Kim Swift

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Kim Swift
Kim Swift - Game Developers Conference 2010 - Panel Day 4 (1).jpg
Swift at the 2010 Game Developers Conference
Born
Kimberly Swift[1]

1982/1983 (age 38–39)[2]
NationalityAmerican
OccupationVideo game designer

Life and Career[]

Kim Swift is an American-born video game designer who has helped create notable games such as Portal, Left4Dead, and Star Wars Battlefront. She graduated from DigiPen in 2005 and was promptly hired by the video game design company Valve after she and her team at DigiPen presented Valve with a game called Narbacular Drop. With the base game Narbacular Drop, Kim was appointed as team leader and level designer for the "Portal" project.

Portal was Kim's first opportunity to leave an innovative mark as a woman in a very heavily male-dominated industry, which she did. Portal was a significantly different game than others at the time in that it was based on puzzles. Players must solve puzzles by teleporting their characters and simple objects around the play space using a teleporter device. A game like Portal had never been seen before as the market was heavily dominated by first-person shooter games such as Call of Duty, and it instantly became a huge success. After her success with Portal, Kim decided to try to implement this puzzle gameplay aspect of Portal into other games.  

Kim then left Valve and worked with companies such as Airtight Games and EA's Motive Studios.[3] At Airtight, Swift released other puzzle games such as Quantum Conundrum[4] and Soul Fjord[4] which were not as successful as her previous games Portal and Left4Dead. At EA, she worked on notable games such as Star Wars Battlefront where she used prior knowledge and game innovations from Portal to help aid the design process for Star Wars. Kim used her puzzle-based game style from Portal and implemented small puzzle features throughout the first-person shooter world of Star Wars Battlefront.

After EA, Swift moved on to work at Google Stadia's internal development studio where she worked as a game design director for the company until Google shut the studio down in February of 2021. Now, Swift is working at Xbox Game Studios in Seattle, Washington as the senior director of cloud gaming.[4] Microsoft hopes that she will "accelerate our innovation and collaborate with independent studios to build games for the cloud".[5] Swift is looking to continue what Google wanted to start with Stadia. She is planning on focusing the gaming experience on the cloud and creating "cloud-native games".[6]

Awards[]

The immense success of the Portal game came mostly from its innovative storytelling and game design. In 2012, nearly 5 years since the game had released, Portal, along with Eric Wolpaw, Kim Swift, and the Portal Team at Valve, won the Game Developers' Choice Award for Best Narrative.[7] They were nominees among other games such as The Witcher 2, Uncharted 3, Bastion, and Saint's Row.[7]

Also in 2012, Kim Swift was recognized by Forbes on their 30 under 30 list of the brightest young stars in the video game industry today.[8] She was recognized for her innovative game design in Portal. Her work on Portal is also one of 14 games to be selected by the Museum of Modern Art for inclusion in their permanent art collection.[8]

Games[]

References[]

  1. ^ "Narbacular Drop". DigiPen. 18 May 2018. Archived from the original on 26 September 2019. Retrieved 5 October 2019.
  2. ^ Dodson, Joe (October 13, 2007). "By Design - Half-Life 2: Orange Box". GameSpot. Archived from the original on April 13, 2019. Retrieved December 16, 2014.
  3. ^ "Kim Swift". Global Shakers. Retrieved 2021-12-08.
  4. ^ a b c "Wikidocumentaries". wikidocumentaries-demo.wmflabs.org. Retrieved 2021-12-08.
  5. ^ EditorJune 21, Chris KerrNews; 2021 (2021-06-21). "Xbox Game Studios Publishing has hired Portal lead designer Kim". Game Developer. Retrieved 2021-12-08.CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  6. ^ Hollister, Sean (2021-06-21). "Microsoft will build native Xbox games for the cloud, and the woman behind Portal will lead". The Verge. Retrieved 2021-12-08.
  7. ^ a b "Best Narrative Archive". Game Developers Choice Awards. 2021-04-26. Retrieved 2021-12-08.
  8. ^ a b Ewalt, David M. "30 Under 30: The Brightest Young Stars In Video Games". Forbes. Retrieved 2021-12-08.
  9. ^ "PIXLD". Airtight Mobile. October 25, 2012. Archived from the original on May 22, 2013. Retrieved June 20, 2013.
  10. ^ Erbland, Kate (October 14, 2013). "Kim Swift, the Woman Behind Portal". Mental Floss. Archived from the original on August 20, 2018. Retrieved October 26, 2015.
  11. ^ "Soul Fjord". Airtight Mobile. Archived from the original on February 2, 2014. Retrieved January 28, 2014.
  12. ^ "Star Wars: Battlefront II Credits". Moby Games. Archived from the original on 2019-01-25. Retrieved 2019-01-25.


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