Written by Isabella Harford
The EGD Collective will host an AMA talk with codeSpark Game Programmer Katie Powell on Friday July 17 at 8 pm EST. The event is part of EGD’s Summer Series involving an assortment of esports tournaments alongside several talks with prominent figures in the games industry.
The talk will offer a holistic insight into the games industry from a professional that has held positions in game design, engineering, and programming. At codeSpark, Katie Powell works to make computer science more accessible to children through the company's learn-to-code platform.
“I have a life-long love of games and seek to make the world a better place through gaming,” Powell said on her website.
According to Linkedin, Powell received her Bachelors of Science in Computer Science and Games from the University of Southern California. She began her career interning for several tech companies, most notably Disney Consumer Products where she worked on Disney Imagicademy, a series of fun and educational Ipad apps for children that promote learning and creativity.
Later on in her career, Powell became a Game Designer for Zindagi Games and a Level Designer at Zynga. In both positions, she designed levels for Yummy Gummy - a social puzzle game for Android, iOS, and Facebook. Powell also worked as a Gameplay Engineer for GameCake, a game development company that works to make games for Connected TV devices.
Since 2016, Powell has been working with a team at codeSpark on an award-winning educational coding platform for kids ages 5 to 9, which has already allowed children to create 10 million games worldwide. In the codeSpark app, The Foos, Powell programmed new minigames, including the puzzle game Pet Stacker that teaches stack and queues. Within the game, Powell has also created new features, most notably Pet Pals, which allows kids to learn automation and collect virtual pets.
“It isn’t everyday you see someone at the office working in Play-Doh as they figure out how to create a math game involving robots, but that’s how Katie’s mind works,” fellow colleague Shoshana Lewin said on Linkedin. “She is an incredibly thoughtful and creative game designer.”
To find out more, check out Katie’s portfolio and keep up with the latest from codeSpark!