program
2025
saturday
06.12
09:00
Arrival & coffee
09:30
Welcome & seating
10:00
How I figured out what I want to be when I grow up
A playful and unconventional approach to presentations, by replacing traditional slides with a custom-designed game – turning the talk itself into an interactive and gameful experience. The content explores my journey towards realising that I want to be an experience designer. It highlights how I began to narrow down where I fit within the game design industry, and how my past experiences, from chemical engineering to photography, played a part in shaping the current path I am on. More than just a talk, this is a designed experience – because as an experience designer, I couldn’t have done it any other way.
Ammaarah Noormohamed
Ammaarah began her journey as an aspiring chemical engineer, but soon realised that she wanted to focus on more creative exploits. This led her to pursue a degree in Digital Arts at the University of the Witwatersrand, where she later stayed on as a tutor and Master’s student. Her academic research focused on thematic integration in board game design — exploring how mechanics and theme can work in harmony to create a unique experience.
Though no longer in academia, she briefly lectured an Android development course at Vega before transitioning into the games industry. She now works as a QA tester at 24 Bit Games, steadily carving out her path toward the title she feels most drawn to: experience designer. Ammaarah is also part of the current team behind the Campus Game Jam.
10:30
Filling the Emptiness: how to turn a blank page into a world and find meaning along the way
Jon Keevy has always been known for his peculiar imagination. Turns out it was undiagnosed mental illness, but that’s not what this talk is really about. This talk is really about making sense of worlds that don’t exist by discovering the wonder of the one that does. It’s about using research and fantasy to fuel creativity. And it’s about the enormous horrible incredible dull task of living between what is and what isn’t.
Jon Keevy
Keevy is known for Genital Jousting (and the game of the same title), a novel you should read (The Unwoven Warrior), and for never reusing a bio.
10:45
90%+ Positive by Design
The speaker will explain how the Steam User Score is predictable and manageable. Their track record improved from an average of 75% to an average of 94% positive. By carefully focusing on aspects that affect the User Score, you can boost your chances of receiving positive reviews and avoid common negative review pitfalls. Some features impact the User Score more than others. The speaker will share the lessons they learned and help you achieve similar results.
Kacper Szymczak
Kacper is the CEO of Artificer, a Devolver Digital Group studio. Creative Director of MINOS, Sumerian Six, Showgunners; Lead Designer of Phantom Doctrine and Hard West; a game designer with 20 years of industry experience.
11:10
Tech-Art in Start Ups
Throughout my years working as a Technical Artist in a country where the industry is in its early phase. I have found myself often recreating the similar shaders, VFX types, editor tools and HLSL scripts because of slight differences in workflows and game genres. However, the more I make the more I realize the similarities, the same starting points. And thus, set to develop a suite that covers a lot of these for myself, start-ups or rapidly prototyping teams. It is meant to save time on set up and amplify refinement in my practice. This document serves to compile my findings and contribute to the knowledge pool accessible to my field from a technical artist’s perspective.
Homolang Marule
I am a Technical Artist that enjoys solving cross field issues as much as creating dev tools and enabling art direction. The best times are when the work involves a bit of VFX, Programming, Render Pipelines & Art, requiring me to be innovative in delivering visual solutions or realizing visions.
I believe art direction and stylization have a bigger impact on visual appeal of a game than realism. If you are looking for custom lighting, editor and design tools, water behaviors, unorthodox pixel styles, 2D+3D hybrid shading styles, Niagra systems, simple particles, VFX graphs, HLSL I’m the guy for that. Game Design is a core pillar in my skill sets as it feeds the feel of my creations very intimately.
11:30
So you can't afford a producer
Tips for a smoother development cycle for small teams that don’t have a full time spreadsheet and Jira nerd.
Bridie Roman
Bridie is a Senior Producer at Devolver Digital working on a variety of games, some of which have even been released (The Talos Principle 2, Minos, The Dungeon Experience, Stick it to the Stickman). She is responsible for bringing people together to organise the release of a game, working closely with her developers to ensure that the team feels supported, and has everything they need to make a great game. This often involves a lot of time looking at Spreadsheets or Jira.
