Game Access ‘18 1 - 2. June | Brno, Czech Republic
Conference
Game Access Week BRNO, Czech Republic
Game Access Conference
Game Access Expo
Game Access Academy
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Brenda Romero
Romero Games

Brenda Romero

Game Designer

Brenda Romero is a BAFTA award-winning game designer, artist and Fulbright scholar who entered the video game industry in 1981. As a designer, she has worked on 47 games and contributed to many seminal titles, including the Wizardry and Jagged Alliance series and titles in the Ghost Recon, Dungeons & Dragons and Def Jam franchises. Away from the machine, her analog series of six games, The Mechanic is the Message, has drawn national and international acclaim, particularly Train and Siochán Leat (often called 'The Irish Game') which is presently housed in the National Museum of Play. Most recently, she received the 2017 Development Legend award at the Develop: Brighton. In 2015, she won the coveted Ambassador’s Award at the Game Developers Choice Awards. In 2014, she received a Fulbright award to study Ireland’s game industry, academic and government policies. In 2013, she was named one of the top 10 game developers by Gamasutra.com and Develop magazine listed her among the 25 people who changed games in 2013. Romero co-owns Romero Games based in Galway.

Some of the games Brenda worked on
Brenda at Game Access '18

Stay: How to Thrive as a Game Dev
Five years is what they give us - five years to live the dream many of us chased since we were children, five years to make the magic we first discovered in arcades, on the Apple II, on the earliest game consoles. Five years to get in, get excited, get shipped, get tired, get laid off and get out. Five years. While much has been said about the reasons we come and we go, not nearly enough has been said about the reasons to stay. Across the industry, there are people with 10, 20, 30 and even 40 years experience for whom game dev has become a way of life, a passionate calling that leaves us more energised than empty. What can we learn from them? In this talk, Brenda Romero explores the reasons we stay.