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Tanya X. Short

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Tanya X. Short is an American video game designer. She is a co-founder of Kitfox Games, an independent video game studio in Montreal, Canada. She was lead designer for titles including Shattered Planet (2014) and Moon Hunters (2016). In 2012, she co-founded the organization Pixelles, which aims to increase gender diversity in video game development.

Early life

Short was raised in California, United States. She lived in home that was "in the middle of the desert" so she would often play video games rather than play with other children. Short's mother also disliked "passive entertainment" such as television, so her mother bought the family a Nintendo Entertainment System, feeling as though playing video games is a more "active" activity for the brain. As a teenager, Short would spend her time meeting other people through massively multiplayer online (MMO) games.[1]

Short knew she wanted to work as a video game writer after volunteering her time as a community manager and content designer for an online game.[2] She attended college in Portland, Oregon, to study English literature. In 2006, she applied for the master's degree program in video game design at SMU Guildhall in Texas.[1][2] Upon graduating from SMU Guildhall in 2008, Short received a few job offers to work on MMO games at video game companies.[1][2] She chose to work for Norwegian video game developer Funcom, which was at the time working on the online game Age of Conan.[1]

Career

At Funcom, Short worked as a narrative designer,[3] designing levels and boss fights for MMORPGs.[4] She moved to Montreal, Canada, in her mid-twenties at the request of her employer, which wanted to take advantage of attractive tax subsidies offered by the province to the video game industry. She participated in meetings held by the Montreal Gaming Society, which Short recalls helped her integrate into the local gaming community even though she did not speak French.[1] In 2012, Short and game hobbyist Rebecca Cohen Palacios founded Pixelles, a non-profit organization which has organized free events to teach video game development to women, non-binary people, transgender people, and people from other marginalized groups.[1][5][6]

Around 2013, when Funcom halted its activities in Montreal to continue its activities in North Carolina, Short chose to stay in Montreal and became unemployed.[1] In 2013, she founded Kitfox Games with three other people. The studio soon developed the game Shattered Planet, released in 2014, as part of a video game incubator; Short acted as lead designer of the game.[5][7] As lead designer of the studio's later project Moon Hunters (2016), she was motivated to create a game that used procedural generation to create "personal player narratives."[8] Short later discussed the studio's focus on inclusivity[9] when designing Boyfriend Dungeon (2021), a dungeon crawler game about dating one's weapons,[10] which meant also giving the player options to date women and non-binary characters despite the title of the game.[9]

Short is a critic of crunch,[11] which she suggests could be countered with co-ops and unions.[12] In 2020, she talked to IGN about the "democratisation" of video game technology, specifically how competition and diversity has increased in indie games with greater availability of game creation tools.[13]

Bibliography

  • Short, Tanya; Adams, Tarn, eds. (2017). Procedural Generation in Game Design. CRC Press. doi:10.1201/9781315156378. ISBN 9781498799195. S2CID 69727455.[14]
  • Short, Tanya; Adams, Tarn, eds. (2019). Procedural Storytelling in Game Design. CRC Press. doi:10.1201/9780429488337. ISBN 9781138595309. S2CID 241639037.

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Dupuis, Stephanie (8 March 2022). "Tanya X. Short, celle qui fait briller les femmes dans l'industrie du jeu vidéo" [Tanya X. Short, the one who makes women shine in the video game industry] (in Canadian French). CBC/Radio-Canada. Retrieved 10 September 2022.
  2. ^ a b c Mood, Jillian (16 February 2016). "IGDA Interview Series: Tanya X. Short". International Game Developers Association. Retrieved 12 September 2022.
  3. ^ "From AAA to Indie: Kitfox Games Is Carving Its Own Quirky Path to Success". The Escapist. 19 March 2020. Retrieved 26 February 2022.
  4. ^ "Tanya X. Short – Womenize! – Inspiring Stories". Womenize! Action Program. 23 February 2022. Retrieved 26 February 2022.
  5. ^ a b Spiegelman, Karen (2 March 2020). "20 women in gaming you should know". VentureBeat. Retrieved 26 February 2022.
  6. ^ Boudreau, Kelly (27 May 2022). "Beyond deviance: toxic gaming culture and the potential for positive change". Critical Studies in Media Communication. 39 (3): 181–190. doi:10.1080/15295036.2022.2080848. S2CID 249326044. Retrieved 12 September 2022.
  7. ^ Guite, Matthew (6 May 2014). "Inside the game in three takes". Montreal Gazette. p. 20. Retrieved 11 September 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
  8. ^ Francis, Bryant (12 January 2016). "3 lessons on procedural storytelling from Moon Hunters". Gamasutra. Archived from the original on 11 May 2017. Retrieved 11 September 2022.
  9. ^ a b Chan, Stephanie (19 October 2017). "Boyfriend Dungeon is like Tinder for swords". VentureBeat. Retrieved 26 February 2022.
  10. ^ Price, Renata (25 August 2021). "Boyfriend Dungeon Director: Despite The Bad Faith, It's Good That We're Talking". Kotaku. Retrieved 26 February 2022.
  11. ^ Schreier, Jason (25 October 2017). "Opinion | Video Games Are Destroying the People Who Make Them". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 26 February 2022.
  12. ^ Short, Tanya X. (16 January 2019). "Your game studio doesn't have to survive to succeed". VentureBeat. Retrieved 26 February 2022.
  13. ^ Shea, Cam (1 June 2020). "The Games Industry on the Biggest Changes in the Last Decade". IGN. Retrieved 26 February 2022.
  14. ^ Review for Procedural Generation in Game Design: "MBR: Wisconsin Bookwatch, September 2017". Midwest Book Review. Retrieved 10 September 2022.
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