Our jury

Our jury

A chance to discover the latest trends and the hottest studios

Selecting more than 100 nominees and 14 winners out of 1000+ entries in a very short period time is a great challenge. This would be impossible without a varied jury and every year we have a great one!  Every year, we are gathering the best gaming experts to play, play, play, and play.

Anisa Sanusi  is a UI/UX Designer based in London, UK. Throughout the years Anisa has cultivated a devotion to effective UX design, speaking at the first UX Summit held at GDC in San Francisco and also served as a Juror for the BAFTA Games Awards for multiple years.Anisa is an advocate for diversity and inclusivity in the games industry, having talked about her experiences at the European Women in Games Conference. ...
Alvaro G Buitrago better known as Alvaro845, is a Spanish Youtuber focused on mobile games with more than 4 million subscribers. He has a degree in Law and Business Administration and is also founder and CEO  ...
Suvi Kiviniemi is on a mission to strengthen the game development community from the roots up, by building and running the Farm League, a game-specific incubator at Helsinki Games Factory.  ...
Fawzi Mesmar is a passionate Creative Director, Game designer, Manager, author, public speaker and retired e-sports player that has been in the gaming industry for over 15 years in a career that spanned The Middle East, New Zealand, Japan and Europe working for companies such as King (Activision Blizzard), Gameloft and Atlus Ltd to name a few. ...
Heini Vesander is the CMO of Helsinki and Berlin-based Matchmade, the leading influencer platform for games. Heini is a seasoned marketing and public relations professional, known for her fast pace and loud laughter. Previously, she worked at Super Evil Megacorp as Marketing & Communications Director and Executive Producer of Esports.  ...
Gustav Stenmark is a producer and game designer at Resolution Games, a Stockholm-based games studio focusing on creating virtual and augmented reality games and was the lead behind what has become one of the world’s most popular VR games of all time, Bait!  ...
Lottie Bevan is the co-founder of award-winning narrative microstudio Weather Factory, best known for Cultist Simulator. She’s one of the youngest female founders in the industry, a current BAFTA Breakthrough Brit and founder of Coven Club, a women in games support network.  ...
Jeferson Valadares is the CEO and Co-founder of Doppio Games, a voice-first game studio based in Lisbon, Portugal. He was also the lead designer on the studio’s debut title, “The Vortex”, available for Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. In past lives he was VP/GM of Mobile at Bandai Namco, Studio GM at Electronic Arts and Executive Producer at BioWare  ...
France Quiqueré Working since 12 years in the mobile/handheld games industry and co-founder of two small mobile games companies: int13 and Flat Pixel Society (Paris), where my main specialty was UI/UX design and game design.    ...
Luna Javier is the Creative Director and Co-Founder of Altitude Games, the Manila-based studio behind the free-to-play mobile games Kung Fu Clicker, Dream Defense, and Run Run Super V. She started as a game writer in 2002 as part of the pioneer team that released the first Filipino-made game.  Before Altitude, she previously worked at Boomzap Entertainment, creating best-selling casual adventure franchises such as Awakening and Dana Knightstone. ...
Jose Jacome is an entrepreneur, strategist and consultant for ecosystem innovation, business development and capacity building. Currently on an international cooperation and bridge building mission for the Gaming Industry.  ...
Wilhelm Taht is an experienced business executive within online, mobile and social media. He has worked in the mobile games industry since 2004 in sales, marketing, product and general management roles, most recently spearheading Rovio’s turnaround as EVP Games from 2016 to 2018. ...
Kristian Kurki  has been working at Supercell since 2013, tasked with a range of gigs: Player Support projects, hiring development staff, charity initiatives and the odd piece of creative input. Having played games since 1987, Kristian, formerly a fledgling academic, couldn’t have joined the industry any sooner.  ...
Joony Koo runs business development at bigpot games which is a mobile arm of blueside, a global console and pc online games company based in Korea.  ...
Eli Hodapp has been obsessed with mobile gaming his entire life. Originally starting with Tiger Electronics handhelds, graduating to the original Game Boy, and upgrading to nearly every handheld platform leading up to modern day portables. ...
Tommy Palm While he’s known for shepherding Candy Crush Saga to mobile – and so helping to bankroll King’s $7 billion IPO in 2014 – Tommy Palm’s success story stretches back to the 1980s, when he began programming games for the Commodore 64. Between then and the dizzying success of King’s bestseller, Palm founded five including this latest venture, Resolution Games, a development studio with an eye on creating virtual reality and augmented reality games experiences everyone can enjoy. ...
