The first game he developed: Jones' video game, Never Yield, is akin to runner games like Temple Run. Join The Game 'Dead Space' Review: New voice for a recurring nightmare That really just changed the game, it just opened so many different doors and motivated me to be like, oh, this is what it's like to actually finish a game." After that, over the course of two years, McGregor finished eight different video game projects. "It took me two months, but I actually got to the end of the finish line and I released Glitch In The System. "It's only going to take me two weeks! " McGregor remembers thinking to himself at the time. If you're familiar with Geometry Wars, or I'd normally say it's like Asteroids except you can move and shoot using the two sticks unlike a controller." Making that game was a lot of fun for McGregor, so he decided to turn the prototype into a complete game. "I finished a really quick, small prototype of a twin stick shooter. It was in college that he decided to make a video game for a media arts club he was part of. The first video game he created: McGregor says there were a lot of video game projects he would start working on, but wouldn't finish. Of the respondents to a 2021 survey from the International Game Developers Association, only 5% were Black while close to 80% were white - suggesting the enormous gap that exists in the industry. And yet, while the industry employs hundreds of thousands of people around the world, Black people are in the minority. These two pioneers showed that Black people have a place in the multibillion-dollar video game industry. Ed Smith was another Black engineer who reimagined consoles in the early days of at-home gaming, working on the very first hybrid video game/personal computer, called The Imagination Machine. It was rare to see Black engineers working in tech decades ago, but Lawson wasn't alone. The move paved the way for future systems like Atari and Super Nintendo, and by the time Lawson died in 2011, his legacy was imprinted on the video game industry. The trailblazing engineer helped lead the team that developed the first home video gaming system with interchangeable cartridges, which opened up a whole new world of playing games at home in the 1970s. In many ways, it all started with Jerry Lawson. Geneva Heyward, Catt Small, Charles McGregor, Xalavier Nelson Jr., Neil Jones, filo/Getty Images and Neil Jones discuss how they are putting their stamp on the industry. These developers (clockwise from top left) Geneva Heyward, Catt Small, Charles McGregor, Xalavier Nelson Jr.
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