User:Christay817/sandbox

For my project I chose Jennifer MacLean. MacLean is an independent game developer. She already has an article on wikipedia but it is missing a lot of information. It does not tell the reader anything about her education, her family life, what inspired her to become a gamer. It also does not mentioned where she was born. It only speaks about some of the projects she worked on. For this project my plan is to add information about her life other than just her awards and games. I will also elaborate on what some of the companies she worked on entail. It also mentions that she took a leave of absence from work but does not explain why. I will try to research and find more information to support why she left. I also plan to explain what contribution she made to amazon when she became the director of their worldwide business development. It mentions in the article that she is working on makes changes to Amazon Web Services, Alexa, Twitch Prime, and Amazon.com but does not mention what kind of changes or what these devices do. I will research each device and explain what they are.  I want to know what inspired her to become a game developer. Was it a hobby she liked as a kid or something she truly had a passion for. Lastly it mentions she was named one of the "Game Industry's 100 Most Influential Women" by Next Generation but does not explain what it takes to be nominated or how important this award really is. It also mentions she is one of the top 20 Women in Games by Gamasutra but doesn't explain what gamasutra is. I plan on looking further.

Jennifer MacLean was the Executive Director of the IGDA from September 2017 the IGDA is the largest professional association for game developers around the world. This organization has about 10,00 members and over a hundred and fifty chapters spanning six out of the seven continents. From 2009 to 2012, she was Chief Executive Officer at 38 Studios, an independent game developer. She is known for her great ability to turn any product vision into an immaculate plan. MacLean has been fascinated by fulfilling the needs of gamers throughout her entire career. Her plan on the game tech is to help smaller groups succeed by using the same tools as larger studios.

Jennifer MacLean new from the age of seven that she wanted to be a gamer. When she was seven years old she got an Atari 2600 for Christmas. ^[1]She spent most of her time playing pitfall. A game that challenges your reflexes. This took place in the 80s where in order to share your high score you had to take a picture with your camera and submit it to Activision where you would receive a certificate that you were a Pitfall expert. MacLean wants to create a world where everyone loves to play video games.^[2] In order to do this, she wants to create a game that portrays diversity and is welcoming to all.  Jennifer Maclean Graduated from John Hopkin with a B.A in International Relations. She was a member of the founding class of the innovative EMBA Global program where received a joint M.B.A from Columbia University and the London Business School.

Jennifer Maclean stresses that she wants women to be involved in game development. She wants to create a world where women feel the same about games as men do. When someone sees their role model achieving their goals it inspires people to do the same. The game industry is mostly male oriented and she wants to break that stereotype and help women realize they do make games too. She stresses that making games is something everyone at any age can do. It can be seen in games when there is a hero it is almost all the time a male. She creates games where the user and choose whether the heroin is male or female. Maclean loves giving women advice and want others to know they have a voice and can make a difference. She wants women to realize that they power too and they can create greatness just like males.^[3]

Many people feel that video games that portray violence have a negative impact on a young child's development. When a child grows up playing videos with gun violence and fighting people feel they are more likely to act out what they play. People are saying that school shoots are occuring due to violent video games. Jennifer Maclean states that video games in America are not encouraging kids to become more violent. If there was a correlation with video violence increasing violence in America it would be a world wide issue due to the fact that video games are played all around the world. The difference is the accessibility of firearms not the video games being played. MacLean encourages parents to look over the rating of the game before they purchase it for their child. Violent video games only make up around 11% of the game industry. Therefore there is less violent games than regular games. MaClean stresses that the reasoning behind the video game rates is to help people understand the content in each game being played. There is also age restriction for a reason and should be looked at before the game is purchased for that reason.^[4]

Recently MacLean joined amazing as the has joined Amazon Game Tech as head of worldwide business development. Amazon Game Tech is involved in managing two different platforms. Amazon Gamelift and Amazon Lumberyard. Amazon Gamelist is a service that scales, operates and manages multiplayer games. It provides an easier outlet for to manage server infrastructure and match a player to an available game at the proper time.  While on the other hand Amazon Lumberyard is a three dimensional

Engine that creates a high quality game that connect games people play and stores information on the cloud. An Amazon Game Tech offeres 14 different databases for distributing the games being developed. MacLean began as a small to mid-sized game developer where she worked most of her career helping game developer. At amazon her new role is the help with the development process of Amazon Web Services, Twitch Prime, Alexa, and Amazon.com. Amazon Web Services^[5] is a service that creates a scalable cloud allowing people to not worry about running into delays with networking, storage and computer issues. Twitch Prime is a major living streaming platform that allows gamers to watch other people live streamed and become connected. It provides a server where gamers can chat and interact through the network.^[6]

After beginning her career working with Brian Reynolds and Sid Meier at Microprose Software in 1992, she joined AOL in 1996, where she became Programming Director for the Games Channel. She went on to become Vice President and General Manager of Games at Comcast Corporation, and the Chair of the Board of Directors for the International Game Developers Association.The international Game Developers Association is a non profit organization provides all gamers with a voice. This non profit organization is an organization helps develope gamers and connect members with other professionals world wide^[7].

In March, 2008 she joined 38 Studios as Senior Vice President of business development, and moved into the position of CEO in the same company on August, 2009. 38 studios is an entertainment and IP development company. This company was founded by Major League Baseball pitcher Curt Schilling. MacLean left the 38 Studios upon its bankruptcy in 2012 when the lost their CEO and High profile game executive.  

As an executive director at the IGDA, MacLean joined Amazon and became the director of their worldwide business development. She has stated that her main goal is to work with small to medium sized game developers. She wants to make sure that the  game development community welcomes and includes everyone who wants to join. She also helps students explore careers in game development. In this role as Game Tech MacLean is helping small studios innovate by using the same tools from largest developers. Some of the tools she uses are from AWS. AWS is a program used by more than 90 of the world’s biggest public game companies. Not only do developers make game but they have to make sure no business issues occur with  discover discoverability, monetization, and content updates.

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