Ben Brudenell BAFTA nominated Art Director Ben Brudenell has worked in video games for 19 years, starting his career at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe creating ‘The Getaway’ series. From there, in 2003, he moved to Sydney, Australia and became a founding member of Team Bondi, creating the award winning game ‘LA Noire’.  ...
Chris James runs Steel Media (Pocket Gamer, 148Apps, AppSpy, etc). He loves mobile games industry, enjoys a party and travels a lot.   ...
Irene Song started as an intern of social welfare at Gangnam-Gu office. Then, she worked at Dongguk University as an assistant to Business start-ups at the foundation support center.  ...
Jack Zhou Director of Bigpoint Berlin Studio. Jack has been working in the game industry for over 10 years. Before joining Bigpoint, Jack was a senior producer of Yoozoo games, which is one of the top leading game development and publishing company in China. ...
Joel Julkunen has been playing games on various platforms ever since he could hold a NES 8-bit controller. Nowadays he leads GameRefinery’s analytics department and has a major role in developing the algorithms and statistical models used in the company.  ...
John Milburn is an Avid gamer since way back with the start of the Nintendo 8-bit. He fell in love with online gaming when Quake came out and spent a lot of time with both team deathmatch and team fortress.    ...
Stephanie Chan is a reporter for GamesBeat and writes its weekly IndieBeat column, which highlights in-progress games by independent developers and students from around the world.  ...
Wang Hao SU is IQIYI Vice President. Wang Hao SU graduated from Université de Poitiers with a Master in Marketing. After graduation, he then worked as project manager for IMGA at NCC Partners, searching for the most creative global games and responsible for the Asian business.  ...
Wenfeng Yang is responsible for Strategic Partnerships for Yoozoo Games. He has been in the global game publishing business since 2004 and launched over dozens of games on PC, Xbox and mobile, featuring by stores and making tens of millions of dollars on his previous projects.  ...
Yiwei P’ng Yiwei is the founder and director of Kurechii, an indie studio that is home to award-winning titles like the King’s League series, Tiny Guardians and Postknight.  ...
Andreas Thorsén is the Technical Director & Product Lead of Rovio Stockholm where he helped push Angry Birds 2 out of the door.  ...
Christopher Dring is a senior editor at GamesIndustry.biz. He joined the website in 2016 after almost a decade at UK industry publication MCV, where he was the title’s editor. ...
Jana Palm (previously Karlikova) is the General Manager of Stugan, a world-class games accelerator in the middle of the Swedish woods.  ...
Jeff Scott is Editor / Publisher at Slide To Play. He is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of 148 Apps, the iPhone app news and reviews site this side of Mars. He’s been a web developer for nearly 15 years now and entrepreneur with over 20 years experience. Jeff thinks that the iPhone is the best invention since the wheel!   ...
Martine Spaans started her career in online gaming in 2006 and has worked for well-known companies like Spil Games and Ubisoft before setting up her own Mobile Publishing company. ...
Nizar Romdhane is the Director of Ecosystem within the Media Processing Division at ARM. He has been working for ARM for 8 years and prior to that worked for STMicroelectronics leading SOC development tools and was a lecturer in universities teaching C/C++, electronics and Computer Engineering. He leads a worldwide team that works with the graphics ecosystem like game studios and game engine and middleware providers so they make the best use of the ARM GPUs and CPUs as well as helping them promoting their games to OEMs and Silicon Providers. ARM designs the technology that is at the heart of advanced digital products, from wireless, networking and consumer entertainment solutions to imaging, automotive, security and storage devices. ...
Pawel Miechowski is a senior writer at 11 bit studios and one of marketing ninjas behind all 11 bit titles. He’s started his game industry career in 1996 working as an animator for “The Prince and The Coward” point’n’click adventure game made by Metropolis Software.  ...
Stephen Jarrett is VP Game Design at King. King is a leading interactive entertainment company for the mobile world, with people all around the world playing one or more of our games.  ...
Tim W. is the Editor-in-Chief of IndieGames.com, the leading game website established in 2005 to discover, report on, encourage innovation in game development, and to recognize the best independent game developers from around the world. ...
Timur Haussila is a game lead At Supercell in Helsinki Finland. During the past 5 years he has led the development of Hay Day, Boom Beach and number of unannounced titles. ...
Will Mason is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Upload, the leading news, events and education provider in the VR industry. Upload also operates a dedicated VR/AR co-working space called The Upload Collective: a place for companies, industry leaders and enthusiasts to work and connect.  ...
Alexander Ekvall is founder at Snowprint. He was the director of Product at King. King is a leading interactive entertainment company for the mobile world, with people all around the world playing one or more of our games. They have more than 190 fun titles in over 200 countries. Their hits include Candy Crush Saga, Farm Heroes Saga, Papa Pear Saga, Pet Rescue Saga and Bubble Witch Saga. ...
