Kim Swift
Level Designer, Valve
Career overview
Kim Swift may have only released one professional title as a lead designer at
Valve, but that game is the innovative, humorous, and much-praised hit Portal, released as part of the 2007 Orange Box -- and that makes all the difference.
Swift is a recent addition to the gaming industry. She
graduated from DigiPen in 2005, and was hired by Valve soon after graduation,
along with the rest of her senior game project team, who had already begun work
on the game that would become Portal.
Swift recently spoke at GDC 2008 about her experience as a writer and designer
for the game, as well as the importance of iteration in the development
process.
 Major
accomplishments
Portal, the game
swift helped design and develop, was one the most important titles of 2007. At
the Game Developers Choice Awards, it won "Game of the Year," the "Innovation
Award," and "Best Game Design" -- along with many more honors
from other award shows and gaming publications.
Innovation
"Doing something new can be a really big risk and
adding something innovative to something already exists can often disrupt and
create new games," Swift has said. Her mantra: try one thing and polish it
to the best of your ability.
What her peers say
Bonnie: "It's great to know that the team who created Portal -- such a unique and enjoyable title -- is made up in part
of a strong, young female designer, someone who's sure to go on to do exciting
things in the near future. I look
forward to seeing what one of the creative forces behind this exciting game can
do in years to come."
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I aspire to be a creative leader like the women in this list.
Great list.
http://www.schadenfreudeinteractive.com/
Clearly that's innovation!
Kudo's to the women on the list, as well as those who we admire that didn't make it...this time.
http://tracyfullerton.com/bio/
I second Tracy Fullerton and add Celia Pearce - they've been positively impacting and challenging game design students for years, with some pretty far-reaching results (ThatGameCompany anyone?)
I think you'll find that the list is in alphabetical order.
Think about, would any list of women or men in the movies be about those types? No, it would be about directors, actors, maybe writers. Would a men or women of fiction be about producers, marking directors? No, it would be about authors. Would a list of men or women in music be about the those guys? No, it would be about musicians, songwriters, and band members.
Having said that, though, I'll be another griper and add I'm disappointed Sanya Thomas (nee Weathers) didn't show up on the list. Sanya defined the role of community relations for MMORPGs and championed the concept of true customer service/relations.
Anonymous at 4:01 from SCAD, I think you and I are the only ones getting the joke here.
Peace.
Also she is NOT the lead on Boom Blox.
I'm not qualified to comment on Brenda's teaching, not having taken her classes, but I have nothing but contempt for anonymous character assassination.
Second, I'd like to second the nomination for Erin Hoffman on this list. She changed our industry for the better on a very tangible, functional level.
Finally, how about Wendy Despain, the chair of the IGDA Game Writers SIG and the editor of our most recent book? If outstanding writers like Susan O'Conner are on this list, why not the voice of the video game writers? Three cheers for Wendy!!
Some of the facts are accurate, while some of them are suspect (Robin as one example). While no list is perfect, you have to admit this list leans a lot to the IGDA favored.
Today is quite hard that people who really push the boundaries of the art of the games get the recognition about their effort, because the companies are trying to hide the team in a way that the consumers only can associate the success of the product with a whole company instead of a group of talented people.
That's why usually we associate to the producers the most influential part of the progress in videogames, because they are the face of the company.
This way of thinking is extremely dangerous for the long term because talented individuals finally become disappointed and left the field of gaming.
I don't try to generalize, and obviously the producer is the one of the essentials keys for the success of the product, but the problem is that I've seen too much horror stories about groups of extraordinary talented people who has saved the producers' ass by working like slaves during months without resting only because some producers don't like to plan, organize, or trust in the team to manage the tasks.
Concluding, stop making this kind of lists for women and men, or at least, let the people suggest who has been the most influential people of the medium, maybe there is a chance to recover talented people who left the industry burnt.
Another fine addtion to the list would have been Sherry McKenna, Co-Founder of Oddworld Inhabitants.
