Hi, I am Brie Y. Ren

Hi there, I'm Brie Y. Ren.

I love creating since I was a little girl. Twenty years before it's creative writing, which was the only thing a good school girl could do in my upbringing. I wrote branches for my novels and let my friends choose between them so as to lead the stories into different endings, from which I got my earliest fun in interactive storytelling.
I played the first video game in my life in university fifteen years before when I had the first PC of my own and I immediately fell in love with this medium in which interacting initiatively is the key to get the expressions of the creators, unlike any other medium I knew before, and I love this autonomy.
As a person who began writing when fell in love with reading, I had a fierce passion in making games at the moment I fell in love with playing them. However, that earliest game-making trial of mine in university failed as I couldn't find a person to do the code job, and I never thought I could do it myself. I simply believed the 'common sense' that code is something too difficult for girls, especially those who study Liberal Arts in high school and Finance in university. Though the urge to make games haunted me.

Luckily, I finally got rid of that ridiculous stereotype which bound me for a decade. After inspired by the 45th Ludum Dare game jam when I saw thousands of hobbyists made their own games in even 48h including female devs, I thought "why can't I?". I downloaded Unity and enrolled Game Design and Development course from MSU on Coursera and began to make my first game. I still didn't have much nerve at that time, just thought there's no harm to try.
Yet when I really put my hand to making games, I found it's not that difficult as I thought it would be. There're tons of MOOCs and tutorials to get me started, and when I have questions in programming specific features in my project I can always find useful references on Stack Overflow or Unity Forum, not to mention the beautifully architected open source projects on GitHub and Unity Assets Store and the thoughtful insights on Gamasutra and GDC shared by experienced developers to learn from when I'm in pursuit of better design. Why haven't I started programming games earlier becomes the biggest regret in my life.
I don't know how to express the thrill when I first saw the world in my head come real in my hand. It's like you equipped your dream with wings and make it take flight. And I don't know how to appreciate the true confidence that game-making gives me. I used to thought I was confident, but it's not true, I only had confidence within my profession, and it restricted me to a life I had no wish to live in. Through continuous instant feedbacks, game-making gives me strength and competence to always step out my comfort zone, to learn things that I didn't know before, and apply them together with things I knew to what I'm longing for.
When talking of instant feedbacks, I'd say game-making is the best game I've ever played in my life. It's easy to reach flow state when programming games, and I have to admit that I'm quite addicted to it. It comforted my soul on tough days and sleepless nights with pure calm and delight. And just like the most fascinating games, there's no simple best answer for all situations when programming games. Therefore it gives me great fun to play with all kinds of possibilities and to find out the most suitable strategy for each specific situation.

In my spare time, I like playing games (real games, not the metophor above). Playing The Sims which I've been played thousands of hours in the last fourteen years can always make me relief, playing OverWatch which I've been played for nine hundreds hours in the past seven years can always make me concentrate, and playing all sorts of recent indie games can always make me filled with inspirations. I also love musicals, I love listen and watch different versions of them to research the subtle difference between each expression approaches. My first game Judas' Trial is largely inspired by musical Jesus Christ Superstar, and a game I'm currently working on Room of Oneself is partly inspired by musical Elisabeth. I like reading a lot. Novels and poems and intro-level textbooks of different disciplines are always my creative fuel. In sunny days I'd like to go for a long walk with my dog who fills my days with endless wonder since I adopted her eight years ago. She's also the Muse of mine. Two of my games, A Stray's Tale and The Way Home, are mainly inspired by her.