planning, deep game knowledge, and disciplined execution. His appr...

James Brooksby is a veteran game studio founder and CEO with over 25 years of experience building, scaling, and leading development teams across the UK games industry. He played a pivotal role in the early growth of Kuju Entertainment, helping it scale to around 350 staff, before going on to found and lead multiple studios including doublesix, Born Ready Games, and Edge Case Games. Across premium,...

Joni Lappalainen is the CEO and co-founder of Dreamloop Games, widely known as Finland’s console experts. Over the past decade, he has produced more than 30 shipped game projects and helped over 40 studios successfully bring their titles to PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and PC. As Creative Director and Writing Lead on Inescapable: No Rules, No Rescue, Joni combines hands-on development exper...

Mark Chen is a games and media scholar, UX researcher, and Teaching Assistant Professor in Media, Technology, and Learning Design at Appalachian State University. His work explores gaming culture, interaction design, qualitative research, and internet studies, with a particular focus on how people learn, collaborate, and form meaning inside online worlds. Mark is the author of Leet Noobs, an ethno...

Eric McConnell is a product leader working at the intersection of games, media, and business. He is currently a Senior Product Manager at Amazon, where he leads engagement and retention strategy for digital manga across Japan and international markets. Over his career, Eric has worked across games and platforms at companies including Amazon Games, EA Sports, Jackbox Games, Warner Bros. Games, Goog...

What does game design actually mean in 2026. This TPIF roundtable brings together three experienced design leaders who have built and shipped games across multiple eras of the industry. Hal Sandbach is a veteran design director and former Head of Design at d3t, with a career spanning from Psygnosis and Codemasters through to Sony and Evolution Studios. Nigel Kershaw is Director at Wushu Studios wi...

Jack Emmert is a veteran game developer and studio leader best known for his foundational work in the MMORPG genre. As a co founder and long time leader at Cryptic Studios, Jack played a central role in shaping some of the most influential online worlds of the last two decades, including City of Heroes, Star Trek Online, and Neverwinter. Over the course of his career, he has worn many hats ranging...

Somer Esat is a senior engineering leader with over 12 years of experience building and scaling high performing engineering organizations in the games industry. He spent a decade at Blizzard Entertainment as Senior Engineering Manager on Overwatch and Overwatch 2, where he helped grow the engineering organization from roughly 35 to over 65 engineers while supporting a globally loved live service f...

Richard Browne is a veteran games industry executive with over 35 years of experience spanning game development, publishing, transmedia, and business leadership. His career has evolved alongside the industry itself, from the early days of console and PC development through to modern live services, digital distribution, and global publishing. Over the decades, Richard has helped bring dozens of gam...

Xaryu "Josh Lujan" is a veteran World of Warcraft creator, PvP competitor, and streamer best known for his mastery of Mage gameplay and deep understanding of MMO systems. He began playing during the original Classic era and rose to prominence through high level Arena competition, earning multiple Rank One titles. During the early growth of Twitch, Xaryu built a following by streaming competitive P...

Greg Street is a veteran game designer and studio leader with more than two decades of experience shaping some of the most influential games and online worlds in the industry. He was recently the Studio Head and Game Director at Fantastic Pixel Castle, a fully remote AAA MMORPG studio backed by NetEase, leading the development on a new MMO project codenamed Ghost. Greg is best known for his time a...