ustwo games was born in 2012 inside ustwo studios, a digital design agency in East London. Fourteen years later, they have carved their path as an independent company and a certified B-Corp. Their award-winning games like the Monument Valley series and the inspiring eco-adventure Alba: A Wildlife Adventure, have reached millions of players worldwide.

In this fireside chat, Maria Sayans, CEO, Daniel Gray, Chief Creative Officer, and Peter Pashley, Chief Development Officer, will discuss the origins of the studio and how they’ve made games with a lasting impact.

They’ve spent years crafting interactive, memorable moments that not only entertain but also make a difference. In the current climate, this is a success story we need to hear.

Maria Sayans
ustwo

Daniel Gray
ustwo

Peter Pashley
ustwo

The classic detective story starts with them exploring the scene and collecting evidence, and ends with the detective sitting in their chair, smoking a pipe and piecing it all together. This talk explains how inkle's breakout mystery game TR-49 takes a different approach that puts the deduction step first, by turning the puzzle process from a quiz about the evidence that can only end in a tick and a new puzzle into the way the player explores the "map" of the game, opening new "locations" by the deductions they make: which in turn allows us to make space for the deeper mysteries, with less clear-cut answers, that bring the game to life.

Session Takeaway

• A different model for deduction mechanics; moving from quizzes to exploration.
• Examples drawn from our recent release, TR-49, of how we did this in practice.
• Pros and cons for this design strategy.

Jon Ingold
inkle

As John Lasseter put it, “Quality is the best business plan”. This sounds simple enough, the higher the Quality of our project, the more successful it will be, right? Yet in an ever-evolving industry, with myriad competing considerations, how do we go about achieving quality? By what standards do we go about defining and subsequently strategize achieving it?

Games industry veteran Erol Kentli delves into the varied considerations, including:

• Visual style and target platform
• To the relationship between scope and finesse
• The impact of autonomy and team engagement
• The perspectives of the development team & the qualitative expectations of the buying public, and how these might differ
• Establishing quality benchmarks, whilst simultaneously front-loading performance testing
• How we might apply a variety of established creative and management methodologies to the realm of visual beauty with a view to strategizing success!

Session Takeaway

• Insight into considerations around what Quality is, how it is perceived & the benefits of pursuing it.
• How we can strategically plan & scope for Quality.
• How we jolly-well achieve Quality!

Erol Kentli
Flix Interactive

The new UK Employment Rights Act represents one of the most significant shifts in employment protection in recent years, with shorter qualifying periods for unfair dismissal and increased scrutiny on hiring decisions. For employers, this means that recruitment mistakes will carry risk much earlier in the employment lifecycle.

This session explores how hiring processes must evolve to remain effective, defensible, and fair under the new legal landscape. Liz Prince will break down what the changes mean in practice for employers, particularly around selection criteria, interviews, probationary periods, and decision-making documentation.

Attendees will gain a clear understanding of why traditional informal or ‘culture-fit’ driven hiring approaches may no longer be sufficient, and how to build structured, evidence-based recruitment processes that reduce legal exposure while still supporting great hires. The session focuses on practical steps organisations can take now to future-proof their hiring, from redefining role requirements to improving assessment methods and record-keeping.

Designed for leaders, HR professionals, and hiring managers, this talk provides actionable guidance to help studios continue hiring with confidence in a tighter, faster-moving employment law environment.

Session Takeaway

• Understand how the new Employment Rights Act changes hiring risk and timelines.
• Learn how to structure recruitment and selection to reduce unfair dismissal exposure.
• Take away practical steps to improve interviews, assessments, and hiring records.

Liz Prince
Amiqus

This session will explore how a small team from Formula 1 game series developed a lightweight yet dynamic objectives system that provides players with contextual goals and feedback during races, meaning to help players tangibly improve their racing performance while feeling fun and authentic to Formula 1.

