Brenda Romero on cashing in, selling out, and staying true to yourself while making games (interview)

Game designer and academic Brenda Romero will receive the Ambassador Award at the upcoming Game Developers Conference for helping video games “advance to a better place” through advocacy or action. She is one of the most prominent game developers in the industry, and has made games such Wizardry and Jagged Alliance. Along the way, she has also given spellbinding talks about the role of women in the game industry, and how she isn’t yet comfortable taking her daughter to the game industry’s biggest trade show, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, because there are so many “booth babes” there.

She was known for most of her career as Brenda Brathwaite. She worked with Doom creator John Romero on the social game Ravenwood Fair, and then they got married in 2012. She changed her name to Brenda Romero. And in 2013, she became the game designer in residence at the Games and Playable Media Program. While there, she has worked on interesting games like the board game Train, which makes the player feel complicit in allowing Jews to be sent to Auschwitz during the Holocaust.