Brenda Romero, the video game designer known for her work on the Wizardry series, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Commander and more, has criticised a bestselling book for leaving off her credit.
Gabrielle Zevin’s 2022 book, Tomorrow, And Tomorrow, And Tomorrow, follows two friends who “come together as creative partners in the world of video game design”, where success brings them “fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality”.
Last Sunday (February 12), Romero tweeted to share that she finds it “hard to believe” that the in-book video game, Solution, “is not inspired by” her 2009 board gameĀ Train.
“Train is about complicity. It is not a game you win. If you win, you lose,” she wrote. “You subvert the rules to break the Third Reich. I showed it at MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology].”
She added in a follow-up tweet: “You can credit me. I was there. I was the only one who made it. Thanks for calling it genius at least.”
“I could be wrong about this, of course,” she continued. “There could be another game about the Third Reich that both courted controversy and critical praise (I won a BAFTA).
“One of the book’s themes is apparently about women in gamesdev not getting the same credit as men. Interesting.”
You can read Romero’s comments below.
I find it hard to believe that āSolutionā is not inspired by my game Train. Train is about complicity. It is not a game you win. If you win, you lose. You subvert the rules to break the Third Reich. I showed it at MIT. https://t.co/o4wdLxwQEd
— Brenda Romero (@br) February 12, 2023
āI have credited the designers, but as readers of this book will know, it is difficult to say who is responsible for any game or game element unless you were there.ā You can credit me. I was there. I was the only one who made it. Thanks for calling it genius at least.
— Brenda Romero (@br) February 12, 2023
One of the bookās themes is apparently about women in gamedev not getting the same credit as men. Interesting.
— Brenda Romero (@br) February 12, 2023
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow won Winner for Best Fiction by Goodreads, ranked as the number one Amazon Book of the Year, was awarded Book of the Year by Apple and was named Time magazine’s Novel of the Year.
Back in 2021, Brenda Romero’s development studio, Romero Games, spoke to NME about how it developed the 2020 strategic and role-playing video game Empire Of Sin.
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