11:55
Hands Free: A History of Accessible Alt Ctrls
VR headsets, dual thumbsticks, mice and keyboards, smartphone screens—standard interfaces structure the way we design games and the way we play games, from the earliest project pitches to a product’s advertising platforms. But what if instead of “universal” designs targeting generic technologies and normative players, games were made for specific people with specific bodies and specific ways of playing? This presentation begins with a brisk survey of the history of hands-free videogame interfaces—from Reg Maling’s POSSUM in 1961 to Ken Yankelevitz’s QuadStick in 1981 to Microsoft’s Adaptive Controller in 2018—before comparing and contrasting two devices that articulate two different design philosophies: Nintendo’s NES Hands Free and the Octopad. Rather than thinking about accessibility as a single-player problem, these controllers engage the social, political, and environmental aspects of videogames to change the way we play.
Patrick LeMieux & Stephanie Boluk
Patrick LeMieux is a media artist, game designer, and associate professor in the Cinema and Digital Media Department at the University of California, Davis. His research and teaching engage game studies, media theory, and art practice to explore the material practices and community histories of play, from speedrunning and esports to installation art and alternative control. Alongside writing, his art and games have been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world, from the Smithsonian Museum of American Art and MoMA PS1 to Babycastles and BarSK. He is the producer of Every Game in This City, a podcast on the Idle Thumbs Network, and is currently developing a series of small metagames like Triforce, a topological transformation of The Legend of Zelda, and the Octopad, an eight-player controller for the Nintendo Entertainment System. For more information visit patrick-lemieux.com.
Stephanie Boluk is an associate professor who plays, makes, and writes about games in the English Department and Cinema and Digital Media Department at University of California, Davis. Her work incorporates game studies, media theory, and political economy to explore the relationship between leisure and labor in the post-2008 global economy. She is the co-author of Metagaming: Playing, Competing, Spectating, Trading, Making, and Breaking Videogames (2017) with Patrick LeMieux and co-editor of The Electronic Literature Collection, Vol. 3 (2016). She has published articles in numerous venues ranging from Digital Humanities Quarterly, ROMChip and Leonardo Electronic Almanac to Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies and Extrapolation. For more information see stephanieboluk.com.
12:20
Crafting an authentic career
Award-winning watercolour artist Iris Compiet traces her career path, its ups and downs, and her current trajectory. Discussing the importance of authenticity in your art.
Iris Compiet
Iris Compiet is a traditional artist and Illustrator from the Netherlands. She is the illustrator of The Dark Crystal Bestiary, winner of the 2020 Jack Gaughan Award for Best Emerging Artist, and a 2020 nominee for the Chesley Award for Best Gaming Related Illustration.
She is the illustrator of The Star Wars Bestiary vol1, The Labyrinth Bestiary, and most recently, winner of the 2021 Chesley Award for Best Interior Art for The Dark Crystal. Iris’s work has appeared in numerous publications including Spectrum, Infected by Art, ImagineFX, and 3D Total. Some of her other clients include Wizards of the Coast and Netflix, and her art has appeared in publications around the world. In her recent work Faeries of the Faultlines Iris guides readers through a world of fantastical creatures from beyond the veil.
13:05
LUNCH
14:00
You Don’t Watch the Future. You Wear It.
I’ve got the only pair of Snapchat AR Spectacles on the African continent!
Not to flex. To experiment. To storytell. To rewire how we see and shape the world.
VR? That’s cool. But isolating. Mounting a screen on your face and escaping reality? That’s not where the masses are.
AR? That’s different. It adds to our world. Layer by layer.
In just five minutes, I’ll show you how these glasses can gamify daily life, turn the streets into storyboards, and put the power of immersive storytelling in your hands.
From working with NGOs to design impact-driven experiences, to imagining indie games that unfold as you walk, breathe, and move.
I’ll show you how the real game isn’t in the headset. It’s out here. With us.
With creators who want to be inside the story, not just behind it.
Nella Etkind
Nella Etkind is a visionary digital storyteller, creative strategist, and member of the Snapchat Lens Network. As one of the first creatives on the African continent experimenting with wearable AR, she is at the frontier of immersive media—where narrative, technology, and humanity collide. Nella is not a content creator; she’s a content alchemist, using gamified storytelling to elevate voices and spark impact. Her work bridges platforms and communities, blending clarity, creativity, and radical honesty. At the intersection of play, politics, and possibility, she’s reimagining what stories can do and how we live inside them.
