”Mothers” of the gaming industry. 6 famous female developers
It so happened that there are far fewer well-known game developers in the gaming industry than developers. However, the times when games were made by purely men for men have long remained in the 80s, and today no one can be surprised by "game maidens". We have already told you about the “fathers” of the gaming industry, and it's time to tell you about its “mothers”. We are finishing our series of materials "Women and Games" and presenting the TOP "Famous Women Developers". 1. Carol Shaw Who is she: first female game designer Creativity: break into Atari and start making games Merit: Since childhood, Carol has not been attracted to stereotypical activities for girls. She did not play with dolls, but instead spent all the time behind her brother's railway, and tried to figure out the radio parts of his other toys. She became interested in computers in high school when she realized that they could play text quests. She was fine with math, so after high school Carol went to the University of California, Berkeley, to study electrical engineering and computer science. She started her career at Atari, the director of the company, Ray Kassar, wanted to entrust her with the design for cardtriggers, but she became a game designer. Carol has worked on games for the Atari VCS [Atari 2600] and has written 3-D Tic-Tac-Toe (1978), Video Checkers (1980) and Super Breakou with Nick Turner. In 1980 she left for Activision where she made River Raid [1982]. 2. Jane McGonigal Who is she: SuperBetter creator Creativity: Promote Gaming as a Community Benefit Merit: She started her career making games in alternate reality [ARG]. In 2009, she suffered a concussion. Every day she suffered from terrible headaches and she thought about how to commit suicide. In order to somehow distract herself, she asked her friends to constantly call her and give her some kind of quests: wash the window, go to the store, etc. So she came up with the idea of creating a SuperBetter game, which is based on living happily and achieving your goals. This helped her get rid of the pain. Today Jane has written a book on the benefits of video games and is giving lectures on the topic. 3. Jade Raymod Who is she: Producer of Assassin's Creed, VP of Google and Head of Google Stadia Creativity: Soar to the Olympus of the industry by working for many of its colossi Merit: As a schoolgirl, she worked part-time in the hospital, announcing difficult situations through the loudspeaker. Once she spent a whole summer playing games, and realized that she wanted to create them and after school she went to study computer technology at the Magil University. After training, I got a job as a programmer at Sony. She recalls that then she managed to work and play Everquest for 10 hours a day. After, she worked at EA as a producer for The Sims Online, and then returned to her native Montreal and got a job at Ubisoft. There, she produced the first three games in the Assassin's Creed and Watch Dogs series. She was later appointed head of Ubisoft Toronto. Today, Jade is Vice President of Google and Head of Google's Stadia Games and Entertainment. 4. Kim Swift Who is she: the creator of Portal Creativity: being Valve's local Alex Vance Merit: She started her career as a game developer at the DigiPen Institute of Technology. There she and her friend created a portal game called Narbacular Drop. The game was hosted on one of the Valv platforms. She was noticed by Gabe Newell and personally invited Kim to work on a game related to portals. So she came up with the Portal dilogy and also worked on two parts of Left 4 Dead. In 2009, Kim left Valve and joined Airtight Games. There, in collaboration with Square Enix, she led the team that developed Quantum Conundrum. In 2017, she left for EA, where she worked on Star Wars Battlefront 2. 5. Rebecca Heineman Who is she: Godmother of classic RPGs from Interplay Creativity: to work in small studios and cut suitability Merit: Like Carol Shaw, she is an industry veteran. She began her career in the 80s and worked as a programmer with Brian Fargo, creating games such as Wasteland, The Bard's Tale, Out of This World. Later she was a designer for The Bard's Tale III: Thief of Fate, Dragon Wars, Tass Times in Tonetown, Borrowed Time, Mindshadow. When Interplay grew larger, she left to work in a small studio. In 1999 she co-founded Contraband Entertainment, which made Myth III: The Wolf Age and Activision Anthology. She has worked as a consultant and senior engineer for EA, Ubisoft, Amazon, Microsoft and Sony. In 2013 he founded the new company Olde Skuul. 6. Amy Hanning Who is she: Lead Writer for the Uncharted series at Naughty Dog Creativity: Drive Nathan Drake around the world in search of adventure Achievement: Started working as an artist in the 80s at EA and Atari. She later served as Director, Producer and Chief Writer for Legacy of Kain for Eidos Interactive. The real boom in her creativity was associated with the Uncharted series. She was the creative director and lead writer for the first three games. In 2014, she left Naughty Dog while working on the fourth part. Amy has now opened her own studio and is engaged in VR games. These were the best female video game developers. By their example, we can see that game development is no longer a man's occupation. As we conclude our March Women & Games series, we hope you learn more about women and female characters in the industry. Read our past articles in the Evolution of Female Characters in Games series, Top Realistic Girls in Games, and Strong Female Characters in a Video Game. The Topic of Article: ”Mothers” of the gaming industry. 6 famous female developers. |
