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Brenda Romero - Fun & Serious 2018 Interview

We caught up with Bizkaia Award in Bilbao, and even though she couldn't share much about her brand-new game (TBA in 2019) she did share some hints, along with her thoughts on the RPG genre, Romero Games, women in tech & videogames, or even Brexit.

Audio transcription

"We are at Fun & Serious Game Festival 2018 and we have the great pleasure to be with Brenda Romero who is going to get the Bizkaia Award day after tomorrow. Congratulations! Thank you! First off, well, I don't know where to start. You've been taking part on the development of many, many games 40-something if I'm correct. Do you have any favorite? Do you think any of those would be the game changer you would choose?
I don't know that... It's interesting because when you talk about game changer, specifically, probably I'd have to say Train which is the analog, one of the analog games that I made, which at the time did something no other games did."

"If you look at other forms of media, it was basically just a documentary game.
But at the time, nobody was making games that would be considered documentary games.
So I guess that was a game changer.
The favorite game I'd have to say, and I hate to do this, but the game I'm working on now and the team I'm working with now, I'm just having a lot of fun."

"Everybody's ridiculously talented. They've been making games for a long time.
We're working with a publisher that I really like and I wish I could tell you everything about it.
But this is a game I've wanted to make for probably 20 years.
So it may be even longer, certainly at least 20 years."

"So I'm really excited to be able to make this game.
We've added just a couple of new systems. We're just in front of a big milestone.
So seeing it come together, it always just feels so great.
So that's a game you're developing at Romero Games."

"We asked John last year about this. He didn't want to share anything about it.
But you're sharing your excitement on the project.
Any clue you can give us?
When can we look forward to see it for the first time?
Which genre are you trying to approach?
Let me see a hint."

"It's got to be so hard being a games journalist, Julie, because so much of what you ask about, game developers constantly just say, can't answer it. What platform? Yes.
So my hope is that we actually announce it in 2019 and not late 2019 either."

"So I don't think the game will surprise anybody that it's, you know, that, oh, OK, Brandon made that. Yeah, I could totally see that.
But that's about all I can say. And it'll be on multiple platforms.
So that's about all I can say about it. I'm sorry. I wish I could say more."

"Fair enough.
On those 40-something games you've developed, looking back at the development of the very first ones, how do you think game design has changed specifically on RPGs?
Oh, wow."

"I would say RPG design, probably the biggest change is that it's been included or subsumed by many other genres that you wouldn't normally think it would be a part of.
For instance, Borderlands stood out to me as a game that absolutely had RPG elements in a traditional shooter."

"So I think we've seen that much more.
And culturally, and it just might be because I'm so focused on traditional RPGs, that culturally I see a tremendous difference as well, just between Western and Eastern RPGs."

"So I think that has developed, obviously has developed over time and has maybe even broadened since it started.
So you can easily spot influences of Eastern RPGs versus influences of Western RPGs."

"I think RPGs themselves have become much more accessible.
Before, if you wanted to play an RPG, and especially if you go back pre-digital, you really had to put in a lot of legwork.
But RPGs now, including non-digital ones, have become much more accessible, like the newest version of D&D."

"It includes digital elements, at least, to help you roll your character.
And I think, oh, gosh, I can't believe I didn't say this already.
With shows like Stranger Things, Stranger Things made RPGs cool, right?
They were already cool to all of us who are hardcore nerds, but they made them cool to a much wider group of people."

"So I found my daughter's friends asking, like, oh, can we play RPG?
Can we play D&D?
And it was probably the first time and maybe the last time I'll ever be cool among my daughter's friends."

"But it was great.
Without disclosing anything else on what you're working on right now, how is Romero Games' structure right now, which is the size of the team you're based in Ireland, if I'm correct?
So what can you tell us about the studio itself?
Well, we're in the west coast of Ireland, in Galway."

"And Galway is a fabulously funky city.
It's not huge, 75,000 people.
It's a great community.
It's a great place to live.
Recently got the European Capital of Culture and is also a European Capital of Gastronomy, so we're very proud of it."

"As far as the studio, we are located in the city center, so we walk out onto a medieval street.
It's a great place.
And we have 20 people now and working on one project just launched."

"There's another one that will be announced on Monday, and then my game will be announced probably next year.
And I have another game in pre-production.
And by pre-production, like, pre, pre, pre-production, in that it's just the design of it is just coming together now."

"And hopefully, I don't know that I'll get to design that, be the main line game designer on that, but that one's in the very early thought stages.
Which would you say is the Irish industry role right now in video games in general, and more so with Brexit in the horizon?
The Irish industry's role is perhaps underplayed."

"So, for instance, if you take companies like Havok.
Havok is Irish. It's Irish-founded.
It's in Dublin, and Havok is under many AAA games.
And then if we look at PlayerUnknown Battlegrounds, that was made by Brendan Green, who's originally from County Kildare."

"So there's, you know, both of those, both of the game and obviously Havok, the underlying tech, are absolutely huge.
So Ireland, like many European countries, has a very vibrant indie game scene."

"I think everybody is hoping for more government supports, not that, you know, coming from the States, we certainly didn't get any handouts in California, but most European countries do in fact provide supports for games because games can be such an economic driver."

