New gaming conference is coming to Dundee later this month with GTA pioneers among speakers

A major new gaming conference is coming to Dundee later this month, bringing developers, industry leaders and some of the people behind Scotland’s remarkable video game story together in the city.

Games Day 2026 will take place at Water’s Edge on Friday, September 25, following the success of the event when it was held alongside DICE last year.

The full-day event will feature demonstrations, talks, panel discussions and networking opportunities, giving Scotland’s games community the chance to meet and exchange ideas with developers and international delegates.

And there are some brilliant names on the line-up.

Among those speaking will be Dundee games industry legend Dave Jones, whose career includes co-founding DMA Design and helping create Lemmings and the original Grand Theft Auto.

Jones will deliver a session titled Share Your Cheat Codes: How knowledge-sharing turns an industry into a community before later joining a special GTA Origins panel alongside Colin Anderson, Mike Dailly and Keith Hamilton, chaired by Gary Penn.

For Dundee in particular, that discussion has some real significance.

The original Grand Theft Auto was developed in the city by DMA Design during the 1990s, helping cement Dundee’s reputation as one of the most important places in the history of the British games industry.

Charles Cecil, founder and CEO of Revolution Software, will also speak about the birth of the UK video games industry with a session titled From whale oil to game code, while Ubisoft creative director Fawzi Mesmar will discuss creativity in the age of artificial intelligence.

Jeff Gardiner, founder and CEO of Something Wicked Games, will explore making single-player RPGs in an increasingly multiplayer world, while Games Industry Executive and Production Leader Linda Tiger will also appear during the day.

Another panel will look at opportunities available to game developers in 2026, featuring representatives from EA, Unity, Spell Garden Games, Devolver Digital and Nordicity.

Other sessions will explore everything from “vibe coding” and securing funding to building viral campaigns and developing independent games.

EA technical artist Shirzad Bahrami will discuss the risks and rewards of vibe coding, Huey Games CEO Rob Hewson will present Survive Long Enough to Get Lucky, while Bennie Terry III of Oddworld Inhabitants will look at the challenge of building ambitious games without funding.

MadeBrave founder Andrew Dobbie will deliver a session titled How to Make a Traffic Cone (or Anything) Go Viral, while indie developer James Muirhead will tell the story of how working in a chip shop ultimately led to his horror game being featured by the BBC.

Doors open at 9am, with the daytime programme running through until closing remarks at 5.30pm.

And Games Day won’t finish there.

From 7pm, attendees will be able to continue the evening with games music cover band The GGs before a ceilidh featuring The Jacobites.

The event will take place at Water’s Edge beside the River Tay, with lunch and refreshments included during the day to create a more relaxed environment for networking and conversations between those attending.

Dundee has an extraordinary history when it comes to video games, stretching from the days of Timex and the ZX Spectrum through DMA Design, Lemmings and Grand Theft Auto to the huge development community that exists in the city today.

Games Day will bring another gathering of that community right into the heart of the City of Discovery later this month.