XP26 programming
2026 sessions
| Time | Red Stage (Regency A) | Green Stage (Regency B) | Blue Stage (Regency C) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9:15 am | Opening Remarks
Jason Lepine
Founder & CEO, XP Gaming Inc.
| ||
| 9:30 am | Indie Pitch Competition presented by Ubisoft
Jason Della Rocca
Co-Founder, Execution Labs
Stefan Jewinski
Game Director, Ubisoft Toronto
Chloé Giusti
ID@Xbox Regional Lead - Americas/ANZ, Microsoft - Xbox
Allan Adham
Content & Acquisition Lead, Team17
Zhenghua (Z) Yang
Founder & CEO, Serenity Forge
| ||
| 11:00 am | Building an OP Cashflow Strategy for your Studio to Thrive
Matthew Walach
Co-founder, Insert Coin
Muddassir Mahmood
Co-founder, Insert Coin
| Building the Creator Pipeline: How Smart Partnerships Are Scaling Influencer Marketing
Scott Christian
Studio Director, Hilltop Studios
John Nguyen
Regional Vice President - Canada, Xsolla
Brayden MacKinnon
Senior Brand Manager, Fixated
Corina Diaz
Marketing Director / Influencer Manager, Mighty Yell / Skystone Games
| Always Playable: The Production Mindset That Survives Reality
Matt Lee
Executive Producer, Gameloft Montréal
|
| 12:00 pm | Art Direction Is Marketing (You’re Just Calling It the Wrong Thing)
Dalisay MT
Founder, DMTC
| The Innovation Paradox
Chris Bateman
Founder and Chief Consultant, International Hobo Ltd
| Closing Deals in 2026
Pontus Mahler
Co-Founder, Agora Gaming Partners
|
| 1:00 pm | Building a Community for Lifetime Game Projects
Alexandra Orlando
Community Director, Kitfox Games
| How We Rebuilt Our Studio Around AI (And Why You Should Too)
Shawn Fischtein
CEO, Gaggle
| Advancing AI Game Development with AMD Schola and GPUOpen
Alexander Cann
Staff Software Engineer, AMD
Alex Blake-Davies
Sr. Developer Product Marketing Specialist, AMD
|
| 1:30 pm | From West to East: How to Make F2P Games Thrive in New Markets
Angel Fraser
Lead Product Manager, Scopely Inc
| Building Our UA System From Media Buying to Scalable Growth Engine
Jordan Dinning
VP, Marketing, HyperHippo
| |
| 2:00 pm | The New Timeline for Indie Success
Jason Della Rocca
Co-Founder, Execution Labs
| Game Audio: The Future of Game Audio & Music
Christian Hurst
Co-Founder, Managing Director, Interleave
| The Business of UX
Ruwan Fernando
Founder, Go Boldly Design
|
| 3:00 pm | What Does Indie Success on Steam Look Like? A Data-Driven Review
Kristian Roberts
CEO, Nordicity
| Inside the Booth: Bringing Professional Performances to Your Next Project
Scott Christian
Studio Director, Hilltop Studios
Myles Dobson
Actor, ACTRA
| Best Practices for Multi-Platform Development
Andrew Carvalho
Co-Founder and Technical Director, Laundry Bear Games
|
| 4:00 pm | Where Traditional Animation Meets Gaming
Agustin Valcarenghi
Executive Director, 2veinte
Pablo Gostanian
Creative Director, 2veinte
| What We Got Wrong (And Right) About Game Marketing
Kit Ellis
Co-founder, Never A Minute Marketing
Jenny Windom
Partner, Wholesome Games
Christopher Chancey
General Manager, Indie Asylum / Gambit Digital
Agusia Krzywinska
Technical Director & Co-Founder, Adjective Noun Studios
| Legal Hacks for the Non-Lawyer: Lessons from the Game Lawyer Trenches
Sangeetha Punniyamoorthy
Partner; Co-Chair of Canadian Intellectual Property & Technology, DLA Piper Canada LLP
Ryan Black
Partner; Global Lead, Video Games, DLA Piper (Canada) LLP
David Lafontaine
Associate - Intellectual Property and Technology, DLA Piper (Canada) LLP
|
| Time | Red Stage (Regency A) | Green Stage (Regency B) | Blue Stage (Regency C) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9:15 am | Designing Backwards: Creating Cauldrons for ‘Horizon Forbidden West’
Dennis Micka
Principle Game Designer, Guerrilla Games
| ||
| 10:30 am | IP TEARDOWN: UNDER THE HOOD OF THE GAME WORLDS WE LOVE
Christian Fonnesbech
Founder and Head of IP, Leverage
| Capacity Planning That Works Across Studios and Titles
Matt Lee
Executive Producer, Gameloft Montréal
Emil Vanjaka
Senior Operations Manager, 2K
Rafael Mayor-Mora
Director of Operations (Shared Development Studios), 2K Games
Gordana Vrbanc Duquet
Production & Planning Director, Ubisoft Toronto
| Worldbuilding a Generated City
Tanya Short
Captain, Kitfox Games
|
| 11:30 am | Designing Effective Communication During Game Development
Rebecca Brooker
Lead Game Designer, Behaviour Interactive
| Renaissance of Business in Health Care and the Video Game Sector
Eda Shere
VP, Business Development and Partnerships, Surrey Place
Ivona Novak
Development Director, Electronic Arts
Christina Hoy
Chief Strategy & Transformation Officer, Lumenus Community Services
Anthea Foyer
Sector Development Officer, IDM Office, City of Toronto
| Start Up 101 – 20 Years Later
Wolfgang Hamann
Pres./CEO/Founder/Owner, Koolhaus Games Inc.
