About us

Breda Game City is a non-profit organization that focuses on elevating the Breda video games industry and creating a professional, healthy & creative environment.

Meet the team

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We have an extended network of organisations and individuals that help to establish and scale the ecosystem in and around Breda in a professional way. With direct ties to regional government, business organisations, education, and research, Breda Game City can help get your studio where it needs to be.

In particular, we work closely together with the Gemeente Breda, the Breda University of Applied Studies to meet the needs of students, studios and other parties that are interested in professionally developing in the videogames industry and establishing in Breda.

We commit to finding innovative ways to encourage all organisations to apply healthy, safe and inclusive work environments. We take the example by conducting in the most positive and inclusive way possible and support and encourage a wide range of organisations that focus on these themes.

By exploring and initiating new worldwide opportunities and partnerships continuously, we strive to be a forerunner in making great games and host creative and innovative events.

Our goal is to put Breda on the international video games map by showing what we have to offer in terms of talent and also to create the ideal atmosphere and factors for new companies to establish in Breda. We support the development of studios in Breda, and help become a top hub in the centre of western Europe for game developers to create their best works.

By its atmosphere, location, infrastructure, and much more; Breda offers the perfect mix to be a powerhouse game development hub. 

Learn more about Breda and West Brabant region

Breda Game City was founded in 2020 by a team of experts that were connected by our mutual awareness of untapped game development potential in the city of Breda.

Board & Team

Matthijs van de Laar (he/him)
Chairperson

Matthijs is the co-founder and creative director of a Breda-based entertainment game development company, Twirlbound. While in the second year of his International Game Architecture and Design course ...

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René Otto (he/him)
Secretary

René is an award-winning video game lawyer at Van Iersel Luchtman (VIL). At VIL he has founded and leads the only full-service legal team in the Netherlands which focuses on providing legal advice ....

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Ana Popescu (she/her)
Board Member

Ana is a Lecturer in Visual Arts at Breda University of Applied Sciences (BUas) and a freelance concept artist with experience working in both AAA studios on games such as 'Baldur's Gate 3' and in indie game companies on projects like 'Superfuse' ...

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Prof. Mata Haggis-Burridge (he/they)
Treasurer

Mata is an award-winning game designer and writer with over twenty years experience of both AAA and indie development, including ‘Burnout Paradise’, ‘Aliens Versus Predator’ (2010), 'Resident Evil Resistance' ...

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Panji Oudsen (he/him)
Coordinator

Panji is a marketing specialist with a focus on the creative industry, specialising in a wide range of disciplines in marketing, project management and events. As an event manager he has been involved ...

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Sabina Dirks (she/her)
Coordinator

After obtaining her master's degree, Sabina has successfully set up and run various companies: including a marketing and communication agency, an employment agency for minorities, a taxi magazine and a food truck. Sabina is now ...

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Advisory Board

Kate Edwards

Kate Edwards is an award-winning 30+ year veteran of the game industry, and the CEO and principal consultant of Geogrify, a consultancy which innovated content culturalization ...

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Ondraus Jenkins

Ondraus is the Chief Strategy Officer and member of the Board of Directors of Bungie. OJ has been with the company for over ten years, and is deeply fascinated by the intersection of technology ...

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Hylke Sprangers

Hylke Sprangers is an international digital & technology thought leader and non-exec board member with a passion for tech innovation and execution. He is specialized in tech, ...

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Willem Hilhorst

Willem is employed as Media Manager Games & Online Preservation at The Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision. In particular he is specialized in the topics of videogames, ...

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Bart Lauwen

Bart has been involved with supporting innovative and creative businesses in Breda throughout his political platform and he brings the knowledge of a successful Edtech company with him. ...

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Anne Heslinga

Anne Heslinga is a PhD candidate at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her research investigates the impact of platform business models on gaming and game development in The Netherlands. ...

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Credits

Photography by: Lothar Zhou

Design and built by:

Breda Game City 2023. All rights reserved

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Matthijs van de Laar (he/him)
Chairperson

Matthijs is the co-founder and creative director of a Breda-based entertainment game development company, Twirlbound. While in the second year of his International Game Architecture and Design course at BUAS in Breda, he and his long-time friend Marc decided to make their side-project more official and start a company to hit the ground running after graduation. Matthijs went on to design, produce and direct their first award-winning title ‘Pine’, with which they soon proved themselves in the global game industry as an indie company focusing on ambitious, colorful open worlds.

