Brenda Louise Romero (born as Garno; born October 12, 1966), who was once called Brenda Brathwaite, is an American game designer and developer. She was born in Ogdensburg, New York, and graduated from Clarkson University. Romero is most famous for her work on the Wizardry series of role-playing video games and, more recently, the non-digital series The Mechanic is the Message. She has worked in game development since 1981 and has contributed to 49 game titles.

For the Wizardry series, Romero helped design the game, create levels, develop systems, write stories, and write code. She also wrote the manuals and instructions for some games in the series. She wrote stories and created instructions for the award-winning Jagged Alliance series. She was the main designer for Playboy: The Mansion and Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes.

Career

Romero started her career in 1981 at Sir-tech Software, Inc., a company that makes and sells video games. She worked first as a tester and later became a designer for the Wizardry 8 game. While at Sir-tech, she also helped create games in the Jagged Alliance and Realms of Arkania series. She worked for Sir-tech for 18 years before joining Atari, where she designed games in the Dungeons & Dragons series for consoles. In 2003, she joined Cyberlore Studios to work on the Playboy: The Mansion game. Her research for this game was later published in a book called Sex in Video Games.

Nerve magazine named her a "New Radical," recognizing her as one of 50 artists, actors, authors, activists, and icons who are making the world more interesting.

In 2009, Next Generation magazine named her the woman with the longest continuous service in video game development.

Romero was the Chair of the Savannah College of Art and Design's Interactive Design and Game Development department until November 2009. She then moved to San Francisco to work as a Creative Director for Slide, Inc., a social media company. In May 2010, she became the Creative Director of Lolapps, a social gaming company. She co-founded Loot Drop, a social game company, with John Romero in November 2010 and joined Loot Drop full-time in February 2011.

In 2013, Romero became the first game designer in residence at the Games and Playable Media Program at the University of California at Santa Cruz. She also led the program as its director.

From 2013 until December 2018, she was the Program Director of the MSc program in Game Design and Development at the University of Limerick in Limerick, Ireland.

Recognition

Romero has received many awards throughout her long career. Some important awards include RPG of the Year for Wizardry 8, a Fulbright Scholar award in 2014, the Game Developer's Choice Ambassador Award in 2015, and the Development Legend award at the Develop:Brighton awards. Romero was also invited to give a TED Talk about her career in the game industry. In the talk, she explains how she uses sad events from history in her game design.

Personal life

Brenda Garno married game developer John Romero on October 27, 2012. She has three children from her first marriage. John and Brenda worked together on the game Ravenwood Fair. John was the lead designer, and Brenda was the creative director and game designer.

IGDA and activism

Brenda Romero was a member of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA). In 2008, she was chosen to serve on the IGDA's Board of Directors. On March 28, 2013, she stepped down as co-chair of the IGDA Women in Games Special Interest Group (SIG).

In 2005, she started the International Game Developers Sex Special Interest Group (Sex SIG). After working on the game Playboy, she studied adult and sexual content in video games. She often talks about this topic in the media and wrote a book called Sex in Video Games.

She is an anti-censorship activist and supports parents knowing about game ratings.

Academics

She often speaks at universities and conferences, including the Game Developers Conference, Austin Game Developers Conference, and Montreal International Games Summit. Some of her lectures have taken place at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, The Guildhall at Southern Methodist University, and Clarkson University.

In the spring of 2007, she received the Presidential Fellowship at Savannah College of Art and Design to create an exhibit and presentation titled, "What You Don't Know About Video Games…". In April 2008, she became Chair of the Interactive Design and Game Development department at Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). Brathwaite left SCAD in November 2009 to return to full-time commercial game development.

In December 2012, she was appointed "Game Designer in Residence" at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

In March 2014, she was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship.

The Mechanic is the Message

In February 2008, Romero started creating a group of non-digital games called The Mechanic is the Message. The series includes six games that explore new ways of making games. These games are:

• The New World, 2008
• Síochán leat, 2009
• Train, 2009
• Mexican Kitchen Workers – prototype
• Cité Soleil – concept phase
• One Falls for Each of Us – concept phase

Of these, Train has received the most attention. It won the Vanguard Award at Indiecade in October 2009 for "pushing the boundaries of game design and showing us what games can do." Train was also shown in The Wall Street Journal and on game industry websites like Gamasutra, where it was praised for using gestures to create meaning. It was also discussed in The Escapist Magazine, Extra Credits, and Kotaku. At the 2010 Gamesauce Conference, Romero gave a talk titled Train: How I Dumped Electricity and Learned to Love Design.

Síochán leat (Irish for "peace be with you") tells the story of Romero’s children’s heritage. She made this game after creating The New World, a game she designed to teach her daughter about the slave trade. Síochán leat was made to help her daughter learn about her Irish heritage. The game follows the family’s history from the Cromwellian invasion of Ireland to ancestors who later moved to the West Indies on the father’s side and Canada on the mother’s side. The game includes a burlap pillow covered with 26 pieces of grass, each representing a county in Ireland. In a talk at the Austin Game Developers Conference in September 2009, Romero explained that the burlap pillow was filled with personal items from her life, such as photos of her great grandfather, Paddy Donovan, and one of her mother’s rosaries. On her blog, Romero wrote that the game is "signed in many ways" and "highly autobiographical," meaning it reflects her personal history and her feelings about the present.