This year, the jury is divided into four groups: the Entertainment Jury (categories: Best Game, Best Debut Game, Best Audio, Best Art, Best Technology, Best Game Design, and Best Narrative), the Student Jury (category: Best Student Game), the Applied Jury (category: Applied), and the Industry Jury (categories: Best Studio, Inclusion, Career Achievement, and Best in Business).
The jury of the Dutch Game Awards 2025 is not yet complete.
The jury members will be added in the upcoming months.
Entertainment jury
Laura de Looff
Erwin Bell
Erwin Bell has been passionate about game design from an early age. As a child, he created levels in Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, inspired by his favorite movies and TV series. He believes there is a game for everyone, and that “I don’t play games” simply means you have not found the right one yet.
He began his career as a games journalist before studying game design at HKU, where his team placed third at the first Dutch Game Awards. Erwin went on to consult on more than 15 commercially released games before discovering his passion for teaching. Today, he is a game design lecturer at Fontys ICT University of Applied Sciences in Eindhoven. Known for his critical approach, he challenges students to improve their work, guided by Jaron Lanier’s belief that “the critics are the true optimists.”
Wytze Koppelman
Wytze works as a curator at The Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision in Hilversum, one of the world’s largest audiovisual archives. The institute’s collection is constantly expanding to provide an accurate reflection of the Netherlands’ media history and legacy. Based in Hilversum, the heart of Dutch broadcasting, Wytze focuses on developing and broadening the collection beyond traditional media into newer fields, including Dutch video games, contributing to the preservation of the nation’s gaming heritage.
Klaas van der Stroom
Klaas is Event Manager at MeetToMatch and co-creator of its agency label, Representing Games. In addition to organizing and managing a wide range of B2B events across the industry, he specializes in tailored, hands-on support for development studios, publishers, governments, and event organizers. His work often focuses on pitch deck and build preparation, dealmaking support, matchmaking, securing publishing or funding opportunities, and general consultation on the business side of the industry. He also facilitates deal-focused initiatives such as pitch sessions and acceleration programs.
Adinda van Oosten
Adinda van Oosten combined a bachelor’s degree in China Studies with a degree in Game Design and Development. After participating in a Game Jam in Guangzhou, she realized she enjoyed teaching more than making games and pursued a Master’s in Game Design and Research in Germany.
She worked in Hong Kong as a service-learning tutor at 嶺南大學 (Lingnan University), where she created her own courses and organized the Global Game Jam. In 2019, she launched the YouTube channel Acreates, offering tutorials for game-making enthusiasts and interviewing indie developers from around the world. In addition to her digital work, she is also a mentor and coach for creative professionals.
John Lewis
John is a seasoned game developer and consultant who leads Liminal Group, helping studios integrate generative AI into their projects. He is known for his design credit on the classic board game Blood Bowl and for founding the NAF, the global players’ association for Blood Bowl fans. Currently, he is developing LoreWeaver, a narrative design tool that uses AI as a creative accelerator, helping designers quickly weave complex stories and lore. John is very excited to bring his expertise to the Dutch Game Awards jury this year.
Wytze Koppelman
Wytze works as a curator at The Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision in Hilversum, one of the world’s largest audiovisual archives. The institute’s collection is constantly expanding to provide an accurate reflection of the Netherlands’ media history and legacy. Based in Hilversum, the heart of Dutch broadcasting, Wytze focuses on developing and broadening the collection beyond traditional media into newer fields, including Dutch video games, contributing to the preservation of the nation’s gaming heritage.
Ressa Schwarzwald
Ressa is the CEO and founder of Gameowdio, an audio outsourcing studio based in Rotterdam. Her main focus is audio direction, visioning and management. Starting 2009, Ressa has worked as game audio generalist: freelanced, directed audio at Aterdux Entertainment (Legends of Eisenwald), worked as audio producer for TinyBuild (Secret Neighbor, Totally Reliable Delivery Service, Party Hard), now one of her biggest goals is building audio team at CM Games (Nitro Nation franchise, Into The Radius).
She creates audio teams from scratch and manages them, working with outsourcing audio specialists from all over the world. Her real passion is implementation of effective and elegant audio strategies for developers to save time and money when creating great experiences.
Carmen van Sleeuwen
Carmen is an art director and one of the founders of Roost Games, an indie game studio and cooperative with members across the Netherlands and Europe. Roost Games developed and released its first game, Cat Cafe Manager, in 2022 and is currently working on a sequel.