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René Otto (he/him)
Secretary

René is an award-winning video game lawyer at Van Iersel Luchtman (VIL). At VIL he has founded and leads the only full-service legal team in the Netherlands which focuses on providing legal advice and (court) representation to video game companies. René is frequently asked to share his insights and knowledge on the legal aspects of video games as a speaker on international events and as a guest lecturer at Breda University of Applied Sciences (BUas) and HKU. Because the well-being of the video game industry is close to his heart, René has frequently committed himself to represent the Dutch industry on a national level regarding topics such as the regulation of loot boxes as well as the evaluation of the Dutch Copyright Act. Furthermore he always tries to use his extensive network of contacts to create opportunities for people in the industry and to ensure the inclusivity and diversity of the industry in his role as a Women in Games Ambassador. For his contributions to the Dutch game industry he was awarded the title of “Gamechanger of 2019” at the inaugural edition of the Game Bakery Awards. 

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Ana Popescu (She/Her)
Board Member


Ana is a Lecturer in Visual Arts at Breda University of Applied Sciences (BUas) and a freelance concept artist with experience working in both AAA studios on games such as ‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ and in indie game companies on projects like ‘Superfuse’. She graduated cum laude from BUas and has a Master’s in International Business Management from one of the top business schools in Europe, EDHEC University. Her Master’s thesis was completed with Breda Game City on identifying the organisation’s position in the Dutch gaming ecosystem.

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Prof. Mata Haggis-Burridge (he/they)
Treasurer

Mata is an award-winning game designer and writer with over twenty years experience of both AAA and indie development, including ‘Burnout Paradise’, ‘Aliens Versus Predator’ (2010), ‘Resident Evil Resistance’, and in collaboration with Techland’s narrative team on mission writing/design for ‘Dying Light 2’. They are the Professor of Creative and Entertainment Games at Breda University of Applied Sciences (BUas), and the owner of the narrative and game design consultancy Copper Stone Sea. They have spoken regarding game design, diversity, and narrative design at numerous international events, including multiple GDC and Develop conferences, and regarding ethics in AI for TedXDelft. Recently, Mata has consulted on writing, design, and creative direction on multiple AAA and indie titles, on national and international research/education policy, and is working on original creative projects.

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Panji Oudsen (he/him)
Coordinator

Panji is a marketing specialist with a focus on the creative industry, specialising in a wide range of disciplines in marketing, project management and events. As an event manager he has been involved with events such as the Gamescom Holland Pavilion, Extrema Outdoor NL, Games [4Diversity] Game Jam 2017: Child’s Play, Tilburg Hap Stap festival and Dutch Game Summit. Furthermore, he has been involved with Healthcare connector UCREATE, La Cloche Hospitality and video game companies such as Dutch Games Association, Degoma among others where he led various marketing related projects and activities. In recent years, he has been working on creating a better position for the Dutch video game industry by connecting, supporting, and facilitating its members in various ways. 

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Sabina Dirks (she/her)
Coordinator

After obtaining her master’s degree, Sabina has successfully set up and run various companies: including a marketing and communication agency, an employment agency for minorities, a taxi magazine and a food truck. Sabina is now an experienced project and event manager working in the games industry since 2006, having worked on numerous game related projects and events. In addition to large conferences, Sabina also ensures tight organization behind projects such as the Games [4Diversity] Jams and the international Courage Events in Cologne (during Gamescom) and San Francisco (during Game Developer Conference). As Operations Manager of the Dutch Games Association, Sabina led all activities, projects and events of the association. In addition, Sabina is committed to various non-profit organizations. She is a board member of Games [4Diversity] and chair of the EBorFoundation.

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Kate Edwards

Kate Edwards is an award-winning 30+ year veteran of the game industry, and the CEO and principal consultant of Geogrify, a consultancy which innovated content culturalization, as well as the CXO and Co-Founder of SetJetters, a film tourism app. She is also the former Executive Director of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) and the Global Game Jam. In addition to serving in several board and advisory roles, she is a geographer, writer, and corporate strategist. In 2021, she was included in the Forbes’ “50 Over 50” Vision List and was also inducted into the Women in Games Hall of Fame.

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Ondraus Jenkins​

Ondraus is the Chief Strategy Officer and member of the Board of Directors of Bungie. OJ has been with the company for over ten years, and is deeply fascinated by the intersection of technology, art, event-driven popular culture, and business. Put simply, he loves games.

