Ready for takeoff? Welcome to our employee spotlight series, Meet Our Pilots, where we introduce you to some of the amazing people here at Big Blue Sky Games! To kick things off in June, we’re highlighting team members who are part of of the incredible LGBTQ community for Pride month.
Let’s get things started with Cait, our Community Development Manager! While she will be conducting the rest of these interviews, we interviewed her for this one so she can tell us about herself and the importance of her identity.
What do you do here at Big Blue Sky Games?
I am the Community Development Manager, which means that I work on developing a safe, accepting space for our community to flourish in once we start attracting people to our game after it has been announced!
What’s the most exciting part of your job?
Just having the opportunity to grow in this role! Community management is something that’s super important to me as someone who is a part of marginalized groups that are typically subject to abuse in online gaming. Being given the chance to create and foster a community from scratch, that I hope people can thrive in and feel safe in, is deeply meaningful and exciting to me. It’s also very fulfilling to be in an industry that I’ve wanted to join since I was a teenager.
What change do you wanna see or make while being in the gaming industry?
I just want people to see themselves represented here, whether it’s within my kind of role in a studio or just in the industry in general. Growing up, I was obsessed with G4TV and had a Game Informer subscription, but I didn’t see anybody that looked like me working on these games or within the games that I was playing and excited for. I’m a Hispanic disabled lesbian, and I just hope that I can help people like me realize that they DO belong in this industry. Also, to show others that queer people and people of color made your games in the past, are making your games now, and will be making your games forever.
Yeah, what’s the phrase? Gay little hands all over everything?
YES! My grubby little gay hands are all over your games.
So, what is it like being queer in the gaming industry?
This is tricky because on one hand, I think it’s something that can be a little intimidating depending on the studio that you work for. Which sucks because I think that will be the case in any industry. Then on the other hand, being here now at Big Blue Sky Games, I feel so comfortable, accepted, and safe to be a very out lesbian amongst my teammates. I feel like a lot of great queer media has come from and continues to come from the gaming industry, so while it’s something that at times can be a little scary, I’m also incredibly happy and lucky to be here!
I wanna ask this question because I love knowing this about people. Which of your favorite foods would you want to put in our game?
I would say like breakfast tacos or a breakfast sandwich! I could eat breakfast food for literally every meal. I live in Texas, so breakfast tacos are a big thing here. Please put a breakfast taco with beans, eggs, bacon, and avocado in the game!
Where do you want to visit, real or fictional, and why?
I definitely want to not only visit, but live in, the Shire. In the Tolkien universe, but also, like, go to New Zealand and see the Shire set! Honestly if I got to go, I would probably cry. I’d be so emotional to be there because it’s the definition of my happy place. Someday my wife and I will make our own little piece of the Shire somewhere with our cats, an herb and veggies garden, and some chickens!
Perfect answer! Do you have a favorite queer movie, show, game?
Ahh, there’s so many but just off the top of my head some of my favorite movies would be But I’m A Cheerleader, The Birdcage, The Handmaiden, and Bound. For shows, my 2 favorites are Steven Universe and Our Flag Means Death. Both shows are so incredibly important to me, especially Steven Universe, because I wish I had a show like that while I was growing up. I probably would have come out sooner! Dragon Age is favorite game series that also holds a very special spot in my heart because they were the first games that allowed me to romance other girls as a female protagonist!
For our last question, would you like to share a moment of queer happiness that you’ve experienced in your life?
Hmmm, I think I’d like to give two experiences to answer this. The first would be when I came to terms with and accepted myself as a lesbian. Unfortunately, it’s very common for us to experience a lot of comphet (compulsory heterosexuality) and internalized lesbophobia, so it was a very freeing experience to finally be like, this is who I am, who I’ve always been, and I don’t have to pretend anymore.
The second experience would be when I got married to my amazing wife! When I was growing up, I would dream of getting married and starting a family, but it would make me cry because I believed I could only experience this with a man. Even being so young I knew I didn’t want that, but I was just resigned to the fact I would have to live my life knowing I didn’t love some guy I’d have to marry just to have these experiences. It was incredibly emotional, but amazing, to go through the process of realizing who I truly am and being able to marry my wife so I could start the life I never would have dreamed of before. I think little me would be so happy!
Interviews are edited for content and clarity.
