📍 Amsterdam
Mentor Bio
Espen Sogn has 20+ years of experience in games development. During that time, he shipped seven full titles. For Guerilla Games in the Horizon and Killzone and fanchises. For Ninja Theory the Enslaved franchise. In addition three DLCs to go with these games.
Over the years he has been involved in nearly every aspect of making a game. He always enjoyed involving every conceivable team in whatever he was working on, so he had to coordinate with pretty much every discipline that you can find in a AAA company.
Espen started his career at Guerilla as a cinematics animator on Killzone and slowly transferred into design. On Horizon he was the lead designer and vision holder for the living world of the settlements in the game. More about that in his 2023 talk “Creating a living world in Horizon Forbidden West” which you can find in the GDC and INDIGO archives.
He is currently running his own studio, Jotun Games, making his first game The Dark Earth – a roguelite XCOM in a dark fantasy setting.
Current role and activities
Founder, Studio Head and Designer of Jotun Games
What you can learn from him
- How to manage a team
- How to avoid pitfalls and beginner’s mistakes in game development
- Provide all the tough questions that you don’t want to hear but really should