Meet the Class
Nadia ShammasNarrative Designer, Writer & Creative Lead
Nadia is a writer, poet, ceramic artist, and Palestinian New Yorker now living in Toronto - she started off as a pile of moss cursed into human form.
Nadia approaches games more so as theatre than film, just as poetry is closer to comics than prose fiction. She’s most fascinated by the space shared between artist, art, and the audience engaging with it. They love gardening and hate bugs. (besides those related to or currently inhabiting their coworkers)
BIO
Bloodborne, Hitman WoA, Fear and Hunger, The Green Knight, A Song of Ice and Fire, Suspiria (both the 1977 and 2017 versions)
FAVOURITE GAMES AND INFLUENCES
Anna KrasnerTech Lead & Game Designer
Anna is a pile of wiggly worms trapped inside a meat suit. She has been masquerading as a game developer for over a decade in AAA, indie, and educational spaces, and so far nobody has noticed.
Over years undercover, she’s developed skills in programming, art, and game design. She is also involved in local activism. At Ghoul School, her friends discovered her secret and chose to accept her anyway.
Anna’s goal is to give you a really weird experience to enjoy, so you can join her in better understanding what it means to be human.
BIO
FAVOURITE GAMES AND INFLUENCES
Katamari, Earthbound, Portal, Psychonauts, Infinity Nikki, Love and Deepspace
Val K. WiseArtist
Val is a cartoonist and writer from the Southeastern U.S. She makes work about having a gender, being a body, and eating things that aren’t food.
He is mother to hundreds of little bugs, including three species of isopods, three permanent resident house cats, and whichever additional cat he’s fostering at the moment.
BIO
FAVOURITE GAMES AND INFLUENCES
Dark Souls 3, Elden Ring, Misericorde, Blasphemous, Cocoon
Christoffer CruzUX Designer
As a User Experience Designer, Chris wants your experience to be nice but not too nice, because friction is an essential element of design.
He firmly believes that games are a conversation between creator and player. How people react to a game determines the stories they tell about it.
That’s why he sees Leon’s briefcase, Wavedashing, and the Starcraft 2 metagame as peaks of human ingenuity.
He’s previously assured the quality of work at Ubisoft, Amazon Game Studios, and Environment and Climate Change Canada.
BIO
Resident Evil 4, Elden Ring, The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, Banjo-Kazooie, Capcom vs. SNK 2, StarCraft 2
FAVOURITE GAMES AND INFLUENCES
Yuriy PlisenkoGame Designer
After a short fingerboarding career, film school, and working in immigration, Yuriy got a AAA QA job in his late 20s.
When he finally experienced the industry he’d heard about for so long first-hand, his first thought was “what the fuck is this?” Which is how he ended up co-founding a worker co-op.
He now makes flowcharts, fills out forms, and watches and immediately forgets Unity tutorials.
BIO
FAVOURITE GAMES AND INFLUENCES
Dragon’s Dogma 2, Hitman WoA, World of Warcraft, Wide Ocean Big Jacket