The Game Developers Conference is gearing up for March 2024, and organizers are thrilled to announce the newest advisors joining the boards of three of our GDC Summits.
GDC 2024 is currently accepting submissions to present lectures and panels for the Summits portion of the event, which runs on Monday and Tuesday of the conference. Each summit centers on a niche topic within game development and its relevant community, and has its own set of advisors who define the summit’s editorial goals and review the summit’s submissions.
Here are the new Summits Advisors joining the team for GDC 2024:
VFX Summit
Sarah Grissom—Principal VFX Artist, FXVille, Inc.
Sarah Grissom has been a real-time VFX artist since graduating from DigiPen Institute of Technology in 2010. For the last decade, Sarah has been at FXVille, the industry's premier real-time VFX contracting studio. The bulk of Sarah's experience has been in the Unreal Engine, but has also had the opportunity to work in half a dozen proprietary engines—including Unity, Cry Engine, and more. Sarah's shipped titles include: Mortal Kombat 1, Psychonauts 2, Spryo Reignited, State of Decay 2, and Shadow of Mordor.
Keith Guerrette—Admin & Founder, RealtimeVFX.com
Keith Guerrette is an award-winning Visual Effects Artist and CEO at Beyond-FX and the online community RealtimeVFX.com. Keith is best known for breaking new ground in immersive real-time visual effects for narrative-driven video games, including the critically-acclaimed Uncharted series, The Last of Us franchise, God of War, What Remains of Edith Finch, and Legends of Runeterra. Keith was profiled on 2014's Forbes “30 Under 30” list, and was inducted into Full Sail University’s Hall of Fame in 2015. Since then, he has served as the Studio Head for Beyond-FX, advocating for better VFX educational support, mentorship, and guidance across the industry.
Bryanna Lindsey—VFX Manager, Insomniac Games
Bryanna Lindsey has worked as visual effects lead and manager at Insomniac Games for a total of five years, and has worked as a visual effects artist in real-time VFX since 2011. She was nominated for a Visual Effects Society award for leading the team on 2020's Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales. Some of the titles she's worked on for real-time visual effects specifically include: The Elder Scrolls Online, Agents of Mayhem, The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners, and the Marvel's Spider-Man games at Insomniac. She enjoys leading VFX teams to accomplish more through collaboration than they could accomplish alone, as well as speaking at game development conferences and events like GDC, Devcom, PAX, and more. Bryanna is also an advocate for accessibility in games, and enjoys leveraging visual effects toolsets to create high-contrast features in the AAA space.
Bryan Venzen—Principal VFX Artist, Freelance
Bryan Venzen got his start in the games industry as Rigger and Animator, then quickly transitioned to Visual FX Artist in 2012. Bryan has developed games for companies like Nintendo, Ubisoft, Bioware, and 2K (to name a few). His FX experience has also allowed him the opportunity to cross over into film and television, working on shows like Disney's Big City Greens—and he developed an online course in real-time VFX called "Let's Make FX" to give back to the FX community and help grow the next generation of FX artists.
Independent Games Summit
Rachel Hwang—Technical Game Designer, Liminal Experiences
Rachel Hwang is a game designer, engineer, and educator dedicated to building community fostered by play and expression. She loves solving problems at the intersection of the technical, the artistic, and the social. She currently works as a technical designer at Liminal Experiences, working on accessible storytelling tools powered by procedural generation. Outside of her day job, Rachel is also very passionate about making her communities more accessible for minorities and more collaborative for everyone.
Level Design Summit
Blake Rebouche—Principal Designer, Guerrilla Games
Blake Rebouche lives in Amsterdam, where he is principal game designer at Guerrilla Games. Originally from Louisiana, Blake got his start in games working at Junction Point Studios and Bioware in Austin, Texas. He worked for a number of years at Zenimax Online Studios on The Elder Scrolls Online before moving to Europe to design quests, levels, and content for the Horizon franchise.
The call for submissions is happening now through Thursday, September 28 at 11:59pm PT. This includes everything for the GDC Summits, which run on the Monday and Tuesday of the event, as well as Friday's Game Career Seminar. Advisors are seeking submissions from developers and professionals in several areas of the game industry.
GDC returns to San Francisco in March 2024, and the GDC Summits call for submissions is now open! For more information, be sure to visit our website and follow the #GDC2024 hashtag on social media.
Subscribe to the GDC newsletter and RSS feed.
Get regular updates on GDC social media—including Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn.
