The Expressive Power of Games: A Talk By Brenda Romero with The Portland Indie Game Squad

When we think of games – video games, board games, any kind of games – they are often trivialized as mere childish pastimes to entertain us. Yet games are and have always been so much more than that. From the Olympics to epic man-vs-machine chess matches to daily “games” in which an underdog rises above and beats the system, games are powerful artifacts of our everyday lives with a potential for creative expressivity and change beyond that for which we give them credit. In this talk, game designer and artist Brenda Romero talks about the expressive power of games and her current work in the award-winning Mechanic is the Message series.

Following the talk, Portland Indie Game Squad will introduce the exciting work happening in Portland and lead a discussion for generating ideas and making connections in the local game development community.

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Brenda Romero is an award-winning game designer, artist, writer and creative director who entered the video game industry in 1981 at the age of 15. She is the longest continuously serving woman in the video game industry. Brenda worked with a variety of digital game companies as a game designer or creative director, including Atari, Sir-tech Software, Electronic Arts and numerous companies in the social and mobile space. She is presently the game designer in residence at the University of California at Santa Cruz and the co-founder and chief operating officer of Loot Drop, a social and mobile game company. In recent years, Brenda has become known for an award-winning series of non-digital games titled The Mechanic is the Message. So far, Train, Siochan Leat, the New World and Pre-Conception have been released. In 2009, her game Train won the coveted Vanguard Award at IndieCade for “pushing the boundaries of game design and showing us what games can do.”

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A collaboration among:
Portland State University
Pixel Arts Game Education
Portland Indie Game Squad