The talk will include concrete implementation examples with gameplay footage and behind-the-scenes formulas as well as highlighting challenges, performance considerations, and insights into how the team integrated voice acting to create an immersive experience that feels natural within a racing game.

Session Takeaway

Attendees will learn practical approaches to:

- Designing adaptive gameplay systems that enhance player experience.

- Balancing realism with the arcade nature of gameplay systems.

- Accounting for time manipulation systems (rewinding) when inventing new features.

- Designing a modular system to account for the ever-shifting scope and tight schedule in annually released games.

- The importance of speech cues for creating natural-feeling objectives.

Paul Stefanescu
Electronic Arts

A question and answer session focussing on the process of designing action content and coordinating stunt shoots within Game Development.

Subject areas could range from the key safety requirements developers should expect a coordinator to manage through to the creative elements that factor in to producing great action content and the steps developers can take to maximise what can be attained from their capture process.

Depending on the space, live demonstration of key concepts with performers could be included. I believe this would elevate the session significantly but there are factors that would need to be discussed to ensure this is viable.

Session Takeaway

• Clarity - Answer key questions and give practical advice regarding the process of creating and capturing action content
• Action in Performance - Explore how action content is created, what can be achieved and how it can enhance and support Cinematic and Gameplay production
• Safe Practice - How a Coordinator can help developers manage and mitigate risk, allowing them to navigate action requirements safely and effectively.

Nathaniel Marten
Lucky 13 Action Ltd

A relaxed and informal roundtable designed to help you get the most out of your time at the conference. A diverse panel of friendly and experienced devs from across the whole industry spectrum want to help anyone who feels shy, awkward, a little out of place, on the outside, or just unable to really squeeze all the goodness out of this amazing show. You'll feel positive, empowered and fully equipped to have an absolutely smashing time, with tips on how to be productive, tools to network, and commitments from volunteers to be your safety net should things get a little too much! Finally, should you feel like it would help, we'll match people up with Show Mentors to ensure however long you're in Brighton, you go back to your studio feeling invigorated and inspired!

Session Takeaway

• Shared experiences that will give you some ideas on best practise plus do's and dont's for networking at every event.
• Recommendations for talks to attend and delegates to meet, plus practical help to do so!
• Knowledge of safe and quiet spaces to help manage your experience at the show. 
• Introductions to helpers who you can approach throughout your visit if you need a friendly face!

Jazeena McCallum
WatchHouse

Deadlines, insufficient documentation, repetitive feedback loops, and compressed timelines can all be avoided through effective communication, collaboration, and internal readiness. Join me as we walk through how to engage with our external partners in a meaningful way to resolve conflict when it arises.

Session Takeaway

- Learn how to effectively communicate with your vendors to get needs met. 

- Emphasize listening to your vendors needs to come to resolution together. 

- Learn how to resolve conflict through communication.

Rikki Vitello
EA Full Circle

There has been a quiet but persistent conversation as to whether PR still matters. Influencer spend went up, storefront algorithms got smarter and the focused turned to how every action linked directly to sales over building awareness through PR. Studios began routing budget elsewhere and many communications teams found themselves having to justify their existence in ways they had not had to before.

That conversation is worth revisiting, because the way players discover games is changing again.

A growing number of players are now using AI assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity as their first port of call when looking for something to play. Unlike a storefront algorithm, these platforms do not serve ads or optimise for commercial placement. They draw on the body of written material that exists around a game: reviews, forum threads, editorial features, community posts. The studios with a rich written record tend to surface. The ones that only ever ran a two-week launch campaign tend not to.

This is good news for video games PR, but it requires a different way of working. Short campaign bursts tied to release windows are not well suited to how these systems pull information. What actually builds visibility in this environment is sustained narrative work over time, the kind of ongoing thought leadership and community presence that most PR teams have historically been told they cannot afford.

This session will walk through how ChatGPT and Gemini actually form game recommendations, what signals they weight, and what a video games PR campaign built to take advantage of that looks like in practice. 

