You’d expect a BBC list of the 100 most powerful women to include crafters of mainstream culture like pop star Adele, internationally bestselling author J.K. Rowling, and, of course, the Queen. But nestled in amongst political figures, business moguls, and Britain’s first openly gay Poet Laureate, there’s a brief description of the career of Siobhan Reddy, a woman who makes video games for a living.
Recognition of the power of women as well as the power of games? Naturally, we approve.
Reddy is best known as Media Molecule’s co-founder and Studio Director, and, as such, is one of the driving forces behind the LittleBigPlanet series and its ever charming sackperson mascots. LBP has evolved over it’s two major iterations to be just as much about creating games as playing them, and she makes no bones about its use as a magnet for folks new to game development, and as a way for them to show off their existing skills:
We’re starting to see more small teams starting to work together [in the LittleBigPlanet community] – and that’ll be interesting because these will end up becoming the teams of the future, making the games we’ll all be playing. And it’s definitely a great portfolio tool. I mean, we’ve hired several members of the community – two of our level designers – and our community team. Two of them were running a website called LittleBigPlanetoid – and we needed a community site, so we hired them!
Both LBP and LBP2 are BAFTA award winners, and Reddy now sits on the BAFTA Games Committee, helping dole out recognition for excellence in the gaming industry.
(via GameInformer.)