Alex Bubb is an innovative senior marketing leader with a track record over seventeen years driving propositions and brand development client-side for leading companies including Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Electronic Arts, T-Mobile or Canon. He excels in fast paced and changing environments where both exceptional innovation and execution is required. Alex now works for Microsoft as a business developer. He handles commercial negotiations with leading games and ecosystem partners across the range of Microsoft’s platforms and services. An EMEA focus – working across teams and local Microsoft DX organisations on desktop, mobile and cloud executions. ...
Alysia Judge is the editor of AppSpy, the YouTube arm of Pocket Gamer. She was nominated for her first Games Media Award while still studying at university, and two years later she now divides her time between video production, freelancing for publications like Official PlayStation Magazine, and travelling around the world to report on global games shows. ...
Clash With Ed Ed is a hardcore mobile gamer from Finland. He has reached the global #1 position in Clash of Clans and spent 12 consecutive months in the Global 200 ranking. His YouTube channel ClashWithEd is known for the highest level gameplay with sarcastic commentary and attack strategies for the gemmers worldwide.  ...
Daniel Gray is the Head of Studio Ustwogames.T hey created Land’s End and Monument Valley, that won the 11th IMGA Grand Prix in March 2015. Ustwogames’ mission is to build and launch mobile games: They create and bring their successful products to market.  ...
Dan Pearson joined Eurogamer in 2006 before moving over to GamesIndustry in 2010. He covers all areas of the business and spends much of the rest of his time Monster Hunting and killing dwarves in poorly constructed fortresses. His dog is brilliant. ...
Deedee Ye is the Director of Evaluation Center at Tencent Games. Each year her center reviews and analyzes over 6,500 games on mobile, PC, browser, and other platforms, and is the de facto game knowledge repository for Tencent Games. In addition to producing in depth reports on games and live knowledge sharing sessions, Deedee plays a pivotal role in Tencent Games’ publishing decisions and have been essential in cultivating prominent game producers for Tencent Games.   ...
Jean-François Royer Business Development and Real Estate Department Director since 2011, Jean-François Royer and his team work together to provide full support to investors and end users willing to expand in EMEA from Marseille. He helps providing professional, free and confidential advice regarding business opportunities, real estate, immigration, housing, education, relocation, effective access to world class universities and higher education institutes. A joint initiative of the national government and local organizations, the Euroméditerranée initiative is charged with redeveloping and growing Marseille to such a degree that it becomes recognized as one of Europe’s major cities. This social, economic and cultural development project of national significance, launched in 1995, is creating a city that is both attractive and influential. At 480 hectares, Euroméditerranée is the largest urban renewal project in Europe. ...
Jouni Utriainen Back in 1983 Jouni started to play games on the Commodore VIC-20, and since then he has played thousands of video, computer & mobile games. In the 90’s he started creating them himself, and finally entered the games business in 2004. He now works as a project lead at Supercell. Additionally, he works as a regular contributor at Pelit. For the past years, he has enjoyed the unique opportunity of being an all around fixer at Supercell, from launching games on Android to heading our Player Support department, being an account manager, organizing localization and helping develop our internal services team. ...
Mark Sorrell is Vice President of Product at Rovio. He’s spent really a very long time mixing game design with behavioural economics, psychology and anything else he could get his hands on.  ...
Mike Minotti Recommended by Dean Takahashi (who was part of the jury last year), Mike Minotti is the community manager and staff writer at GamesBeat, but he also handles plenty of writing duties. Unlike all of those fancy guys covering video games from San Francisco, Mike reports on the industry from the magical land of Ohio. He also co-hosts The Exploding Barrel Podcast and likes Mega Man, Star Trek, and pro wrestling. He started as a community writer for Bitmob, the site that former GamesBeat editor-in-chief Dan “Shoe” Hsu cofounded with former EGM and 1UP.com editor Demian Linn (Venturebeat). ...
Peter Willington is the Producer at Auroch Digital in Bristol, an award-winning ex-journalist, and the co-founder of InRetroSpectPodcast.com, and as an IMGA judge brings with him a deep knowledge of all facets of the games industry. ...
Tommy Krul co-founded Super Evil Megacorp in 2012. He believes that truly good and deeply compelling games are timeless and ultimately prevail over fine-tuned shallow addiction cycles. Their mission is to make deeply engaging and technically outstanding games, while embracing all the opportunities of new platforms, new business models and a games industry in flux. Super Evil’s first game, Vainglory, was featured during Apple’s iPhone 6 keynote event and has launched world-wide to rave reviews. Vainglory also won two awards for the 11th IMGA: People’s Choice Awards and Best Technical Achievement. ...