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Hello, world! My name is Lauren Peirson and games are my passion. I’m in my third year studying Game Design at DePaul University in Chicago, IL. Now that I’ve learned the fundamentals of game design like how to use game engines such as Unreal and Unity, how to make 3D models using Autodesk Maya, how to code for games using C# and visual scripting, and how to use things like sound, lighting, and the level setup to convey information to the player without explicitly telling them, I am working to fine tune my skills and expand my knowledge and portfolio. In the past couple of months, I have been focusing on level design, and really trying to be very intentional with the choices I am making as a designer. Why am I setting up the space in the ways that I am? What is this telling the player and does it make sense within the context of the game? How does the physical environment reflect the tone I am trying to convey? How can I use the physical space to reward players with different play styles in different ways? In addition to making meaningful games that I am proud of, I also want to use my career to help make the Games Industry more welcoming for women and girls: women have always had a place in Game Design and we always will, the world just needs a little reminding sometimes!
Throughout my entire life, I have loved games – both playing and creating them. On long car rides growing up, I used to come up with games in my head that I could play in my mind while looking out the window. I had a game where I would glide on a snowboard along the power lines I saw as if I was in Subway Surfers, and another where I would imagine a giant knife that I could raise up or down to cut grass on lawns as I drove past, as well as change the shape of the knife to avoid cars and other objects. The different objects I might see on the street would give me different amounts of points or create different reactions when hit, such as trash cans giving bonus points and empty sidewalks not adding anything. Playing with my friends and brother growing up, I would make up games we could play with objects around the house (i.e., laundry bins & stuffed animals) with certain songs that went along with them and had detailed rules for point scoring. I even made a couple of board games in elementary school as class projects.
Based on all these previous games I had made, it is quite surprising that I never considered making games as my career until I found a glitch in the Valorant Ascent map where you hear the wrong sound for the texture of the wall when you hit it with your melee weapon. This made me wonder what video games looked like behind the scenes and why that mistake was there. My curiosity for how things worked turned my love for playing games into a passion for game design, and I think finding game design is one of the best things that has ever happened to me.
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