in 1982 •
Kellee Santiago - Video game designer and producer. While studying at the
USC Interactive Media Division at the
University of Southern California, Santiago produced the game
Cloud which was developed by
Jenova Chen and a team of students. After graduating, Santiago and Chen founded
Thatgamecompany, and Santiago took on the role of president. Santiago left Thatgamecompany in 2012. She is a backer for the
Indie Fund, a
TED fellow, and the head of
developer relations for
OUYA. •
Carol Shaw - First woman who was a full-time video game designer. She began as an
Atari employee, designing and programming
3-D Tic-Tac-Toe (1979) for the Atari 2600. Shaw later joined
Activision where she designed
Happy Trails for the
Intellivision and
River Raid for the
Atari 8-bit computers and
Atari 5200 for which she is most widely known. Additionally, she designed an unreleased
Polo game in 1978 and worked on the game
Super Breakout. •
Kazuko Shibuya - Japanese video game artist known for her work with
Square and
Square Enix. •
Yoko Shimomura - Japanese video game composer and pianist who has composed or contributed to nearly one hundred video game soundtracks. •
Tanya X. Short - American video game designer and founder of
Kitfox Games, where she has worked on games such as
Shattered Planet (2014) and
Moon Hunters (2016). She co-founded
Pixelles, an organisation that aims to address gender diversity in video game development. •
Joelle Silverio - American video game designer, software engineer, animator, and visual effects artist. Notably, the first
African-American female game designer to drive design of a
AAA game, with her work on
Killing Floor 2 for
Tripwire Interactive. Silverio began her career with
Hi-Rez Studios, working on
Global Agenda,
Tribes: Ascend, and
SMITE. She later worked on
EVE Online, and
World of Darkness for
CCP Games. before moving on to
Killing Floor 2. As a Gameplay/Combat Designer, Silverio worked on
Battlefield 2042:Portal for
Electronic Arts. She is currently a Principal Game Designer with
TEAM KAIJU, working on an unannounced
FPS game for
PC and
console. •
Kim Swift - American video game designer best known for her work at
Valve with games such as
Portal and
Left 4 Dead. Swift was featured by
Fortune as one of "30 Under 30" influential figures in the video game industry. She was described in
Mental Floss as one of the most recognized women in the industry and by
WIRED as "an artist that will push the medium forward". == T ==