14:25
State of the Game Industry 2025
This presentation explores the current state of the game industry in 2025, navigating the inherent tensions between massive growth and economic instability. Attendees will gain insights into the key trends shaping the industry, examining how studios are adapting through strategic cost reduction, efficient tool adoption, and innovative approaches to game development, including AI integration and evolving multiplayer experiences. The talk will also cover critical considerations such as platform prioritization, the demand for larger game experiences, and emerging market opportunities, concluding with predictions for the industry’s future trajectory
Mike Geig
Mike is the Principal Advocate at Unity Technologies, where his passion for educating and inspiring creators can shine. Prior to joining Unity in 2013, he experienced life through the lens of an indie game dev, a university educator, and even briefly as a wedding DJ. A gamer at heart, Mike loves being an Advocate because he gets to build awesome and absurd Unity projects while making game development fun and accessible for everyone. His favorite questions are ones that make him say, “Wow, I have no idea… let’s find out!”
14:50
Level Up Together: Boot Camps for Consistent Game Design
When your game’s mechanics allow for wildly different play styles, how do you keep your level design consistent and cohesive? On one of my recent projects, we faced this exact challenge – multiple designers, multiple design philosophies, and a system flexible enough to make entirely different types of levels. Our solution was to break away from day-to-day production and run intensive “Game Design Boot Camps” – short, structured sprints focused entirely on design alignment. In this talk, I’ll share how we used boot camps to rapidly prototype ideas on paper, classify challenges into a library for puzzles and traversal challenges, and establish a shared language for level design. You’ll walk away with practical techniques for facilitating alignment, fostering creativity, and setting design guidelines before opening your level editor.
Riker
Henrike Lode (aka Riker) is a narrative game designer obsessed with mechanical storytelling, diegesis, and transformative text. Riker is Game Director at All Day All Night and previously served as Lead Game Designer on Nyamakop’s Relooted. Riker has lectured game design at universities in South Africa and Europe, holds a Master’s degree in Game Design, and have participated in 40 game jams, including co-organizing the Nordic Game Jam for five years.
15:15
The Art of Community: Creating Connection Across Digital and IRL Spaces
Whether online or in real life, the power of community allows us to be seen, heard, and most significantly, feel connected to something bigger than ourselves. In a time where our attention is focused on the individual, communities allow us to focus on broader initiatives and collective action toward shared goals, driving positive impact on society as a whole.
The Art of Community explores the journey of crafting community-oriented spaces across digital and IRL spaces that foster a greater sense of well-being, engagement, belonging, and meaningful connection. Drawing on experiences in gaming, conventions, activations, and hybrid events, this talk will demonstrate how to build community, establish foundational value pillars, and cultivate trust across diverse platforms, regions, and cultures. Attendees will gain practical strategies to design experiences that empower participants, encourage collaboration, and create ecosystems that persist beyond a single event or game.
By blending theory, real-world examples, and actionable insights, this session reveals how creators can harness the power of community to design inclusive, enduring, and impactful experiences that unite people across digital and physical spaces.
Seth Smith
Seth S. Smith is a Trinbagonian-American writer and game designer who champions diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging through art, entertainment, and technology.
As an independent game designer, he creates immersive worlds and experiences that authentically reflect faith and celebrate the richness of cultures across the world, while designing systems that foster healthy player-to-player interactions.
He is the founder, curator, and moderator of www.helloworldmixer.com, an inclusive social mixer for anyone seeking to support representation and connection in tech and entertainment. Seth is also the founder, creative director, and resident DJ of @dreambashworld, a vibrant, empowering space for eclectic fans of Afrobeats, Amapiano, Soca, Dancehall, R&B, Hip Hop, gaming, anime, cosplay, and art.
As the DJ and music artist SNDSMTH, Seth blends elements from diverse art forms and experiences to craft unforgettable, immersive vibes in every medium he engages with.
Through his work, Seth designs and curates experiences that bring communities together, amplify underrepresented voices, and create meaningful connections across digital and real-world spaces.
