Video Game Makers Unite (VGMU) Presents: Being Black in Game Development
When:
February 11, 2021 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Where:
Online
About the Event:
Via Video Game Makers Unite (VGMU!):
For the first VGMU! show of 2021, they're having a panel discussion, featuring experienced game development professionals, all based in the Austin area, and also Black people with their own stories about personal achievement, perspectives on representation and professional mores.
Mayet Andreassen, panel moderator, is currently working as a full-time Assistant Instructional Professor and Internship Coordinator in the Visualization Department at Texas A&M University. She has over 10 years of teaching experience, with a focus in games and animation. She previously worked as a game and front-end artist prior to becoming an educator.
Panelists:
Michael D. Smith is Lead UX/UI designer for Zynga’s Game of Thrones Slots Casino Game, based in Austin. "GoTs Slots" launched last year and has done very well, winning the EKG Slot award for best Social Slots Game in 2019. His career started in animation, continued into learning apps such as Rosetta Stone and Pearson, and has followed entirely into user interface for games.
Richard "KirbyKid" Terrell is the founder and CEO of designoriented.net, a company that teaches game design through a unique combination of play, critique, and community. He created the game enLIGHTen: Learn the Art of Learning and worked as a combat designer on Remnant: From the Ashes. He wrote over a million words on his game design blog: critical-gaming.com.
Carmen Askerneese Jr. is a producer for Wizards of the Coast. Carmen is a Producer, Writer, and Designer of Games and Comics. He is also the Dungeon Master for the tabletop actual play show, Realms & Roleplay.
Lauren Brown is an Emmy-Award Winning artist who is currently working as an Associate Art Director at Zynga in Austin. She has 10 years of experience between the games and animation industries, working on television series such as Archer on FX, The League, and Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
Evan Narcisse writes for and about video games, comic books, and TV. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, Time Magazine, Kotaku, io9, and The New York Times. He wrote the Rise of the Black Panther graphic novel for Marvel Comics, the gen:Lock animated series, and served as a narrative design consultant on Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales. A native New Yorker, he now lives in Austin, Texas.
Donald Harris is an executive producer at FarBridge. His career has taken me from Titanfall to Goldman Sachs, and everywhere in-between. Donald enjoys growing and leading business development, project management, and product development teams. Getting to combine amazing people with great technology is what gets him out of bed in the morning, always on the hustle to make experiences that inspire, entertain, and take you away from your everyday life!