Brenda Romero on cashing in, selling out, and staying true to yourself while making games (interview)

Above: Brenda Romero

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

GamesBeat: I wonder if Intel’s $300 million investment will put a more positive spin on things going forward or lead to some change.

Romero: Intel’s money, its financial infusion, is incredible. I remember reading the headlines about just the figure. At first I thought, “Somebody obviously added a zero.” That’s unprecedented, absolutely unprecedented. I think it’s fantastic, what they’re doing. And not just bringing more women into the industry. Plenty of people are underrepresented in the industry. John is Cherokee and Yaqui. A few games have highlighted those cultures just this year, and I would have loved to see more of that. I’d love to see more games that have themes beyond those that we’ve played again and again.

Not just gender diversity, but cultural diversity, like Never Alone, or Vander Caballero’s game. Seeing games from different perspectives, representing different cultures — whether they’re educational games or pure entertainment — that’s where I would like to see the medium go. It has tremendous potential. We’re not necessarily a young industry. We’re my age, or we’re in our 40s, anyway. We have a lot of potential.

Anyway, I think it’s fantastic, what Intel did. Anything that supports and helps the industry grow is a good thing. It’s not just bringing more women into the industry, but any initiative that helps the industry move forward.

GamesBeat: I was wondering a little about how to use those funds. One of the things I’ve heard other people talk about is more incubators. The U.S. itself seems to need more non-profit incubators. Sweden, Finland, England, France….

Romero: Ireland.

GamesBeat: Yeah. Lithuania, even. They have these incubators that don’t take a 30 percent cut. They just train people, give them a place to work, and give them some funding. In Finland, if you fail, you don’t have to return the 400,000 euro or whatever loan you get. Finland is perfectly happy with that, because they got Supercell out of the deal. They’re making 200 million euro back every year in tax revenue. It’s a no-brainer.

Romero: It really is. When I was in Ireland, this was a topic that came up quite a bit. In Ireland there are incubators, often attached to colleges. A lot of the game developers there have some of the same concerns we have here. It would be great to have some degree of mentorship, to have some degree of incubation, to have some place you can work on games.

In Silicon Valley, incubation is a business unto itself. The level of mentors they’re providing with those incubators is non-trivial. But it would be great to say, “Here’s a place. Here’s some seed funding for you to possibly grow a business.” I’m more acquainted with Ireland’s industry, but that’s something they’re doing. That would be an excellent way to go about it.

One thing I think would be another good investment is targeting kids at the elementary school and middle school levels. When I went to school I had access to a computer and I learned how to code. Most schools now don’t. If kids aren’t even encountering code until they’re in college, or somehow magically through a code camp in the summer—Again, there are so many that this is a whole for-profit industry of summer code camps for kids. But if kids aren’t encountering code as a fundamental part of their education, they’re 10 years behind where the pioneers in this industry were.

GamesBeat: I have three daughters. None of them are coding yet, though.

Romero: John is teaching our youngest, who’s 10. I imagine he’d be working on C, C++ by the time he’s 13. It was heavily mocked, but I think it’s interesting — I believe it was in the state of Kentucky, where somebody challenged the notion of whether or not computer language could count as a language requirement in schools over, say, Latin or French or Spanish.

I would say that maybe it’s not spoken openly, but code is ubiquitous. It’s everywhere. It’s in our phones, in our appliances at home. I think it’s critical that my kids learn how to program. I will make sure that happens. It’s very surprising, the number of kids who come into college now who don’t have that degree of basic technical literacy. Or they’re so dependent on tools — they can mix and match things with a tool and they’re happy to never go deeper.

Above: John and Brenda Romero on the red carpet at the DICE Summit.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi