Brenda Romero: A Trailblazer in Game Design

Career

Romero began her career in 1981 at video game developer and publisher Sir-tech Software, Inc., on the Wizardry role-playing team. She worked first as a tester, and moved up through the ranks to designer for Wizardry 8. While at Sir-tech, Romero also worked on the Jagged Alliance and Realms of Arkania series. She was employed with Sir-tech for 18 years before moving on to Atari where she worked on the Dungeons & Dragons series for consoles before joining Cyberlore Studios in 2003 to work on the Playboy: The Mansion game. Romero's research for the game was ultimately published in a book, Sex in Video Games.

Nerve magazine cited her as a "New Radical" — one of "the 50 artists, actors, authors, activists and icons who are making the world a more stimulating place".

In 2009, Next Generation magazine identified her as the woman with the longest continuous service in video game development.

Romero served as Chair of the Savannah College of Art and Design's Interactive Design and Game Development department until November 2009. She moved to San Francisco to consult as Creative Director for social media company Slide, Inc., and then became Creative Director of social gaming company Lolapps in May 2010. She co-founded the social game company Loot Drop with John Romero in November 2010, then left Lolapps and joined Loot Drop in February 2011.

In 2013, Romero became the first game designer in residence at the Games and Playable Media Program of the University of California at Santa Cruz. She also served as the program's director.

Romero was the Program Director of the MSc program in Game Design and Development at the University of Limerick in Limerick, Ireland until December 2018.

Recognition

Romero has won several awards in her long career. Some highlights include RPG of the Year for Wizardry 8, a Fulbright Scholar award in 2014, the Game Developer's Choice Ambassador Award in 2015, the Development Legend award at the Develop:Brighton awards.

Personal life

Brenda Garno married game developer John Romero on October 27, 2012. She has three children from her first marriage, to Ian Brathwaite.^{[citation needed]}

John and Brenda worked on Ravenwood Fair together. He was lead designer and she was creative director and game designer.^{[citation needed]}

IGDA and activism

Brenda Romero was an active member of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA). In 2008, she was elected to the IGDA's Board of Directors. On March 28, 2013, she resigned as co-chair of the IGDA Women in Games SIG.

She had founded the International Game Developers Sex Special Interest Group (Sex SIG) in 2005. Since working on Playboy, she has studied adult and sexual content in video games and is regularly interviewed about the subject in the media. She has written a book on the subject, Sex in Video Games.

She is an anti-censorship activist and a proponent of parental rating awareness.

Academics

She is a regular speaker at universities and conferences, including the Game Developers Conference, Austin Game Developers Conference, and Montreal International Games Summit. Some of her lectures have been held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, The Guildhall at Southern Methodist University, and Clarkson University.

In the spring of 2007, she was awarded the Presidential Fellowship at Savannah College of Art and Design to develop an exhibit and presentation titled, "What You Don't Know About Video Games...". In April 2008, Romero became Chair of the Interactive Design and Game Development department at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). Brathwaite left SCAD in November 2009 to return to full-time commercial game development.

In December 2012, she was appointed "Game Designer in Residence" at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

In March 2014, she was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship.

The Mechanic is the Message

In February 2008, Romero began work on a series of non-digital games known collectively as The Mechanic is the Message. According to the series abstract:

The Mechanic is the Message captures and expresses difficult experiences through the medium of a game. Much like photographs, paintings, literature and music are capable of transmitting the full range of the human experience from one human to another, so too can games. Due to their interactivity, the installation suggests that games are capable of a higher form of communication, one which actively engages the participant and makes them a part of the experience rather than a passive observer.

The series is composed of six separate non-digital games that experiment with the traditional notions of games.

• The New World, 2008
• Síochán leat, 2009
• Train, 2009
• Mexican Kitchen Workers – prototype
• Cité Soleil - concept phase
• One Falls for Each of Us – concept phase

Of the six, Train has received the most attention, and won the Vanguard Award at Indiecade in October 2009 for "pushing the boundaries of game design and showing us what games can do." Train was also featured in The Wall Street Journal as well as on game industry sites including Gamasutra, where it received accolades for its ability to evoke meaning through gestures, the Escapist Magazine, Extra Credits, and on Kotaku. Romero delivered Train: How I Dumped Electricity and Learned to Love Design at the 2010 Gamesauce Conference.

Síochán leat (Irish for "peace be with you") chronicles the history of her children's heritage. Romero made the game following The New World, a game she originally made to teach her daughter about the slave trade. Romero designed Síochán leat to teach her daughter about her Irish heritage and traces the family's history from the Cromwellian invasion of Ireland to their ancestor's eventual immigration into the West Indies on the paternal side and Canada on the maternal side. The game features a burlap pillow simulating an earthen mound covered by 26 pieces of grass, each representing a county in Ireland. In a talk given at the Austin Game Developers Conference in September 2009, Romero noted that the burlap was filled with mementos of her upbringing and her heritage, including photographs of her great grandfather, Paddy Donovan, and one of her mother's rosaries. On her blog, Romero notes that "the game is signed in many ways and is highly autobiographical. It is my history and it also reveals my feelings about its present state."

Works

Bibliography

• Sex in Video Games is a nonfiction book about the history of sex content in video games.
• Challenges for Game Designers is a non-fiction book that aims to challenge and improves your game design abilities.
• Game Balance is a nonfiction book about balancing computer, video and non-digital games.
• Breaking Into the Game Industry: Advice for a Successful Career From Those Who Have Done It is a non-fiction book about how to get into the game industry with advice from several game industry professionals.