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Recreation Builders With out Compromise
This checklist exists as a result of there isn’t a horizon in sight of the variety of builders who’ve modified the trail, impressed a technology, modified the lifetime of only one particular person, and – whether or not recognized or unknown – grow to be the very definition of tenacity, audacity, and miracle-working.
It’s a residing checklist. It will likely be expanded and up to date. It doesn’t aspire to be definitive, nor does it intend to be unique.
These are builders, writers, artists, administrators, and producers which have modified the dialog…and which are altering the dialog. Contributors to the sport business which have outlined it…and which are at present redefining it.
IGR felt it was time to make one other such checklist. Might it open some doorways so that you can discover, could it provide some mirrors by which you may even see a model of your self.
Tracy Fullerton
Writer of Recreation Design Workshop: A Playcentric Strategy to Creating Revolutionary Video games and professor at USC’s College of Cinematic Arts, Fullerton’s lengthy profession within the video games business started with early interactive movie tasks for such corporations as Interfilm, for whom she co-directed Journey for Your Life (starring Adam West and Matthew Lillard), Synapse, and Spiderdance.
Her considerate, experimental strategy to interactive media is evidenced by her work on pervasive video games and interactive artwork installations like Actuality Ends Right here and The Night time Journey, in addition to Walden, a sport, an award-winning strolling simulator based mostly on the writing of Henry David Thoreau.
Kellee Santiago
As founding father of thatgamecompany, Santiago is accountable partially for such critically acclaimed releases as Movement, Journey, and Sky, however her contributions transcend sport design. Together with Jonathan Blow and Nathan Vella, amongst others, she helped create the Indie Fund to offer monetary encouragement to approaching builders, and later labored for the indie-friendly micro-console firm Ouya.
And do not forget that time Roger Ebert went on a rant about video video games not being artwork? That was a direct – albeit delayed – response to a TED Speak that Santiago delivered all the best way again in 2009.
Rieko Kodama
It’s arduous to think about a time when a reputation as synonymous with video video games as Sega might have been thought-about “indie,” however throughout the business’s early days, even the largest improvement groups and budgets could be thought-about paltry by as we speak’s blockbuster requirements.
Kodama (typically credited as Phoenix Rie) was on the forefront of those years for Sega, producing, contributing artwork, and even directing now-legendary titles like Alex Kidd, Phantasy Star, Fantasy Zone, and naturally the early Sonic the Hedgehog video games. She remained a producer on the firm and usually championed the position of girls within the business till her premature demise at 58 in 2022.
Danielle Bunten Berry
Bunten Berry’s work as a sport developer began in 1978 with Wheeler Sellers, a multi-player public sale sport for the Apple II pc.
Her most notable launch, multi-player technique sport M.U.L.E., has been extremely influential within the subsequent 4 a long time since its 1983 launch for the Atari pc, particularly when it comes to multi-player performance and simulated financial techniques.
Brenda Romero
Throughout her profession, Romero has labored on such seminal tasks because the Jagged Alliance and Wizardry video games, extra lately working within the indie enviornment with such video games as Gunman Taco Truck and Prohibition-era crime RPG Empire of Sin in addition to a collection of experimental board video games referred to as The Mechanic Is the Message. She has additionally written a number of books concerning the sport business.
An anti-censorship activist, Romero is especially within the intersection between video games and sexuality, as evidenced each by her ebook, Intercourse in Video Video games, and Playboy: The Mansion, a Hugh Hefner sim she designed in 2005.
Nina Freeman
The creator of such video games as Kimmy and Seaside Date, Freeman’s work stands out for its mixture of acquainted sport mechanics with slice-of-life vignettes and autobiographical materials that may be so intimate and true-to-life it feels virtually voyeuristic, as in Cibele, a barely fictionalized account of a relationship that passed off partially by an MMORPG.
Freeman has additionally based her personal studio, Star Maid Video games, and did degree design for Tacoma at Fullbright.
Robin Moulder
Cofounder of 3lb Video games (and former bass participant and founding member of legendary different rock act Jack Off Jill), Moulder is a serious drive within the XR and VR world, creating unique video games like Vault of Stars, Grokit, and House Dragon in addition to offering consulting on VR functions for different corporations.