|
| 12:30 pm | Great Game, Wrong Foundation: A Studio Audit for Indie Founders
Lucien Parsons
Fractional COO, OpsCat
| Canada’s Video Game Industry – From Strength to Staying Power
Paul Fogolin
President & CEO, ESAC
Kristian Roberts
CEO, Nordicity
| |
| 1:00 pm | The Retention Layer: The Hard Truth About Community and Social
Mike Gallagher
Founder, Untitled Advertising
| When Your Voice Shakes: Building Safety in the Studio Trenches”
Emily Vulama
Director of Operations, Nightmarket Games
| D2C in 2026: How New Platform Policies Unlock Even Greater Opportunity for Web Stores
Chip Thurston
Head of Gaming, FastSpring
|
| 1:30 pm | How To Achieve High Quality, Performant Lighting in URP and Unity 6
Ryan Warner
Sr. Software Development Consultant II, Unity Technologies
| The State of Game Funding: Trends, Tactics, and Opportunities
Luiz Vianna
Strategic Advisor | Games, Partnerships, & Investments
Shum Singh
Managing Director, Agnitio Capital
Pontus Mahler
Co-Founder, Agora Gaming Partners
| Responding to Unprecedented Climate
Trang Nguyen
Head of Operations, Soft Rains
Kaitlin Tremblay
Narrative Director, Soft Rains
|
| 2:30 pm | Funding the Future of Canadian Game Development
Corey Caplan
Director of Business Development and Partner Licensing, tinyBuild Games
Ryan Sno-Wood
Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, XP Gaming Inc.
eileen mary holowka
Co-Executive Director, Baby Ghosts Studio Development Fund
| ||
2026 round tables
XP Curated Expert Roundtables are available to Conference and VIP pass holders. Limited capacity ensures focused discussion.
Advance registration through MeetToMatch is required and seats will fill quickly.
| Time | Studio B |
|---|---|
| 11:00 am | Ask Games Lawyers Anything: This Normally Costs Money
Sangeetha Punniyamoorthy
Partner; Co-Chair of Canadian Intellectual Property & Technology, DLA Piper Canada LLP
Ryan Black
Partner; Global Lead, Video Games, DLA Piper (Canada) LLP
David Lafontaine
Associate - Intellectual Property and Technology, DLA Piper (Canada) LLP
|
| Time | Studio B |
|---|---|
| 10:30 am | Game Audio Round Table
Christian Hurst
Co-Founder, Managing Director, Interleave
|
| 1:30 pm | The AI Adoption Gap: Bridging Strategy and Reality in Games Leadership
Russell Sng
Strategic Growth & Developer Relations, Artificial Agency
|
Advancing AI Game Development with AMD Schola and GPUOpen
Explore how AI is transforming game development pipelines — accelerating your workflows and enabling smarter, more immersive gameplay. This session covers the latest developer tools
Always Playable: The Production Mindset That Survives Reality
Most game projects fail quietly while “on track.” This talk reframes production around a single, unforgiving truth: a playable build tells you more than any
Art Direction Is Marketing (You’re Just Calling It the Wrong Thing)
Art direction is not visual polish—it’s conversion designCosmetics = identity = monetization = retentionDiversity isn’t moral fluff—it’s market expansion + player attachment Cosmetics work from
Ask Games Lawyers Anything: This Normally Costs Money
This roundtable session allows you to ask any burning legal questions* you may have from a group of games industry lawyers. DLA Piper’s games lawyers
Best Practices for Multi-Platform Development
Applying just a few best practices for code and design to a game during development, regardless of project budget, can make a huge difference in
Building a Community for Lifetime Game Projects
How do you build and maintain a community for games in indefinite development? Alexandra Orlando of Kitfox Games will give a peek behind the curtain
Building an OP Cashflow Strategy for your Studio to Thrive
Let’s discuss strategies that enable studios of any size to supercharge established financial tools to improve your returns. Early-stage indies can convert sweat equity into
Building Our UA System From Media Buying to Scalable Growth Engine
Most UA teams are still optimizing campaigns while believing they’re optimizing for growth. This talk challenges that assumption and introduces a different model: user acquisition
Building the Creator Pipeline: How Smart Partnerships Are Scaling Influencer Marketing
The creator economy is evolving fast — and the studios and publishers winning at influencer marketing aren’t doing it alone. This panel brings together industry
Canada’s Video Game Industry – From Strength to Staying Power
Economic impact, global competitiveness, and the policy foundation for growth.
