The board of the SGDA
Matthias Sala
President & Co-Founder
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Matthias Sala is founder and CEO of Gbanga. With an award-winning technology and a vast set of developed games the studio is defining the future of location-based gaming in Switzerland by blending reality and fiction to create immmersive mixed-reality mobile games. He is co-founder of the Switzerland chapter of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA). Matthias Sala has a background in computer science and constructional architecture.
Reto Senn
Board member & Co-Founder
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Reto Senn is co-founder and CEO of bitforge, the company pionieering in mobile game development for over a decade. bitforge is best known for its flagship title Orbital, a worldwide success praised for its technical and artistic excellence. Reto Senn is co-creator of the Swiss Game Jam label and co-founder of the Switzerland chapter of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA). Reto Senn has a background in computer science.
Robbert van Rooden
Board member & Co-Founder
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Robbert van Rooden is a producer for games and interactive media and has been active in consultant and managing roles in Switzerland’s industry for over 15 years. He is founder of the studio Inlusio. Robbert van Rooden has a background in mass communication & media research.
Philomena Schwab
Board member
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Philomena Schwab is a versatile game designer taking on roles from art to programming to marketing. Her big passion, biology, becomes obvious in her indie game Niche – a genetics survival game and as founder of the indie collective Playful Oasis, a platform to spread the word about nature and biology related games. As a member of gameZ and the SGDA Philomena is very active in organizing events and helping the Swiss game community grow.
Elias Farhan
Board member & SGDA Swiss-French Representative
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Elias Farhan is the game designer of the indie collective Team-KwaKwa and co-organizer of the monthly Swiss-French Game Developers’ Meet-up. He has done research on game jams, with a paper on “Big Team Game Jam” accepted to the International Conference on Game Jams, Hackathons, and Game Creation Events, while he also participates in a lot of different game jams at the same time. Elias Farhan has a background in computer science.
Stefano Maccarinelli
Board member & SGDA Swiss-Italian Representative
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Stefano Maccarinelli is co-owner of Stelex Software, an independent game development studio focused on narrative games, and one of the pioneers of game development in Ticino. Since 2012 Stefano also collaborates with the Swiss radio station Rete Tre as an expert on videogames. As a board member of the SGDA he will be responsible for connecting the game creators in the Italian speaking part of Switzerland with the rest of the country.
