The Girl Behind The Game: Interview With Chicago Indie Developer Erin Robinson

I wrote everything, I designed everything. I did a lot of the art and animation. All the concept art. And the human animations and I had an artist do all the nice background art. 

Yeah, it's gotten good reviews. They say, so many games are so serious these days, but this is like very cartoony, it gets compared to Futurama or a Nickelodeon cartoon. It's very lighthearted and easy to digest.

Since a little kid. I wasn't allowed to have consoles growing up, so always PCs. I wasn't allowed to play consoles because they're seen as a distraction from our homework. Which is pretty ironic considering now that it's my career. So, I played a lot of shareware games, Age of Empires RTS's. 

They're really supportive. My friends are really geeky, so it's not an issue. I was worried when I decided to make it my career that I wasn't going to make it or fall on my face, but it's been quite the opposite. I didn't have any training when I started, just started making them like 6 years ago. It's pretty cool.

With others, I don't know, I get embrassed about it, so I don't tell people right away. For a long time I said I was a designer, like graphic design. Which is technically part of what I do. But honestly, I went to China to give a talk recently, and the customs guy was like "What do you do?" and when I told him, he's like "Seriously? That's awesome."

I don't know, it kind of feels like I'm cheating, like I don't have a serious job that I hate and I don't like bragging about it. <laugh>. It's just so out there. I have a lot of friends, that do the 9-5 thing, wear suits and commute and try to blend in with the career people and I just couldn't do that.

Yeah, there are a lot of gamer girl organizations that represent themselves that way. I don't really judge them one way or another if that's there business model but I think It sort of paints an unfair picture. It definitely means the girl gamer is very sexualized when people talk about them, orIt usually means that when there are articles about girl gamers in the media, it's usually sexy photo shoot pictures instead of, you know, me playing Peggle in my room in my robe. But I don't judge it. It's a fantasy I guess and there is so much about video games that are a fantasy already.

 

Probably demand. The majority of gamers are young fellas who buy into that. I don't know. It doesn't bother me. If that's what you want to do with you life, cool. But I'm a game developer, it's my art, damn it. I'm going to take it seriously. 

I haven't had a problem with being taken seriously. Sometimes at afterparties at GDC I get laughed at, and that's annoying but a lot of people are actually excited about it. They're happy more women are getting into it. I mean, the same kind of people tend to make games, so the games tend to all come out the same. 

It was Chris Hecker whose worked on Spore saying, you know, the games...there's Star Wars and then there's Lego Star Wars, and then Family Guy, and Family Guy did a Star Wars episode and it's like the same cultural sources being recycled. No new voices and influences. I try to come from a place outside of games and game design schools, so I try to do things that are different.

I'm just me. I'm trying to make games. I actually didn't realize there were so few females in the industry, because there's a decent amount of female players. Especially in a game like World of Warcraft. But like when I first got into professional game development, I'd get into a room and look around and I'd be the only one. I was shocked. I wish there were more females involved in the creative vision of games.

 

There's times that I don't really want to stand out. I'd rather people play the game, and if they like it to continue to follow my work. I don't want attention unless I'm good. I don't think I'm getting any handouts or anything.