4 minute read
Rebekah Saltsman: She’s Got Game
WORDS AND PHOTO BY ELYSE WILD
Rebekah Saltsman is the co-founder and CEO of Finji, a collaborative video game studio based in Grand Rapids. To date, she has published a multi-award-winning game, orchestrated launches on multiple platforms simultaneously, (a rare feat in the gaming industry) and negotiated multimillion dollar deals, all while co-developing a game with her husband, Adam, and raising two boys under the age 10. While she is charting a successful career in a booming industry (according to Super Data’s 2019 Year in Review for Digital Games and Interactive Media, digital games revenue reached $109.4 billion in 2019, up 3% yearover-year), Saltsman grew up with the message that video games were not for her.
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“Games were never in the cards for me,” she said. “It was always in the cards for Adam … ere are so many things that indicate that games weren’t built for women, especially in the 90s and early 2000s.”
Saltsman entered the industry by way of supporting her husband, a game developer known for the 2009 mobile gaming hit Canabalt, which popularized endless-runners and is on permanent digital display at the Museum of Modern Art.
“When I got into video games, I used to introduce myself as Adam’s wife, Becka — I do the money,” she said. “I would say, ‘I don’t actually make games. I am not quali ed to do anything else in this community.’”
VISIBILITY In 2013, Adam launched Hundreds, a mobile-puzzle video game that received numerous honorable mentions at industry awards. A large portion of the Hundreds was developed while the couple was training for a marathon; they spent their mornings running, pushing their newborn in a stroller and discussing the game design. When the game launched, it became apparent to Saltsman what her contributions were.
“It became clear that I had done a bunch of design work on Hundreds,” she said. “I would joke around say, ‘I am just a sounding board,’ which, now looking back, is a very o ensive way for me to describe my own contributions.”
When she is not editing for WLM, Elyse enjoys traveling to far off lands, taking photos, listening to live music and spinning records.
In 2014, the couple launched Finji, and Saltsman stepped out publicly as a game developer. She says she felt a responsibility to be visible in a community in which the loudest voices discourage women from participating.
“I knew friends who got rape and death threats on Twitter, because they exist in a space where apparently women make other people very uncomfortable,” she said. “It is really important for me to be visible. I am not just visible running the company — I am a visible parent. I am a woman who works in games with kids and a life and pets and so much outside of all of this.”
OVERLAND In September of 2019, Finji launched Overland, a game that the Saltsmans spent nearly six years creating. In uenced by a 1970’s SovietRussian science ction novel, Overland, takes players on a road trip across a United States ravaged by the apocalypse. Rather than moving through levels by defeating the “bad guy,” players make choices that impact the coming gameplay: who to save, who to kill, what to supplies to grab, what to leave behind, etc.
e launch was a big moment for the couple, who over the course of developing it, had moved from Austin to Grand Rapids, built a remote team, gotten through the toddler years and published Night in the Woods, a game that went on to earn numerous awards, including a British Academy Games Award and SXSW Gaming Award. In the nal weeks while she prepared launch assets, West Michigan was inundated with snowstorms, and her kids were home from school for nine days. She also lost power, and therefore, her internet connection.
“I thought we were going to die,” she laughed. “I really didn’t think there was any
way to do it, but I did. ere was no one else that could get it done, and I just had to make it happen.”
Overland is available for purchase on seven gaming consoles and platforms, including Playing Station, Nintendo and the Apple Arcade.
SHOWING UP According to a report by the Equal Opportunities Commission, video gameplay between genders is nearly equal: 52% of players are male, while 48% are female. at gap widens substantially when it comes to video game developers: 75% are male, 22% are female, and 2% report as transgender. 47% of those polled said that there is unequal treatment in pay and opportunity in the industry.
Saltsman says that the more women who make themselves visible in gaming, the more women will show up.
“It can be really intimidating to be the only woman in the space. e only reason you are the only woman is that no one else felt brave enough to go, because you are not the only one who is interested in games.”
