Brenda Romero designs games that turn some of history’s most tragic lessons into interactive, emotional experiences.
TED Speaker
Brenda Romero is an award-winning game designer, Fulbright scholar, entrepreneur, artist, writer and creative director who entered the video game industry in 1981. Brenda has worked with a variety of digital game companies as a game designer, creative director or consultant, including Atari, Sir-tech Software, Electronic Arts and numerous companies in the social and mobile space. From 2016-2019 she was the Program Director of the MSc in Game Design & Development at Limerick University. She is currently co-founder and CEO of independent game developer at Romero Games, Ltd in Galway, Ireland. Brenda has extensive experience in PC, console and casual gaming.
She recently won two awards Development Legend, Develop Conference and BAFTA Special Award. She is also a Board of Advisors, Game Developers Conference from 2015 to present.
She is a game designer who understand and embrace the society problem as a reflection in her games. For example, her TED Talk on “Gaming for Understanding” touched on the racism and slavery. She was hesitated at first in touching on the topic in the game industry. Her daughter pushed her through her curiosity of the black people. That’s how she embarked on difficult topics through playing game.
In the blog post “To Understand Inequality, let’s play a game”, she talked about her new game “Mexican Kitchen Workers”. She touched on the immigration issue through her game. Her game lay out the big picture on how Mexican kitchen workers were treated as a disposal resources, which is quite disturbing in many ways. She approached the game through various iteration so that people appreciate that there is someone doing the hard work for them. It illustrated the domino effect by treating someone better, we will benefit and prosper in other ares, especially the economy.
Bibliography
“Bio & Awards.” Accessed November 24, 2020. http://brenda.games/bio-awards.
“To Understand Inequality, Let’s Play a Game.” Accessed November 24, 2020 ideas.ted.com, January 1, 2016. https://ideas.ted.com/lets-play-mexican-kitchen-workers/.
Romero, Brenda. “Gaming for Understanding.” TED. Accessed November 24, 2020. https://www.ted.com/talks/brenda_romero_gaming_for_understanding.
I really like that you included Romero’s integration of social justice in her work!