Designing Women at GDC Europe
I recently went to GDC Europe to speak on a panel with several other female game designers, including our own Kellee Santiago. In planning the panel, we all agreed we didn't want to do yet another typical women in games panel and brainstormed ways we could make it more interesting for ourselves and the audience.
One of the things we decided to do was give ourselves a mini design challenge, to explore whether we as designers really do approach process differently than our male colleagues. For example, would we make a war game with a different emphasis? So we tried it. At the panel, I presented an idea for a war game with a core mechanic of holding hands. Kellee presented ideas for a war game about the emotion of fear. The audience seemed to really enjoy the way we structured the panel, and here is a nice write up about it.