BioWare - Christina Norman Leaves Bioware

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aries100

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Our sources in the Bioware Social Forums has told us that Christina Norman, Lead Gameplay Designer for ME2, has left Bioware. Apparently she's been hitched - married. Here's a quote from the social forums over at Bioware, Chris Priestly says:
I removed Christina Norman from the Twitterinformation section as Christina has left BioWare (she recently got married and she and her husband moved away from Edmonton). You are still welcome to follow Chistina if you want (she is a very interesting person and a lot of fun on Twitter), but she isn't part of the Mass Effect or BioWare teams anymore, so I removed her info.
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More information.
 
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People do complain about lack of women in gaming but it seems atleast bio have/had quite few female employee. I would guess Lead Designer is one of the top jobs...
 
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Lead Gameplay Designer in ME2?
Sorry, but somehow I don't feel gaming community lost much. Best wishes to her in her new life, ofc.
 
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lostforever said:
People do complain about lack of women in gaming but it seems atleast bio have/had quite few female employee. I would guess Lead Designer is one of the top jobs…
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I'm pretty sure that you will usually find most female employees in the various art departments (animation, cinematics, level art, character art etc.) of a development studio.
Coding chicks, programmers, are probably rare but that would not seem to be too surprising given the lack of women's ability to think logically... :uhoh:
 
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Preston W. is and always been the Lead Designer for all the Mass Effect games. Christina has always worked in the art department at Bioware, ME2 being her first game as Lead Gameplay Designer. From the comments in the linked, it seems the Bioware community thinks she did a good job with ME2's gameplay being more accessible (not dumbed down that is) than ME1's.

And I think it is because most women think of others first e.g. they take their starting point in the gamer and build the gameplay experience around how it feels for the gamers playing the game, not (only) thinking logically and straightforward...
 
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Best female game designer:

Linda Currie: Co-Designer and the Level Designer on each Jagged Alliance product (Jagged Alliance, Jagged Alliance Deadly Games, Jagged Alliance 2, Jagged Alliance 2 Unfinished Business), Designer and Project Leader of Nemesis: The Wizardry Adventure, and finally Project Leader and a Co-Designer of Wizardry 8, recipient of Computer Gaming World's 2001 RPG of the Year award.
 
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Moriendor said:
Coding chicks, programmers, are probably rare but that would not seem to be too surprising given the lack of women's ability to think logically… :uhoh:
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aries100 said:
And I think it is because most women think of others first e.g. they take their starting point in the gamer and build the gameplay experience around how it feels for the gamers playing the game, not (only) thinking logically and straightforward…
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Weaving theories through confirmation bias I see.
 
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ME2 is one of my personal favourite and I think she did good job as lead designer :p I wish her best of luck with her new life.
 
slow news day?
 
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Moriendor said:
Coding chicks, programmers, are probably rare but that would not seem to be too surprising given the lack of women's ability to think logically… :uhoh:
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When I learned programming myself, all 3 women in my "programming class" were the best of all in the whole class !

By the way, do you know the Silicon Sisters ? ;)
 
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Designers are not programmers (sometime they cross but these days that seems very rare) and designers have more say on game design(!) that affect us players.

I did not think may woman were involved even with game design stage, not because they are not capable but rather due to lack of interest/opportunities.
 
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The graphics department usually a strong "women's thing" in dev studios, as far as I know.
 
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Alrik Fassbauer said:
When I learned programming myself, all 3 women in my "programming class" were the best of all in the whole class !

By the way, do you know the Silicon Sisters ? ;)
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I have met plenty of men who couldn't reason logically if their life depended upon it and women with sharp and in-penetrable logic demolishing their weakly prepared opponents.

Men who claim women are illogical often displays their own shortcomings.
Women who claim women are illogical displays a defense mechanism.

Logic is hard. That said, I do look down upon the men who claim to be logical when they clearly aren't, and I am sad with females who believe they are illogical and end up with a self-fulfilling prophecy.
 
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lostforever said:
Designers are not programmers (sometime they cross but these days that seems very rare) and designers have more say on game design(!) that affect us players.

I did not think may woman were involved even with game design stage, not because they are not capable but rather due to lack of interest/opportunities.
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Expectations tend to reproduce certain behavior. When expectations change, so do the behavior. When it was decided that "women do not play games, so we do not need to market our games to women", the market also locked away large potential markets that successes like The Sims and WII Fit shown to be huge. Many AAA-developers have been poorly served by their marketing bureaus who tend to run on assumptions rather than potential.
 
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If you've ever driven a car in heavy traffic, you should know most women can't think logically :)
 
JemyM said:
Expectations tend to reproduce certain behavior. When expectations change, so do the behavior. When it was decided that "women do not play games, so we do not need to market our games to women", the market also locked away large potential markets that successes like The Sims and WII Fit shown to be huge. Many AAA-developers have been poorly served by their marketing bureaus who tend to run on assumptions rather than potential.
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I agree with you on this. I know some pretty intelligent women who are just simply not interested in games or programming etc since from young age they were not expected to be interested in these types of activity. However if they put their minds to it, they can be good as any male gamer or programmer.
 
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DArtagnan said:
If you've ever driven a car in heavy traffic, you should know most women can't think logically :)
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I have theory about this (properly wrong!) why men are better/logical drivers than woman.

Men in general drives more than women hence they are better experienced/logical drivers. Why? getting drivers license and getting your first car is rite of passage for a man. It shows (to women and to lesser extent other men) that you are a "man" now. What is the first things guys do when they get a car? they take their "girl friends" for spin! Its basically another mating ritual!

This is why men drivers more than women hence better experienced than women. Women in general drive less since they get men to drive them around!
 
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