2009 Game Industry Speakers

Ken Bautista has over 10 years experience in the interactive industry. He founded his award-winning company, Hotrocket, in 2001 after graduating from the University of Alberta with a Bachelor's Degree in Education. The company's interactive services division would later be acquired in 2008 by RED The Agency, one of the fastest growing independent marketing agencies in Western Canada, where Ken now heads the agency's interactive unit. Over the past few years, Ken has also led the creative development of "CIE: Seek Your Own Proof", a cross-platform experience that uses websites, social media, and real-world locations to engage kids in science and history as agents of the "Central Institute for Exploration". Before its' launch in 2009, CIE has been recognized with several awards including: Best in Show at the Fusion Digital Media Venture Forum in Vancouver, Pitch It! Winner at KidScreen Summit in New York, the first TELUS Innovation Fund recipient in Canada, and Most Promising Company at the Canadian New Media Awards. Ken has also been a leading advocate of the digital media industry. He has been invited to speak at international events including the Digital Entertainment Leadership Forum in Hong Kong and at the Canadian Arts Summit in Banff. He recently served as President of Digital Alberta, the provincial industry association for digital media, organizing and leading industry development initiatives, international trade missions and professional development workshops. He was appointed to the Alberta Film Advisory Council and served on the Canadian Interactive Alliance, Canadian Heritage Trade Team, and the nextMEDIA Industry Advisory Board.

www.seekyourownproof.com
www.redtheagency.com

Skye J.W. Boyes is the founder/owner of Canada-based XGen Studios Inc., and responsible for bootstrapping the developer/publisher into a casual entertainment destination for over 3-million monthly visitors.

Skye has earned lead design and development credits on five browser-based games totaling 150+ Million plays worldwide, executive production credit on Defend Your Castle for Nintendo’s WiiWare service, and programming credit on Bioware's Mass Effect.

His work has appeared on G4 Television and Channel4, and in Nintendo Power and FHM Magazine as well as many other broadcasts and publications.

Jordon is a new recruit at HermitWorks . He started in the summer 2008 after completing a 2 year Digital Animation Course from The College of the North Atlantic in Newfoundland. He loves playing games on his Nintendo Wii and watching cartoons such as Ren and Stimpy.

He is currently the office ‘cool guy’ who comes to work on his motorcycle, except during -30 cold spells.

He claims working at HermitWorks is the most excitement he’s had in years.

• Artist - Saturday Night Fever, Apple iPhone/iPod Touch(HermitWorks Entertainment Corp.)

Michael Grills is an award winning freelance illustrator plying his trade as an Art Director and Concept Artist, in Video Games, Publishing, Editorial, and Advertising. He has been credited on over 11 games including, the following award winning games - Baldur's Gate 2, Neverwinter Knights, Jade Empire, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic as well as the 3 sleeper hit series, Plant Tycoon, Virtual Villagers and Curse of the Pharaoh. He has also done storyboards for Cadbury and illustrations for Scholastic Canada.

Michael Currently runs his studio out of Calgary Alberta where he spends his time both Traditionally and Digitally Painting, Sketching, and Mentoring new illustrators. You can see his work at www.michaelgrills.ca.

"I took my first year of my BSc. in computer science at GPRC in 1988/89. I transfered to the UofA and graduated in 1992. I started doing a MSc. in Computer Graphics at the UofA, but it was interupted by a 4 month stint as an instructor at GPRC. During that time I got married and was offered a job in Banff doing virtual reality. They were using software from the graphics lab at the UofA, so I had an easy shoe in to get the job. Working in Banff was a blast, but it ended when the government funding disolved. Here is a link to one of the projects I worked on. It was a head-mounted VR piece where the participant was riding in an RV."

