Speakers - Game Days - International Videogame Festival

You may know his work from PROJEKT RED games since he worked on The Witcher 3 and returned to work on Cyberpunk 2077 where he is currently in the role of Senior UI Artist. On the side, he still takes Graphic Design commissions, and occasionally or as personal projects, he is doing digital illustration.

https://www.artstation.com/supernovasson

https://www.behance.net/vladimirvilimovsky

Chris Bateman is a game designer and renegade philosopher. He founded the award-winning game design and narrative consultancy International Hobo (ihobo)in 1999, and has more than 100 published game credits. His latest books are Game Writing: Narrative Skills for Videogames (second edition), and The Virtuous Cyborg.

https://onlyagame.typepad.com/about.html

Game industry veteran with almost 20 years of experience

20+ released crossplatform titles as Creative Director and Head of Development

Co-founder, CEO and Creative Director of Games Farm, operating since 2001. Games developed with Games Farm were awarded with multiple awards

Founder, CEO and Creative Director of Grindstone (2015+)

Founding member of Slovak Game Developers Association

Founder of Game Dev Kosice platform

Organizer of annual Game Days Kosice conference (2018+)

Speaker, Consultant, Entrepreneur

GamesFarm

Mike is a concept artist and illustrator based in Valencia, Spain. On top of his freelance work for clients like Wizards of the Coast he has been teaching digital art classes at numerous schools for the past 7 years. He is very passionate about improving his skills and enjoys sharing his journey and learning from other artists. Currently works at Envar Studio collaborating on projects such as Valorant or League of Legends.

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/qQ21RR

Gabriel is a talented concept artist who worked for One Pixel Brush, Games Farm, West studio etc. Currently he is working for Riot on their next not announced AAA project with many more projects on the way. His main focus is on environments, vehicles and guns.

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/kDvXE0

After experince in movie and game indrustry, Jakub Javora connected with scientific leaders to explore boundaries of existing conventions.

He is using his matte painting and illustration/concept art know-how to develop new and unique ways how to bring motion dimension into “static image” world.

https://www.javoraj.com/

https://www.artstation.com/javoraj

Jad is a concept artist and art director who participated in the making of numerous AAA games, most notably Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us: Part II and Uncharted: Lost Legacy.Along the years, he has worked on a variety of projects ranging all the way from stylized animation to more realistic feature films, such as DC comics’ Black Adam. He is an Art director and Co-founder of Chromatic studio that focuses on AAA titles.

https://www.artstation.com/jadsaber/profile

https://jadsaber.gumroad.com/

Tomas is an art teacher and a freelance illustrator/concept artist based in Prague, Czech Republic. He started his professional career in digital painting 8 years ago in Warhorse Studios, working on Kingdom Come:Deliverance – a realistic medieval RPG. This experience has greatly influenced his artistic development and gave him courage to start a freelance career. Since then he has worked for Games Workshop, Wizards of the Coast, CD Project Red, and many more companies.

https://www.artstation.com/dusint/profile

Developer, teacher, musician and writer. CBE Software’s last game Someday You’ll Return was a success that you should definitely play. Jan teaches Composition and Interactive music at Janáčkova Akademie Múzických Umění.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jankavan/?originalSubdomain=cz

You may know Šimon from games like Kingdom Come Deliverence. He is a Senior concept artist at Massive Entertainment which is working on projects from Ubisoft.

https://www.artstation.com/simongocal

Miro Straka was born in Trnava, graduated in architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture and the University of Applied Arts in Vienna.

His game work is dedicated to transformations of the space around the player. After his studies, he released the mobile games Euclidean Lands and Euclidean Skies, which sold several hundred thousand units, and worked as Technical Director for the development of VR training applications for the automotive industry at innovation.rocks in Vienna.

