Brian Green, often known by the online pseudonym of “Psychochild”, is an experienced online game developer. In his six years of hobbyist and eight years of professional game development, he has done programming, designing, writing, and administrating.

Brian later started Near Death Studios, Inc. with fellow former Meridian 59 developer Rob "Q" Ellis II. Brian helps maintain Meridian 59 and run the business side of Near Death Studios, Inc. while evaluating potential new projects for the company. He is a frequent speaker at game industry conferences and shares his experiences in developing independent games and running a games-based business.

Kelly Rued develops video games and interactive adult entertainment to create engaging, positive player experiences. She is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Black Love Interactive, an independent game development studio, and ISER Games, a serious sex games company. Through ISER Games, Kelly evangelizes new uses for serious games in sex education, research, and therapy. Currently, Kelly is employed as Lead Designer on Gods of Desire, a unique fantasy MMORPG for adventurous adults. Previously, she worked on an experimental social MMOEG called Rapture Online.

She published The Sex Ed Game by ISER Games - an interactive trivia game that serves as a teaching aid for parents and educators to encourage a healthy dialog about teen sexual health and wellness while supporting a range of ethical and pedagogical approaches. Kelly also recently founded the Sex in Games Network, a media marketing group focused on market research and the promotion of AO games. She maintains a sex in games developer's blog, and is an original member of the Leadership Council for the IGDA Sex SiG.

Celia Pearce is a game designer, artist, researcher, teacher and author of The Interactive Book: A Guide to the Interactive Revolution (Macmillan, 1997), as well as other writings on game design and culture. She began working in the attractions industry in 1983 developing multiplayer location-based entertainment and museum exhibitions. In 1993 she creative directed Iwerks and Evans & Sutherland's multiple-award-winning Virtual Adventures: The Loch Ness Expedition, a 24-player virtual reality attraction. Since 1998 she has worked primarily as an academic researcher, and currently holds a position as Assistant Professor in the School of Literature, Communication and Culture at Georgia Tech, where she leaders the Emergent Game Group, which is developing Mermaids, an experimental MMOG, with a team of graduate students.

Kelly "Ophelea" Heckman began her life in games journalism as a content editor for the MMO, Asheron's Call, with the WarCry Network. Her time at WarCry saw her fill a number of roles, ranging from Tradeskills Editor through to Network Operations Manager where she managed as many as 18 Site Managers covering as many MMORPGs. After WarCry, she worked as an Exclusives Manager for Stratics as well as freelance writer, before co-founding reviews website GamersInfo.net - a site founded on the principle that the game player is as important to the review as the game itself. She has an extensive history in human resources, has worked as a community manager for existing MMOs and provides consulting on various projects within the gaming community. She currently lives in the Phoenix area with her two children, five computers and far too few books

Greg Boyd is an attorney with Kenyon & Kenyon LLP in New York. He has represented some of the most prominent game companies in the world. His work includes IP counseling and litigation for both publishers and developers. He is co-editor of the book Business & Legal Primer for Game Development from Charles River Media. As a member of the IGDA IP Rights Committee, he was an author and editor on the IGDA IP Whitepaper.

Dr. Boyd has spoken at several national conferences including AIPLA, GDC, Austin, and State of Play. His commentary on business and law in the game industry has appeared in national publications including Fortune, Forbes, Game Developer Magazine, and Gamasutra. He sits on the Board of Advisors for Mobygames. Dr. Boyd obtained MD and JD degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Robert is the author of MMO EVOLUTION (ISBN 978-1-84728-679-6) and an authority in the design, development, production, operations, community development and management of persistent immersive environments, massively multiplayer online games, and large scale online communities.

Robert is a visionary and entrepreneur who is dedicated to pushing the technological and design boundaries for online interactive and immersive environments. His career started in 1992 at the first virtual reality entertainment company in the US. Over the years, he has gained broad and in-depth experience in project direction and executive management with a number of start-ups.

With more than 14 years of experience, he is a multi-talented individual with a strong combination of Business, Design, and Technical skills. Recognized as an "Internet Gaming Pioneer" by Advertising Age Magazine in 1996, Robert was also called "a Founding Father of the Digital Nation" in 1998 by The Raleigh News & Observer while he was designing an immersive 3D interface to the Internet.

Eric "Malevolent" Rhea, business owner, author of the fantasy romp The Red Regiment: Foundations, artist, musician, engineer, and all around great guy, began in the game industry many years ago writing for numerous, in-demand-at-the-time print and online MUD magazines while researching future trends in the MUD market before entering the entrepreneurial world to learn what made real businesses tick. After earning his ranks as a successful entrepreneur, Mr. Rhea founded the creative service company RheaSTUDIOS in 2005 and in the following year launched ESC Games, the subsidiary of RheaSTUDIOS responsible for game development.

