This oral and written history examines three generations of pioneering women game developers from Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile—the South American region known as the Southern Cone. Each of the individuals interviewed—Marcela Nievas, Sofía Battegazzore, Maureen Berho, and Martina Santoro—offers insight on female leadership over three generations of precipitous growth in regional game development. Together, their personal and professional trajectories demonstrate how the embodied and material conditions of game production condition diverse histories of game development, challenging universalizing myths of a global game industry in which “anybody can make games.” At the same time, these four developers' histories working outside the conventional centers of the global game industry reflect the transformative role of women developers and game designers across the Global South in shaping three generations of global game culture.
Pioneras: Three Generations of Women Developing Games in the Southern Cone
Phillip Penix-Tadsen is an associate professor of Spanish and Latin American studies at the University of Delaware, where he regularly teaches courses on contemporary Latin American cultural studies as well as game studies. His research focuses on these areas as well. He is the author of Cultural Code: Video Games and Latin America (MIT Press, 2016) and editor of the anthology Video Games and the Global South (ETC Press, 2019). He has published work in the scholarly journals Latin American Research Review, Letras Hispanas, and Ciberletras.
Phillip Penix-Tadsen; Pioneras: Three Generations of Women Developing Games in the Southern Cone. Feminist Media Histories 1 January 2020; 6 (1): 163–197. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/fmh.2020.6.1.163
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University of California Press