Edit this page Portal screenshot shared on Steam by catfishbilly97 / First-person view of a grey concrete test chamber with a white portal gun and two portals, one orange and one blue, in the walls. Through the portals we see two views of the holder of the portal gun, a woman with brown hair and wearing a jumpsuit. / Image credit: Valve Corporation
Kim Swift at the Game Developers Conference in 2010 / Sorry, we don't have accessible text for this image :( / Image credit: Official GDC / This work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0

Kim Swift

  • Person
  • Born in United States

Kim Swift is an American video game designer, artist, and creative director. She was the lead designer of acclaimed first-person puzzle game Portal and has worked for large gaming companies including Amazon Game Studios, Google Stadia, and Xbox Game Studios.

Game credits

Personal details

Born
United States

Personal life

1

Birth and nationality

Swift is American and was born around 1983, according to a profile at IEEE Spectrum.

Education

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Degree at DigiPen

Swift is a 2005 graduate of the Bachelor of Science in Real-Time Interactive Simulation program at the DigiPen Insititute of Technology in Washington, USA. She told Eurogamer: "I was in my Junior year of high school and I knew that I really wanted to make videogames... I was talking to my Dad about possibly going into a Computer Science programme somewhere so I could maybe break into the games industry one day. He had heard about DigiPen from a coworker and suggested I apply there."

Career

4

GCD Awards host

Swift hosted the 20th Game Developers Choice Awards ceremony in 2020.

5 6

Hiring by Valve

Swift's first job was at Valve Corporation. She was hired "on the spot" by Valve boss Gabe Newell after she and her team demonstrated a game prototype named Narbacular Drop, which was Swift's senior college project at DigiPen. Narbacular Drop became the foundation for the highly acclaimed puzzle game Portal. Swift also worked as an artist on Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 while at Valve.

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Roles after Valve

After leaving Valve, Swift joined the small development team Airtight Games before moving on to roles at large gaming companies.

  • Airtight Games: Swift was creative director on the first-person physics puzzler Quantum Conundrum, which was developed by a team of 17 people and published by Square Enix, and the Ouya-exclusive dungeon crawler Soul Fjord.
  • Amazon Game Studios: Swift was hired by Amazon as a senior designer when the company opened its gaming division in 2014.
  • Electronic Arts: Swift joined EA's Motive Studios as a design director in 2017.
  • Google: Google hired Swift as design director of its cloud-based game streaming platform Google Stadia.
  • Microsoft: Swift was hired by Microsoft in 2021 "to build a team focused on new experiences in the cloud" with the goal of building cloud-native games, according to a Polygon article quoting Xbox Game Studios publishing head Peter Wyse.

Personal views

7

Making players feel smart

Swift has said that good puzzle design makes players feel smart. She told Game Developer: "You get a really good endorphin rush from the satisfaction of feeling smart... You have a problem in front of you, and if you can solve it, and figure it out, it just makes you feel really smart, and really clever. After people play our game, I want them to feel clever."

7

Approach as creative director

In a Game Developer interview in 2012, Swift described her role as a creative director as follows: "I like to do a little bit of everything, and I have a background in programming, and I have a background in art as well as design... more than anything else, I like contributing to the project."

10

Call to female game developers

Swift called on women in the industry to make themselves more visible in a 2013 blog post, as reported by GamesIndustry.biz. "Be everything that the younger versions of us could've pointed to and proudly said: 'Girls make games too,'" wrote Swift. "When I blather endlessly about a game I'm working on... I hope that there's a little girl out there that realises her dreams are achievable."

Recognition and commentary

GDC Award wins for Portal

Swift received the "Innovation" and "Game of the Year" awards at the GDC Awards for her work as lead designer on Portal. Portal's lead writer Erik Wolpaw was a co-recipient.

11

Forbes list

Forbes included Swift in its 2012 list of "30 Under 30" high-profile young game creators.

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Industry prominence

Swift has featured on numerous lists of the most prominent women working in the games industry, including those published by The New York Times, Game Developer, and Kotaku.

References

  1. Karlin, S. (2011, December 28). Profile: Kim Swift. IEEE Spectrum. IEEE. https://spectrum.ieee.org/profile-kim-swift.
  2. DigiPen (2012, January 30). DigiPen Graduate Kim Swift Featured in IEEE Spectrum Magazine. https://www.digipen.edu/showcase/news/graduate-kim-swift-featured-in-ieee-spectrum-magazine.
  3. Walker, J. (2009, December 20). Narbacular Drop. Eurogamer. Gamer Network Limited. https://www.eurogamer.net/narbacular-drop-interview.
  4. Edwards, N. (2021, February 15). A Celebration Of Women In The Video Games Industry. GameByte. https://www.gamebyte.com/a-celebration-of-women-in-the-video-games-industry/.
  5. Campbell, C. (2012, June 20). Being Kim Swift. IGN. Ziff Davis, Inc. https://www.ign.com/articles/2012/06/20/being-kim-swift.
  6. Hollister, S. (2021, June 21). Microsoft will build native Xbox games for the cloud, and the woman behind Portal will lead. The Verge. Vox Media, LLC. https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/21/22544018/microsoft-xbox-hire-portal-developer-kim-swift-cloud-native-games.
  7. Nutt, C. (2012, May 4). The Inclusive Design of Kim Swift. Game Developer. Informa PLC. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/the-inclusive-design-of-kim-swift.
  8. McKeand, K. (2017, January 20). Portal designer Kim Swift joins EA’s Motive “to work on our new IP and Star Wars projects”. PCGamesN. Publisher Collective. https://www.pcgamesn.com/kim-swift-ea-motive-studios.
  9. Schreier, J. (2014, April 2). Amazon Hires Portal's Kim Swift, Far Cry 2's Clint Hocking. Kotaku. G/O Media. https://kotaku.com/amazon-hires-portals-kim-swift-far-cry-2s-clint-hock-1557091175.
  10. Weber, R. (2013, January 3). Kim Swift's call to arms for female devs. GamesIndustry.biz. Gamer Network Limited. https://www.gamesindustry.biz/kim-swifts-call-to-arms.
  11. Rigney, R. (2013, November 21). Games That Changed Everything: The Most Wired Games of the Generation. Wired. Condé Nast. https://www.wired.com/2013/11/most-wired-games/.
  12. Suellentrop, C. (2014, August 19). Saluting the Women Behind the Screen. The New York Times. . https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/20/arts/video-games/those-underappreciated-female-video-game-pioneers.html.
  13. Ruberg, B. (2008, May 22). Women in Games: The Gamasutra 20. Game Developer. Informa PLC. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/women-in-games-the-gamasutra-20.
  14. Schwimmer, T. (2010, January 1). The Ten Most Influential Women In Games Of The Past Decade. Kotaku. G/O Media. https://kotaku.com/the-ten-most-influential-women-in-games-of-the-past-dec-5438346.

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