Know Me Personally

Know Me Personally

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I’m Tara. I just think this picture me is cool. It was one of those helping a friend with her photography homework sor

tof things and it turned out awesome. And sorry about the glare on it, that’s my bad. Photo credit to Kate McComas.

I got my start in the video game industry by working as a QA tester for Volition. (No, I don’t count my nearly 3 years of working as a Game Advisor at EB Games/GameStop as working in the industry. Because it isn’t.) I was working at Volition for about 14 months before the recession hit and I was laid off with about 80 of my coworkers. But, it worked out though. I met a lot of awesome people (including my husband) and learned that I wanted to work with my passion- video games. And if I hadn’t gotten laid off I wouldn’t have been have learned about game accessibility.

Right after getting laid off I started my own blog, Thoughts from a (Girl) Gamer. Enjoying writing about videos games and very interested in game accessibility I picked up working for AbleGamers.com – News, Reviews, and Community for the Disabled Gamer as a Game Journalist where I reported on gaming news, interview members of the game industry, and review games generally and for accessibility. I also worked for the AbleGamer Foundation, the non-profit organization by attending and organizing events and fundraisers. I’ve always been passionate video games, so it was really easy for me to become passionate about making games for everyone. I really recommend you check out their site, and see what they are about.

Continuing my love for game accessibility, I became (and still am) the VP of Game Industry Relations for the Pursuit of Happiness Foundation, a non-profit organization that was just recently founded my friend Michelle Hinn. She’s a pretty kick ass lady. We work both for getting controllers to children in hospitals and towards teaching people about game accessibility. We plan to start speaking to students a lot, as they are young and impressionable. While working for them I’ve gotten to speak at GDC and attend some other awesome events.

Partially started through working for AbleGamers, and also partially by Michelle, I really began to push for game accessibility and became a member of the IDGA SIG for game accessibility. At GDC 2010 I even hosted a poster session called”Accessibility Arcade: Bringing AAA Game Titles to Disabled Gamers through controller Hacks” in addition to leading the Gaming Accessibility SIG round table with Thomas Westin. Later that year I was elected on to the GA SIG steering committee, and then elected chair. Since then I’ve been pushing our revamp of our online presence and I loved leading my 2 sessions at GDC 2011, the SIG roundtable as well as “Industry Game Accessibility Ratings System: Promoting Mainstream Games to the Gamer with Disabilities.”

After moving to Florida to live with my now Husband, I became the the QA Lead for a small studio called Firebrand games. It was a lot different than my previous work, but it was a great learning experience. I also worked on an island, so that’s pretty cool. The drive isn’t bad but the tolls were killer. However, Florida wasn’t for me and I missed being passionate about the projects I worked on.

So, I decided to apply at Irrational Games. And here I am, Irrational Senior QA.

I’ve also taken an interests in game design recently, and have started putting together my first design document… I will keep you posted on how that’s going.

I used attend a lot of fighting game tournaments, although it was rare that I actually compete. I get a sort of stage fright when I compete sometimes, so I tend to just show up and play casual matches. I’m not very good at fighting games anyway. I have competed in Tekken 6 and Street Fighter Third Strike, but I’ve played casuals for about all the Street Fighter Games and Tekken 5 at tourneys… I’ve even played against Daigo Umherara. My apartment used to be the HUB for the Champaign fighting game scene, and I totally didn’t even take advantage of it.

You can find me kicking ass on the 360 now-a-days, when I’m not busy wedding planning. I love Resident Evil(s), Silent Hill(s), Borderlands, Zelda(s).

And finally, I love tattoos. I’ve got 5, and 3 are video game related.