Nina Freeman

Nina Freeman (born March 15, 1990)[1][2] is an American video game designer known for her games with themes of sexuality and self-reflection.[2] She used to be a game designer at Fullbright. Her game How Do You Do It was developed during the 2014 Global Game Jam and was a finalist at the Independent Games Festival and Indiecade.[3]

Nina Freeman
Freeman speaking at the 2016 Game Developers Conference
Born (1990-03-15) March 15, 1990
NationalityAmerican
Alma materNew York University Tandon School of Engineering
OccupationVideo game designer
Years active2012–present
EmployerFullbright
OrganizationThe Code Liberation Foundation
Notable credit(s)
Cibele
Websitehttp://ninasays.so/

List of awards and accomplishments

Her game Bum Rush (2016) debuted at NYU Game Center's 2015 No Quarter event and was released for free on July 6, 2016, for OS X and Windows.[4]

She was included in Forbes 2015 list of influential video game industry figures.[5]

Freeman developed her first game in 2012 based on a science fiction poem she wrote, though it remains unreleased.[6]

Freeman is a co-founder of The Code Liberation Foundation, a program offering free development workshops in order to facilitate the creation of video games by women.[7][8]

Her autobiographical game How Do You Do It deals with the discovery of sexuality through Barbie dolls after viewing the movie Titanic.[9][10]

The first game Freeman worked on was her own creation, Cibele. The game tells the story of a teenage girl, engaged in a whirlwind online romance with a fellow gamer, and is based on a personal experience she had during her college years. The game has gained praise for its characters and intimate stories and received the Nuovo Award at the 2016 Independent Games Festival, the largest annual gathering of the indie video game industry.[11]

In 2022, her game Last Call was nominated for the Excellence in Narrative award at the Independent Games Festival.[12]

Recent activities

As of January 2020, Freeman recently quit her job at Fullbright to focus on her own projects. She and her romantic partner, Jake Jefferies, are currently working on a narrative, domestic horror game. However, Freeman insists she's not leaving behind her love for quotidian, confessional storytelling.[13]

For the last five years, Freeman has worked with teams of artists, trying to make personal games about sex and human relationships. Her ultimate goal for each game is to elicit what she calls “player-character embodiment,” for example, Cibele. As a teenager, Freeman was a devoted player of Final Fantasy Online, an MMORPG. She became close with another player she met in the game, and the pair eventually decided to meet in real life and have sex. The game is about such relationships. Set during her college years, the gameplay alternates between exploring files on a simulated version of her desktop and controlling her avatar in a fictional MMORPG. As a result, the game has been considered to be possibly the most realistic first-person experience ever produced in the medium.[14]

Academic career and personal life

A trained poet, she floundered after college until falling in with a group of game developers who introduced her to the burgeoning scene of indie games. Freeman was a former protégé of the poet Charles North, had worked at the Poetry Project, and had written poetry exclusively for years. Freeman didn’t know one single programming language back then. Enrolling in a master’s program at NYU, most artists with that kind of experience and background would have joined the Creative Writing department, but Freeman opted to study in the Integrated Digital Media program, hoping to make a career out of video games. Freeman since then, has become one of the most prolific artists working in the medium. [15]

Notable works
  • We Met in May, 2019 indie video game.[18][19]
  • Last Call, 2021 indie video game.[20]

References
  1. ✿, ✿ nina freeman (March 12, 2015). "it's my birthday on sunday ahhhhh~".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  2. Hudson, Laura (November 4, 2015). "Cibele Is a Crazy-Real Game About Falling in Love Online". Wired. Archived from the original on January 7, 2016. Retrieved January 7, 2016.
  3. "'Cibele:' Love in a time of video games and surveillance". Washington Post. Retrieved November 14, 2017.
  4. Biery, Thomas (July 1, 2016). "Car combat dating game Bum Rush launches for free July 6". Polygon.
  5. "30 Under 30 2016: Games". Forbes. Retrieved February 26, 2016.
  6. Wallace, Kimberley (February 2016). Making Games Personal. Gameinformer Issue 274. pp. 22–23.
  7. Smith, Graham (November 8, 2013). "Interview: Code Liberation On Game Workshops For Women". Rock Paper Shotgun. Retrieved February 26, 2016.
  8. "About us". The Code Liberation Foundation. Retrieved February 26, 2016.
  9. Stuart, Keith (November 16, 2015). "Meet Nina Freeman, the punk poet of gaming". The Guardian. Archived from the original on March 5, 2016. Retrieved March 5, 2016.
  10. Starkey, Daniel. "If Sex Videogames Make You Feel Weird, That's the Point". WIRED. Retrieved February 26, 2016.
  11. "Dyson Alumna Nina Freeman '12 | DYSON COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES". www.pace.edu. Retrieved March 9, 2021.
  12. "2022 IGF Award Nominations". igf.com. January 7, 2022. Retrieved January 7, 2022.
  13. Baltimore, About Shannon Gormley Shannon Gormley is originally from; Maryl; local, She covers; Portl, non-local music in; hometown, writes for Baltimore City Paper whenever she's visiting her. "Nina Freeman Has Been Called "the Punk Poet of Gaming." But That Doesn't Mean She Doesn't Like to Shoot Things". Willamette Week. Retrieved March 9, 2021.
  14. "An Interview With Nina Freeman – INTERVIEW WITH AN ARTIST". Retrieved March 9, 2021.
  15. "An Interview With Nina Freeman – INTERVIEW WITH AN ARTIST". Retrieved March 9, 2021.
  16. http://cibelegame.com, Starmaid Games for. "Cibele". cibelegame.com. Retrieved December 29, 2021. {{cite web}}: External link in |last= (help)
  17. "Tacoma - Fullbright". tacoma.game. Retrieved January 10, 2022.
  18. "We Met in May". ninasays.so. Retrieved December 29, 2021.
  19. "We Met in May on Steam". store.steampowered.com. Retrieved December 29, 2021.
  20. "Last Call". starmaidgames.itch.io. Retrieved January 7, 2022.

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