Session Takeaway

• Delegates will understand how platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity form game recommendations, what they draw on, why some games appear consistently and others do not, and why earned media is better placed than advertising or influencer spend to build that kind of visibility.
• Delegates will leave with a working framework for planning a video games PR campaign built around sustained narrative and thought leadership rather than a launch window burst, including how to structure content, brief collaborators and sequence activity across a longer campaign arc.
• Delegates will have a practical starting point for auditing their game's current AI recommendation visibility and a set of tactics they can bring back to their studio or agency and act on straight away.
• Delegates will have the language and evidence to make the internal case for restoring or increasing video games PR investment, including a clear argument for why the discipline is better positioned than it has been in years to demonstrate genuine discovery value.

Ravi Vijh
Bastion

Arseniy Klishin from Party for Introverts shares the tips and tricks he wishes he knew while securing funding and a publishing deal for their recent narrative RPG Cabernet. In his talk he provides an array of developer-friendly insights and advice about the pitching process, developing prototypes, making adjustments to the pitch and demo based on publisher feedback, and more. With topics ranging from the common challenges indie developers experience in the publisher-oriented market to demo improvement suggestions to setting expectations for the meeting and beyond, he will provide easy alternatives to lessons usually learned the hard way.

Session Takeaway

In this presentation, attendees will gain an increased confidence in pitching abilities, a breakdown of what to expect from pitch meetings from the developer perspective, and strategies for a more successful pitching process.

Arseniy Klishin
Party for Introverts

Session Takeaway

• How to prepare for/as an actor on a Motion or Performance Capture shoot, to achieve the best data; aligned to the creative vision.

• How to prepare a shoot that is both actor friendly and more efficient.

• Acting in the digital realm. How casting directors/performers can help Game Devs achieve the most out of their time in the volume; acting techniques for games.

Gareth Taylor
Freelance & The Mocap Vaults

Are you someone who is new to the games industry looking for your first client, or have you been in the industry for quite some time as an employee but are now looking to take the freelancer plunge?

When we first take that step, it feels like there are so many unknowns. I know when I first ventured my mind went to:

‘Where do I find the work so I can keep being able to pay rent?’

‘How much should I charge for my skills and time?’

‘What is a self assessment and how do I even go about it?’

And many, many more.

It took time for me to find the answers, and even longer to realise what I should have been asking in the first place.

In this ‘How Does One Freelance?’ roundtable we will discover those questions and openly explore the answers together to help establish whether this work structure is for you. We will discuss all the main FAQ’s, the pros and cons to the choices that don’t necessarily have a right answer, as well as ensure you know how to look after yourself from a work, money and business perspective in a sustainable way. By the end we will have gained insight from one another and leave with a much stronger understanding of what day to day life as a freelancer in games (regardless of your role) could look like.

Session Takeaway

• The Work - We will break down different ways to build up your client network and maintain sustainable work so you are thriving and not just surviving.

• The Money - A topic we often are too shy to speak about, but we will cover how to price your services and how to go about getting paid.

• The Business - How not to have HMRC on your back about self assessment and tax, as well as better understanding legal contracts and business expenses.

Lorna McFall
Freelance UI UX Designer

This talk questions the growing assumption that Artificial Intelligence should guide key product or UX decisions in product teams. Rather than accepting AI recommendations at face value, I will explore where AI genuinely enhances research, prototyping, and design decisions, and where it subtly shifts responsibility away from human designers. Attendees will discover practical frameworks for using AI in ways that strengthen product quality, user insight, and ethical outcomes.

Session Takeaway

• How to evaluate when AI adds true value to UX and product decisions.
• A simple framework for balancing human judgement with AI support.
• Practical ways to keep ethical design and user needs at the centre of AI‑assisted workflows.

