Womenize! Wednesday Weekly is our weekly series featuring inspirational women from games and tech. For this edition we talked to Roxy Dürrmann, who is currently in the middle of her Game Design studies, while also doing an internship at astragon Entertainment. Read more about Roxy in this interview:
Hi Roxy! Let’s start with a very basic question: Why did you choose to join the gaming industry?

Actually, I got in touch with video games relatively late in my life, but then I fell head over heels in love with them. It was the combination of art and high tech that fascinated me from that very moment on. The game that fascinated me at that time was, and I know that it’s quite an obvious choice, The Witcher 3. This game originally sparked this passion in me and meanwhile there are dozens of games, especially indie titles, that inspire and excite me. This admiration has only become more and more intense over the years of my studies when I discovered all the amazing technology hidden behind their beautiful surfaces. It’s great to see what other developers contribute to our branch, with their fantastic ideas, great concepts and finally, their high-quality games.

What motivates you to do your very best every day, specifically in times of lockdowns and work from home?

Currently, my strongest driving force above everything else is my fantastic internship at astragon Entertainment and the opportunity to learn so much here. My amazing colleagues are my biggest inspiration. They are doing a really damn good job and give 120% every day, all despite lockdown and home office. To be able to experience the daily operations of publishing games and to have the chance to learn something is especially valuable to me in the current confusing times. I can only express my luck to work here, while many other students and interns are in a really bad situation, as many of them were not able to start their internships and others lost their student jobs.

Apart from this dark thought, I am always motivated to also give at least 120% and manage to motivate myself with positive thoughts about the happy future after Corona.

In your opinion, which game is most underrated from a Game Design perspective?

This might not be true from the perspective of the gaming industry, but maybe more from a consumer perspective: “The Return of the Obra Dinn” is what I would consider a rather underrated game. In my fourth semester, I developed a game with my team, which was also supposed to be based on detective mechanics and it made me realize how difficult it is to develop these kinds of mechanics. During my research, I came across “The Return of the Obra Dinn” and was excited from the very beginning, how the game manages to engage the player’s imagination and encourage him to think for himself and draw his own conclusions based on the given clues.

Thank you for your time, Roxy!

Roxy’s Links: Roxy’s LinkedIn | Roxy’s Twitter | astragon Entertainment Website

WWW Feature by Sophie Brügmann