![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.library.unt.edu\/media\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/12\/2017\/02\/Lisette-Titre-400x400.jpg\")
\r\nAs February moves into full swing, we celebrate Black History Month by looking back at a world shaped by people that often were overlooked at best and silenced at worst. We have made bold strides since then, and the world of media has often been at the forefront of that movement. Today, we take a look at some of the black game designers that helped shape the videogame industry into what it is today.<\/p>\r\n
<\/p>\r\n\r\n
Lisette Titre-Montgomery<\/a> is an Art Director with over fifteen years of industry experience. Her artistic skills include special effects, character modeling, and texture painting. In addition, she has also managed global art teams in Japan, China, Australia, India, and the Philippines. Lisette has contributed to some of the industry\u2019s highest profile games, including Tiger Woods Golf, The Simpsons, Dante\u2019s Inferno<\/a> (Game 67 Xbox 360 and PS3), Dance Central 3<\/a> (Game 288 Xbox 360 Kinect), SIMS 4, and Transformers Age Of Extinction for Android and iOS. Her most recent project is with Ubisoft San Francisco on South Park’s next AAA game sequel,\u00a0The Fractured but Whole<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n Ms. Titre-Montgomery\u2019s passion is being a diversity advocate for the game industry. She speaks publicly about how game based curriculums are the key to engaging today’s youth in S.T.E.A.M education and careers. Lisette has been a keynote speaker at N.A.S.A., Intel,\u00a0Black Girls Code<\/a>, Girls Who Code<\/a>, and Soledad O’Brien’s Starfish Foundation. She has also been named One of the Most Powerful Women<\/a> in Tech by Business Insider.\u00a0She was most recently honored to be invited to The White House to work on initiatives to improve diversity in tech hiring and inclusion.<\/p>\r\n <\/p>\r\n Bellamy started his career as a lead designer for EA\u2019s\u00a0Madden<\/a>\u00a0franchise. He also served as executive director of the International Game Developers Association<\/a> and serves as a judge for the Promax\/BDA MI6 Awards<\/a>, which celebrate the best in marketing, advertising and design within interactive and game entertainment. As an executive consultant for\u00a0MTV, Bellamy provided creative guidance on the content, direction and strategic marketing partnerships for the annual Spike TV\u00a0Video Game Awards\u00a0show and the highly rated weekly program GameTrailers TV with\u00a0Geoff Keighley, also on Spike TV. Previously, he was Executive Director of the game industry’s trade organization, the\u00a0Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences. Bellamy has also played key business and product development roles at\u00a0Electronic Arts, where he was named the company’s Rookie of the Year for his work on the\u00a0Madden NFL\u00a0franchise,\u00a0THQ, and\u00a0Activision\u00a0subsidiary,\u00a0Z-AXIS.<\/p>\r\n He recently co-founded Hangry Studios, a consulting firm focused on quality assurance and automation for PC, mobile, and virtual reality games.<\/p>\r\n <\/p>\r\n As an engineer at\u00a0Fairchild Semiconductor, Jerry Lawson<\/a> designed the electronics of the Fairchild\u00a0Video Entertainment System, later renamed the Channel F, in 1976.<\/p>\r\n Predating the release of Atari\u2019s Video Computer System by a year, the Channel F was the first videogame machine that used interchangeable game cartridges, which Fairchild sold separately. Previous game machines like Atari\u2019s\u00a0Pong\u00a0and the Magnavox Odyssey had all their games built into the hardware. Lawson\u2019s pioneering design set the standard for the game consoles of today.<\/p>\r\n Lawson and Ron Jones were the sole\u00a0black\u00a0members of the\u00a0Homebrew Computer Club<\/a>, a group of early computer hobbyists which would produce a number of industry legends, including\u00a0Apple\u00a0founders\u00a0Steve Jobs\u00a0and\u00a0Steve Wozniak. Lawson also produced one of the earliest arcade games, Demolition Derby,\u00a0which debuted in a southern California pizzeria shortly after\u00a0Pong. Lawson later worked with the Stanford mentor program and was preparing to write a book on his career.<\/p>\r\n In March 2011, Lawson was honored as an industry pioneer by the\u00a0International Game Developers Association<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As February moves into full swing, we celebrate Black History Month by looking back at a world shaped by people that often were overlooked at best and silenced at worst. We have made bold strides since then, and the world of media has often been at the forefront of that movement. Today, we take a… Read more »<\/a>","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1,33],"tags":[74],"class_list":["post-1732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-video-games","tag-black-history-month"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5CjJ3-rW","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.unt.edu\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.unt.edu\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.unt.edu\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.unt.edu\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.unt.edu\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1732"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.unt.edu\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1866,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.unt.edu\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1732\/revisions\/1866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.unt.edu\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.unt.edu\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.unt.edu\/media\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.library.unt.edu\/media\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/12\/2017\/02\/Gordon-Bellamy.jpg\")
\r\nGordon Bellamy<\/h3>\r\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.library.unt.edu\/media\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/12\/2017\/02\/Jerry-Lawson-400x281.png\")
\r\nJerry Lawson<\/h3>\r\n