As February moves into full swing, we celebrate Black History Month by looking back at a world shaped by people that often were overlooked at best and silenced at worst. We have made bold strides since then, and the world of media has often been at the forefront of that movement. Today, we take a look at some of the black game designers that helped shape the videogame industry into what it is today.
Lisette Titre-Montgomery
Lisette Titre-Montgomery is an Art Director with over fifteen years of industry experience. Her artistic skills include special effects, character modeling, and texture painting. In addition, she has also managed global art teams in Japan, China, Australia, India, and the Philippines. Lisette has contributed to some of the industry’s highest profile games, including Tiger Woods Golf, The Simpsons, Dante’s Inferno (Game 67 Xbox 360 and PS3), Dance Central 3 (Game 288 Xbox 360 Kinect), SIMS 4, and Transformers Age Of Extinction for Android and iOS. Her most recent project is with Ubisoft San Francisco on South Park’s next AAA game sequel, The Fractured but Whole.
Ms. Titre-Montgomery’s passion is being a diversity advocate for the game industry. She speaks publicly about how game based curriculums are the key to engaging today’s youth in S.T.E.A.M education and careers. Lisette has been a keynote speaker at N.A.S.A., Intel, Black Girls Code, Girls Who Code, and Soledad O’Brien’s Starfish Foundation. She has also been named One of the Most Powerful Women in Tech by Business Insider. She was most recently honored to be invited to The White House to work on initiatives to improve diversity in tech hiring and inclusion.
Gordon Bellamy
Bellamy started his career as a lead designer for EA’s Madden franchise. He also served as executive director of the International Game Developers Association and serves as a judge for the Promax/BDA MI6 Awards, which celebrate the best in marketing, advertising and design within interactive and game entertainment. As an executive consultant for MTV, Bellamy provided creative guidance on the content, direction and strategic marketing partnerships for the annual Spike TV Video Game Awards show and the highly rated weekly program GameTrailers TV with Geoff Keighley, also on Spike TV. Previously, he was Executive Director of the game industry’s trade organization, the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences. Bellamy has also played key business and product development roles at Electronic Arts, where he was named the company’s Rookie of the Year for his work on the Madden NFL franchise, THQ, and Activision subsidiary, Z-AXIS.
He recently co-founded Hangry Studios, a consulting firm focused on quality assurance and automation for PC, mobile, and virtual reality games.
Jerry Lawson
As an engineer at Fairchild Semiconductor, Jerry Lawson designed the electronics of the Fairchild Video Entertainment System, later renamed the Channel F, in 1976.
Predating the release of Atari’s Video Computer System by a year, the Channel F was the first videogame machine that used interchangeable game cartridges, which Fairchild sold separately. Previous game machines like Atari’s Pong and the Magnavox Odyssey had all their games built into the hardware. Lawson’s pioneering design set the standard for the game consoles of today.
Lawson and Ron Jones were the sole black members of the Homebrew Computer Club, a group of early computer hobbyists which would produce a number of industry legends, including Apple founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Lawson also produced one of the earliest arcade games, Demolition Derby, which debuted in a southern California pizzeria shortly after Pong. Lawson later worked with the Stanford mentor program and was preparing to write a book on his career.
In March 2011, Lawson was honored as an industry pioneer by the International Game Developers Association.
Set amidst the first encounter of European and Native American cultures during the founding of the Jamestown Virginia settlement in 1607. Tell the classic tale of Pocahontas and her relationships with adventurer John Smith and aristocrat John Rolfe. This woman’s journey of love lost and found again takes her from the untouched beauty of the Virginia wilderness to the upper crust of English society as we witness the dawn of a new America.
Every year, the UNT Libraries are graced with numerous patrons and donors that drive our work in supporting the student community in more ways than we can count. Bi-weekly, here on Contribution Corner, we will acknowledge one patron by exploring a donated game or movie they have given.
This week, our game of choice is Tail Feathers from Plaid Hat Games.
Shadows whisper deep within the oaken roots of Nestlebrook. Wizards scry black wings from pinpoint drops of water. Silence scouts from the edges of Meanderfield. All voices ring with the same message, the Downwood Militia must take arm.
