Casual Connect Leadership and Development Panel!

Here’s the spiel that got approved by the Women in Games IGDA group:

What:

http://archives.igda.org/women/archives/2010/03/call_for_propos.html

When & Where:

Monday, 7/19, in Seattle at the Fairmont Olympic Hotel.

Link: the Leadership & Professional Development Forum.

This debut pre-Casual Connect conference was a big hit last year!

My pitch:

Successful Female Game Devs Speak: It Pays to Hire Women in Games

Yes, we do need more women in the game industry! We need to make sure girls and women are aware of the opportunities, and make sure employers are aware of the benefits.

Q: What do you get when you hire women to develop games?

A: Successful, fun games that sell! Come hear women from different experience levels, companies, and genres share their experiences in the game industry, plus the learnings and successful games that resulted.

For Panelists - let's go a bit deeper than the "hey we're women in the game industry!"

What issues can we really dig into, for an audience of managers/employers/execs in casual games (many of whom statistically at this conference are male).

Other Panelists:

Maryann Klingman, Senior Producer, PlayFirst.

Maryann’s career spans 17 years and over 40 titles: working in educational software as an Executive Producer and now directing the production of casual downloadable games published by PlayFirst. She is a strong mentor and role model and inspirational team builder.

Because of Maryann’s example, her daughter, Theresa Duringer, grew up inspired by her mother’s success in the game industry. Theresa now works at Electronic Arts as a Community Manager on Spore, among other titles.

Prof. Carrie Heeter, Michigan State University. (tele-teaches from San Francisco).

Carrie Heeter is a frequent speaker at game design conferences. Her current game design and research includes brain games, deliberative decision games, and adaptive learning games. She has been designing interactive media since 1990, winning more than 50 awards. She co-founded the Serious Game Design MA track at Michigan State University and is a PI in the GEL (Games 4 Entertainment and Learning) Lab. Heeter is PI on numerous National Science Foundation grants to study gender and gaming and play style and learning. She is co-editor, with Kafai, Denner, and Sun, of the book Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat: New Perspectives on Gender, Games and Computing. She is creator and editor in chief of http://investigaming.com , a gateway to research on gender, gaming and computing for game industry professionals and academics.

Karen Clark, Senior Project Manager, World Golf Tour

Karen is an industry veteran and expert in Agile project management: she’s worked at Bioware on Dragon Age Origins; at EA on Online Features including for Mass Effect 2, as well at Linden Lab, Garage Games, and more. She also co-founded the GameMentorOnline site and is the chair of the Women in Games International Mentoring Program. http://www.gamementoronline.org/

Tentative or unconfirmed

• Brenda Brathwaite
  
• Jane Jensen (Kenny introduced us this week, she has not yet responded)
• Amanda Fitch (who founded and runs her own game dev company, Amaranth Games. Aveyond series.) Just asked her today 4/29 on LinkedIn.
• Erin Robinson (designer/developer of the new adventure game Puzzle Bots. Won Game Design Challenge at GDC 2009. Co-Host of IGF Awards at GDC 2010). Emailing her now 4/29

Moderator:

Solveig Pederson Zarubin, Producer, PlayFirst

Over 12 years in the game industry, from educational software to The Sims 2, to casual games, Solveig enjoys bringing talented people together and guiding them to a finished, high quality game. Or in this case, a panel! Most recently, Solveig has been a Producer at PlayFirst, as lead producer on Diner Dash: Hometown Hero, Wandering Willows and Love and Death: Bitten. In spring 2006 after the Women in Games conference, Solveig also co-founded a small lunch group for women in the game industry, which has now lasted for four years of monthly lunches and networking!

Here’s my LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/solveigpederson

Bitten Launch!

The game I have been working on with a large number of talented people, for over a year, finally launched today to the public!

A bit jaw-dropping that it looks like it will be potentially quite successful commercially, at least the most financially successful game I have worked on at PlayFirst. A bit hard to get my mind around it.

Recently on 24, the character Chloe O'Brien said, "I don't do praise well."
I often feel the same.
Often it's much harder for me to deal with success or impending success -- than to just buckle down and deal with a crisis or a problem. I spent most of the day working on other projects ...and not really being able to sit and let the potential success soak in...other than sneaking peeks at the forum postings!

It's been a few weeks since we GM'ed the game. I have been playing the game again back and forth on BART commuting today, and I can honestly say that I still like to play it! Even the hidden object scenes which are my least favorite as a player, still draw me in. This project was full of emotion for almost everyone on the team, we all cared pretty deeply about it.

David Ryan Paul, the first lead artist on the project, wrote this blog post which has links to all the artists involved except for:
Jeff Troupe, Alt A Games, and Xing Xing Digital Corporation.
We had talented designers - Patrick, Helen, Dana...
Once again I was lucky enough to work with the "Ninja-neer" - Jim.
And Paul, who jumped in to learn the engine in the middle and got us through several major changes (I don't have a nickname yet for Paul. "Remember Sweden!")
Plus as a bonus, Peter, "Winston Wolf", and the awesome senior production of Maryann (who just won a "greenlight Oscar" award today).

Here's the PlayFirst blog post I wrote as the Producer interview...there are tons more Bitten posts on the PlayFirst blog - character diaries, the "focus hat" video made by Mike which stars Chuck and Helen (and I wave my arms around while wearing a werewolf hat).
Also the game trailer (I do like the animation that Big Fish has on their landing page as well).
Plus character profiles, and soon also concept art.


I was so happy to see the positive posts in the forums today and reviews. Early positive word from trusted fans and players is so important...and we are very thankful for it. Many people posting later in the day said that their decision was almost made for them after seeing these posts. I also really love this feeling of connectedness with the fans.
It's like playing Diner Dash:Hometown Hero live with Heather89 the moment that we turned on the multiplayer server for the public almost 3 years ago. Or watching the small but dedicated fan base for Wandering Willows get sucked into the game.

One example from the Big Fish forums: "Poodlebear" posted at 1:41 am on 4/13 - so they had downloaded as soon as possible since the game went live at midnight on 4/13
"Loving this so far - 40 minutes into the demo."
It *is* a very dark, and adult, story and no doubt some players will have issues with that, but not meeee! Love me some vampire hotness.
Buying! Gently Poodlebear Approved given I've only played 40 minutes... "
(I was briefly suspicious that this could be another team member, but Poodlebear's account has been active since 2007 and s/he has written thousands of posts!)

At 3:52 am Poodlebear had played a couple more hours and believes he/she is about halfway through: "Unless something really wacky occurs I can now fully Poodlebear Approve!"


Brenda Brathwaite wrote a post on "Moments to Gold" which is probably way more emotional than I can get about this game, but what resonates for me is this emotional feeling at the end of a big project:

Here it is...we made this! We hope you like it!
We (most of us) still like to play it even after working on it for months!