Kellee Santiago was born in 1978 or 1979. She is a Venezuelan American video game designer and producer. She co-founded and was the president of thatgamecompany. She was born in Caracas, Venezuela, but grew up in Richmond, Virginia. She played video games from a young age, and her father, a software engineer, encouraged her to try working with computers. While studying at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, she became involved in experimental theater. She planned to continue this work after earning a master's degree in the Interactive Media Program at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts. However, she later became interested in video game design. She helped create a game called Cloud, which was developed by Jenova Chen and a student team. The game's success led her and Chen to start thatgamecompany after graduating. She became its president.

Santiago produced the studio's first two games, Flow and Flower. She took on more responsibilities as president during the development of the third game, Journey. In addition to her work at thatgamecompany, Santiago supports the Indie Fund. The Indie Fund is a group that helps fund the creation of independent video games. She is also a TED fellow. She married Mike Stein, a graduate of the University of Southern California, in 2010. After Journey was released in 2012, Santiago left the company. Since then, she has worked on several advisory boards and held roles at companies such as Ouya, Google Play Games, Niantic, and E-Line Media.

Biography

Santiago was born in Caracas, Venezuela, and grew up in Richmond, Virginia. She played video games from a young age, often playing them with her younger brother. One of her first games was Sleuth, which she describes as "simple, but so effective and so evocative" in creating emotions for players. Her father, a software engineer, had a computer in the home when she was young and encouraged her to explore it. At 18, she moved to New York City to attend the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. There, she participated in amateur theater and focused on creating new works instead of adapting older ones. She was especially interested in using interactive digital media in her performances, which she believes was influenced by her father's work and her early experiences with computers.

In 2003, when she was 24, Santiago moved to Los Angeles to earn a master's degree in the Interactive Media Program at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. She originally planned to stay in theater, but in her second semester, she took a class on the history of game design taught by Tracy Fullerton. This class inspired her to switch her focus to video game design. She realized how much potential existed for communication and expression in video games, and how little structure existed for making them, which connected with her interest in experimental theater. While at school, she helped create the award-winning game Cloud, which tells a story about an out-of-body experience. She also worked on other games, such as Darfur is Dying.

Cloud was an experiment to see if the team could make a game that expressed something different from traditional video games and to test how interested the gaming community was in such games. The game was downloaded over 400,000 times in its first four months, more than the total number of people in every theater she had ever worked in. This success convinced Santiago to stay in the video game industry. The strong response to Cloud, released in 2005, inspired her and Jenova Chen to start their own company to create more games like it. Their designs focused on the emotions they wanted to inspire rather than traditional gameplay mechanics.

After graduating, Santiago and Chen founded thatgamecompany in May 2006. They signed a contract with Sony Computer Entertainment to develop three games for the PlayStation Network. Santiago was the president of the company and also served as a producer. She remained involved in the game design process despite her title. The company’s first game, Flow, was an adaptation of a game Chen had made for his thesis at USC. It was released in 2007 and helped establish the studio as an important force in independent game development. In 2008, Gamasutra named the studio one of the "20 Breakthrough Developers" of the year, highlighting Santiago’s role. The company’s second game, Flower, was its first completely original project and was released in 2009. Both Flow and Flower received critical praise, awards, and strong sales. For the company’s third game, Journey, Santiago hired Robin Hunicke as the producer so she could focus on leading the company. Journey was released on March 13, 2012. Two weeks later, Santiago announced she was leaving thatgamecompany, though she did not share her future plans.

During the development of Journey in 2009, Santiago became a TED fellow and gave a talk at a USC conference about whether video games are art. Her views on this topic were later discussed by Roger Ebert a year later. She was also one of the founders of the Indie Fund, a group that supports the development of independent video games. In 2010, she married Mike Stein, whom she met at USC. In 2011, she was named one of the top 100 most influential women in technology by Fast Company.

In 2013, Santiago joined Ouya, a microconsole that allows users to develop games, where she worked on developer relations. She also joined the Women in Games International advisory board in 2014 and became an official advisor for Night Light Interactive. In 2015, she left Ouya after the company was sold and dissolved, joining Google Play Games. In 2019, she left Google to become the head of developer relations at Niantic. She later left Niantic for E-Line Media, where she served as an executive vice president from 2024 to 2025.

Influences and philosophy

Santiago explained that her work at thatgamecompany involved creating games that produce emotional reactions, to show that video games can offer a broader range of experiences than usually seen. She stated that the company's goal during her time there was "to make games that expand the possibilities of video games as a way to share messages, and to create games that attract many different types of people." Through this work, she aims to encourage the rest of the video game industry to view games as a "creative medium" instead of just a product. She has supported independent game developers both through her involvement with the Indie Fund and by working at thatgamecompany, helping them by providing financial support and connecting them with others in the industry.