Make a game about blowing zombies' heads off? Great! Make a game about losing your virginity? Oh, heck no!
Video game developer Valve pulled one of its star designers from the Game Developers' Conference annual design competition this week reportedly because the topic was sex-oriented.
According to Erik Zimmerman of GDC's Game Design Challenge, the company forced designer Kim Swift to withdraw from the contest two days before it concluded.
Valve Corporation is known for a number of violent shooters including the Half Life series and Left 4 Dead, as well as content service Steam.
Each year, the challenge pits three top-shelf professional designers to create a game based on a specific topic with only a few weeks' notice. Contestants' games are demonstrated and winners are announced at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.
Past winners have included Will Wright (The Sims, Spore) and Harvey Smith (Deux Ex), and topics have included love, the poetry of Emily Dickenson, and the Nobel Peace Prize.
"My first time: Sex and autobiography" was this year's topic — a theme employed in the films of John Hughes and Woody Allen and the novels of Alice Walker and Vladamir Nabokov. Competitors had several weeks to design, develop and present their entries.
This year, Swift — who created Valve's blockbuster hit Portal — was to compete against YouPlus game-design vice president Steve Meretzky and Sulake lead designer Sulka Haro. But just days before the entry was to be presented, Valve reportedly pressured Swift to remove herself from the competition due to the topic.
"I'm saying this as a fan of Valve, but I do find it frustrating and disturbing that Kim would be pulled from the panel," Zimmerman said at the award event on Wednesday.
Swift was replaced by a two-woman team of Heather Kelley (Lapis) and independent designer Erin Robinson. The pair subsequently won the competition, despite only having 36 hours' time to create and design their game.
It is a first-time GDC Game Design Challenge win for both women. Kelley won a similar design challenge at the Montreal Games Summit in 2005.
GDC Game Design Competition
Comments
LOL... dang I love Valve so much.
Hello all,
Does anyone know where I can get a cheat trailer for Zero Hour?
I tried roughly 10 resent ones and nothing seems to work.
I know cheating is bad but its an old game and I'm just messing about now
Thanks
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Valve isn't getting any more of my sexy dollars.
She was part of a "team" that made Portal, not a lone developer.
She probably should have cleared it with her bosses first.
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