Ivan Allan

Backbone Entertainment
Senior Producer

A seventeen year veteran of the video game industry, Ivan started his career at Electronic Arts, where he managed the Quality Assurance and Japanese localization teams. After being promoted to Development Director, he oversaw the launch of three consecutive NBA Live titles, as well as the critically acclaimed Coach K College Basketball. Later, as a Producer in the late 1990's, Ivan led the development of the company's storied Need for Speed franchise before moving to Australia to work in their down-under start-up venture.

As an Executive Producer for Nokia Games, Ivan was responsible for developing the titles needed to support the company's innovative N-Gage platform, and, as a Senior Producer at Blaze, a mobile game publishing company based in San Mateo, California, Ivan oversaw development of new and innovative mobile phone games for global territories.

In 2006, Ivan joined Backbone Entertainment as a Senior Producer.

Jake Birkett

In 2005, after nearly a decade of developing stock control and accounting systems for bookshops in the U.K., Jake formed his own company in a bid to realize a lifelong dream to make games. As a Lead Programmer/Designer for Big Fish Games, he has six casual games under his belt, including the top-selling Fairway Solitaire and Unwell Mel download titles.

Having been both an independent developer and an employee in the casual game industry, Jake offers his perspective of these different approaches, and is also knowledgeable about running a business. Due to the small, manageable nature of downloadable casual games companies (they typically take 6-12 months to make with only a handful of team members), Jake has experience with every stage of the development process from design and implementation, to testing and localization.

Like many 30-somethings, Jake has been playing games all his life and loves to put his experience to good use by making great, fun casual games. As well as brainstorming new ideas with other designers, he enjoys honing the fine details to give games that all-important polished feel.

Devon Blanchet

Propaganda Games
Design Director

Devon Blanchet is a Design Director at Propaganda Games. Starting out with the quality assurance team at Electronic Arts Canada, Devon moved onto a production team where he worked on games as a game-play designer, level designer, and writer. In his 10 years of game industry experience, Devon has worked on more than 15 titles over three generations of consoles. He has design experience in fighting games, first-person shooters, third-person action games, RPGs, and racing games, and his design experience at EA Canada focused on titles such as Def Jam Vendetta, Def Jam Fight for NY, and SSX 4.

After leaving EA, Devon helped build and develop a new studio in Vancouver with the personal goal of branching into new genres. At Propaganda, he has helped lead the design for the first-person shooter Turok. Devon is currently working on an upcoming Action-RPG.

David Elton

Electronic Arts
Senior Designer

David is a 13 year veteran of the video games industry. His career has spanned 4 generations of console development as well as a PC market that has changed radically since the days of the 386. David has spent the majority of his career with Electronic Arts, where he has worked on the Need For Speed franchise, the SSX franchise and numerous other titles. He has also worked with ReadySoft Inc. on the home versions of Dragon's Lair and Space Ace, with Acclaim Entertainment when they were one of the giants of the industry, and with Microsoft Game Studios as a Business Development Manager, finding the next big hits for Xbox 360 and the PC.

David has experience in a number of capacities including Project Manager, Development Director, Business Development Manager, Producer, and, currently, as the Senior Designer for the Need For Speed franchise.

David has a Bachelor’s of Arts from the University of Guelph.

Clint Hocking

LucasArts
Creative Director

Clint Hocking entered the game industry working for Ubisoft Montreal in July of 2001, when he began his career as a Level Designer, Game Designer, and Scriptwriter on the original Splinter Cell. Along with writer J.T. Petty, Clint was honoured for his writing work on the title with the first-ever Game Developers Choice Award for Excellence in Scriptwriting. Clint continued as Lead Level Designer, Scriptwriter, and Creative Director on Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory - the highest rated Splinter Cell game to date, with an aggregate review score of 94%. Clint then worked as Creative Director on the innovative and acclaimed Far Cry 2. In 2010, he left Ubisoft and moved to San Francisco where he is currently working as a Creative Director for LucasArts.

Before games, Clint worked in the web industry and experimented with independent filmmaking while earning an M.F.A in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia.

Carl Schnurr

Carl Schnurr is the Senior Director of Game Design at Activision, where he and his Central Design Group provide design oversight and assistance to the teams behind all of Activision's titles. Previous work includes producing and designing the award-winning tactical shooters Rainbow Six and Rogue Spear for Red Storm Entertainment, and overseeing the design of Amped, Top Spin Tennis, and Links as a Design Director for Microsoft Game Studios.

Prior to joining the games industry, Carl designed shuttle astronaut protocols, delivered singing telegrams, and freelanced for White Wolf. He holds a Ph.D. in physics from Duke University, where he studied quantum optics.

Dan Scott

Nokia Games
Senior Producer

A Senior Producer for Nokia Games, Dan has been a part of the production of twenty-five games. From 1991-2000, Dan worked at Electronic Arts, first as an Audio Sound Engineer and later as a Development Director. While at EA he played a major role developing different versions of the company's hugely popular NBA Live series.

Over the course of his fifteen year career in the video game industry, Dan has developed games for many platforms including PC, SNES, Sega Genesis, PS1, N64, Gamecube, PS2, N-Gage. From 2000-2003, he was a Senior Producer Helikon Technologies. Dan started his career as a hardware and software Engineer/Designer, before moving into graphics and audio at Distinctive Software. He studied Computer Science and Robotics at the University of British Columbia and BC Institute of Technology.

David Seymour

BigPark
Game Director

After narrowly escaping the apocalyptic events of the Y2K transition, David bailed out of his IT career and began making video games. He started out by working on an indie PC project before joining Moderngroove Entertainment as a Producer and Designer on Moderngroove Presents: Ministry of Sound for the PS2. He was later hired as a Designer by Radical Entertainment, where he worked on James Cameron's Dark Angel game. After that, the sky was the limit. David was promoted to a Lead Design role and dove into concept development.

In 2003, he moved to Electronic Arts Canada, where he produced Need for Speed Underground on GBA. This led to a Lead Design gig on NFSU: Rivals on PSP, which was quickly followed with a Producer and Lead Design role on NFS: Most Wanted 5-1-0. Both of the NFS games sold over 750,000 copies and were re-released as "Greatest Hits". David led the design on SOCOM: US Navy SEALs Tactical Strike, which brings the series to Confrontation.

Recently, David moved from his position as Design Director at Slant Six Games to become the Game Director at BigPark. He aspires to resume skateboarding, writes autobiographical blurbs in the third person, and tells himself that he will get through his game backlog later this year.