Being LadiesGamers, we feel it’s time to give women that work in the gaming industry a podium in our series of articles, featuring ladies who are working in the gaming business! Interested? You’ll find the other interviews here.
A lot of avid gamers would probably love to have a job in the industry themselves and we think it’s especially important to encourage girls, in particular, to go for their dream job. This time we talk to Audrey Winzeler, Heather Sounik and Katie Zaback who are at the helm of Zwinzler Games.
Meet Audrey, Heather and Katie
Can you tell us a bit about yourselves?
We are three friends who hang out all the time both inside our studio and out!
Audrey works in cybersecurity as her day job, and spends a lot of time either playing games or practicing guitar. For Zwinzler Games, she codes and makes the music for all of our games.
Heather’s working towards her master’s degree in musicology, but also plays games and reads books on the side when she’s not working on graphics and music for our games.
Katie is a full-time AI researcher when she’s not playing with her cats, quilting, or playing D&D with her best buds! She also codes, makes art, and files boring taxes for our company. 🙂
Professional History
What is each of your professional history when it comes to gaming?
We’ve developed two full games so far and are in the process of making our third game. Our first two games, Victimized and Make Ends Meet, were developed for mobile devices. Victimized is a 2d-runner with pixel art that focuses on the victims of war and the cyclical nature of war. Make Ends Meet is a mobile puzzle game set in the 1920s with a unique drawing mechanic that has an underlying message on income inequality.
Our third game that is currently in development is called When The River Runs Dry. It’s a story and choice driven exploration game that is based on the idea of trickle down economics and, basically, how it doesn’t work.
Tell us a bit about your studio Zwinzler Games?
We are a small studio of three best friends who work together remotely. Our games center on telling stories about people who don’t often have a voice in gaming. We want to pull our players into our games by giving them something to think about that applies to the real world.
During college, we played both board games and video games all the time and would often talk about our own game ideas. So during our last year of college, we just decided that we wanted to bring one of our ideas to life!
Storytellers, Women-Led, World-Builders and Rebels
Key words on your About page on https://www.zwinzler-games.com are “Storytellers”, “Women-Led”, “World-Builders” and “Rebels”. Tell us a bit more!
We’ve had many discussions as a studio about the types of games we want to make and who we want to be in the gaming industry, and these are the words we came up with. As storytellers, we want to make sure the stories of our games are both interesting and emotional to give players a deeper meaning while they play. As a studio of all women, we are women-led in every sense of the term and we know that this gives us a unique perspective in a male-dominated industry.
For us, world-builders means that we put a lot of focus on making interesting worlds for our players to explore and live in while they play our games. And finally, “Rebels” to us means that we are not your typical gaming studio; both by who we are and what we want to be. As a team of three women, our experiences have allowed us to bring different perspectives to gaming that you can’t get from teams with male voices. We choose to embrace this to do our part in progressing the gaming industry to a place of equity and representation, both in gaming studios and within the games themselves.
Do your educational backgrounds match your positions in the gaming industry?
Both yes and no! Our programmers have computer science degrees, and our company members that work on audio have degrees in music. But we often overlap our roles just because our company is so small. And no one in our company has a background in art, so we’ve been learning and improving on that throughout the time we’ve been making games.
Gaming Habits
Do each of you play games yourselves, or have you played them in the past growing up?
Yes, we all played games growing up and still do now! It’s a lot more difficult to find the time between developing our own game, working our day jobs, and all the other typical adult things, but we make the time for it, both so that we can stay on top of the popular games coming out and also because we love it!
What are your favourite gaming genres and why?
Audrey – I really like adventure or action-adventure games – anything with quests! I also love a good narrative game like Night In The Woods.
Heather – I also really like adventure games with a bit of action, but I also love a nice, relaxing game from time to time. I usually love adventure games for their amazing stories and being able to feel like a hero (or a villain if I’m feeling spicy). Relaxing games like Animal Crossing and Abzu really help me from day to day, though, so that I can chill out and destress in the evening before I go to bed.
Katie – I like my games in two forms: super cute and relaxing, or maximum chaos with friends. So my favorite games to play solo are A Short Hike and Animal Crossing, and my favorite games to play with friends are old-school panic games like Super Mario Bros Wii or Rock Band. I’m also a huge fan of any cooperative board game while vibing with my best buddies 🙂
What is your preferred video game console or handheld device to play games on?
Audrey – I think I prefer the Xbox, but just because I like that controller the best. I can find games for any platform that I like though.
Heather – I generally prefer the PlayStation because I’ve been playing that console for many, many years since I was young, but the Nintendo Switch has really been growing on me recently.
Katie – I’ve been a Nintendo girl my whole life, so I tend to gravitate to those consoles because the controls are the most familiar to me.
Women in the Gaming Industry
What are your thoughts on the gaming industry, is it still very much male dominated, or has that changed, or is it changing?
In our opinion, it’s changing but definitely still a work in progress. Big companies are for the most part still dominated by men, and you can see that in some of the recent stories that have come out about sexual harrassment in these companies. We’ve found the indie gaming sphere to be much more diverse and accepting of women as big voices and leaders, even though we still experience incidents of sexism occasionally, mostly in the form of microaggressions. We’re hoping that the industry keeps improving for women, and we want to make sure we contribute as much as we can towards that goal.
Do you think a woman has a different approach when it comes to making games?
Audrey – I don’t think women as a whole necessarily have different approaches to game development, other than having different experiences that men don’t have. These experiences will shape us and our approaches to making games, and each woman is going to have different experiences to bring to the table.
Heather – I also think that the primary difference lies with our experiences. While others can perhaps empathize with one another’s experiences, first hand experiences have the unique ability to, as Audrey put it, shape us in everything we believe and we do. That inherently produces unique perspectives that are valuable, especially to the gaming industry.
Katie – I can only speak for the women I know personally who have made games, but something I see from all of those women is making games that are some of the most thoughtful and creative games I’ve had the pleasure of playing. So I think they’re doing something right 🙂
What advice would you give girls who have a dream to one day have a job in the gaming industry?
Our advice would be to go for it! The more women in the gaming industry, the more inclusive the industry will become, and we need this for progress to happen. We also think cultivating strong friendships and working relationships with other women is important, because the reality is that there is still so much sexism in the gaming industry and having people in your life who can understand, empathize (and sometimes even unionize to promote real change) is absolutely invaluable. Don’t feel like you need to “fit in” with the male-dominated culture – your unique experiences and history will bring something new to the table. Don’t “fit in” – try to seek true belonging.
Alternate lives
If each of you could be a character in a game, which one would it be and why?
Audrey – I’m not sure if this counts, but I would love to be any of the Pokemon trainers from the Pokemon games! Something about traveling around with a bunch of little buddies sounds super fun and relaxing.
Heather – I mean if I could be any character in a game, I’d probably be one of the main characters in Assassin’s Creed. I might have to deal with a lot of problems, but at least I’d be super cool and confident doing it! And if I could just do one leap of faith, I’d be happy.
Katie – Tom Nook. My student debts would be paid back in FULL in no time 😉
Thank you ladies, for participating in this Ladies in Gaming Biz!
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