With over 10 years of experience in the industry, Carmen has contributed to numerous indie titles as an artist and animator, including Renowned Explorers, Godhood, Reus 2, and Tracks of Thought. She also helped establish WerkPlant, an initiative sparked by Dutch indie game studios Wispfire and Roost Games that aims to promote sustainable independence in the creative industry.
With a rich background in animation, Carmen is passionate about bringing ideas and concepts to life.
Gino van den Bergen
Gino’s work had a big impact on game physics and many of his discoveries are still a common component in current game physics engines. He developed an early version of the SOLID collision detection library to support his thesis, and opened the source code to the public as GNU software. By public demand, Gino started to offer the SOLID library under commercial licensing and founded Dtecta Middleware in 2001. SOLID has been applied in top-selling game console titles, such as the Formula One series for PlayStation 2.
He also shared his ideas in a number of journals and books, and is best known as author of the book Collision Detection in Interactive 3D Environments.
Céline Veltman
She creates audio teams from scratch and manages them, working with outsourcing audio specialists from all over the world. Her real passion is implementation of effective and elegant audio strategies for developers to save time and money when creating great experiences.
Applied Jury
Will be announced soon.
Dr. Menno van Pelt-Deen
Dr. Menno van Pelt-Deen is a Design[er] Researcher, he explores game design in new and weird contexts. Amongst others, he created games in swimming pools, therapeutic sessions and forests. By creating games with professionals, students and non-game developers, Menno builds bridges between industries, disciplines and people. As a result, he fosters the inclusion of new perspectives and domains into the creative industry of game development.
Anique Mulder
Anique Mulder is Managing Director at &ranj, a Rotterdam-based studio with a 25-year legacy in serious game development. &ranj partners with governments, NGOs, Fortune 500 companies, and innovaters worldwide to transform complex challenges into AI-powered, game-based solutions that drive behavioral change.
Lindy Damen
Lindy describes herself as a curious creative for life. She founded EVRgreen Studio, an applied games studio, out of her passion for nature and her interest in gaming. From her own experience and from her education, she noticed how powerful these tools can be to raise awareness. How they can bridge the gap between science and society by simplifying and introducing a positive and playful approach. This is how she aims to make an impact with games for a green future.
Nikita Kayal
Nikita Kayal, Game Designer at ImproVive, has 13 years of experience in making playful games. She started her career making board games for classrooms in India. For the past 9 years, she has been working with immersive media, making games and interactive experiences for social impact, training and learning, healthcare, and performing arts. She loves deep diving into new and broad topics and translating difficult topics into playful experiences. In the past years she has been applying AI to create new ways of storytelling and intelligence in immersive media.
Marcel Mens
During his study to become a teacher in physical education, Marcel discovered the power of play. Learning new skills, improving connectedness, addressing and motivating each other… Play facilitates and strengthens the effect. Early in his career, he transitioned to the corporate world, but the lessons from the gym-class remained. With his company AtHand Serious Gaming, Marcel was involved in the development and implementation of numerous serious games for telcos, financial service providers, customer contact organizations, and other large corporates through-out Europe. Games from AtHand have been awarded multiple times, winning the NL E-learning Award, SAN Accent, and Dutch Game Awards. After selling AtHand in 2021, Marcel founded 4Growth with the aim of making a social impact through Serious Gaming. As a jury member, he focuses on the connection between creativity, engagement, and measurable impact.
Joris Dingelstad
Joris Dingelstad graduated from the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht with a degree in Game Design in 2022. That same year, he joined HackShield as a Developer and Designer. During his academic journey, he primarily focused on enhancing the game experience to make it more pleasing and satisfying for players. At HackShield, he leverages this knowledge, aiming to design educational interactions for players. Within the team, he applies his expertise to craft systems that empower his colleagues to work, design, and create with greater efficiency.
Furthermore, since 2020, Joris has been assisting with the Gamefeel course at the Hogeschool Voor De Kunst Utrecht, a program tailored for budding Game Design students.
Hanneke Scholten
Hanneke Scholten is an assistant professor at the University of Twente and co-director of the Games for Emotional and Mental Health (GEMH) Lab. In her PhD project at the Radboud
University, she designed and tested a game to help youth quit smoking. In this project, she collaborated with game designers and youth. In her position as postdoctoral researcher at GEMH Lab, she focused on understanding and improving youths’ emotional and mental health through technology. In her current positions at the University of Twente and GEMH Lab she is driven to build interdisciplinary collaborations through which digital experiences can be developed that matter to youth and improve their wellbeing. Furthermore, she strives to implement scientifically proven products in the real-world to have an impact on as many youth as possible. Hanneke is a vocal proponent of the potential impact of interactive media on emotional and mental health. To this end, she has published her work in international journals and delivered over 60 presentations and workshops on this topic to audiences of diverse backgrounds, including the scientific community, parents, youth, teachers, designers, and psychologists.
