Brenda Brathwaite

Brenda Brathwaite is a game designer, artist, writer and game developer who entered the video game industry in 1981 at the age of 15. She worked with Sir-tech Software for 18 years on the Wizardry series and later the Jagged Alliance series among others before moving on to work with Atari on Dungeons & Dragons. During this time, Brenda had the opportunity to work alongside legends in the game industry and quite literally apprenticed in the ways of game design moving up through the ranks from lowly acolyte to lead game designer to creative director.

Since her days at Atari, Brenda has worked with a variety of companies, including Electronic Arts, Cyberlore, Firaxis and numerous companies in the social media space. She is presently Creative Director at Slide. Brenda develops her games both in analog and digital mediums, depending on the needs of the game. She has worked as a system designer, writer, level designer, world designer, lead designer and creative director throughout the years.

Brenda serves on the board of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) and the advisory board for the International Center for the History of Electronic Games at the Strong Museum of Play. She was named Woman of the Year by Charisma+2 Magazine in 2010 and also was a nominee in Microsoft’s 2010 Women in Games game design awards. In 2009, Train won the coveted Vanguard Award at IndieCade for “pushing the boundaries of game design and showing us what games can do.” She was named one of the top 20 most influential women in the game industry by Gamasutra.com in 2008 and of the 100 most influential women in the game industry by Next Generation magazine in 2007. Nerve magazine also called her one of the the 50 artists, actors, authors, activists and icons who are making the world a more stimulating place.

She is an avid player of games and has been since she was a child. For more information, also see her wikipedia and mobygames entries.