Interview: Stephanie Herrera, Artist and Writer for Dreams

Recently Geek Woman played Dreams for iOS on iPad. And then got in touch with the artist/creator, Stephanie Herrera. Geek Woman: It seemed like the differences in the pictures were tiny details that women would be more inclined to notice than men, were you intending that? Stephanie Herrera: When I made the game I was a lot younger than now and the differences just came out of thin air, I didn’t plan them at all, just made whatever came to my mind. I think the innocence of the moment also helped and the stuff I was going through in my life at that certain point, such as becoming a self conscious woman. What art your art style influences? In that time I liked manga and anime a lot, probably you can tell from the images, lol… But now I’m older I have much more influences in my style, most of

Read more →

Interview: Sharon Wood, Founder and CEO of Stone Creek Entertainment

Sharon Wood is an innovative female leader in the former “boys club” of the gaming industry, her past experience includes work on projects like Grand Theft Auto.  Now, Sharon is debuting Luminous, a lifestyle app that allows women to compare their opinions with those of famous female leaders. The game seeks to continue the discussion about ladies’ growing power in the gaming industry and Stone Creek’s unique approach. Sharon’s background is mainly in marketing, so the goal of her new lifestyle app, Luminous, is to get a high profile sponsor on board to use it as part of Stone Creek Entertainment’s digital marketing campaign. Recently, for example, MTV sponsored a Facebook game Stone Creek created to promote this season of The Real World. Her career has taken an interesting transition. Her first job was with a sports marketing agency, working on campaigns such as Major League Baseball. She then transitioned

Read more →

Interview: Tanya Otero, USA Sales Director for Aerial 7

Tanya Otero, USA Sales Director for Aerial 7 has been in the business of selling fun for a couple of decades. She started competing in snowboard contests which led to working in a snowboard retail environment, followed by being an independent sales rep, then a regional sales manager, then National sales manager, a brand manager and now Sales Director at Aerial 7 USA headquarters. Tanya, a self proclaimed snowboarder believes that snowboarding without music is like having a computer without email access, therefore happy to have access to a quiver of listening devices at Aerial 7. As a resident of Encinitas CA Tanya is able to focus on career and quality lifestyle simultaneously. Tanya believes that if you work from a place of passion your work can enhance your lifestyle and lead to long term success. Geek Woman: I was told that you are a snowboarder, do you still enjoy

Read more →

Interview: Jessica Chavez, Senior Editor/Community Manager, XSEED Games

Jessica Chavez is a 29 year-old localization specialist who has a love of Japanese culture and gaming, a penchant for the sarcastic/absurd, and an unholy love of bacon. She has worked at XSEED Games for nearly three years as an editor and is primarily responsible for inserting crude and shocking witticisms into unsuspecting treasure chest messages. She has been lead editor on several projects of questionable humor such asHalf-Minute Hero, Lunar: Silver Star Harmony and Rune Factory: Frontier, has labored with great justice on works such as Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces and Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon, and has slaved mightily over the text-heavy monster that is Ivy the Kiwi?. Most recently she tackled The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky during a nine month stint where she was chained to her home desktop and allowed neither sunlight nor the joy of human company. Her current mental

Read more →

Interview: Marti McKenna and Stacey Janssen, Writers for En Masse Entertainment

This time we have an interview with two ladies who have a background in SyFy writing. Marti McKenna is a 22-year game industry vet and a lifelong geek girl. Her games career began in the late ’80s at Sierra Online, where she worked her way up from the assembly line through the fulfillment, customer service, marketing, and game design departments. In the early ’90s she took a senior writer position at Electronic Arts and eventually went on to lead the EA writing team. More recently she worked on Guild Wars and Aion (for ArenaNet and NCsoft) respectively, and now holds the position of Writing Team Manager at En Masse Entertainment. Marti has also been busy outside the games industry. Over the past decade she worked as fiction editor for Scorpius Digital Publishing and Aeon Speculative Fiction and as editor-at-large for The Internet Review of Science Fiction. Her short fiction has

