Amy Kalson '95

Character Development

photo by Susan Goldman

In 2000, when Amy Kalson flew to California to cover a video-game designers conference as a freelance journalist, she had no idea that it would mark a turning point in her life. Kalson had assumed she’d be a writer of the old-fashioned variety—in fact, a story she’d published in 1997 had been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. True, she made her living as a computer programmer, but she considered her job to be no more than a sideline. “As far as I was concerned, real work was being a writer or in theatre. It was this beautiful, reversed perspective I got from Sarah Lawrence.”

At the conference, the opening sequence of the “Final Fantasy VIII” game knocked her off her feet. “It was a completely different type of storytelling from anything I’d seen before,” Kalson recalls. “It mesmerized me.”

Over the next few days, she discovered that the craft of making video games involved all her interests: storytelling, technology, theatre, architecture, cinema, music, myth, psychology, history. And there was another aspect of the conference that struck her—the almost complete lack of women. She wondered why no one seemed interested in making games for the other half of the planet. “I asked around and got answers like, ‘Females simply don’t play games,’ or ‘Girls don’t like technology.’ I knew those answers were simply untrue.”

When she tried to share her enthusiasm about gaming with the professionals at the conference, they were less than thrilled. “Basically they told me, ‘Take a number, kid. Everybody wants to do this.’”

Kalson didn’t let the pros dissuade her, though, and enrolled at Carnegie Mellon, where she received a dual M.S./M.A. in entertainment technology in 2003. By the time she finished, she already had a production and design credit on “The Sims Unleashed” and had started working on “The Sims 2.” That led her to Amaze Entertainment, where she was the lead designer on “Disney Friends.”

Now Kalson has her dream job: senior design producer at Disney Interactive. “I fly around the country and meet with all kinds of studios and developers who are making games for Disney. I brainstorm game ideas and come up with the heart and soul of new games. And I get to dream for a living.”

Kalson’s first contact with computers came as a young girl when her parents bought her an Apple II. She promptly took it apart with a screwdriver to see how it worked. Technology remained a hobby, however, until she left Sarah Lawrence. “The dot-com thing was going on,” she says. “Nobody was hiring writers, but there was a big need for people who could do computers. So I started out repairing computers and eventually taught myself how to program them.”

In a field that is still male-dominated—about 90 percent of game designers are men—Kalson remains an anomaly. Yet she sees being a woman in video game design not as a handicap but as a source of strength. “At the beginning of my career, I thought being a woman would be a big liability because the industry was focused on very violent, very masculine games. But more and more women are playing games and buying games. In fact, there’s a whole segment of thegaming population that is women over fifty.

“I feel lucky to be different,” Kalson continues. “One of the most important things I bring to the table is that I can remember, vividly, what it’s like to be a nine-year-old girl.”

Kalson has found that her quirky background in theatre, writing, and architectural history prepared her well for a profession that was very young when she was at Sarah Lawrence. “My games tend to be more like sandboxes,” Kalson says. “People can choose their own paths through them. But you still need a good story and to provide a rich, rewarding experience no matter what path people take.”

Kalson’s first major game for Disney, “Disney Friends,” hit the stores in March. Using the Nintendo DS gaming console, children can speak to Disney characters and have them answer back. “You can go on adventures with them,” Kalson says. “And help them overcome obstacles and solve problems and buy them treats. It’s a game about making friends and taking care of your friends.”

Kalson sees greater challenges and successes ahead. “Game design is a new craft, and the Shakespeare of games has yet to emerge. We’re still figuring out how to use this new medium to move people—still figuring out the rules and the language. I love the frontier feeling of it all.”

— Robert Anasi ’88