Over Laralyn’s 28 years in the industry, she’s led the design for award-winning adventure, social, strategy, simulation, platform, brawler, FPS, and massively multiplayer online games. She’s a frequent conference speaker on topics ranging from design to analytics and more recently on wellness and inclusion in game development. She’s an outspoken proponent of games for everyone and a fierce advocate for the benefits diversity on our game development teams.
She was honored by her peers with the 2021 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Game Developer’s Choice Awards. Highlights of her almost thirty year career include being Creative Director for the ground-breaking MMO Free Realms at Sony Online Entertainment, which the New York Times called “a triumph of the company’s own reinvention.” She was also lead designer for the critically acclaimed Full Spectrum Warrior, the most nominated game of E3 2003. She was one of Gamasutra’s Top Ten Game Developers of 2014, she shared the top spot in Massive Online Gaming’s 2010 list of the Top 20 Most Influential People in MMOs, she was on Beckett’s list of the top women in MMOs for 2010, and she was one of Gamasutra’s 20 most influential women in games in 2008.
Laralyn has a B.A. in psychology from Vassar College and a J.D. from St. Louis University School of Law. She’s currently a Principal Design Architect for Microsoft. She’s also an active indie game dev with her first solo title in development.