Ayobami Aderemi
ReAssure

Mobile players expect smooth, responsive gameplay regardless of whether they’re playing on an older phone/tablet or on a modern flagship device. For developers already targeting mobile, or considering extending PC and console experiences onto mobile, hardware fragmentation across many vendors and generations remains one of the biggest challenges to delivering great player experiences.

In this talk, Nordeus share practical lessons from developing and optimising Top Goal, a football title currently in soft launch aimed at supporting a wide range of devices and regions. Arm will complement this with insights into on-device profiling techniques that empowered the Nordeus team to make efficient and effective performance improvements where it counts.

The session will cover accessible, free profiling tools available to developers today, along with concrete examples of feature scaling and optimisation strategies that preserve gameplay feel across low-end and high-end devices alike. We’ll also discuss why mobile is increasingly important for player retention, enabling engagement between PC and console sessions in short, everyday moments.

Attendees will leave with a clear, practical approach to tackling device fragmentation, improving player experience, and making informed performance decisions that scale from “potatoes” to modern super-chips.

Session Takeaway

• Why to profile on real devices, early and often. (Emulators and desktop builds don’t reflect real-world CPU, GPU, or thermal behaviour)
• How to optimise for frame stability and responsiveness, not just FPS. (Consistent frame pacing and low input latency define player experience)
• How to scale features intelligently, not indiscriminately. (Preserve gameplay feel across “potatoes” and super-chips by targeting the biggest bottlenecks first)

Ian Bolton
Arm Ltd

Đorđe Đurđević
Nordeus

As video game production increasingly spans borders, casting and voice recording across the US and UK has become less of a novelty and more of a necessity. With this comes a unique set of creative, logistical, and cultural challenges. This talk explores what it actually takes to run successful split US/UK casts, from aligning developers to two very different acting climates to building workflows that don’t fall apart when your team is in a whole other time zone.

We’ll dig into the realities behind contracts, pay expectations, session structures, and scheduling differences, and how to set clear expectations with developers early on so production remains fair, efficient, and actor friendly on both sides of the Atlantic without forcing one market’s standards onto another.

Attendees will leave with practical strategies for creating and understanding equitable production pipelines that still deliver one cohesive game.

Session Takeaway

• Practical strategies and ideas for creating equitable production pipelines that still deliver one cohesive game.
• Understanding of where they fit into the pipeline as actors, directors, agents, etc and how best to contribute.
• Better understanding of how game dev pipelines work to be a better collaborator.

Lexington Vanderberg
The Halp Network

Julia Bianco Schoeffling
The Halp Network

Katie Young
Liquid Violet

Kirsty Gillmore
Freelance Voice & Performance Director

This roundtable will open a vital discussion about the barriers many games industry employers face to implementing positive mental health and wellbeing practices. The types of organisations that make up our fast-paced industry are so diverse that there is no "one size fits all" approach to getting mental health support at work right. This fosters an environment in which leaders will often struggle alone to support the mental health of their teams, not knowing how to overcome barriers including finances, time, personnel, and more. Opening up an honest discussion about these barriers, and sharing best practice on how to overcome them, will ensure attendees leave with practical actions to level up their workplace wellbeing. 

Session Takeaway

• Understand the barriers to implementing mental health support faced by organisations across the games industry.
• Gain insight into methods to overcome these barriers, with best practice and recommendations that can be flexible to suit your organisational make-up.
• Connect with industry peers to understand that you're not alone in facing these challenges: this is an opportunity to learn from others and share your insights in a supportive, facilitated environment.
• Leave with actionable goals to improve mental health support in your company.

Izzie Micul
Safe In Our World

It’s every Narrative Designer’s worst nightmare. A quest has been cut, an enemy descoped, or a character nixed. We know we should be calm, collected and above all flexible, but the panic sets in. The game narrative makes no sense anymore! This session will explain and explore a tool to help in this situation and many more: “Dream Mode”. By using symbolic archetypes, like the kind we encounter in dreams, we can turn overwhelming narrative complexity and confusion into functional building blocks that can quickly be moved around, adapted, or removed entirely. And in the process build stronger, more powerful and more flexible narratives.

