THE TOP OF THEIR GAME

Brunette Games, headquartered in St. Louis, represents one of the few female-owned companies in the video game industry

BY WENDY TODD

According to a study done by Forbes magazine in 2020, women made up 46% of video gamers, but only 16% of women made up executive teams of the top 14 gaming companies. Lisa Brunette has carved out her space in the male-dominated gaming space by creating her own company, Brunette Games, headquartered in St. Louis.

In 2009, Brunette transitioned from her career as a news editor and then freelance writer to writing scripts for video games. After working for companies including Nintendo, Big Fish Games and Take-Two Interactive as a narrative designer, she identified a need in the industry for storytelling and character development. In 2018, Brunette formed her own company.

“With the success of my first three projects, ‘Matchington Mansion,’ ‘Choices: Veil of Secrets’ and ‘Sender Unknown,’” Brunette said, “I was swamped with writing requests and saw that I could realize my dream to create a studio of writers providing storytelling services to the game industry.”

Since then, her company has been creating characters and narratives for popular games such as “Merge Mansion,” “Solitaire Grand Harvest,” and “Jellipop Match.”

Being part of an underrepresented community in the gaming profession hasn’t posed as a significant issue for Brunette, who while working for other companies was on teams that were gender-balanced. She attributes that to the kind of work she does and the primary audience it attracts.

“Except for a brief stint where I was only one of three women in a 30-person office, I’ve always been able to find other non-traditional game professionals, even if women only make up 10% of the industry, which was true when I started, or 30%, which I believe is where we are now,” Brunette said. “I think it helps that

I design and write games mainly for older women. I don’t work on first-person shooters, but rather story-driven puzzle games, and those attract a diverse set of creatives to write them.”

In addition to gender not posing a challenge when she worked at other companies, she’s not finding it to be an issue running her own company. Brunette faces the same trials as other small business owners regardless of gender.

“I think more than my gender, what’s most been challenging in my career has been my status as a small business owner,” she explained. “Increasingly, the world is built to work against us, with rules and regulations often favoring large corporations at the expense of mom-and-pop shops like Brunette Games.”

The first person Brunette hired on her team was her husband, Anthony Valterra, who had “steered” the ever-popular brands, “Dungeons & Dragons” and “Avalon Hill for Wizards of the Coast.”

“He’s very talented at navigating complex systems like government bureaucracies,” she said. “That helps me immensely, as he can deal with red tape while I concentrate on developing our creative team and projects.”

In terms of other employees, Brunette has made the effort to create an inclusive team, hiring women and BIPOC and LGBTQ+ writers and game designers. Their experience and work has contributed to the success of the small business that includes having developed projects for the show “Family Guy,” the candy M&M’S and Disney’s overwhelmingly popular brand, “Frozen.”

“Every writer on the team has a writing degree and years of experience, and some of us have advanced writing degrees and/or decades of experience,” Brunette said, “Our voice actors’ credits include film, TV, and the stage, as well as high-profile games like ‘Angry Birds’ and ‘Dying Light.’ We’re, simply put, the best.”