Meet the 2026 Guest Speaker!
We are honored and delighted to welcome our distinguished guest speakers, whose presence adds immeasurable value to this festival! Their expertise, experience, and insights are invaluable resources that enrich our understanding and inspire meaningful discussions.
We extend our gratitude to our guests for sharing their time and knowledge with us, recognizing that their contributions will shape and enhance the experiences of everyone present. Their presence underscores our commitment to learning, growth, and collaboration, and we are happy to have them as partners in this journey.
Our 2026 Plenary Speaker
Introducing Rika Nishikawa! Rika Nishikawa is Lead Content Designer at Skydance Interactive, a game division of Paramount Skydance that develops original and IP-based virtual reality and immersive video games. She graduated from California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) with a Bachelor of Fine Arts majoring in Character Animation. She fell in love with game development after starting her career in the industry as a game animator right out of college. Following her thirst for knowledge and curiosity for the many different facets of game development, she eventually found her calling in game design and switched specialties mid-career. Her career thus far has involved a wide array of video games from mobile to console, indie to AAA, such as Shantae: Half-Genie Hero and STAR WARS Jedi: Survivor.
Game development being a line of work where the developers constantly chase a subjective goal of “finding the fun” in a game, gathering available data and analyzing it plays the vital role of connecting the developers to the players, and becoming a guiding light that points game development in the right direction.