Session Takeaway

• How to use “Dream Mode” to transform a narrative into its symbolic and functional core
• How to distil characters, locations, enemies, objects and gameplay/story beats into symbolic archetypes
• Some of the most useful and recurring symbolic archetypes
• How to work with these building blocks to adapt a narrative when change occurs, and test out new approaches quickly
• How to reduce complexity in a narrative and amp up the emotional power

Lydia Cockerham
Creative Assembly

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl - a first-person open-world shooter built on Unreal Engine 5 - was released under the extraordinary circumstances of full-scale war in the developers’ home country. In this session, Agostino Simonetta, Chief Commercial Officer at GSC Game World, shares the real story behind launching this unique Ukrainian title: self-publishing without a traditional publisher, the pivotal Microsoft partnership, integration with Game Pass and cloud services, and the immense challenges of shipping a major game during wartime.

Session Takeaway

- How to successfully self-publish a major title without a traditional publisher, including key decisions on control, risk management, and partner selection

- Real strategies for building and maintaining an authentic indie-style marketing voice that resonates with fans, even under tight resources and high pressure

- Practical ways to keep development and release on track during extreme external disruptions like war, blackouts, and team relocation, while still delivering post-launch support and maintaining player trust

Agostino Simonetta
GSC Game World

The consumer games market is intensely competitive. However, the UK games industry’s core value is boosted by an estimated £1.3 billion in 'spillover' GVA, generated by game skills used in non-traditional sectors. This session introduces the 'More Than Games' Mindset: a strategic framework for senior leaders to leverage their creative and technical expertise in fields like health, education, and cultural heritage.

Attendees explore how to identify potential B2B and government partners, translate game design vocabulary into language that resonates with non-games clients, and structure collaborations that deliver sustainable income. The session moves beyond theory to provide a practical guide on securing alternative funding and mission-driven grants. Participants leave with a clear process for diversifying their studio's portfolio and finding new revenue streams that utilize their existing development superpowers.

Session Takeaway

• Identify three high-growth non-consumer markets (e.g., healthcare, heritage) seeking interactive expertise.
• Translate game development concepts into professional language that builds trust with corporate and government partners.
• Strategize a pitch process for non-games clients that focuses on mission outcomes rather than just features.
• Access alternative funding and grants by positioning development skills as tools for cross-sector innovation.

Brian Baglow
Scottish Games Network Ltd.

The Pareto Principle suggests that 80% of output comes from just 20% of input. For concept artists, this idea can be a powerful framework for deciding where to focus time, attention, and skill development, especially when working under tight deadlines and shifting project demands. In this session, a working concept artist will share how the 80/20 rule can be applied in practice: from rapidly learning new software and tools, to onboarding onto large, lore-heavy IPs, and prioritising daily tasks for maximum creative impact. The talk breaks down how to identify the set of features, skills, and decisions that consistently deliver extraordinary results. Attendees will leave with a practical, repeatable framework for improving efficiency, reducing wasted effort, and elevating their day-to-day performance as a concept artist in a production-focused environment.

Session Takeaway

• Using the 80/20 rule to understand softwares - what are the crucial elements we need to master to get the results we want?
• Creating workflows using the 80/20 rule.
• Using the 80/20 rule when trying to understand a new IP/lore/design principles.
• Planning and preparing for the end goal.
• Having an exit strategy to finish your concept pieces efficiently.

Gargi Roy
Lab42

The video game performance landscape has evolved rapidly - voiceover is no longer the final stop, and performance capture is no longer a mystery reserved for a select few. Drawing on eight years of hands-on experience representing voice and performance capture talent across the gaming industry, this talk offers a practical, unfiltered look at how actors can build sustainable, future-proof careers in games.

