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Challengers:
Heather Kelley, Ubisoft
 Heather Kelley is a Game Designer at Ubisoft's Montreal Studio and Chair of the IGDA's Women in Game Development Special Interest Group. Currently designing an unannounced PSP title, her previous work includes level design on Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory at Ubisoft, design on Thief: Deadly Shadows at Ion Storm Austin, and producer-designer at Human Code, creating the award-winning Redbeard's Pirate Quest among other titles.
Frank Lantz, area/code
 Frank Lantz is Creative Director and co-Founder of area/code, a New York City company than makes large-scale, real-world games. Frank has worked in the field of game development for the past 20 years. Before starting area/code, Frank was the Director of Game Design at gameLab, a developer of online and downloadable games. Frank has also worked as a game designer for the developer POP, where he created games for Cartoon Network, Lifetime TV, and VH1. Between 1988 and 1998, he was Creative Director at R/GA Interactive, a New York digital design company. For over 10 years, Frank has taught game design at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program.
Eric Zimmerman, gamelab
 Eric Zimmerman has been working in the game industry for more than a decade. He is the co-founder and CEO of gameLab (www.gamelab.com), a game development company based in New York City. gameLab creates award-winning online games, including the hit downloadable game Diner Dash. Pre-gameLab titles include SiSSYFiGHT 2000 (www.sissyfight.com) and the PC title Gearheads. Eric has taught courses at MIT, New York University, and Parsons School of Design. He has lectured and published extensively about game design and game culture and is the co-author with Katie Salen of Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals (MIT, 2004) and The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology (MIT, 2005).
Pascal Luban, The Game Design Studio
 Pascal Luban has been the Lead Level Designer and Playtest Manager on the world acclaimed multiplayer mode of Splinter Cell - Pandora Tomorrow and Chaos Theory developed and published by Ubisoft. He is also the founder and General Manager of The Game Design Studio, a French company specialized in game and level design consulting services whose clients include Cryo Networks, Darkworks, Ubisoft , VU Games as well as mobile games publishers and developers such as Gmedia and Nexgen Studio.
Moderator:
Jason Della Rocca, Executive director, IGDA
 Jason oversees the management of the International Game Developers Association, working to build a unified global game development community and provide a common voice for developers. Jason and the IGDA deal with such diverse topics as developer quality of life, anti-censorship, academic relations, business issues and workplace diversity. Jason has been a member of the game development community for over a decade, and has spent time at Matrox Graphics, Quazal and Silicon Graphics.
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Designers' Challenge: Sex in Games Video games are emerging as the dominant form of art and entertainment of the 21st century, enjoyed by hundreds of millions of players worldwide. As a culturally potent and expressive medium, developers should be able to explore all aspects of the human condition - as we see in film, literature, etc.
However, the stigma that video games are simply "toys for children" is holding back the industry - both creatively and economically. The concerns over the hidden sex scenes in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is just one indicator that industry critics cannot accept that a wide range of diverse content is played by a just as diverse audience.
That said, even if these barriers didn't exist, could we even create a game with meaningful representations of sex? From cheap titillation to eroticism to more complex notions of sexuality, sexual tension and innuendo, if challenged, what could we design?
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