Christer is director of tools and technology at Sony Computer Entertainment America in Santa Monica where he leads the engine and tools development for the award-winning God of War franchise. Before joining Sony in 1999, he was a senior programmer at Neversoft Entertainment. Christer received his Master’s Degree in Computer Science from Umeå University, Sweden, where he also lectured for several years before moving to the United States in early 1996; he is also the author of the book Real-Time Collision Detection.

Bryant Freitag began a career in the game industry when he took a job with the Developer Relations Division at Intel Corporation. There, he worked for over three years with publishers and game studios to enhance and optimize their titles for Intel’s latest technology. While at Intel, Bryant contributed to such titles as Sacrifice and Giants: Citizen Kabuto, co-authored a paper on real-time shadow-casting, and researched concepts such as seamless distributed compilation environments and 3D graphics engines. From Intel, Bryant moved on to Big Huge Games, where he has been for over 8 years working on every title from Rise of Nations to Catan. He is currently working on their forthcoming multi-platform RPG.

After a four-year tour in the U.S. Army in Texas, Sam Lewis returned to school and received a Bachelor of Arts and MBA from Northwestern University, and after college, he received a position with a small adventure game company, Mayfair Games. He eventually became Vice President of Mayfair and was game developer on DC Heroes. Sam went to FASA Corporation next, producing games like BattleTech; he eventually became President of the company. In 1995, Sam went to Kesmai Corporation, producing MMOs, and running Kesmai’s “Game Storm” site. After Kesmai, Sam worked at Sony Online Entertainment as a Lead and Senior Designer, where he worked on Star Wars: Galaxy.  Sam’s then went to Cartoon Network, where he worked as Lead Designer on FusionFall, spending 16 months in Seoul working with the game’s Korean game developer. With FusionFall’s release in 2009, Sam went over to ZeniMax Online, where he is a Senior Designer on their upcoming MMO.

Sheri Graner Ray is a Senior Game Designer with Schell Games, and heads up their new Austin office. She has been in the game industry since 1989 and has worked for such companies as Electronic Arts, Origin Systems, Sony Online Entertainment, Cartoon Network, CCP/Whitewolf, KingsIsle, TellTale Games and many others. She is author of the book Gender Inclusive Game Design-Expanding the Market and is the game industry’s leading expert on gender and computer games; in 2005 she was awarded the IGDA’s Game Developer’s Choice award for her work in gender and games.

Andi Smithers is an industry veteran since the late 1980. He has 85 published games and has patents pending in the advanced graphics field.

Gordon Walton has been authoring games and managing game development since 1977. He is currently VP and co-Studio General Manager at BioWare Austin working on Star Wars: The Old Republic.  Previously he was VP, Executive Producer, and Studio Manager at Sony Online Entertainment in Austin, working on an unannounced product and Star Wars Galaxies.  Prior to joining Sony Online Entertainment, Gordon was VP and Executive Producer of The Sims Online at Electronic Arts/Maxis, and in the same role for Origin Systems managing Ultima Online. He has personally developed over 30 games and overseen the development of over 200 games. Gordon has been a speaker at every Game Developers Conference since its inception in 1988, and a featured speaker at industry events such as E3. Gordon is a founding member of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) and a member of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences (AIAS).