From booking early VO roles to navigating the growing demand for full-body performance capture, I’ll break down what studios are actually looking for, how casting expectations have changed, and where opportunities are expanding fastest. With a roster of actors holding multiple AAA and indie game credits - and a dedicated mocap division launched in 2024 - I’ve had a front-row seat to the shifts reshaping this space.

This session is designed for both emerging actors looking to break into games and seasoned professionals seeking to evolve alongside the industry. Attendees will gain clear insight into career pathways, skill gaps, representation realities, and how to position themselves for long-term success in an increasingly performance-driven medium.

Whether you’re stepping into the booth for the first time or onto the volume for the next generation of games, this talk will help you understand where you fit - and how to move forward with confidence.

Who This Talk Is For

• Actors new to video game voiceover

• Established VO actors curious about mocap

• Experienced performers navigating career longevity in games

• Anyone seeking a realistic, insider perspective on representation and casting trends

Key Takeaways

• How game VO careers typically actually progress

• The rise of performance capture and what it means for actors

• Common misconceptions that hold actors back

• What agents and casting teams value right now

• Practical advice for staying competitive in a shifting industry

Session Takeaway

• A realistic understanding of how game voiceover and performance capture careers actually develop
• Clear insight into current industry expectations and where opportunities are growing
• Practical guidance on how actors at any stage can adapt and build long term careers in games

Natalie Edwards
Nordlings

This year’s LGBTQ+ round table will compare where we were at last year's roundtable, were we are now, and tackle key issues LGBTQ+ professionals are facing in the ever-changing social and political landscape. The hosts will present a series of topics, which attendees will be free to openly discuss, sharing their thoughts, insights and experiences, in a safe and supportive environment. Attendees should leave with a better understanding of what others are or have experienced, steps they have taken to navigate these, the knowledge they are not alone in most instances, and tangible or actionable takeaways to facilitate a better working and social environment for all.

Session Takeaway

• What LGBTQ+ professionals are experiencing in 2026.

• Practical ways to navigate and mitigate negativity.

• Examples of changes to EDI practices around the world along with practical advice on how to navigate them and minimise the effect on yourself.

• Steps you or your business can take to support LGBTQ+ individuals and employees.

James Dodd
Out Making Games

This session examines the development of the Open World Encounter in Project Avatar, covering the design domains of systems, narrative, and gameplay. It highlights how the encounter framework enhances player exploration, improves immersion, and seamlessly blends gameplay with the project’s rich lore and strong IP identity. Through this overview, we explore the design principles, technical solutions, and development workflow that shape how players discover, interact with, and understand the world around them.

Session Takeaway

• Practical methods for designing open world encounters that balance systemic behavior with authored narrative intent.

• Techniques for integrating lore and worldbuilding into moment-to-moment gameplay without disrupting player agency.

• Actionable workflows and cross discipline practices that help teams build scalable encounter content for large open worlds.

• Practical solutions for preserving already produced content and resources during scope adjustments.

Shi-tao Fan (Maverick)
Cloud Imperium Games

A tour around the uses and pitfalls of using AI technologies in games development. 

Session Takeaway

• How can AI be used in games development
• What are the legal and ethical considerations
• What you should do going forward in using AI

Ben Byford
Nuclear Candy Games

Who is the artist, what is the circumstance of the artwork's creation, what is the fabric it tries to weave and how are its parts connected?

Session Takeaway

• Why art can't stand on its own and always comes with a context.
• On the importance of said context. What does the artist bring along, it's surrounding and what part comes from our selves.
• On the importance of a red thread that weaves itself through a body of work.
• Be it PR, myth building or unfortunate circumstance, how the context drives or tanks the value of an artwork. 

Andrej Horoschun
Frontier Developments

For many games, launch is treated as the finish line. Wishlists convert, reviews come in, visibility spikes and then momentum quietly fades. Not because the game isn’t good, but because post-launch marketing is rarely designed to support retention, re-engagement, and long-term discovery on PC.

This talk breaks down why game marketing so often stalls after launch and what studios can do differently to build systems that keep players coming back months and years later.