Dimme van der Hout
Wieke Schrakamp
Wieke works as a UX researcher at Valsplat, a strategic research and design agency. She studied communication and health sciences at the University of Amsterdam. After graduating she worked in the field of applied games at IJsfontein as project manager and researcher.
Because of her fascination with human behaviour, she has decided to dedicate her time fully to user research. She and her colleagues at Valsplat are always on the hunt for ways to improve designs and make them more effective in their outcome.
In her sparetime she’s been known to spend a morbidly amount of time playing the game ‘Don’t Starve’.
Industry Jury
Rami Ismail
Rami Ismail is a Dutch-Egyptian independent games & tool developer with over 20 genre-defining and award-winning titles across PC, console, web, and mobile. The co-founder of the influential indie games studio Vlambeer, Rami worked on award-winning and genre-defining games such as Ridiculous Fishing and Nuclear Throne. His development of tools like the industry-standard dopresskit.com, his prolific & popular public speaking, and highly-regarded consultancy and insights have helped shape industry opportunities for game communities & independent game developers worldwide.
Rami continues to advocate the creation of a fairer and more equal industry for developers anywhere through his work at gamedev.world and globalgames.fund. His versatility and work resulted in him receiving a wide range of recognition, including the prestigious Game Developers Choice Ambassador Award, the IndieCade Gamechanger Award, and a Forbes 30 Under 30 nomination.
Martijn Schenderling
Collin van Ginkel
Back in the year 2000, Collin co-founded game developer Two Tribes together with Martijn Reuvers. The company is probably best known for the Toki Tori series of games. During its peak, Two Tribes grew in size to around 15 people was able to work with famous IP’s such as Ice Ace and Portal 2. At the end of 2016, after releasing RIVE, their last and arguably best game yet, Collin decided his spark for game development was gone and quit development to go on a trip around the world to clear his head.
After returning home, he soon realised it would be a waste of his almost 20 years of experience to leave the industry. Since then he has been supporting other game developers in the Netherlands and Belgium as well as becoming Incubation Manager at Dutch Game Garden in 2023 until it had to close its doors in late 2024.
Stephanie van Geel
Stephanie is a co-founder of Game Drive, a full-service game marketing agency for indie developers whose clients include well-known Dutch developers like BlackMill Games of the WW1 Game Series and Total Mayhem Games of the We Were Here series, as well as a variety of international studios like Pine Studio, creators of Escape Simulator, and Funselektor Labs with several hit racing games.
Stephanie has experience with nearly all of the facets of marketing, but her biggest interest lies in the strategy and operations side.
In her free time, Stephanie likes traveling and spending time with her two kids. Before settling in The Netherlands, she has lived in Ivory Coast, Sweden and Zimbabwe. She loves animals and spending time outdoors, which is why African safaris – Game Drives – are one of her favourite things in the world!
Bertine van Hövell
Eric Bartelson
Eric Bartelson has been working as a game journalist for magazines like PC Zone Benelux and GameQuest since the nineties. He co-founded Control Magazine and organized events like Control Conference, Control Gamelab and the former Dutch Game Awards. Nowadays he works as a freelance journalist for various magazines, websites and tv.
Student Jury
Lucia de Visser
Lucia de Visser is an experienced game developer, director, and entrepreneur with a background in game production and, more recently, film production. She is the co-founder and former CEO of Total Mayhem Games, known for the award-winning We Were Here series—a cooperative puzzle adventure franchise that has reached millions of players worldwide.
Together with her team, Lucia helped grow Total Mayhem Games from a student project into an international studio with multiple successful releases on consoles and PC. The studio has won several awards, including Best Game Design at the Dutch Game Awards and Best Small Studio at the TIGA Awards.
Lucia is now building a new creative chapter with Make Way Games, a studio that uniquely connects film and games. Drawing on her extensive experience, she serves as a jury member for the Dutch Game Awards, celebrating and encouraging innovation, narrative, and creative boldness within the Dutch games sector.
Kela van der Deijl
Kela is a (solo) game developer and 3D artist, known for her game Mail Time, and winner of the Best Art category at the Dutch Game Awards 2023.
Tomas Sala
Tomas Sala is a Dutch video game designer and developer. He co-founded Little Chicken Game Company and is more recently known for his solo projects, including The Falconeer and Bulwark Evolution: Falconeer Chronicles.