From 1997 through 2000 OJ was an M&A and Securities Associate with Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton and Sullivan & Cromwell in New York and Los Angeles, respectively. He then moved to a talent-side boutique law firm in Beverly Hills. His transition to interactive business came soon after a move to the Bay Area where he joined Electronic Arts as a member of the worldwide business affairs organization. Ondraus returned home to the Pacific Northwest and joined Bungie in 2008.

Ondraus has been a Bungie fan since first playing Marathon on his Macintosh in 1994. 

Notable achievements while at Bungie include:

  • Driving the reorganization of the company from an LLC into an employee-owned C-Corp in 2010.
  • Sourcing, negotiating and closing in 2010 a multi-year development and publishing agreement with Activision providing over $[150]M of direct development funding to the studio, annually.
  • In 2018 lead the $200M strategic investment by NetEase into the company.
  • Together with his colleagues on the leadership team, lead the negotiations to terminate our development and publishing agreement with Activision at the end of 2018.
  • In 2019, lead $60M transaction for Bungie to be the “hero” game on a strategic, emerging platform.

 

OJ also serves on the Board of Wicked Cool Toys, a toy manufacturer and the global licensee for the Pokemon and Cabbage Patch brands. Bringing together a love of conservation, science and education, Ondraus serves on the Regional Board of Directors of NatureBridge, an amazing non-profit which connects young people with hands-on science experimentation and the outdoors that he’d love to talk to you about.

Ondraus is a graduate of Stanford University, The Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, and the Columbia University School of Law where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar and an editor of the Columbia Law Review. 

In his copious free time, OJ is an avid surfer, windsurfer, and mountaineer. He is also an instrument-rated private pilot, but is regrettably not current.

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Hylke Sprangers

Hylke Sprangers is an international digital & technology thought leader and non-exec board member with a passion for tech innovation and execution. He is specialized in tech, digital & innovation strategy & management.

 Currently he is working for Erasmus University Rotterdam as Executive Director & Lecturer and also works as non-executive board member with a focus on tech, digital & innovation.

Hylke has been working for 7 years at Talpa Network as Group CTO and executive board member, responsible for driving the technology vision, execution and innovation roadmap. Talpa Network is a leading global MediaTech company with omnichannel brands in TV, radio, social, digital, ecommerce, gaming and is well-known for its talent competition The Voice, airing in 180 countries. Prior to joining Talpa, Hylke has held various executive positions in the technology industry. At tech company Northgate, Hylke was responsible for global delivery spanning 10 global hubs with 3000 engineers.

 He studied Computer Science at the VU University Amsterdam where he graduated cum laude. In 2018 he was elected as CIO of the Year in the Netherlands.

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Willem Hilhorst

Willem is employed as Media Manager Games & Online Preservation at The Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision. In particular he is specialized in the topics of videogames, interactive and immersive media and online preservation such as web-archival, webvideo and podcast archival. Willem is actively involved in the presentation and preservation of videogames at Sound & Vision and uses his network and expertise to forge connections between the Netherlands games industry and the broader media landscape. In his free time he likes to write on the topic of games, plays board games and participates in archery. 

Willem has been active at Sound & Vision since 2021, where he started working on the renewal of the Mediamuseum which opened in February of 2023. In particular he worked on the themes of ‘play’ and ‘tell’ within the museum. Before that he completed his bachelor’s degree in film & television sciences, with a minor in game studies at the University of Utrecht, after which he completed a Master’s degree in Journalism & Media at the University of Amsterdam. During his studies he participated in two internships, one of which at Nintendo of Europe in Frankfurt am Main, Germany as well as one for the Dutch educational children’s program Het Klokhuis.

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Bart Lauwen ​

City Councilor in Breda & HR manager at Breda Edtech Scale up Knowingo.

 

Bart has been involved with supporting innovative and creative businesses in Breda throughout his political platform and he brings the knowledge of a successful Edtech company with him.

His political network, the contacts he has in the international game scene and his HR perspective make him a valuable member for the Breda Game City Advisory board.

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Anne Heslinga


Ana is a Lecturer in Visual Arts at Breda University of Applied Sciences (BUas) and a freelance concept artist with experience working in both AAA studios on games such as ‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ and in indie game companies on projects like ‘Superfuse’. She graduated cum laude from BUas and has a Master’s in International Business Management from one of the top business schools in Europe, EDHEC University. Her Master’s thesis was completed with Breda Game City on identifying the organisation’s position in the Dutch gaming ecosystem.

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