Tail Feathers takes place in the same world as the Plaid Hat hit Mice and Mystics. In this game, our mousy friends take wing, riding their starling and blue jay mounts, to fight the invading rat army and their allied rooks.
Unlike Mice and Mystics, which takes the form of a story driven co-op dungeon crawl RPG, Tail Feathers instead looks at tactical combat and incorporates an interesting flight mechanic into a skirmish battle game. Balancing speed and maneuverability as you manage your flying units, and disrupting this balance through tactical placement of ground forces is key. Combined, this new take on flight movement with incomplete information mission options creates deep strategic gameplay and interesting player interaction. Using familiar themes, characters, abilities, and components from Mice and Mystics, this game quite successfully integrates one genre into another.
We had an absolute blast playing this game. Each scenario from the provided scenario book created unique choices in how each player approached the game. Early on, our Downwood Militia player took some hard hits, allowing for the Vermin Raiders to obtain a bit of an edge. The added benefits of each game was minor though, and by scenario 3 the Downwood Militia gained a win through superior mission usage and action card selection. The final game was a tough one that lasted a bit longer than the estimated 60-90 minute time frame. Meticulous decisions were made, but in the end, the Downwood Militia was victorious.
In all, we would highly suggest Tail Feathers as a strong selection for a competitive two player game!
We would like to thank Plaid Hat Games for this great donation.
If you would like to give Tail Feathers a try, or another selection from Plaid Hat Games, they are 
Set in 1944 Spain, against the backdrop of the anti-Franco guerrilla warfare. When young Ofelia and her mother go to live with her new stepfather on a rural military outpost, she finds herself in a world of unimaginable cruelty. Soon Ofelia finds the creatures of her imagination in which she used to escape have become a reality and she must battle them to save both her mother and herself. In the terrifying battle that ensues, Ofelia soon learns that innocence has a power that evil cannot imagine.
Four main stories show the rise of the Communist revolution in Cuba, including Battista’s Havana and the grinding poverty and oppression of the Cuban people.
Raimunda lives in Madrid with her daughter Paula and her drunk husband Paco. Her sister, Sole, is separated and works clandestinely as a hairstylist for women. Years ago, in the sisters birth village, they lost their parents in a fire in La Mancha. Their aunt, Paula, still lives in the village and continues to speak about her sister Irene, mother of the two sisters, as if she were still alive. When the old aunt dies the situation changes and the past returns(volver).
A quiet, cynic taxidermist, who suffers from epilepsy attacks, is obsessed with committing the perfect crime. He claims that the police are too stupid to find out about it when it’s well executed, and that the robbers are too stupid to execute it the right way. He feels that he could do it himself by relying on his photographic memory and his strategic planning skills. He is invited on a hunting trip away from his home. Once there, an accident gives him the chance of a life time: the possibility to commit the perfect crime.
The anchor of a popular news show flies to a small town in Ecuador to cover a story about a serial child killer. He saves a man after the town tries to lynch him. The man offers information about the case in exchange for a story about his innocence.
Fausta suffers from ‘The Milk of Sorrow, ‘ an illness transmitted through mother’s milk by women who’ve been raped during Peru’s civil wars. Stricken with the fear that she’s contracted the illness from her mother’s breast milk, Fausta goes to extreme lengths to protect her own sexuality and safety. After her mother’s sudden death, she finds herself compelled to embark on a frightening journey for re-awakening, freedom, and wholeness.
Gen.—Efraín Ríos Montt was a military leader in Guatemala during the early, 1980. s. He was responsible for over 200,000 deaths of Mayans. The filmmaker Pamela Yates was making the documentary “When the mountains tremble” there at the time, and her film was later entered as evidence by lead counsel Almudena Bernabeu during the genocide trials of seven Guatemalan military officials. This film tells the story of five main characters whose destinies collided in the Guatemala of 1982.
Explores Chile’s bloody 1973 coup through the coming-of-age story of a pair of 12-year-old boys. From opposite extremes of society, Gonzalo and Pedro form an unlikely friendship as politics rip their world apart.
