The Scottish Games Network has announced that founder and CEO Brian Baglow will speak at Web Summit 2026 in Lisbon next week, alongside the legendary DMA Design founder and CEO Dave Jones, and Claudio Telo Pestana, the head of Portugal’s eBames Lab Consortium, to advocate for the transformative value of game design talent across the wider economy.
Taking place on Stage 4 as part of the headline Future of Work Summit, the panel brings together these pioneers of interactive development to address a critical question facing technology and enterprise leaders worldwide: As artificial intelligence fundamentally reshapes the global workforce, why are game developers becoming the enterprise’s most crucial strategic hire?
The Linchpins of the AI-Driven Workforce
As rapid advances in artificial intelligence and automation commoditise standard programming and basic digital design, enterprise demand is shifting toward higher-order capabilities: complex systems thinking, intrinsic human motivation, spatial computing, and behavioural resilience.
All of which are developed and required in roles across video game design, development and production.
Game developers spend their careers solving the precise bottlenecks modern enterprises are now stumbling over:
- Systems Thinking at Scale: Video games are complex, reactive ecosystems balancing thousands of interlocking variables, logic states, and user interactions simultaneously.
- Engagement Architecture: In an era where user attention is the world’s most valuable currency, game designers understand intrinsic & extrinsic motivation, dynamic feedback loops, and intuitive onboarding better than any other software discipline.
- Human-Centric Design Under Uncertainty: Games require active, willing user participation. When game mechanics fail, users leave; game developers are uniquely trained to iterate continuously around human psychology.
More Than Games: Taking the Scottish Thesis to the Global Stage
For Baglow and the Scottish Games Network, the Web Summit stage offers an international platform to advance the core principles of Scotland’s National Games Action Plan and the commercial More Than Games initiative.
As organisations across fintech, digital health, advanced manufacturing, and civic infrastructure race to deploy real-time 3D pipelines, digital twins, and interactive engagement tools, they routinely discover that their legacy software development stacks are ill-equipped for real-time interactive design.
Game developers are not ‘mere’ entertainment creators; they are the pioneers and architects of the interactive, spatial web.
By reuniting with former DMA Design boss David Jones on a global stage, the panel highlights Scotland’s enduring legacy of foundational technical innovation, while making a direct, evidence-based business case to international investors, corporate executives, and HR leaders: the future of work is interactive, and game developers hold the master key.
The inclusion of Claudio Pestano, the head of Portugal’s eGames lab, underlines the need for Scotland to adopt a more strategic and comprehensive support for its games ecosystem. The eGames lab brings together the country’s games industry, with education, academia, public sector and Government, to put Portugal on the global games map – and build a more connected and collaborative approach to making games a recognised and valuable digital and creative utility.
Session Details & Connecting in Lisbon
Web Summit attendees, corporate executives, founders, and talent leads are invited to join the session on Stage 4 or connect directly with the team in Lisbon to discuss strategic collaboration, talent recruitment, and applying playful thinking to enterprise challenges.
- Session: Game Developers: Your Next Key Hire
- Track: Future of Work Summit
- Location: Stage 4, Altice Arena & FIL, Lisbon, Portugal
- Format: Live Panel Discussion & Audience Q&A
- Panel: Brian Baglow (Scottish Games Network), David Jones (DMA Design / Rockstar North), Cláudio Pestana (eGames Lab)
- Connect: To book a 1-to-1 meeting in Lisbon with Brian Baglow regarding More Than Games advisory, cross-sector interactive strategy, or Scottish studio partnerships, reach out via the official Web Summit app or email
brian.baglow@scottishgames.net.
See you in Lisbon!
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