Read more →

Interview: Kate Hedstrom, PR Manager at Michael Meyers Agency

Kate Hedstrom has been involved in gaming and entertainment PR for thirteen years. At Michael Meyers PR, she managed several accounts, including Deep Silver, Konami Digital and Eidos Mobile, and worked on major campaigns for clients such as Crave Entertainment, Ubisoft and KingsIsle Entertainment. Prior to joining MMPR, Kate was at The 3DO Company, where she headed up PR for the Might and Magic brands as well as several other titles, and Broderbund Software, where she handled campaigns for Myst, Riven and Prince of Persia. She was the first female on the editorial staff at Computer Gaming World magazine, where she managed the online properties and relaunched the covermount disk. She also served as a news editor at GameSpot. Prior to entering the electronic entertainment field, Kate worked in the hospitality and construction industries. She has a Masters degree in Library and Information Science and a BA in History. —————-

Read more →

Interview: Sabine Duvall, EVP of Global Publishing & Sales from Tik Games

Sabine Duvall has a long history of work on many recognizable game titles. Her history includes being on the team at Hudson Entertainment, Inc. For many years where she worked with Diner Dash, Alien Crush Returns, Omega Five, Star Soldier R, and Bomberman LIVE. Before that she worked for one of the most popular casual game companies, Oberon Games, Inc. on BeTrapped!. Some of you may remember Riven: The Sequel to Myst from back in 1997, with Red Orb Entertainment. She even worked during the event horizon of gaming with Sierra On-Line, Inc. On The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery, Space Quest (Collector’s Edition), Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist, Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, The Dagger of Amon Ra Gobliiins, and Inca. Geek Woman: I remember those Sierra On-Line games very well. I loved that era in gaming. Do you miss those simpler times? Sabine Duvall: I don’t think

Read more →

Interview: Lori Zawada, Sr. Environmental Artist at Certain Affinity

Lori Zawada is one of the Sr. Environment Artists on staff at Certain Affinity.  Certain Affinity is a top console game developer in Austin, TX with a strong 5-year history of working major publisher credits and projects. Their studio is well-known for contributing world-class design on Call of Duty: Black Ops, Halo 2 and 3 and Left 4 Dead. Extensive design work from them on Halo Reach was recently announced. Geek Woman: Looking at your resume is like reading  ”How to Succeed in Video Games”, maybe you should write a book about your career? Lori Zawada: Haha, the closest I came to writing a book was trying to write and illustrate a children’s book. It made my friends’ little girl cry so I gave up on that. Have you ever encountered, or witnessed any sexism and judgement from men in the industry that you can talk about? Actually not at

Read more →

NBC hangs with GamingAngels at E3

Yesterday we kicked E3 off with a bang as we met up with the wonderful @JenniferNBCLA from NBC and took her with us to our Nintendo appointment. We spoke with @JenniferNBCLA about Women in Games, the latest figures on Women in Games (we’re at 42% now!) and the need to have more women in the industry! At the Nintendo booth, we were able to preview the Wii U on two games which we all played together. You can see us checking out the controller in the video below. I was able to escape our new NBC friend. Hopefully she had a great time and in the end, we made her an official GamingAngel! Enjoy! View more videos at: http://www.nbclosangeles.com.

Read more →

Interview: Shan Poon, PR & Marketing Manager at Two Tribes

Shan Poon from Two Tribes has told us that she has been playing video games since she was a little girl. She also says, “I had never imagined I would work in, or be a part of the gaming industry. Mostly because in my imagination I always thought only men were supposed to work in the gaming industry. So, after high school I choose to study social work and graduated, after spending two years in the field of social work I knew something was wrong. I knew this wasn’t really the field I wanted to work in, so I decided to take a risk and find my way towards the gaming industry. Then, at the age of 23 I choose to study Media and Entertainment Management with just one goal in mind, the gaming industry, I had to find an awesome internship and get them to hire me. Now here

Read more →