After returning to Slovakia, he founded Straka.studio, and started working on the development of Loot River for PC and Xbox. Loot River went through a successful marketing cycle, and won a Game Pass contract with Microsoft.

https://straka.studio/

Michal studied at Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava, Slovakia. Soon after he started freelancing for various companies such as Blizzard Entertainment. Later he worked for Sixmorevodka as a senior artist where he created illustrations and concepts for Legends of Runethera. Michal is currently freelancing for Riot games directly.

https://michalivan.artstation.com/

In his professional career spanning over twenty years, he’s tried it all – working in tiny, highly technical, behind-the-scenes teams for brands like Bang&Olufsen, Apple or Autodesk; winning Startup Awards and trying to ‘make the world a better place’ in Silicon Valley; solely
programming an app for Dominos Pizza and last but not least, always being passionate about computer graphics and low-level programming. He was one of the founding members of the Kosice branch at BISim, a company which uses the latest technology and a large, experienced in-house team of engineers to develop high-fidelity, cost-effective training and simulation software products and components for defense applications. To this day, Miro loves coding in assembler for 8/16-bit Atari computers in his spare
time.”

https://www.linkedin.com/in/miro-kropacek/

Will Gist is a Berlin-based concept artist and illustrator who has worked on games such as League of Legends, Legends of Runeterra, Degenesis and has worked for companies such as SIXMOREVODKA – Riot Games, Microsoft, and more. He has mentored artists in several digital painting classes and is currently an Art Director for Envar studio.

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Aq4J0o

If Last of Us Part 2 rings a bell then you have what to look for since Balasz worked on it as a Freelance Concept Designer. Furthermore he did some work for Blizzard, WB Games Montreal and last but not least Parallax Studios.

https://www.artstation.com/balazs

Rohit is a talented 3D character artist with over 15 years of experience.

If you know the name Tommy Angelo from legendary Mafia games, Rohit was responsible for modeling this iconic character with his team in the latest Mafia Definitive Edition as a Lead Character Artist.

Currently, he is working as a Principal character artist at Hangar 13.

He also worked on Red Dead Redemption 2 for Rockstar Games and was involved with other projects like Aliens Fireteam Elite, Exoprimal (Capcom), and The Towers.

https://www.artstation.com/rohitsingh

My name is Daniel Dička. I have been playing video games since I can remember. I have a slight technical background, as well as a background in humanities. My game developer career started in Bohemia Interactive working on DayZ. Currently I am a proud member of Nine Rocks games and we are making the #1 hunting game on the market. Throughout my career I have been working in companies like Lionbridge, Bohemia Interactive and Nine Rocks Games as a Creative Director, Lead Game Designer, Gameplay Scripter or Localisation Engineer.

https://ninerocksgames.com/

Having worked in the Games Industry for the last 15 years at various studios; Ashley is currently the CEO/character art director of K9 Digital – a character creation studio of his making. He has worked at some amazing studios such as Splash Damage, Lionhead and Ubisoft on AAA titles including Assassins Creed Odyssey and Immortals Fenyx Rising. Ashley has also been teaching with Vertex school and Think Tank for the last six years helping students learn 3D and giving them the vital knowledge they need to succeed in the industry. Learning and researching character development is so important to him and passing this information on is vital to pushing the boundaries within the industry.

https://www.artstation.com/ashleysparling

https://www.k9digital.co.uk/

His inspiration comes from the gaming industry and he is looking to incorporate gaming mechanics in the new era of financial services on blockchain technology. CEO of Qorpo and BlackSwan Dao.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rastislav-bakala/?originalSubdomain=sk

Since early 2000 Štefan has been a CEO of todays Cypronia, a slovak indie video game developer from Michalovce. Cypronia gained popularity when they released Cube Life: Island Survival a sandbox video game for the Wii U.

http://www.cypronia.com/

Thomas is an Art Director with an almost 20-year history in graphic design, advertising, film, and animation, currently working as Project Art Director and Narrative Director at DIGIC Pictures working on CGI trailers and cinematics for games like Rainbow Six Siege, Call of Duty: Vanguard and Black Ops Cold War. He also serves as the Group Head of the Concept Art Unit within the Art Department. From writers’ rooms to boardrooms and film sets to graffiti jams he feels at home in all creative spaces.

