Womenize! – Inspiring Stories is our weekly series featuring inspirational women from games and tech. For this edition in cooperation with the Film und Medien Stiftung NRW, we talked to Linda Rendel, Associate Producer at Ubisoft Düsseldorf and Founder of the FemDevsMeetup. Read more about Linda in this interview:
 
Hi Linda! Could you give us some insights into your day-to-day work as Associate Producer?

It is hard to describe a typical day. Every day brings new topics and challenges to solve. My main focus is communication and ensuring all teams have the info they need to do their jobs. Usually, you work towards a defined milestone and make sure the task planning reflects the work while moving potential roadblocks out of the way. Most of the day consists of chatting to team members and stakeholders to see where everything is at and refine processes. Now during the pandemic, the information flow has definitely increased and there is more written communication to be structured and passed along to the right people.

In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges for VR game development nowadays?

I feel the biggest challenge is working with the hardware constraints of bringing the product quality (that people are used to from PC and console titles) to VR. Especially for standalone VR devices, which more people can afford now. We are also still experimenting and figuring out how to use this medium to tell our stories in the best and most immersive way. A lot of knowledge we have from traditional mediums cannot be translated directly to VR. It is fun to figure out how players react to different mechanics and what we need to do to get them fully immersed. It’s the best feeling, when we really achieve it.

 
When did you decide to found the FemDevsMeetup and what was important for getting started?

I founded the #FemDevsMeetup in early 2017. It offers networking events for women, marginalized groups and allies to get to know more about game development. I’m not sure what the important factor was for getting it started. Early on, I didn’t really perceive game development as a possible career path for myself, since there were still a lot of stereotypical perceptions around the industry being male-dominant. But when I entered, I met more and more female developers and decided to set up an event where we could meet and create more visibility for female game developers’ expertise and creations. I was lucky to get a slot at a co-working space and Ubisoft Düsseldorf to sponsor the rent. I advertised the event mainly on Facebook back then and somehow the word spread, and 30 attendees showed up. Since then, we have expanded from Düsseldorf to Frankfurt and Cologne and also offer online events on Discord.

Thank you for your time, Linda!

Linda’s links: Linda’s Website │ FemDevsMeetup │ Ubisoft Düsseldorf

Womenize! – Inspiring Stories Feature by Sophie Brügmann