author: Hank
Women of Game Dev
The International Women's Day is a perfect occasion to break the stereotype that only guys can work in the gaming. We would like to appreciate some ladies who worked on the most iconic titles in the history of electronic entertainment.
Table of Contents
Debra Wilson
An actress and voice actress whose career covers movies, TV shows, and video games. What Debra Wilson does is as important in creating a video game as designing locations or designing the plot.
Ever since 2017, Debra’s face can be seen in not just one but many video games, including Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus and Wolfenstein: Youngblood as Grace Walker, Days Gone as Addy Walker, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare as General Lyons, and most recently Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order as Cere Junda. And these are only the last 4 years, as Debra Wilson has been also working as a video game voice actress for much longer.
You can hear her voice in games such as Halo 3, Fallout: New Vegas, Infamous 2, Grand Theft Auto V, Gears of War 4, Batman: The Enemy Within, and many more.
Jennifer Hale
Jennifer Hale with over 400 credits across movies, TV shows, and video games for sure is someone that continues to have an incredible impact on the gaming business. With her debut as Katrina in Quest for Glory IV: Shadows of the Darkness and her most recent role of Kronika in Mortal 11, Jennifer Hale participated in the creation of almost 150 games! I know some people who have played so many games, but still this is an astounding number!
Roberta Williams
Mrs. Williams created the graphic adventure genre. Together with her husband, Ken, they created their first adventure game called Mystery House. The success of the game lead to the founding of Sierra On-Line (initially known as On-Line Systems).
After starting her company, Roberta worked on Wizard and the Princess, which was the first graphic adventure game with color graphics. Before we move to their biggest hit, let’s give an honorable mention to other games developed by Sierra On-Line, such as Mixed-Up Mother Goose and Phantasmagoria.
Williams’s biggest hit was, of course, the King’s Quest series. These games are considered the icons of the golden age of adventure games. I can’t imagine how many people played them in their childhood and dived into the incredible and colorful worlds conceived by Mrs. Williams. Even though she retired in 1999, to this day she remain a legend in the video game industry.
I wish we all learned to appreciate people all year round, and not only on their special day. I for one am glad women are such a huge part of the games we get to play – they chip in with their own perspective, emotions, and incredible ideas.
On their special day, we wish them all the best on their current and future undertakings, and we can’t wait to play more of the games they keep working on.