Drawing from real Steam data, post-launch campaigns, and hard-earned lessons from PC releases, this session examines the most common failure points: over-indexing on launch-day hype, misreading wishlists as retention, under-utilizing Steam’s ecosystem, and treating marketing as a short-term visibility push instead of a long-term player lifecycle strategy.

Rather than focusing on paid acquisition tactics, the presentation explores how successful PC games align product updates, community, store presence, and communication into a single retention engine. Attendees will learn how to identify the signals that predict long-term engagement, how to structure post-launch beats that re-activate players, and how to turn updates, events, and community moments into sustained growth rather than temporary spikes.

This is not a theoretical framework or a “launch checklist.” It’s a candid, experience-driven look at what failed after launch, why it failed, and what actually worked to stabilize retention, improve engagement, and extend the commercial life of PC games.

Session Takeaway

• Launch success does not equal long-term success - Wishlists, reviews, and launch visibility are only the starting point. Without a post-launch system that supports re-engagement and ongoing discovery, momentum will fade even for well-received PC games.
• Retention is built through systems, not spikes - Sustainable PC game growth comes from aligning updates, community, store presence, and communication into a consistent rhythm. One-off beats and reactive marketing cannot replace a structured post-launch approach.
• Marketing works best when it is tied to player behavior, not hype - The most effective post-launch strategies focus on how players actually engage with the game. When marketing supports real play patterns and reasons to return, engagement and long-term performance improve naturally.

Mike Gallagher
Untitled Advertising Lab

Create-A-Sim is one of the most diverse character customisation systems out there, allowing players to see themselves - and a multitude of others! - in the world’s leading life simulation game.

Supporting that system with a constant stream of new content is no mean feat and I’d like to shed some light on the tech and the mindset that enables my team to quickly and intuitively create flexible and inclusive character content that reflects all facets of our huge, diverse and highly dedicated fanbase.

Tech that’s easy for artists to understand and use frees us up to be more efficient and more creative. Win-win for us and our players!

Session Takeaway

• Players cherish diversity and will build you a solid fanbase

• Being able to move with the times lets you live longer

• The easier and more flexible you make tech to use for artists, the more they will make with it and the more creative they will be!

Jessica Hyland
Electronic Arts(Maxis)

Games studios are creative powerhouses. But when it comes to raising investment, we consistently get it wrong - and we tend to get it wrong in the same ways.

Ella Romanos has spent 19 years in the games industry working as a developer, as a consultant advising studios on funding strategy, and most recently as a founder raising pre-seed for her own VC-backed startup. That last role was the one that finally showed her how badly the industry misunderstands what investors actually need.

This talk is an honest post-mortem on the assumptions games studios bring to the funding conversation - and why those assumptions cost us deals, credibility, and time. Ella will cover the mistakes she made herself, the patterns she observed in others, and the shift in mindset that changed how she pitches, plans, and thinks about proof.

Key topics include: why games studios confuse creativity with investment readiness; the vanity metrics trap and what investors actually want to see; the difference between proving a concept and proving demand; why the games industry thinks it's unique (it isn't); and what tech startups do differently that we should steal.

This is not a talk about how to write a pitch deck. It is a talk about why most of us are asking the wrong questions before we ever get to one.

Session Takeaway

1. Investors do not fund ideas, passion, or creative potential - they fund proof of demand. Understanding what proof means in your specific context is the work that needs to happen before you approach a single investor.

2. Most games studios are pitching the wrong thing. The game is not the investment case. The commercial model, customer validation, and evidence of repeatable demand are the investment case.

3. The games industry has far more to learn from the wider tech startup world than it typically acknowledges - especially on customer validation and building proof before scale.

4. Vanity metrics (wishlists, social follows, demo downloads) are not investor evidence. Knowing the difference between activity and traction will save you months of unproductive fundraising conversations.

