Blog - Ada Lovelace Day 2010

Friday, February 26, 2010

Ada Lovelace day is coming up on March 24th!

If you feel so inspired, please join in the pledge to write a blog post about a woman in science or technology on that day.

I was proud to participate last year (see the Ada Lovelace Day tag to hunt down the two blog posts that resulted from last year).
I really encourage others to follow.

I haven't yet thought of who I'll write about this year (not for the lack of awesome game dev women I know, though!) ...so I figured I'd at least chip in with helping get the word out.



And if it helps, Rhoulette of the FragDolls recently posted a great list of Game Industry Women to Know, if you need a good place to start...

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posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 10:47 PM  0 Comments Links to this post



Blog - Ada Lovelace Day Bonus Feature

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

I already wrote one entry for my earlier pledge for Ada Lovelace day, but here's another one, because it's a story I don't think I've had a chance to tell yet.

As I wrote about one of my mentors, now time for a tale of one of my students...



At nearly every session of the Emagination Game Design camp I taught at, there was at least one or two girls attending.

The first single female student out of all the sessions I taught has stuck with me the most.

She was very shy, I'm guessing from being the only girl stuck at camp for 2 weeks with a bunch of geeky gamer boys. I always felt a little sorry for her for that.

So that's why I was particularly impressed when, as her team was in a complete panic crunching on their game as the final milestones loomed near, and their team was beginning to fall apart, she suddenly became very outspoken and took the reins. She took charge and pulled their team through crunch and got their game done on time, acting as a producer and developer both, helping to complete miscellaneous art assets, testing, etc. I'm fairly sure the game wouldn't have been complete without this.

I have no idea if she plans on sticking with game development or what, but I hope so because that's just great and inspiring. You go girl.

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posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 3:23 PM  0 Comments Links to this post



Blog - Ada Lovelace Day Posting


Greetings from GDC!

Today is Ada Lovelace Day! If you don't know who she was, go find out right now.

A long while ago, I found and signed up on this site, pledging to write about a woman in technology that I admire on this Ada Lovelace day.
As I highly support the women of the games industry (both present and future) through groups like WIGI and the IGDA's Women in Games SIG, I felt like supporting this cause.

My choice for who to write about was obvious.She's been my mentor in game development for the past 3 years now -- Brenda Brathwaite.

It's rather awkward to write this as I'm almost certain she will find and read this.
Especially awkward, in fact, because after certain events at GDC so far she is certainly owed a favor or, in this case I suppose a tribute. Keep in mind though that I pledged to write this over a month ago. ;)

You could with some searching online find out enough information about her that I won't bother with any sort of biography. Her accomplishments are certainly worthy of admiration. Instead, I'll simply tell of my more personal admiration:


I came to the Savannah College of Art and Design after realizing at another university that my initial declaration of major as a film student just wasn't for me. Although I loved writing screenplays and editing footage, the actual process of filming a movie I found to be a dreadful bore. Those film classes gave me enough of a taste of media analysis though that I, as a gamer, began to apply it to the games I was playing. In search of more voices studying games in that fashion, I discovered gamasutra and the game development community.
I had, as a creative and artistically-minded person, dabbled in game development for fun but for some reason never saw it as something I could actually do for a living. It didn't even cross my mind as an option. But as I read more and more about game development as an art form, I became fascinated. I decided to change my path in life and transferred to SCAD.

However, I originally did so as an concept artist. I've always been drawing strange characters and creatures and doing so at a level far above my peers, so I was interested in doing concept art for games.
But in the process of transferring, I needed a portfolio, so I grinded away doing concept art and it wore me down. Then at SCAD, taking foundational art classes required before you can even get into any of the game development courses, I was worn down even further. I realized that although I'm talented at art and like doing it casually for fun, actually doing it all day became work that I didn't enjoy. Also, living with other artists there made me no longer as confident about my skills as an artist.

So I was actually jumping BACK onto the path to becoming a film student again despite my earlier misgivings when I managed to finally get into my first game design class, Brenda's introduction to game design course. She has mentioned before in our classes that some students have an epiphany moment where they discover that game design is what they were already destined to do, meeting the people who have been just like them all along that they never know. Count me amongst that tribe.

I fell completely in love with game design, at just the right time. I don't know how I never saw it before, as I was not only a dedicated gamer, but I had made a handful of games before that point as just fun diversions while in high school and even earlier.

Unfortunately, she does not teach the introductory courses anymore. I'm glad I had the opportunity to be 'saved' when I was. Thanks again Brenda, for all the help you've provided to me as a student (and hopefully beyond), and again, thanks for helping me discover that game design is the love I was destined to find.

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posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 2:35 PM  0 Comments Links to this post