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/q926Ze

https://www.digicpictures.com/

Ivan is a game designer, animator and writer at small Bratislava-based indie studio – Doublequote Studio. The main focus of the studio is to create visually distinct game experiences, utilizing the team’s strengths in 2D graphic design and illustration in combination with a compelling narrative. In 2019 the studio released their video game debut Blood will be Spilled for PC and Nintendo Switch. Currently, they are working on their second title, a cyberpunk RPG with deckbuilding elements, called HeistGeist.

https://www.doublequotestudio.com/

Martin Macháček is an Audio Designer and Programmer at Grand Beats Production. With his knowledge in the area of creating and implementing sound, Martin has contributed to the development of more than 30 published game titles such as Mob Control by Voodoo, Smashing Four by Geewa or Way of the Hunter by Nine Rocks Games and THQ Nordic.

www.grandbeats.com

Philosopher, aesthetician and design theorist. From 2004 to 2015 he worked at the Academy of Fine Arts Arts as a university teacher and researcher (2009-2011) and vice-rector for studies (2011- 2015). In 2015, he became the first Director of the Slovak Arts Council. As of 2019, he is working at the Philosophical Faculty of Comenius University in Bratislava at the Department of Aesthetics. He is professionally engaged in issues of the relationship between high and popular culture, design theory, education at art schools and cultural policy strategies. She is also involved in curating and translating activities.

Lukas A. Mrazik is the co-head of the firm-wide Data & Cybersecurity Law at Kinstellar and a Senior Associate in its Bratislava office. He focuses on Technology, Media & Telecommunications with significant expertise in data protection, intellectual property and corporate matters.
His experience covers wide range of data protection matters, including global data protection compliance, support in privacy programmes, risk assessments, data processing agreement negotiations, support in data breach response or development of internal documentation and compliance tools (policies/procedures).
Lukas studied law at Pan-European University in Bratislava, at University of Fribourg and at Queen Mary University of London and he holds the CIPP/E, CIPT and CIPP/US certifications awarded by the International Association of Privacy Professionals

Peter Kovac is an Of Counsel in the Bratislava office in the Bratislava office and the co-head of the firm-wide Data & Cybersecurity services. He focuses on Technology, Media & Telecommunications, the life sciences sector, dispute resolution, compliance, risk and sensitive investigations, white-collar crime. He has a strong academic background and an extensive professional experience in both criminal and medical forensic law.

Slovak Arts Council administrator for Music and Digital Games. Graduated in Aesthetics at the Faculty of Arts in Nitra. Favourite game genres: RTS, RPG, platform: PC.

Co-Founder and executive in gaming companies such as Pixelfederation, SGDA, Geewa, Charged Monkey and Tristone.

Martin is a clinical psychologist and cognitive-behavioral therapist (CBT) in training. He does research on novel CBT treatments, such as Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy and internet-based CBT in treating anxiety disorders (University of Graz, Austria). He is the CEO of GAMETHERAPY (Nitra, Slovakia), where he & his team develop gamified and automated VRET applications for specific phobias. He is a member of the European Society for Research on Internet Interventions, Society for Virtual Reality Therapy, and co-founder of the Association of Clinical Psychologists of Slovakia (Asociácia klinických psychológov Slovenska).

Gametherapy.eu

Matyas is the CEO and co-founder of a Slovakian game audio production studio Grand Beats Production founded in 2013. He started as a music composer and sound designer, later he worked as a project manager and currently he is responsible for running of an 8-team-members game audio squad. For the studio’s achievements he should definitely mention developing their custom AudioXP journey, custom audio engine for Unity 3D or cooperation on many well-known titles with game development studios and publishers like Voodoo, Pixel Federation, THQ Nordic, Geewa, Invictus Games and many more.

https://soundmatters.sk/

Previous year speakers