Erin Robinson

Erin Robinson Swink is a Canadian indie game designer and developer. In 2011, Fast Company named her one of the most influential women in technology.[1] In 2015, University of California, Santa Cruz appointed her creative director of the Jack Baskin School of Engineering's master's programme in games and playable media.[2]

Erin Robinson Swink
Erin Robinson at the 2010 Game Developers Conference
NationalityCanadian
OccupationVideo game designer / Video game developer
Notable work
Gravity Ghost (2015)

Personal life and education

Erin Robinson is originally from Toronto.[3] The first game she ever purchased was The Lost Mind of Dr. Brain (1994). She earned money for the game by doing household chores as a child, remarking later that "maybe associating video games with chores was the reason I became a developer."[4] She also played Myst and King's Quest VII.[3] Robinson has a bachelor's degree in psychology from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.[3][5] Her college thesis was on spatial memory and the translation of experience into memory.[6] She worked as a research assistant at a psychology lab. Unhappy with her work, she eventually quit to become a game developer.[1] She has been inspired by the work of Marjane Satrapi, particularly her graphic novel Persepolis.[7] She lives in Chicago, Illinois.[8] She is firm supporter of the fight against climate change, and has called for video game companies to divest their investments in fossil fuel companies.[9]

Work

Robinson works from home as an independent video game developer under her own indie game label "Ivy Games."[9] She started in 2005. The first game she ever designed, Spooks,[10] was about a dead girl who tries to save a goldfish. The game was designed on MS Paint. When she first started designing video games, she kept it a secret from her friends because she thought it was "super geeky."[8] She develops the concept, mechanics, and artwork, but she hires computer programmers to code the game logic.[1] Many of her games have a retro design feel.[8] Her early games were released as freeware.[1] These freeware games included Spooks, Little Girl in Underland, and Nanobots.[4] She has released two independently funded games: Puzzle Bots, a point and click puzzle adventure game, and Gravity Ghost, a game about a ghost girl on a mission to save the galaxy.[11] In the game Gravity Ghost she experimented with alternative forms of game story-telling, which allows the player to learn how to navigate the fictional world as the same rate as the character. She has stressed the importance of the introspective journey to this particular game.[12] She has done artwork for Blackwell Unbound.[8]

Robinson has taught indie gaming classes at Columbia College Chicago. She was named one of the most influential women in technology, in 2011, by Fast Company.[1] She has spoken at Game Developers Conference about video games being used in neuroscience as rehabilitative therapy. She talked about her findings that video games are increasingly being used in medical and rehabilitative therapy and that playing First-Person Shooters improves visual and auditory perception.[4][8] In 2015, she was named the creative director of the master's degree program in games and playable media at the Silicon Valley Center of the University of California, Santa Cruz.[5]

References
  1. Zax, David. "Erin Robinson". 2011 Most Influential Women in Technology. Fast Company. Retrieved 26 October 2012.
  2. Stephens, Tim (16 December 2015). "UCSC hires game designer Erin Swink as creative director of master's program" (Press release). Santa Cruz: University of California, Santa Cruz. Retrieved 5 June 2016.
  3. MacCormack, Andrew. "Erin Robinson - Puzzle Bots". Interview. Adventure Gamers. Retrieved 26 October 2012.
  4. "Game Designer Erin Robinson on Free Games and Indie Life". Exclusive Interviews. Gamesauce. Archived from the original on 3 February 2011. Retrieved 26 October 2012.
  5. "Six Women Appointed to New Administrative Posts at Major Universities". Women in Academia Report. Women in Academia Report. 31 December 2015. Retrieved 26 June 2016.
  6. "Chicago's Indie Video Game Darling, Erin Robinson - Gapers Block Tailgate | Chicago". gapersblock.com. Retrieved 26 June 2016.
  7. "Erin Robinson: Creating the Games We Want to Play – Shameless Magazine". shamelessmag.com. Retrieved 26 June 2016.
  8. Eordogh, Fruzsina. "Chicago's Indie Video Game Darling, Erin Robinson". Tailgate. Gapers Block. Retrieved 26 October 2012.
  9. "The DeanBeat: How to get game developers to save the planet". VentureBeat. Retrieved 26 June 2016.
  10. O, Desiree. "Erin Robinson: Creating the Games We Want to Play". The Shameless Blog. Shameless. Retrieved 26 October 2012.
  11. "Lively Ivy » About". livelyivy.com. Retrieved 26 June 2016.
  12. "Game creator Erin Robinson Swink on the challenge of creating meaningful games - Kill Screen". 22 September 2015. Retrieved 26 June 2016.
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