"But then on the flip side I do think that that is using women expressly for the purpose of ornamentation, and if I had to make that game right now, probably not. "Women can like sex too, right, it's not always a hetero-normative world," she says. Romero admits that there are some "right things and wrong things" about that argument. Empire of Sin takes the form of a turn-based strategy game. "People like to bring it up because they're like 'you made a what?'" Romero is an outspoken supporter of diversity around the games industry, but she says that sometimes the games will be brought up in the context of "how can you possibly argue for diversity and representation of women, and also have made that game?", to quote her directly. "It comes up periodically," Romero says of the two Playboy games. One of these books, Sex in Video Games, came about from Romero's research while developing the two Playboy: The Mansion games in the early 2000's. Google her right now and you'll see TED talks, you'll see activism with the International Game Developers Association, and you'll see books. Playing games might not be universally seen as a "proper job" (as I'm sure just about everyone in this industry can attest to), but Romero's career doesn't end at game development by any means. "I basically never left, and I'm still yet to really get a proper job," Romero chuckles.
Romero might have started as a FAQ writer at Sir-Tech, but she quickly ascended to doing jobs including "testing, product development, management, and then ultimately looking at third-party titles." That role then developed into writing for games, which then transformed into a design position.
Go all the way to the end of the dark area and there's an elevator that'll take you all the way to level four.' So if you got stuck in the game you would call me and I would give you the answers." "And I would say 'ok so you need to find the dark area.
"If you got stuck in Wizardry level one for example and you don't know how to get to level 10, you would call the Wizardry hotline, and I would say 'hello, Wizardry hotline' and you would say 'I can't get to level 10 on Wizardry,'" Romero explains. "I started as a FAQ, believe it or not, and it was 1981, so it was pre-internet." The thought of writing guides as a job without the internet makes my brain hurt. (And at 38 years and counting in the games industry, who the hell isn't inexperienced compared to Romero?) All Romero wants to do is sit and engage you in a two-way conversation, happily flipping the interview with frenetic energy, firing some questions back at you ("did you enjoy Empire of Sin? Was the tutorial ok? Do you play strategy games often?").Ī mad coincidence is that 38 years ago, Romero was doing the job I'm doing right now. Having worked on the Jagged Alliance, Wizardry, Dungeons and Dragons and Playboy game series, she doesn't consider herself "above you," no matter how comparatively inexperienced you may be. That's the vibe Brenda Romero gives off as soon as you meet her. She's incredibly cool, calm, and collected, and when we shake hands before our interview, my anxiety and the background screeching of Gamescom fades away. Brenda Romero has been working in this industry since before I was born.