Jennell Jaquays

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Jennell Jaquays (* 14. October 1956 in Michigan as Paul Jaquays ) is an American game designer , artist and writer. From the 1970s onwards she developed graphics and designs for traditional role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons as well as computer games.

life and work

Jaquays graduated from Jackson County Western High School in Michigan in 1974 and from Spring Arbor College in 1978 with a Bachelor of Arts.

Her professional life, she started creating illustrations for pen - & - paper role-playing games of Dungeons - & - Dragons - franchise , partly on a permanent basis for the game publisher Judges Guild . She also wrote two popular Dungeons & Dragons modules for Judges Guild, Dark Tower and Caverns of Thracia , manuals for pen & paper game masters that include a complete story within the Dungeons & Dragons universe for the game master necessary background information.

In December 1980 she began working as a game designer for the consumer electronics manufacturer Coleco , where she helped to create the implementation of popular arcade games as tabletop devices. With the release of the ColecoVision - game console she was appointed head of the newly established Department of game design and was responsible for the creative aspects of the porting of licensed arcade games like Pac-Man or Donkey Kong on the new console. Coleco's video game division was closed in 1983 as part of the Video Game Crash .

As an independent artist and designer, she worked in the late 1980s and early 1990s with the computer game publishers Interplay Entertainment , Epyx , Electronic Arts , but also developed graphic and design content for the role-playing game systems of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), BattleTech , Star Wars and Ghostbusters .

In 1997 she returned to computer games and developed gameplay levels for fast action shooters like Quake 2 and Quake 3 Arena at id Software . At Ensemble Studios she created 3D game settings for real-time strategy games, including Age of Empires III on the PC and Halo Wars on the Xbox 360 game console . In 2003 she was instrumental in setting up the game development program "The Guildhall" at Southern Methodist University in Plano , Dallas . From 2009 she worked at CCP North America near Atlanta, Georgia , as lead level designer for the unfinished World of Darkness MMO, based on the role-playing game of the same name by White Wolf .

In 2011, Jaquays publicly announced that she identified as a lesbian woman. In 2012 she began to take on freelance art and design assignments and again managed her former Jaquays Design Studio as Dragongirl Studios. In 2012 she left CCP North America to work for Olde Sküül, Inc., a company she co-founded. As creative director of the Transgender Human Rights Institute in Seattle , she was involved in the petition for the creation of the law that the conversion treatment of LGBT prohibits adolescents it. In 2015 President Barack Obama called for a ban on conversion therapy for minors based on this petition.

Jaquays is married to the also transgender game developer Rebecca Heineman . She has a son and a daughter.

Awards

  • 1979: Dark Tower was nominated for the HG Wells Award as the best RPG adventure
  • 1981: Chaosium's Griffin Mountain RuneQuest scenario was nominated for the HG Wells Award
  • 1986: Griffin Island nominated for the HG Wells Award
  • 1989: Origins Gamer's Choice Award for Best RPG Adventure (Castle Greyhawk)
  • 2017: Hall of Fame Inductee for the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ RPG.net: Paul Jaquays. Accessed July 31, 2020 .
  2. ^ Nathan Kozlowski: Coleco Chat: Paul Jaquays . In: ColecoNation . No. 9, July 2006, p. 3.
  3. ↑ Dawn Ennis: This Year's Transgender and Gender-Nonconforming Who's Who. In: Advocate. April 1, 2015, accessed August 29, 2019 .
  4. ↑ About Jennell Jaquays. Retrieved August 30, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Erik Mona, James Jacobs: The 30 Greatest D&D Adventures of All Time . In: Paizo Publishing (ed.): Dungeon . No. 116, Bellevue, Washington , November 2004.
  6. ↑ a b Game and Product Design, Development and Editing . Jaquays.com. Archived from the original on July 13, 2011. Retrieved March 22, 2012.
  7. ↑ Game Info - WG7: Castle Greyhawk . RPGnet . Retrieved March 22, 2012.
  8. ↑ Chaosium congratulates Jennell Jaquays on her induction into the Gaming Hall of Fame . In: Chaosium Inc. . Retrieved December 1, 2017.


personal data
SURNAME Jaquays, Jennell
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Paul Jaquays (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American computer game designer and artist
DATE OF BIRTH October 14, 1956
PLACE OF BIRTH Michigan