15:50
The A MAZE. Hyper Talks hosted by Ben Myers
The dangers of Scope Creep: 5-year game project autopsy
Talk about a game project that was done with 2 friends (it was the 3rd game we had attempted), and how it went on for 5 years before dying off due to scope creep. Then how i used all the art assets i created to build my personal channel and itch.io art asset packs.
SP van der Merwe
SP is a self-taught pixel and comic artist who used to be a qualified mechanical engineer before delving into the artistic side of life. He’s always been making stuff with friends, from comics to indie games, and is currently working on his own little side project indie game called “Lira the Shieldmaiden”.
Can We Stop Climate Change By Making Video Games?
In this talk, I’ll present some of the initial findings from my ongoing research into the intersections between climate change and video games. In particular, I will be discussing the ways that video games can contribute towards global human efforts to solve the issue of climate change and global warming. I’ll make mention of activist or “impact” games, as well as AAA games, but for this talk my focus will be on indie video games. The talk will be presented in the format of making cases for and against video games as a ‘solution’ to climate change.
The argument for how video games can and do contribute centres on their value as artistic and cultural works made by very passionate people with something to say about the world. Games also engage and immerse players powerfully, and can help them understand climate change and the biosphere in new ways. I’ll share some examples of indie games that I think offer some hope in the face of overwhelming environmental catastrophe.
However, these productive aspects of games are compromised by the material realities required to play games. Significant consumption of electricity and rare minerals and emissions of carbon are a core part of the games industry. Although indie developers are certainly responsible for substantially fewer emissions than AAA studios, the energy and mineral requirements for video games can’t be overlooked or hand-waved away. I’ll share a case study from an indie studio that tracked their carbon emissions, and some resources meant to help other indie studios do the same.
Finally, I’ll share an optimistic summary of the whole thing. Climate change is a bummer, but it doesn’t have to be immobilising. Video games are powerful and special things, and more games in the world can only be a good thing. I’ll urge game developers to keep doing what they’re doing – making great games – but with some more consideration for sustainability.
Elle Fieggen
I am a writer, programmer, and fledgling academic based in Cape Town. I initially studied Computer Science and English Literature at university, before working as a game and software developer for four years. I am now doing my Master’s at Stellenbosch University, funded by the Mellon Foundation. I chose to return to studying so that I could do research about how video games can contribute towards global, human efforts to stop climate change. I also foolishly thought studying would give me some free time to make my own games.
Currently, in between writing my dissertation and free-lance programming, I am working haphazardly on a novel and several nonsensical pen-and-paper games. Very occasionally, I even find the time to play video games.
Games as Living Archives of Memory and Resistance
What if a game wasn’t just a place to escape into, but a place to remember? What if digital worlds could hold memory the way our communities do, with care, complexity, and resistance against erasure?
Ties is a proof-of-concept project we’re shaping to explore these questions. Inspired by Cape Town’s District Six, once a vibrant, multi-racial neighbourhood destroyed under apartheid’s forced removals, Ties asks: what happens if we rebuild that memory in digital form, not as a static museum piece, but as a living, playable archive?
Games present a unique opportunity here. They are not static records; they are interactive, narrative-driven, and player-centred. They allow us to navigate painful histories through play, to reimagine silenced voices, and to invite collective authorship. With Ties, we envision a future where heritage is mapped as a global collective, where communities across the world can use play to preserve their own stories, shift who holds the pen of history, and make archives that are alive, diverse, and resistant to erasure.
In this session, technologist Lisa Adams and archaeologist/digital anthropologist Lauren Powell will share the sentiment and vision of Ties, and invite creators to see games as powerful acts of remembrance, resistance, and liberation.
Lisa Adams & Lauren Powell
Lisa Adams is the Founder of Citizen Code, a Cape Town–based technology collective that builds inclusive, feminist digital systems for underserved communities across Africa and Asia. Over the past 15 years, she has led projects at the intersection of technology, justice, and culture, from low-data health and education platforms to large-scale AI-driven youth ecosystems. She also serves as Director of Technology & Product at Girl Effect, where she shapes digital strategy and infrastructure for platforms that reach millions of adolescent girls across the Global South.