"I moved to Vancouver in 1994 and worked in the Simon Fraser University graphics lab on a 'Virtual Wedding' project. In February of 1996, I was hired by Electronic Arts because of my experience in 3D graphics and Unix systems. EA and the gaming industry were in a transition from pseudo 3D games (aka two-and-a-half-D) to real 3D. Motion capture was a new thing for the game industry and EA was experimenting with the idea. My job was to get motion capture data into Softimage 3D and to develop tools that allowed artists to work with this type of data. We quickly proved out the workflow issues and games were soon shipping using motion captured talent. I continued my work in a central technology role by providing a common 3D file format and suite of tools and libraries for use across the company to facilitate getting 3D content into the game. More recently I have become the lead engineer (Technical Director in EA terms) for our central animation system which was show cased at E3 in 2009 - the first time that EA has focused on its technology rather than just games."

Bruce Rutley is a farm boy who developed a passion for helping people fulfill their dreams.  He helped:

• 4-H members as a 4-H Specialist;
• Students with their educational dreams while a College instructor and Dean;
• Reindeer and bison producers in the Peace Country with their dreams for a new way of farming;
• Organizations meet their dreams of becoming more robust and more vibrant;
• PREDA achieve their dream of an organization that would help inventors get new products into the marketplace (The Innovation Network). 

Being the Director of the Centre for Research & Innovation (CRI) is a dream come true for him - leading the development of a new organization (the CRI) which has been created to help people (people like you) develop/commercialize their ideas (Innovation) and to nurture applied research within the College and region (Research). 

Bruno Steppuhn is the CEO & Executive Producer of Zensoft Studios, established in late 2004, a Serious Games interactive software developer in Calgary, Alberta. As the company’s leading founder, Mr. Steppuhn has been on the forefront of Calgary’s serious games market, creating some of the world’s premier next generation medical simulation interactive technology.

Bruno’s passion and experience didn’t begin from building games as a child, but spawned from his years playing with Lego and mud, driving him to the architectural industry as a designer on small and large scale industrial, commercial, and residential developments across Canada. His entrepreneurial spirit, inspired by his families success in business, grew from his experience managing enterprise software, mobile location based software, global oil company IT mergers, digital media campaigns, and working with such clients as Dell, Mercedes Benz, Hyatt, and Big Rock Breweries, Evil Space Monkey Studios, Art Machine, Epic Games, Knowledge Where, Gran Tierra Energy, the U.S. Department of Defense, Science Alberta, and more.

Under the Zensoft Studios banner, he recently acquired Crowded Games, a social networking community, targeted towards independent game developers and aspiring students, which Zensoft Studios hopes to launch to the public in 2009.

As a persevering technology entrepreneur rooted in Alberta, Bruno Steppuhn continues to look for opportunities to expand the Zensoft Studios enterprise.

Cameron Tofer is president and co-founder of HermitWorks Entertainment Corporation. Cameron’s  programming and directing experience began at Bioware Corp. in Edmonton, Alberta in 1996. He left in 2000 to become Technical Director of Namco Hometek Inc. in San Jose, California. A highly qualified video game developer, he has experience with a wide range of gaming platforms.

• Executive Producer - Saturday Night Fever, Apple iPhone/iPod Touch(HermitWorks Entertainment Corp.)
• Executive Producer - Space Trader, PC & Mac (HermitWorks Entertainment Corp.)                              
  
• Technical Director - Dead To Rights XBOX and PS2 (Namco Hometek, Inc)
• Producer and Lead Programmer - MDK2 DreamCast, PC, and PS2 (Bioware Corp./ Interplay)
• Programmer - PacMan World II (Namco Hometek, Inc)
• Programmer - Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn (Bioware Corp./ Interplay)
• Programmer - Baldur’s Gate(Bioware Corp./ Interplay)
• Programmer - Shattered Steel (Bioware Corp./ Interplay)

Game programmer Scott Brooks brings to the team extensive experience in multiplayer gameplay, especially his most recent work on the popular ‘Reaction Quake 3’ game modification. Scott’s role at HermitWorks Entertainment is to create and implement a variety of systems related to cross platform development.

Scott’s past experience includes managing Binary Solution’s Wireless network, covering most of North Western Alberta and parts of British Columbia. Scott is currently involved with Fragapolooza, Canada’s largest network gaming party, and has been on the organization committee since 2002.

Scott received his bachelor degree in Computer Science and Information Systems from Athabasca University.