GameDev Unsung Heroes

Alyssa Finley is another one of those names that most won't have heard of - unless you are actively in the industry, in which case you definitely will have -, but she's more than made her presence felt in the games industry. Producer to some of the biggest names - Bioshock, Walking Dead, Batman Telltale games, Tales of the Borderlands, to name a few. She's quite the powerhouse and example to us all!

The producer behind oh so many hits of the early 2000's - Spiderman, for Activision, being one highlight. He's done so many interesting things, and he's not stopping now!Chris' resume reads like a list of games everyone has played. Ultimate Spiderman, Medal of Honor, The Evil Within, Archangel, NHL2K3 - the list just goes on. Plus a stint as an executive at Skydance - one very accomplished game dev executive.

DJ has been around games for sometime, and worked on some big titles as a VFX artist, and chances are, you've seen his work somewhere. DJ has been involved in games like Halo, a bunch of the Call of Duty Games, and most recently has a whole slew of games his company have created the VFX for, like Starfield, Doom Dark Ages and Star Wars - Jedi Survivor. So come learn about him - he's an incredible and unique character!

Matt Pritchard, late of Ensemble and Valve, has had a varied career, with lots of ups and downs, and work on some major titles - Counter strike 2, Portal 2, Brothers in Arms, Left for Dead, and of course, almost all the Age of series. Sometimes he got to work twice on the same game, but with a 30 year gap! Hear lots of tales of the making of the Age of Empires titles, among other things!

Simon Cooke, originally of Your Sinclair magazine, show runner for XFest and now of Google, talks about how he came to be a developer, his life in Seattle, and good hangover cures.Simon is one of those developers who tends to stay in the background, but I can guarantee that almost any gamer has seen his work. When working at ATG, his influence and expertise allowed many XBox games to ship better than they ever would have been, and now he's doing the same thing at Google, for Android.

Industry legend that is Tony Barnes chats about his life in games, how he came to start, where he's been and where he's going. And wherever it is, it's going to be pretty fast, given the kinds of car this man drives!Tony has been in games so long, he doesn't remember a time he _wasn't_ in games. And he's got some pretty hefty titles under his belt to prove it - Strider, Waking Mars, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, New Worlds. I could go on but I've about run out of spa