5. You do not need to be far along to be investment ready - but you do need to be honest about where you are and what you have actually proven. Investors reward clarity and credibility over ambition alone.

Ella Romanos
Arcanix

From having the rug pulled out from under my feet in the waves of layoffs, to funding and shipping my very first indie game, this session will look at how I started a company and we made The Quiet Things against a challenging backdrop. I’ll take you through my journey, from making the first prototype of the game for a University project, to raising £150k in funding through a mixture of grants, crowdfunding and bootstrapping. I’ll talk about the challenges and benefits of self publishing, and show a roadmap of what our budget and production really looked like, all the way to release.

While the talk doesn’t directly involve in depth discussion of the games’ content, it’s worth noting The Quiet Things deals with some challenging topics around childhood abuse.

Session Takeaway

• Funding options available to indie developers.
• Marketing a game with limited time and resources.
• A realistic picture of what it takes to ship an indie game.
• Managing self publishing as a small team.

Alyx Jones
Silver Script Games

Having problems with frame stutters? Are your servers unresponsive due to performance issues? You’re not alone...

All too often releases are plagued by commentary on poor technical optimisation, despite the time and passion the devs put into making these brilliant games.

So, why does optimisation become an issue and how do we solve it? This session will explore why optimisation remains a challenge that affects so many games; and how external pressures such as the rising cost of GPUs, hardware availability, player expectations and the increasing pressure of time and money on game development are only adding to the challenges.

Our panellists will then share how developers can use knowledge, tools and processes to better address it in their games.

Session Takeaway

• Understanding the challenges around optimisation that the industry is currently facing.

• Insights into the impact of poor optimisation across all departments of a business.

• Sharing of expert knowledge, tools, and processes that can improve the optimisation processes on their games, and shift attitudes across their studios.

Ken Noland
AI Guys

Ari Arnbjörnsson
Epic Games

Emily Bailey
JECO

The games industry thrives on creativity, collaboration, and community—but is not immune to the wider societal problem of sexual harassment and sexist behaviours. We appreciate this may feel like a challenging topic, but we are very used to having these discussions, and making them sensitive and engaging.

Sexism, Sexual Safety and Allyship in Gaming sets the scene by grounding these issues in a broader cultural and legal context, including an overview of the UK’s Worker Protection Act.

We’ll explore why sexual harassment is not just a legal risk, but a serious barrier to wellbeing, retention, and innovation; considering this issue in the context of gaming.

The session will consider challenges that are particularly acute in the gaming industry: power imbalances, freelancer and contractor vulnerability, social events blurring professional boundaries, online spaces, and long-standing cultural norms that can normalise “banter,” exclusion, or silence.

We’ll examine common behaviours to watch out for and discuss their real impacts, especially for women, LGBTQ+ people, and other marginalised groups.

Crucially, this talk is not just about identifying problems, it’s about action. Attendees will learn practical, accessible ways to be a good ally and active bystander, regardless of role or seniority. This includes how to safely intervene, support colleagues, challenge harmful behaviour, and help create environments where people feel able to speak up, so everyone can do their best work and feel they belong in gaming.

Session Takeaway

• Identification of potentially unharmful behaviours.
• Becoming confident for bystander intervention.
• Supporting affected parties.

Helen Race
Survivors' Network

What auditions get attention? Actors are rarely directed in the audition process so how can they learn what works and what doesn't?
Some game auditions are loaded with lore, character details, and direction. Others have a handful of lines with no context.

Casting people can hear whether or not an actor is connecting to the character, but how does an actor do that? Actors need to craft performances that stand out, so they’re heard above the roar of actors “playing it safe”.
This interactive talk takes participants thru the examination, analysis, and execution of real video game audition scripts, with the intent of catching and holding a casting director's interest and curiosity.

Session Takeaway

Attendees will Learn to

• take an audition document and find a sense of character and scene
• explore actions and emotional states
• play, go off-road, be daring

DB Cooper
DBCooperVO, LLC