"But we find ourselves in the awkward space of, we're not art and we're not tech.
We're art and tech in the middle.
So sometimes it's difficult to find funding bodies that are interested in supporting homegrown talent."

"But I feel like the scene is very dynamic.
It's growing every single year.
There's been some big successes already, and more and more people are coming to Ireland."

"Particularly, so you mentioned Brexit, there's a lot of companies looking to Ireland as a direct result of that.
It's interesting because I feel like I look at, obviously I keep my, I'm watching the news, particularly because of the border in the north, or the rather lack of a border in the north and hoping there will not be a hard border in the north."

"And it feels to me like it changes every single day.
Like if you say, okay, I've got my head around this now, and then the next morning you wake up and it's all changed.
So it's, boy, it's up in the air."

"I wouldn't feel that I know enough to even comment on it.
What's happened today? I don't know. I've been here.
So perhaps if you are in between tech and art, a good foundation for that talent could be the university."

"What are you guys doing in the university?
What am I doing in the university?
So I frequently teach.
I like teaching. I like doing workshops."

"I would say that most fun that I'm currently having, just in terms of education, is working with a group called Babaro.
And Babaro is an arts festival for young children."

"There's all kinds of festivals in Galway.
I mean, I'm sure there's some festival I'm missing this week by being here.
So Babaro is specifically an arts festival for kids.
So as a company, what we do is we get the coders, the artists, and the designers together."

"We put on a big workshop for the kids to introduce them to code, introduce them to art, and hopefully through that medium of seeing the stuff that they create in a game, maybe that'll get them interested in making games, get them interested in tech."

"So I would say my educational, my focus on education right now, is that young kids hoping to get them into tech, but even more so young women hoping to get them into tech.
Now that you mention young women, and of course women in games is a big topic this year."

"And we are lucky to have many women for interview this year, and many talented women that have been for many years like you, or even just entered the industry.
So what are your thoughts on how women are represented and are respected in this industry right now?
The first thing that came to my head actually didn't have anything to do with this industry."

"So I've been here 37 years now, so I think I've seen everything.
I'm sure I'll see something later on that makes me go, oh no, I haven't actually seen everything."

"But I still hear, you know, just last year for instance, and it wasn't in the industry, I heard that women just aren't meant for tech.
Just they're not meant to do it."

"The only reason that women can code is because their parents supported them.
And I mean, that's obviously crap.
I mean, it was a woman who invented the assembly language."

"It was a woman who invented the compiler.
It was a woman who invented COBOL.
It was a woman who invented programming.
It was a woman who was an all-female programming team on the ENIAC."

"It's in many cases women coding 6502 into little chips to make dolls talk for Christmas.
So that's ultimately ridiculous, but for me to be told just last year that women are not meant for tech, and then to have that when I said, seriously, and I was talking with somebody else about it, they said, there's a little point in taking offense."

"And my reply was, no, it's the entire point.
If anything, I'm not taking enough offense.
So I feel, to me, this challenge is much larger than just our industry."

"Getting the drought of female programming candidates, you know, getting more women into code.
I view this, whatever it is they choose to do, I want women to have a role in the future of technology."

"And right now, if you look at all the technology companies, women head such a small amount of them.
And so we end up with things like controllers that don't fit female hands, or seatbelts that were never designed to take into account breasts."

"So it's very important that women continue to have, to continue to have a place at a table, and we continue to make this an inviting, continue to make this a more inviting industry for women."

"But I view it as much larger than just games.
Okay, changing topic completely.
In 2006, you wrote a book which was about sex in video games.
If I'm correct, it was 2006?
Okay, so, but that was 2006."

"So how do you think it changed in the last decade?
I mean, at that time, as any game designer, I will develop, I'll develop an interest in something.
And game designers aren't very good at developing superficial interests."

"If we're going to research something, we go further than anybody needs to go.
And so that was my interest at the time.
Just nobody had researched this, and I was fascinated by it."

"And I researched it, and I wrote a book on it.
So I, at that point, since then, I really haven't paid a whole heck of a lot of attention.
But asking me about it, I'm thinking that it seems to me nowadays that, especially with the advent of digital distribution, things are much more accessible, and we're not viewing games as just for kids."

"Certainly, there are people who do, but the narrative that we're seeing in games is certainly more evolved.
The stories are not necessarily targeting 12-year-olds."

"They're targeting 50-year-olds.
And with that comes more mature themes.
Now, that said, that doesn't mean that there's sexual content in games."

"As a designer, I don't feel, I would never, I would never think, oh, just, geez, I want to put some sexual content in the game somewhere any more than I would think I want to have soccer in the game somewhere."

"So to me, I don't feel, at this point in time, that that is a concern that I need to have.
And I do think that we're covering a much wider range of topics."

"So therefore, we are seeing more realistic representations of relationships in the game, which might include intimacy, people falling in love, people expressing that to one another."

"So I'm thinking of the game Florence, which I thought was just beautiful.
So we're seeing more, a wider range of the human experience."

"It's not, it's certainly not as constrained as it was back then.
That's great.
Thank you so much for your time.
And congratulations again on your award."

"Thank you."

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