Meg Jayanth hosted the Independent Games Festival.

Independent Games Festival begins with emotional talk about Christchurch

The Independent Games Festival got off to an emotionally charged start tonight at the Game Developers Conference. It happened to be the first major public gaming event after the tragic massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand last week, with thousands of people in the audience.

And so it opened appropriately with a presenter who made a quick reference to mental illness.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.