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

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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

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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.

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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

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Interview: Kirsten Forbes, COO Silicon Sisters

School 26 is a recently released game from the female development team Silicon Sisters. The game is currently available on iOS. We speak to their COO Kristen Forbes. Geek Woman: This is your first game can you tell our readers a little about your team? Are you all from Canada? Kristen Forbes: I’ve been working with creative teams for my entire career, and doing that in game development for something like 13 years, yet only twice have I been fortunate enough to be on a team with as good a dynamic as this one. Believe me when I say it’s not an easy thing to achieve – to gather a group of disparate individuals and have them function as a unified team in short order. It worked this time, in my opinion, because we had great diversity of talents, personalities and cultures – for every senior developer we also had

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Interview: Mitzi McGilvray, Game Industry Veteran and VP of Casual Games at TikGames

This time I was honored to bring you all an interview with Mitzi McGilvray who is a celebrated game industry veteran with over two decades of game production experience.  She has worked across all major platforms and genres and is an avid consumer of social and casual games. 2011 marks Mitzi’s sixth year with TikGames.  During this time, she has helped evolve the company through several industry transitions, keeping it ahead of consumer trends.  She is involved at an executive level in most aspects of the company including Business Development, Production and Marketing.  As a hands-on producer, she has led some of TikGames’ best-selling content, including the 1M + unit seller, Texas Hold’em for Xbox Live Arcade. Prior to joining TikGames, Ms. McGilvray worked as a producer for several large game publishers including Electronic Arts.  There she helped produce some of their top mega-selling franchises including NHL Hockey and NCAA Football.  Additionally, she

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Review: Mass Effect 2 (PS3)

Rating: M (for Mature) Publisher:Electronic Arts Developer: Bioware Release Date: January 28, 2011 (PS3) RENT Mass Effect 2 was released for Xbox 360 and PC back in the beginning of 2010. It is getting pretty tired that it takes games like this another whole year to come out on the PS3. Why they have to continue with the annoying exclusivity rights and other delays that make PS3 releases take forever is beyond me. The focus should be on the consumer experience, and that would mean good customer service. If we don’t have a game for a year, then that is literally not serving the customer. That may all be in the past if Mass Effect 3 which is said to be dropping this fall, becomes cross platform. This game had the distinction of winning several Game of the Year Awards, which did not make not getting it on time any

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Interview: Lesley Yuen, Bar Star Intern

Lesley Yuen was an intern at GlitchSoft during the production of our game, Bar Star. The iOS game which was aimed towards the 18-24 year old female demographic was the project she worked on. Lesley’s insight and contributions to the game were invaluable to the small development team. As an intern, she contributed to the games writing and scripting. She was responsible for all of the pop culture references that are found in Bar Star. She was also integral in identifying phrases and celebrities that would resonate with 18-24 year old females. These features were a major factor of Bar Star’s success. Lesley also handled a considerable amount of marketing activity surrounding Bar Star including the management of the game’s online presence, review submissions, and social media communities on Facebook and Twitter. Geek Woman: Where do you go to school? Lesley Yuen: I go to Carleton University in Ottawa and

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Interview: Stephanie Morgan, Vice President of Social Gaming for Yoostar Entertainment

Stephanie Morgan is the Vice President of Social Gaming for Yoostar Entertainment Group, the publishers of the upcoming Kinect and PS3 Eye game, Yoostar 2: In The Movies. Stephanie Morgan joins Yoostar from ngmoco, a leading creator and publisher of cutting-edge social games for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch. At ngmoco, she led the development of a number of critically received and #1 App Store titles, including GodFinger and Star Defense. Prior to that, Stephanie was Studio Director at Hands-On Mobile, pioneering new innovations in web and mobile gaming by developing cross-platform, multiplayer titles such as World Poker Tour and Guitar Hero World Tour. Projects she has led have resulted in multiple editor’s choice awards, industry-leading downloads and implementation of new social marketing features which have become standard across entire product catalogues.  Morgan’s ability to identify and integrate cutting-edge technology and social media concepts will bolster Yoostar2’s extensive social

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Interview with Artist Weng Chen

Weng Chen who is also known as “wonn” to some people is an illustrator, manga artist, and game developer–and a game player. She did all of the 2D art for Fat Princess, and was nominated for Best Downloadable Game by Spike TV Video Game Awards in 2010. Previously Weng wrote the manga Messycow about her experiences in World of Warcraft. Today Gaming Angels Geek Woman was able to ask her some questions about her work. In a blog announcing the release of Fat Princess, she mentions that “I enjoyed drawing Fat Princess, just like I enjoy drawing Messycow, I guess I like to turn people’s idea bout something not so beautiful and perfect, anything can be cute and lovely–a cow or a fat girl. I mean, why only women with pretty face and sexy figure can be the main characters in games?” And we tend to agree. With a year

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