Named one of Africa’s Inspiring Fifty Women in Tech, Lisa has spoken on global stages including the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, the Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI), and Games for Change Africa. Her practice is rooted in feminist technology leadership, trauma-informed design, and an insistence that digital futures must be co-authored by the communities they affect.
Lauren Powell is a South African archaeologist, paleoanthropologist, and digital anthropologist whose work bridges deep human history with contemporary digital futures. Her research spans human migration, admixture, and tool-making, tracing the story of how technology has always been part of what makes us human. As a coloured woman from Cape Town, Lauren’s work is also deeply personal: she explores how heritage, displacement, and survival can be honoured and reimagined in new digital forms.
Through Ties, Citizen Code’s heritage initiative, Lauren investigates how games and immersive technologies can act as living archives of memory and resistance, beginning with the erased histories of District Six. By combining archaeological insight with digital anthropology, she challenges how history is recorded and by whom, and explores how play can become a radical act of remembrance.
Making Games in the Attention Economy
We’re all making games in the Attention Economy whether we like it or not. As creators we have ethical obligations to our players, especially in South Africa, which has recently been ranked as the country with the highest average screen time in the world. We need to care about time, and consumer culture. Even if we like to think we’re just peddling fun, the transaction doesn’t end when the player buys the game.
Bracken Hall
Bracken (he/him) took a frolic through the lovely field of game design on his way to becoming a science teacher. In the field, he came across a group of goblins, who tricked him and made him lose his way. Then, he stumbled upon a witch and he asked her for directions, but she put a spell on him and now he cannot stop frolicking. For 11 years he has been cursed to be involved in game design, education, and community building. He is currently based in Johannesburg, where he spends his days remote-frolicking with Clockwork Acorn. When the sun sets, the curse is temporarily lifted, and he is able to spend his nights teaching in peace.
Making Sense Backwards
Every player is a storyteller after the fact. This micro-talk shows how the brain turns scattered gameplay into narrative gist – how coherence is built backwards from experience – and what that means for designing games that live on in memory rather than on a tabletop or screen.
David Backwell
Dr David Backwell is a medical doctor and cognitive systems consultant based in Cape Town, whose work explores how the mind constructs meaning.
He is the founder of Triliteral, a consulting practice that helps leaders and teams think more clearly by applying ideas from cognitive neuroscience, systems theory, and cybernetics. He also runs The Mental Spectacle, a weekly Substack on how we make sense of the world, and maintains a clinical practice focused on cognitive restructuring, adjustment, and insomnia.
In his work, David explores how experience becomes story, and story becomes identity.
16:45
Beyond Mass Distribution: Putting the Game Dev Back in the Proverbial Box
In 2014, I published motion control game Johann Sebastian Joust as part of Sportsfriends, a collection of local multiplayer games for PS3, PS4, and home computers. One advantage of a game like J.S. Joust, which makes use of existing commercial hardware, is that it can be relatively easily shared around the world, without specific installation requirements. However, over time, I grew to resent that aspect of the piece, and more specifically, the often-assumed ideal of low-friction distribution. In this talk, I want to question this product-centric way of thinking about game making that pervades so much normative “design” wisdom. I’ll talk about how my ongoing, ever-evolving installation piece Canopy Co-op (formerly “Edgar Rice Journey”) is partly a response to my prior work. Taking influences from dance, theater, and media art, I’ll explain how and why I inserted myself into the game, as a form of performance. At stake here are questions of who exactly are we making games for and what design possibilities get left behind when we assume the goal is to “go infinite” – to distribute an .exe file, via some storefront, to as many strangers as possible. In addition to talking about my own work, I’ll discuss a variety of other games (some non-commercial, some commercial) that re-imagine distribution in inspiring ways.
Doug Wilson
Douglas Wilson lives in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia, where he is a Senior Lecturer at the RMIT University School of Design. Doug was previously a co-owner of Die Gute Fabrik, where he worked on a number of commercial videogames including Johann Sebastian Joust, Sportsfriends, Mutazione, and Saltsea Chronicles. These days Doug is collaborating with comedian Melissa McGlensey on a variety of playable theater projects, including their most recent clown show, Mel McGlensey is NORMAL. He is also a co-host of the podcast Eggplant: The Secret Lives of Games.