This year the jury will be divided in 3 groups: "Entertainment Jury" (categories Best Game, Best Innovation, Best Student Game, Best Audio, Best Art, Best Technology & Best Game Design), “Applied Jury” (Category Applied) and “Industry Jury” (Best Studio, Inclusion, Career/Lifetime Achievement and Awesome Achievement).
The jury of the Dutch Game Awards 2024 is not yet complete.
The jury members will be added in the upcoming weeks.
Entertainment jury
Käy Vriend
GlitchKraft
Willem Hilhorst
Willem is the Media Manager for Games and Online at Het Nederlands Instituut voor Beeld & Geluid. He specializes in video games, digital media and online culture. Willem is actively working on the archiving and preservation of Dutch games and collaborates with various game makers, publishers, journalists and workers in the (inter)national games industry. In his spare time he writes about games, plays boardgames and practices archery.
Klaas van der Stroom
Klaas is co-creator of- and business developer at Representing Games, the agency label of MeetToMatch. Representing Games started in 2020 as a side activity and was born out of studios, publishers, and governments reaching out to MeetToMatch requesting active support to help set them up with connections to other companies in the entertainment games industry to secure deals and partnerships. As a natural fit with the MeetToMatch activities, this grew bigger over time, with Klaas being responsible for building this into a separate business unit and supporting today’s clients mainly by providing pitch & build related advice, establishing connections between developers and publishers & investors, and providing general consultancy & guidance along the way.
Adinda van Oosten
Adinda van Oosten combined her bachelor’s degree in China Studies with a degree in Game Design and Development. After joining a Game Jam in Guangzhou she came to realize that she enjoyed teaching more than making games and continued her studies with a game design and research Master in Germany.
She worked in Hongkong as a service learning tutor at 嶺南大學 (Lingnan University) creating her own courses and organizing the Global Game Jam. In 2019 she started the channel “Acreates” on Youtube providing tutorials for game maker enthusiasts and interviews Indie developers from all over the world. Next to her digital journey is she also a mentor and coach for creative professionals.
Paul van der Made
Paul was only 30 when he suffered a severe brain hemorrhage. Thanks to his rehabilitation he is able to participate in numerous things again. However, his hobby of playing video games remains a challenge. In 2016 he founded the HiPerks Foundation with which he wants to stimulate game development for people with disabilities.
Len Maessen
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
Ellis Bartholomeus
Throughout her career, Ellis Bartholomeus has been intrigued with the value of play. She graduated from the Design Academy in 1996 as a product designer and realised that to have audiences own a message they needed to interact with it. Since then she has been designing play as a method/tool to amplify self-motivated learning and enable rich social interaction. She co-developed over 75 games and playful interactive products on a wide spectrum of topics and wrote a book Apply Play • to get ahead of the game which has been published in four languages and is being used to learn and play more worldwide.
Mathijs Konings
Mathijs Konings is the Chief Product Officer at Tover, where he leads a talented team in developing innovative products and services that greatly improve the lives of people living with dementia and other cognitive challenges. With a strong commitment to design thinking and human-centered principles, Mathijs and his team create engaging experiences that foster social interaction, physical activity, and mental stimulation.
Having built and managed high-performing teams throughout his career, Mathijs has successfully guided numerous products from concept to market launch. His extensive expertise in product management, design, and innovation, combined with a deep understanding of emerging technologies and market trends, is an important driving factor for Tover’s success.
Under Mathijs’s leadership, Tover’s products have gained widespread acclaim and are sold in markets worldwide, including North Western Europe, Northern America, and Australia. This global presence reflects the universal demand for their impactful solutions.
Passionate about making a positive impact, Mathijs works closely with customers and stakeholders to ensure Tover’s products surpass expectations and deliver tangible results. His team actively transforms the lives of individuals with cognitive challenges and enhances the quality of care they receive.
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.
Bart Hufen
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
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!
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.
Juney Dijkstra
She was formerly a Business Owner at Paradox Interactive, responsible for business development & sales of a portfolio of 60+ titles generating $ 15m USD revenue YoY. Prior to that, she was Lead Producer at SOEDESCO Publishing, building the publishing pipeline & team for PC & console to support the worldwide release of 50+ games digitally & at retail, while also developing & running the in-house porting team. She obtained her Game and Media Technology MSc. degree at Utrecht University, alongside organising and running a variety of large scale events in the game development industry.
Bertine van Hövell
The jury of the Dutch Game Awards 2023 is not yet complete.
More jury members will be added in the upcoming weeks.
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.
