Award-winning composer Jessica Curry has announced plans to (sort of) leave UK indie studio The Chinese Room by stepping away from her long-held role as director at the studio to focus on her own musical career.
This is notable more for why Curry is distancing herself from the studio she helped create than for how it will affect The Chinese Room’s work — Curry says that she plans to continue working out of the studio’s office, composing music for its games and serving as a director of the company.
But she’s stepping away from day-to-day development duties to focus on her own career as a composer in part because of what she describes as the toxic nature of some aspects of the game industry, including the pressures of doing creative work within the constraints of a developer-publisher relationship and a tendency to downplay or miscredit her contributions as a woman.
“There is a famous quote that behind every successful man there is a strong woman,” writes Curry in her farewell post on the company blog. “Well sod that. I’ve realized that the only way I’m going to get credit for the work that I do is if I take a step away from Dan. I love Dan so, so much. He is a talented, intelligent, shining-souled man. This is not a rejection of him but of the society that still can’t cope with the fact that a woman might just be as talented as the man she shares her life with.”
The full blog post is worth reading, as Curry does an eloquent job of laying out her perspective on the game industry. For more insight into how she and husband Dan Pinchbeck worked together to guide the development of their latest game, check out Gamasutra’s conversation about Rapture with them last year.