Brenda Romero

Brenda Louise Romero (née Garno; born October 12, 1966), previously known as Brenda Brathwaite, is an American game designer and developer. She was born in Ogdensburg, New York and is a graduate of Clarkson University. Romero is best known for her work on the Wizardry series of role-playing video games and, more recently, the non-digital series The Mechanic is the Message. She has worked in game development since 1981 and has credits on 49 game titles.

For Wizardry, Romero provided game design, level design, system design, writing, and scripting. She also wrote the manuals and documentation for some products in the series. Romero provided writing and documentation for the award-winning Jagged Alliance series. She was the lead designer for Playboy: The Mansion and Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes.

Romero began her career in 1981 at video game developer and publisher Sir-tech Software, Inc., on the Wizardry role-playing team. She worked first as a tester, and moved up through the ranks to designer for Wizardry 8. While at Sir-tech, Romero also worked on the Jagged Alliance and Realms of Arkania series. She was employed with Sir-tech for 18 years before moving on to Atari where she worked on the Dungeons & Dragons series for consoles before joining Cyberlore Studios in 2003 to work on the Playboy: The Mansion game. Romero's research for the game was ultimately published in a book, Sex in Video Games.

Nerve magazine cited her as a "New Radical" — one of "the 50 artists, actors, authors, activists and icons who are making the world a more stimulating place".

In 2009, Next Generation magazine identified her as the woman with the longest continuous service in video game development.

Romero served as Chair of the Savannah College of Art and Design's Interactive Design and Game Development department until November 2009. She moved to San Francisco to consult as Creative Director for social media company Slide, Inc., and then became Creative Director of social gaming company Lolapps in May 2010. She co-founded the social game company Loot Drop with John Romero in November 2010, then left Lolapps and joined Loot Drop in February 2011.

In 2013, Romero became the first game designer in residence at the Games and Playable Media Program of the University of California at Santa Cruz. She also served as the program's director.

Romero was the Program Director of the MSc program in Game Design and Development at the University of Limerick in Limerick, Ireland until December 2018.