GameZone Talks

Business Development & Operations • Strategic Partnerships • Machine Learning • Mentor & Advisor

Before joining Zalando, I was leading the strategic partnership and business development teams in several start-ups in Berlin: Wooga, EyeEm and IDAGIO where I gained my knowledge and passion for mobile app ecosystems and AI in general.

After completing her teacher training in German and politics and economics for secondary schools, Annegret Montag worked as a teacher for special tasks in primary level didactics of German at the University of Kassel. After a year as a consultant for marketing, talents and serious games at game – Association of the German Games Industry, she found her way back to academia. After a stopover at Martin Luther University in Halle, she is currently working as a research assistant for Jun.Prof.in Dr. Melanie Fritsch at Heinrich Heine University in the Institute for Media and Cultural Studies. Her research focuses on gaming, education and digital media in teaching.

After completing her master’s degree in literature and media practice at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Sabine began her PR traineeship in the press office of the technology group IBM in Düsseldorf. During her two-year traineeship, she was responsible for topics including Big Data Analytics, Internet of Things/Industry 4.0, Cognitive Computing and Connected Car. Sabine currently uses her numerous experiences in media operations and IT as a press and public relations officer for the game. She is also responsible for diversity at the association.

FENDER SCHRADE is a musician, performer and media engineer.

His instrument 392 combines sculpture and archive of sounds collected and developed over years. It is a hub for encounters. It is a medium to become visible and audible together.

Schrade has been part of the artist duo NAF since 2013. NAF work in the fields of performance, music, theater, video and visual arts. They were awarded the Baden-Württemberg Dance and Theater Prize in 2015 and 2017.

Sana Tornow is an expert for digital applications in the field of educational and entertainment pedagogy and currently works at the EdTech company scoyo. Her passion is the emotionalized and thus sustainable transfer of knowledge. Sana studied communication design, media informatics and digital journalism. She is a sought-after workshop moderator and speaker. Her favorite topic – besides gamification and serious games – is the OKR method and how it can be implemented in companies.

Pippa Tshabalala holds a BAFA and MAFA (Digital Animation) from Wits University and lectured 3D animation at Honours and Masters level at Wits Digital Arts between 2007 – 2009. She has worked as a content producer, as a promo producer and as a magazine editor, managing digital pop culture magazine Spliced and presented South Africa’s first locally produced TV show on video games – The Verge. She spoke at TEDxSoweto in 2013 on the subject of video games as a medium for social change and was listed on the Mail & Guardian’s Top 200 Young South Africans in the same year. In 2016 she was on BrandSA’s 40 under 40. She has hosted and spoken at numerous tech events, including co-hosting BCX Disrupt with keynote speakers Will.I.Am and Malcolm Gladwell. Pippa is passionate about all things video games and animation. She is currently the On Air and Creative Services Manager for The Walt Disney Company Africa.

Finja Walsdorff, MA, studied media science in Siegen (University of Siegen) and Tokyo (Keio University). She is a PhD candidate and scholarship holder at the University of Siegen, and co-spokeswoman of the research groups AG Games (Gesellschaft für Medienwissenschaft) and GamesCoop. Her PhD thesis focuses on women, gaming and user-generated game content.

Margarete Jahrmann, is an artist, researcher and activist game designer, founded Area7lab and Ludic Society and magazine series on experimental game art and ludic interventions. She is Univ.-Prof. in the artistic research PhD program of the University of Applied Arts Vienna and leads since 2020 the Austrian Science Fund FWF research project Neuromatic Game Art: Critical Play with Neurointerfaces. As professor Game Design at the Zurich University of the Arts she developed a focus on Game Art and Neuro-Epistemology experiments with a specific Ludic method. She founded the Ludic Society as arts project, label and international research association on play in society. As internationally exhibiting artist she works with neuroscientists, philosophers and early adopters of technologies, from Augmented Reality to AI and Artivism. f.ex. CIVA Contemporary immersive Arts Festifal Vienna 2021, Parallel Vienna 2020, Amaze Playful media festival 2018, AIL Arts Innovation Lab gallery 2020, Center of Advanced studies LMU Munich and Art|Sci Center Los Angeles (CNSI) 2019. Also check the LS playbook VOID book, premiered at the founding place of Dada, Cabaret Voltaire Zurich. Currently she is working on a series of artistic research experiments in relation to neurointerfaces and play, fostering a new form of critical play with neurointerfaces.

Tracy Fullerton is an experimental game designer, professor and founding director (emeritus) of the USC Games program. Her research center, the Game Innovation Lab, has produced several influential independent games, including Cloud, flOw, Darfur is Dying, The Night Journey, with artist Bill Viola, and Walden, a game, a simulation of Henry David Thoreau’s experiment at Walden Pond, which was named “Game of the Year” at Games for Change 2017 and “Developer’s Choice” at IndieCade 2017. Tracy is the author of “Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games,” a design textbook used at game programs worldwide, and holder of the Electronic Arts Endowed Chair in Interactive Entertainment. Prior to USC, she designed games for companies including Microsoft, Sony, MTV, among many others.  Tracy’s work has received numerous honors including an Emmy nomination for interactive television, IndieCade’s “Sublime Experience,” “Impact,” and “Trailblazer” awards, Games for Change “Game Changer” award, the Game Developers’ Choice “Ambassador” Award, and Time Magazine’s Best of the Web.

Carmen Johann is a researcher, developer and interdisciplinary designer in the field of interactive media from Cologne. She is currently working at the Cologne Game Lab (TH-Köln) for the research project SOLVE with a focus on “Mental Health Games” for addiction prevention programs and as a lecturer. Her PhD topic deals with the question: Which processes are necessary to produce serious games with a user centered design approach. The topic of sustainability also plays a major role here!

Since 2011, her focus has been on researching interactive media and their role in social as well as cultural contexts.

In order to create a free, experimental space for interactive media far away from clichés, genres and categories, she supported among others the Notgames Fest exhibitions 2011, 2013 & 2015, gives game workshops worldwide and works on several freelance projects besides. These address, for example, interactive concepts for an understanding approach to Alzheimer’s patients, the research question of the cultural development of gaming, museum education or early musical education. A project in Sudan together with the Goethe Institute is very close to her heart, as it can strengthen the local games community and thus promote African games culture, & bring it to Europe. She hopes to promote more diversity in the European games community. Together with her colleague Fee Bonny, she has also founded the company Pixelbeschleuniger, with which a game about griefing is being developed for children from the age of 5.