Amongst different tasks, her studio is chargeable for the VR port of Slime Rancher, an IGR favourite and winner of our High Indie Recreation of 2017.
Nonny de la Peña
De la Peña recognized for her pioneering work in immersive journalism. Because the founding father of Emblematic Group, she focuses on creating progressive digital, blended, and augmented actuality experiences. Her strategy, which melds Unity graphics with actual audio, has revolutionized the best way customers work together with digital actuality.
De la Peña’s immersive journalism experiences like “After Solitary,” “Out of Exile,” and “Undertaking Syria,” have garnered vital acclaim and a number of awards, and her achievements have been acknowledged at prestigious festivals and occasions, together with Sundance, the Venice Movie Competition, and SXSW.
Brenda Laurel
With a profession that began within the Seventies with work for the CyberVision and Atari platforms, Laurel has additionally labored for Activision and consulted on a variety of LucasArts Leisure tasks.
She based her personal firm, Purple Moon, which targeted on growing video games for pre-teen and adolescent women by way of the Rockett and Secret Paths collection, and has additionally been extremely influential in early work learning digital actuality and interactive design by her work with Interval Analysis Company and Telepresence Analysis, an organization she cofounded with USC professor Scott Fisher.
Lori Cole
Lori Cole, alongside husband Corey Cole, is half the two-person design crew chargeable for the Quest for Glory collection, a high-water mark for journey/RPG video games because of intelligent however irreverent writing and thoroughly designed mechanics.
Whereas the largest studios have largely deserted this explicit type of journey/RPRG, the Coles have extra lately moved to the indie enviornment with such non secular successors as Summer time Daze: Tilly’s Story and Hero-U: Rogue to Redemption.
Keiko Erikawa
A founding father of now-major Japanese writer Koei within the Seventies, what actually cements Erikawa’s position in indies is that whereas main an all-female improvement crew, Ruby Get together, she co-designed what are thought-about the very first Otome video games: visible novels focused particularly to girls.
Otome video games stay a staple of each the indie and cell scenes to today, thanks in no small half to the trailblazing work by Erikawa and her friends.
Jane McGonigal
A pioneer in alternate actuality video games, McGonigal has labored on such tasks as I Love Bees, World with out Oil, and SuperBetter.
She has additionally written a number of books, together with Actuality Is Damaged: Why Video games Make Us Higher and How They Can Change the World, which argues for the potential of video games as a tool for social change.
Carol Shaw
A programmer employed by Atari straight out of her Grasp’s program in 1978, Shaw labored for them for a number of years earlier than relocating to a comparatively new firm referred to as Activision in 1982.
She is commonly credited as one of many first feminine sport designers in all the business’s historical past and is greatest recognized for River Raid, one of many earliest video games to make use of random enemy and merchandise placement and thus an early affect on motion Rogue-lite video games.
Rebecca Heineman
A programmer and House Invaders event champion who realized the right way to reverse-engineer Atari 2600 code as an adolescent, Heineman went on to co-found Interaction.
She would go on to on most of the firm’s titles, together with now-legendary video games like Wasteland, The Bard’s Story, and Out of This World, most of which have had outsized influences on the indie RPG world.
Christine Love
Founding father of studio Love Conquers All Video games, Love is a author and sport designer of thematically advanced visible novels like Analogue: A Love Story and Analogue: A Hate Story.
Love has expressed the idea that the indie sport motion has completed a greater job depicting LGBTQ experiences than bigger studios, as evidenced by Ladykiller in a Bind, which she describes as “an erotic visible novel about social manipulation and women tying up different women,” and her newest sport, Get within the Automobile, Loser!, combines a lesbian street journey story with JRPG components.
Anna Anthropy
Anthropy is one other sport developer whose work facilities on LGBTQ themes; considered one of her first video games, Lesbian Spider Queens of Mars, is a BDSM-themed tribute to 1981’s Wizard of Wor.
Along with improvement work, Anthropy can be the writer and editor of a number of books concerning the indie sport neighborhood and sport improvement.