Capacity Planning That Works Across Studios and Titles
Capacity forecasting across multiple studios and titles is one of the hardest operational problems in modern game development, and one of the least consistently solved.
Closing Deals in 2026
Learn how to pitch at the right stage, what deal terms to expect in 2026, and how to target the right partners. This session unpacks
D2C in 2026: How New Platform Policies Unlock Even Greater Opportunity for Web Stores
2025 was a year of unprecedented growth for D2C, with rulings like Epic v. Apple and Epic v. Google unlocking new growth vectors for web
Designing Backwards: Creating Cauldrons for ‘Horizon Forbidden West’
When getting stuck on designing Cauldrons (Horizon’s dungeons) on ‘Horizon Forbidden West’, Dennis Micka’s entire approach to level design changed when he started designing the
Designing Effective Communication During Game Development
Whether it is two people or fifty, knowing how to communicate clearly, resolve conflicts, and align goals can make or break a game’s development. Come
From West to East: How to Make F2P Games Thrive in New Markets
I’ve worked across North America, Europe, and Asia on live-service games like Monopoly GO! and Apex Legends Mobile. From that experience, I’ve learned that successful
Funding the Future of Canadian Game Development
What does sustainable growth look like for game studios in Canada today? This panel brings together leaders from public funding, global publishing, and nonprofit developer
Game Audio Round Table
Part of the Interleave Audio Track This will be an open forum for discussing topics important to the game audio and music community. Best practices
Game Audio: The Future of Game Audio & Music
This session explores best practices and emerging trends by connecting strategy, team-building, and creative vision with the latest tech and tools defining the modern industry
Great Game, Wrong Foundation: A Studio Audit for Indie Founders
This session gives indie founders a practical framework for finding the cracks in their company’s foundation before a publisher, investor, or the market finds them
How To Achieve High Quality, Performant Lighting in URP and Unity 6
I take users through the process of lighting a complex scene in Unity URP and the performance ramifications of the choices available to them. Breaking
How We Rebuilt Our Studio Around AI (And Why You Should Too)
The traditional studio model of long planning cycles, rigid pipelines, and budgets demanding mass-market hits is no longer viable. AI has collapsed the cost of
Indie Pitch Competition presented by Ubisoft
Got a game with strong commercial potential? Pitch it live on stage in Toronto at XP Game Summit 2026. Five indie studios will be selected
Inside the Booth: Bringing Professional Performances to Your Next Project
Voice Acting in video games is more than performance, it’s a production process that hinges on direction, context, and iteration. In this live interactive session,
IP TEARDOWN: UNDER THE HOOD OF THE GAME WORLDS WE LOVE
“The great game universes feel inevitable. But what’s actually going on beneath the surface? In this session, Christian Fonnesbech shares principles for thinking about game
featured sessions
- Building a Community for Lifetime Game Projects
- The Retention Layer: The Hard Truth About Community and Social
- From West to East: How to Make F2P Games Thrive in New Markets
- The Innovation Paradox
- Best Practices for Multi-Platform Development
- Always Playable: The Production Mindset That Survives Reality
- Worldbuilding and Procedural Generation
- Responding to Unprecedented Climate