> John Romero To Receive Lifetime Achievement Award At GDC. Mabel Addis to Receive The Pioneer Award

Game Developers Conference:

“This year, the Game Developers Choice Awards will recognize two of the most impactful game development talents in history, Mabel Addis and John Romero.” said Stephenie Hawkins, Director of Event Production for Media & Entertainment at Informa Tech. “The Game Developers Choice Awards are proud to honor two artists with wildly divergent career trajectories, who worked decades apart but shared a creative passion and ingenuity that would help define entire game genres for decades.”

Mabel Addis is recognized as the first female game designer, but that title alone does not convey the breadth of her pioneering work. As the lead designer of 1964’s The Sumerian Game, she helped pave the way for game elements that wouldn’t become mainstream for decades. Among the innovations she helped conceive were game updates, in-game narrative experiences, and early iterations of what would become known as cutscenes—which, in 1964, took the form of photo slideshows accompanied by synchronized audio. The Sumerian Game itself predates modern display technology and instead used a computer printer to express dialogue and prompts, which took the form of an in-game narrator/character who conveyed game information and asked questions of the player.

I didn’t even know who she was until I read this. Amazing to think that everything we consider fundamental for today’s games came from her and way before they were even possible.

Makes Romero’s accomplishments seem somewhat small by comparison, even though he helped define an entire genre.

John Romero will be honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award for his work developing more than 100 published games, which include such genre-defining classics as Wolfenstein 3D, DOOM and Quake. As an early indie game developer, Romero’s first game development experience started in 1979 on a computer mainframe before moving to the Apple II in 1982, working as a completely self-taught programmer, designer and artist. He is considered to be among the world’s top game designers, with previous works that have won over 100 industry awards, and a range of development experience in the PC, console, mobile and mod space. Romero is an advocate and supports diversity in the game industry, particularly among Indigenous and Latine youth. He has co-founded 10 game companies, including id Software and Romero Games, which celebrated its seventh anniversary in 2022.

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