Kim Swift
Kim Swift entered the business with Narbacular Drop, a pupil/indie challenge with a singular “portal” mechanic that caught the attention of Valve Software program and led on to Swift’s most well-known launch, Portal.
Swift’s later work has targeted on cloud-native streaming video games for Google Stadia and – extra lately – Microsoft.
Zoe Quinn
Offering narrative design for such video games as Framed and Photo voltaic Ash, Quinn is maybe greatest recognized for Melancholy Quest, an interactive fiction piece about psychological well being points.
She based the nonprofit group Crash Override (which later merged with the On-line Abuse Prevention Initiative) to take care of the difficulty of Web harassment, which she additionally addressed in her Hugo-nominated ebook of the identical identify.
Lucy Morris
Morris is the founding father of New Zealand’s Starcolt, a part of the Alliance Media studio group alongside such indie sport luminaries as Zachtronics.
With the tagline “We deal in feels,” Starcolt’s design philosophy is centered on empathic, emotional experiences, as evidenced by their first launch, Finest Good friend Eternally, a mixture pet care and courting sim.
Erin Reynolds
Reynolds has ft in each the big studio world – she’s in senior administration at Walt Disney Video games – and the indie video games world as founding father of Flying Mollusk, a developer targeted on rising expertise, together with however not restricted to VR.
Her studio’s flagship launch, Nevermind, combines digital actuality and biofeedback that double as each suspenseful journey sport and stress administration instrument.
Megan Fox
Creator and brainchild behind Glass Backside Video games, Fox launched into her coding journey at simply 11 years previous, epitomizing the progressive spirit of indie sport improvement. The identify of her studio is a significant nod to the challenges typically encountered by girls within the gaming sector, underscoring her dedication and advocacy.
Amongst her notable creations is SkateBIRD, a sport the place gamers embody a small but spirited skateboarding chook decided to uplift its Massive Good friend’s spirits. This sport, together with others like Spartan Fist and Sizzling Tin Roof: The Cat That Wore A Fedora, showcases Fox’s expertise for weaving partaking tales with charming characters, marking her works as distinctive within the indie gaming world.
Mitu Khandaker
Khandaker first rose to prominence as founder and solo developer of The Tiny Shark, the studio behind Redshirts, a parody of social media tradition impressed by Purple Dwarf and Star Trek.
Extra lately, Khandaker cofounded Glow Up Video games, a cell and XR studio, and launched Insecure: The Come Up, in collaboration with HBO and that includes actress Issa Rae.
Allison James
James is an extremely prolific developer throughout the GameMaker Studio neighborhood, releasing seemingly numerous video games on the GX.video games platform.
As cofounder of Chequered Ink, she has launched such titles as Pong Quest – an arcade/RPG mash-up backed by Atari – Gyro Boss DX, Gained’t You Be My Laser?, and Maddening Euphoria, and is thought for an strategy that pays playful homage to traditional arcade mechanics.
Jenny Xu
Working primarily within the cell enviornment, Xu based JCSoft and has launched a number of titles, together with the Can You Escape collection of experimental arcade video games and the 5 Tries at Love courting sim collection, amassing nicely over 9 million downloads.
Her latest enterprise, Talofa Video games, partnered with Pokémon Go builders Niantic to launch Run Legends, an augmented actuality health program that mixes Xu’s love for video games and long-distance working.
Lana Lux
Lux is a real solo developer, dealing with all the pieces from 3D asset creation to programming for her upcoming apocalyptic survival sport, Pressure. But it surely’s her Twitch channel that units her aside, giving a uncommon inside view of course of. Her award-winning stream – Lux received final yr’s Unity Streamer award – additionally helps funds the sport’s improvement by such sponsors as Microsoft, Unity, and Capital One, highlighting the choice funding approaches accessible to as we speak’s indie builders.
She shared an inspiring speak about tenacity, self-discipline and navigating the challenges of being a lady growing an indie sport alone on the VRTO convention in 2023 that introduced the gang to its ft.
Kathryn Yu
A promising new developer in VR gaming, Yu has already received quite a few awards for video games like Heirloom and Penrose Station, her thesis sport at USC’s College of Cinematic Arts. She lately labored on Digital Digital Actuality 2 for Tender Claws.
