Some of the most powerful people in game development are also moms. In honor of Mother's Day, Pixelles is featuring micro talks by game dev moms (virtual event). They'll be talking about not only the intersection of parenthood & game development but also leadership and their craft.

Emotional Roller Coasters: Crafting Safe Yet Engaging Experiences
Virginie D’Amours-Licatese (she/her) | Creative Director, Sloe Burn Games

Romance genre shares a lot of common points with cosy games: relationships, care, community, safety (happy ending!) and their predominantly feminine audiences. However, romance is a suspense genre: it excels in emotional tension and intolerable slow burns. How can it be compared to cosy games? This talk will explore the relation between romance, suspense and cosiness.

Accidental Lead, Surprised Neurodivergent Person
Leanne "Lan" Roed (she/her) | Design Lead, Séance Collective

I'll be sharing my reflections on how the last 10+ years of my career have gone through the lens of neurodiversity, running through a primer on autism/ADHD, and sharing some perspective on best practices from my own experiences. Growing up I struggled constantly with my own brain not behaving the way it was expected to but I didn't have the language to understand why at the time. I found the neurodiversity movement through my experience of being a mom that gave me the tools to work with my brain in a kinder and more productive way and helped me understand how to accommodate folks without requiring disclosure on my teams.

...And you're also a mom??
Yiyi Zhang (she/her) | Heart Machine Inc., Gumbo Collective Inc., Arcade Common

I low-key dread the self-intro in a professional setting. I understand why they need to happen but I always feel awkward by the end of my intro. Like many women in the industry, and many women living / working in NYC, I have a lot of side hustles, responsibilities, and work I'm involved in. On top of that, yes, I'm also a mom. So when I reel off my list of affiliations and current roles, and include in the end that I'm also a mom, usually someone will say something to the effect of "you do all that AND you're also a mom??" As if somehow having spawned an offspring makes it impressive or even heroic to be able to wear various professional hats.

I think of parenting as yet another job. It's a very important one, the one I care about the most, and my highest priority. But at the end of the day, it's very much just like my other roles and side hustles. It's something I choose to allocate time, energy, and resources to. It's something I think about often, constantly want to level up in, and strive to learn more about. A large reason why the culture of game development resonates with me is because I see so many parallels and transferrable mentalities between raising a child and making a game. A lot of the skills and approaches are transferrable.

This talk will be about how wearing the "mom hat" is still just another hat. And how thinking about game dev through that lens can ultimately make your dual careers as a game maker and a parent more symbiotic and efficient.

Everything, everywhere all at once.
Navigating Motherhood, Game Development, and Self-Publishing Across Continents.
Speaker: Sura Karnawi (she/her)

Creating a debut game while raising young children, moving across continents, and establishing a studio focused on traditional art is an immense challenge. Throughout this journey, I've faced self-doubts, societal pressures, and practical obstacles in game development. Borrowing the title from the movie "Everything, Everywhere All at Once," I grappled with the feeling of needing multiple versions of myself to manage it all. Join me as I share insights into navigating these challenges, balancing family and career, and finding fulfillment in the process.

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This online workshop is open to everyone and is covered by the Pixelles safer space policy. Yes, it will be recorded. We have a ticket type specifically for folks who cannot attend but would like to receive notification when the video is available.

Please note that the order form asks for your mobile number. This is not required information! Unfortunately, this ticketing platform does not let us remove it.