Here's my Top 5 women that I've worked with that make an impact or who are influential (in no particular order of course):
Lorena Villa - THQ QA manager
Eve Waldman - THQ Sr. Manager, HR
Briana Covill - Incinerator, Associate Producer
Kim Marlis - Associate Project manager at Snowblind Studios
Carole Lin - Localization Producer at Heavy Iron
Also I'd say that I think that Morgan Webb has a pretty big impact / influence on the industry (for better or worse I'm afraid).
Samantha Ryan Senior Vice President, Development & Production, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
Samantha has more chops than all 20 of them combined! That's a pretty big gaffe overlooking her...
I worked with Heater Kelley and she is the worst colleague I've ever had. No discipline, no ideas, no structure, no serious at all. The thing that was the most important for her was her Linkedin.
I assisted to a conference with Braithwaite and it was dull.
Ernest Adams is really bad as well.
So stop your stupid lists and get a real job!
I'd hate to have to start using the word "trolling" on this comments system.
I'm glad that Robin had enough integrity to correct those mistakes. Thanks for bringing that to my attention.
Top 20 of industry professionals of a racial minority
20 most successful dyslexics in games
If lists such as these are composed can we not purely categorise them by skill?
Top 20 games designers
Top 20 programmers
20 most creative professionals in games
"So what did I learn from this article? That if you're a woman your options are very much pushed outside of game development."
Excuse me? There were a number of female designers and even a writer on the list. They count as game developers too!
If you meant game *programmers*... well, even on lists of male developers, you find relatively few "influential" programmers (a few, but not many compared to designers or producers). This is more a function of the programming role not lending itself well to high influence, than any bias against female programmers, I'd suspect.
@Anonymous 5/22 4:01pm:
"Sadly to say, I believe [Brenda Brathwaite] started teaching because she is getting too old for the game industry and feels the need to be around college fan boys to boost her ego."
Notwithstanding the fact that she spends more hours doing industry contract work than teaching nowadays. Honestly, sounds like someone took their bitter pills that morning.
@Alex Greenwood:
"Kind of expected Dani Bunten Berry to be there too"
And Roberta Williams, except that this is a list of women working in the industry *today*.
@Anonymous 5/22 1:22pm (formerly known as Anonymous at 7:28)
"If YOU were composing a Top 20 of anything, wouldn't you exclude yourself out of humility?"
The same is true of Sheri, so why single out Brenda? Anyway, the article was clear up front about both Brenda and Sheri being nominated for the list by others. It didn't say one way or the other whether either of them was part of the nomination panel (or how many other people picked for the list were on said panel), but it was clear that they were contributing to this article only in the capacity of providing color commentary.
@Anonymous 5/26 1:25pm:
"Ernest Adams is really bad as well."
I wasn't aware he was in the list of top 20 women. Where did this come from? Honestly, the more I read the comments here, the more bizarre the accusations seem to become.
@James West:
"Now let’s have an arbitrary list of the top 20 men in games
Top 20 of industry professionals of a racial minority
20 most successful dyslexics in games"
The point here (to me, at least) is to showcase that, while definitely skewed towards white/male/straight, the game industry does have influential people that are not white/male/straight. Top 20 men wouldn't demonstrate that. Top 20 racial minorities would, and I would actually love to see a list along those lines (I'll also add top 20 GLBT for good measure). Dyslexics... not really a minority in this sense.
@Anonymous:22 May 2008 at 4:01
"Most of the Game Design major at SCAD is very unhappy that she has been promoted to Chair of the Major."
I'm not sure who you are, but as a 2008 Graduate of the SCAD ITGM program, I find your post full of, well, bullshit, whining and falsehoods. Your "analysis" of Brenda couldn't be farther from the truth. Most students, from my experience, are happy with Prof. Brathwaite's presence at SCAD and her efforts to shape the program from a focus on content creation to design. Please do not speak for a group of people that you do not represent, or if you do, please have some level of competence in your writing abilities at the least.
Ernest Adams was right. You are a gutless coward and your flagrant idiocy is evident in your posts.
I was going to second (or third) Dani Berry until Ian mentioned what I overlooked -- that this list is limited to present-day developers. No biggie tho, she's been on plenty of other lists and she has the lifelong respect of the people who matter. I read somewhere that Will Wright dedicated The Sims to her.
I hope that our industry recognizes the unique and valuable perspective women bring to games.