Along with her work as a developer, Yu cofounded the Immersive Experiences Institute, a nonprofit group dedicated to immersive and interactive artwork.
Heather Maxwell Chandler
With credit on over three dozen video games, Chandler has in depth manufacturing expertise each in such mainstream titles as Fortnite and the Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon collection and on indie tasks like By no means Alone (Kisima Ingitchuna) and Past Blue.
She can be a prolific author who has authored a number of guides on sport improvement and manufacturing.
Nathalie Lawhead
Closely impressed by zine tradition and ’90s-era pc artwork and net design, Lawhead’s experimental work in sport design with such tasks as Tetrageddon Video games and The whole lot Is Going to Be OK has received quite a few awards.
She lately reissued her BlueSuburbia interactive poetry challenge, initially a Flash web site created in 1999, as a 3D open world challenge for this yr’s IndieCade pageant.
Jeri Ellsworth
Jeri first made waves in 2004 with the progressive Commodore 30-in-1 Direct to TV, a joystick-based Commodore 64 emulator. Pivoting to augmented actuality gaming, Ellsworth co-founded CastAR and later Tilt 5, specializing in advancing AR expertise in gaming.
Her profitable Kickstarter campaigns for these tasks spotlight her influential position within the {hardware} aspect of indie sport improvement.
Hilary Mason
At present working inside a Venn diagram that encompasses sport design, information science, and AI, Mason based machine studying firm Quick Ahead Labs, later acquired by information administration firm Cloudera.
Her present firm, Hidden Door, is constructing a story AI platform that may convert fictional worlds into social position taking part in experiences in what she describes as “Roblox meets D&D.”
Lena Raine
Raine is greatest recognized for as a composer for such indie favorites as Celeste, Chicory: A Colourful Story, Deltarune, and Minecraft.
She can be a developer in her personal proper, releasing ESC, a philosophical interactive fiction piece, in 2018.
Camille Kanensley
A digital artist engaged on the slicing fringe of VR gaming, Kanensley has labored on such video games as Remaining House: The Rescue and Knockout League for Seize Video games.
She is the founding father of FreeForm Labs, builders of ElemenTerra, a digital actuality world-building simulation.
Nana Moon
Solo developer Moon’s video games are influenced by traditional JRPGs when it comes to their mechanics and a devotion to advanced narratives and beautiful artwork path, as evidenced by the science-fantasy Virgo vs. the Zodiac and the forthcoming cyberpunk-themed Keylocker.
Darya Noghani
British solo developer Noghani is already making a mark within the indie sport scene with a knack for exposing human foibles by way of city animal characters, first by way of Victorian authorized sim Avian Lawyer and extra lately with Redwall-meets-Remaining Fantasy turn-based RPG Small Saga.
Andy Wooden
Co-founder of Toronto indie studio Lithic Leisure, Wooden is greatest recognized for her work on Dwarrows, a fantasy city-building sim.
Extra lately, she labored on Arthurian VR puzzle-platformer A Knight within the Attic from Mighty Yell.
Erin Reilly
A professor of media and leisure on the College of Texas at Austin’s Moody Faculty of Communication, Reilly’s tutorial work focuses on such rising applied sciences as digital and augmented actuality, however she’s additionally the founding father of ReillyWorks, an organization at present growing interactive and augmented actuality video games.
Tiani Pixel and Fernanda Dias
Pixel and Dias are the two-person crew behind Pixel Punk Studio, the builders of action-RPG Unsighted, considered one of our High 10 Indie Video games of 2021.
Lauren Clinnick
Clinnick is the founder and CEO of Lumi Video games, the studio behind Kinder World, a cell sport combining plant care sim, self-care reminders, and the Cottagecore aesthetic that’s at present in Early Entry.
Jane Ng
One of many business’s high 3D setting artists, Ng has labored on a variety of Double High quality Productions titles like Stacking and Costume Quest. Extra lately, she labored on Firewatch, the award-winning park ranger sim from Campo Santo.
InfinityWaltz and TheOvermatt made vital contributions to this text.
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