Since mid 2006, Mr. Rhea travels the country while leading a transcontinental team of five people toward the creation of the online title Wraith: The Iron Horse, which is an immersive, impressive and ambitious MMOG title set in a possible future earth.

The line between genius and insanity is a fine one indeed. Jonathon Stevens started in development at the young age of 16. With determination and strong passion, Jonathon decided to learn C by taking an open-source talker code base (think MUD without role playing) and transform it into a world where you could role play Vampire: The Masquerade (by White Wolf publishing.)

This sparked the love for gaming, role playing and building games. Jonathon diverged from his dream of game development to enter the business programming world for the next 10 years. At 28, Jonathon decided to revisit his dream and created the Indie game studio Last Straw Productions. Jonathon is known mostly for his work with XNA and the Garage Games game engine TorqueX. Jonathon was last seen at GDC 2007 participating in the ‘4 games in 4 days by 4 teams’ challenge where he built an entire playable game from scratch in 4 days while on display at the conference.

Last Straw Productions has two titles debuting at IMGDC this year: Fowl Prowl, a single player casual game reminiscent of Duck Hunt and Simian Escape, a multi-player casual game based on the GDC game his company built at GDC 2007. Jonathon is also the creator and organizer of the Indie MMO Game Developers Conference.

Serafina began her marketing career at age 9 when she sold 50 cent subscriptions to the neighborhood kids who wanted to join her club. She even had a premiere membership for 75 cents. (Membership is still available, but the price has gone up a bit.) Since then, she has marketed and sold cosmetics, clothing, pickles, greeting cards, pretzels, chocolate, publications, credit cards, games, software products and services. For several years, she also headed successful fund-raising and sponsorship efforts for the non-profit organization, The Strategic Leadership Foundation. Most of this done with little to no marketing budget.

Serafina is currently co-owner of World Fusion, Inc., an independent software developer founded in 1987. World Fusion has a full history of providing software architectural consulting and product development for Fortune 50 companies. In 1995, World Fusion began development on a 3D interface to the World Wide Web. That project eventually evolved into the current project, the massive online game, Atriarch (www.atriarch.com). Serafina is the Lead Game Designer for Atriarch.

Josh Ritter has been creating games professionally for a decade. He co-founded the Canopy Games development studio where his technology powered 12 retail titles. In 2005, he co-founded Prairie Games, Inc and shipped the company's flagship product "Minions of Mirth". Josh is a tireless developer with a great passion for technology and game design. When not developing games, he can sometimes be found napping with his Great Dane/Yellow Lab mix, Chloe.

Rafhael has a distinguished track record of building the fundamental technologies that make new large-scale applications possible. At companies like Excite and Netscape, he built technologies that defied convention and enabled entirely new business models. His proven ability to create scalable solutions has formed the foundation of several innovative new companies.

Prior to Multiverse, Rafhael was director of engineering at Kontiki, a peer-to-peer communications platform for enterprise networks. He was responsible for the overall server product releases and large deployments at Fortune 500 companies, such as Ernst & Young and GameSpot.

Prior to Kontiki, Rafhael was co-founder and CTO at Themestream, an Internet services company funded by Redpoint Ventures and Kleiner Perkins. Rafhael was overall architect and development manager for Themestream’s personalized content publishing and distribution system for specialty topics.

At Netscape, Rafhael led the design and development of projects such as “My Netscape,” as well as the dynamic page generation engine that serves as much of the backbone for the Netscape and AOL portals.

Josh Williams is CEO and CTO of GarageGames. GarageGames' mission is to help independent developers build their games and bring them to market successfully. GarageGames offers the Torque Game Engine and its series of related developer tools and technologies.

GarageGames also functions as a pro-developer publisher to help independent developers and small studios find audiences for their games, and Josh is presently overseeing the build up of GG's publishing efforts, in addition to its ongoing commitment to provide affordable and powerful game making technology and tools.

Jay was previously Dir. of Business Development, Marketing Director & Evangelist for GarageGames, an online tool dev and game publisher. He joined GG in '02 when they were 5 guys crammed into a one-room office. When he left, they were a team of 30+. While at GG, he launched IndieGamesCon, oversaw the online publishing of independent games, and worked to establish Torque as the game engine platform of choice for independent game developers.

Dave Young is the President of Dream Games, Inc. He was the lead developer of the MMOKIT for Torque (now unavailable). He holds a day job as an application, web, and database developer whose passion for coding sprung out of a wild passion for gaming. He is currently working on MMO and RPG products and games to make a dent in the long list of lifetime goals.

Dave is also a long time GM and avid player of a long line of P&P, tabletop, and electronic games. His dream now is to build a community of hungry Indie developers and teams and to provide guidance and encouragement for them to finish their own games. To that end, he is helping to sponsor the Dream Games $10,000 1 Year Game Contest and beginning training and team building programs for Torque developers.