The International Game Developers Association Foundation (IGDA-F) has chosen Muriel Tramis as the recipient for this year’s Gerald Lawson Award for Achievement in Game Development. The award will be presented during this year’s Game Developers Conference on March 18.
Tramis is recognized as the first Black woman video game designer, including the first wargame, Freedom: Rebels in the Darkness (1988). Tramis is originally from Martinique, an island in the Caribbean Sea, and Freedom explores the historical slave revolts of the island.
Tramis joined French game design company Coktel Vision in 1986. Her credits include several quality adventure games: Mewilo, Geisha, Fascination, Lost in Time, Urban Runner, and co-created The Bizarre Adventures of Woodruff and the Schnibble.
I actually played and loved Woodruff and the Shnibble back in the 90s — a fantastic if overly perplexing point-and-click adventure game with some seriously deep themes hidden behind the cartoonish graphics.
Woodruff is now considered abandonware, and is playable via ScummVM.
Tramis also helped create the puzzle-adventure Gobliiins series, which spawned several sequels.
Tramis has been an advocate for women representation in the game industry throughout France and Europe. She was appointed a Knight by the French government in 2018.
The Gerald Lawson Award honors “underrepresented minorities in the game development community, with a specific recognition of their work directly related to game development.” It’s named after Jerry Lawson, creator of the Fairchild Channel F, the first home video game system with separate game cartridges.
The Game Developers Conference will run from March 17-21 at San Francisco, CA.
