Kiki Wolfkill

Kiki Wolfkill (born 7 July 1969) is an American video game developer and an executive at 343 Industries. Wolfkill served as an executive producer on Halo 4 and Halo: The Master Chief Collection, and currently oversees Halo as it appears in other media.[1] Before working in the video game industry, she was a race car driver in college.[2]

Kiki Wolfkill
BornJuly 7, 1969
Seattle Washington
EducationChinese History, Broadcast Journalism
OccupationExecutive Producer
EmployerMicrosoft
Known forVideo Game Development
Notable work
Halo 4, Halo: The Master Chief Collection

Personal life

Early life

Wolfkill was born in Seattle, Washington. She moved at a young age to New Hope, Pennsylvania, where she was raised on a farm. Wolfkill's parents encouraged her to explore and be adventurous. Her father was a race car driver, so she was around cars and motor sports in the early stages of her life. Her father taught her and her brother how to race by taking them to the race track every weekend.[3]

Adult life

Wolfkill attended the University of Washington, specifically the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, where she majored in Chinese history. She later went back to get a degree in Broadcast Journalism.[4] During college, she was a race car driver in a local league.[2] She started racing in 1993. During this year she placed second in SCCA Club Racing. In 1994 she won the SCCA Northwest Region ITS Championship. A couple years later in 1996 she started participating in road racing competitions in the SCCA and Porsche Club Racing circles.[5] Some of her more notable races were at the 1999 Women's Global GT Series. She competed in 6 races and ended up getting 5th place. She secured this win using the Panoz GT car. She continued racing in 2000 with the First Racing team at 2000 BMG Motorola Cup. She participated in one race and got 81st place overall.[6] Wolfkill also taught racing at many schools while she was in college.[2]

Career

After college, Wolfkill interned at multi-purpose computer software company Asymetrix. Following that, she worked for Microsoft Encarta, which was Microsoft's digital encyclopedia. After those, she began to work for Microsoft in the development team to create computer games. Her success there led her to begin her work on Halo. 343 industries was created from Microsoft to focus on the Halo game series. Wolfkill was not only executive producer of both Halo 4 and Halo: The Master Chief Collection,[1] but she was also given the leading role of the Halo Franchise. Both games did very well with Halo 4 getting high critic reviews with aggregate review site Metacritic giving it an 87 out of 100 based on 87 reviews[7] and selling 3.7 million copies within the first day of release,[8] and Halo: The Master Chief Collection also getting generally high critic reviews with aggregating review site Metacritic giving it an 85 out of 100 based on 69 reviews[9] and in the first day of release being in the top five of the popular video game distribution service Steam.[10] Millions were playing it on a regular basis and even 13 million people watched online the 2017 Halo Championship. With the growing popularity of Halo 4, a controversy arose. During Xbox live, sexist comments were made, which go against the Xbox Live Code of Conduct. In addition, women playing the game were insulted and harassed based on their gender from men who were also playing the game. Wolfkill and colleague Bonnie Ross, who is the head of Halo 4 developing, both spoke out on the matter, condemning sexism.[11] Moreover, Halo 4 threatened to give players a lifetime ban from the game and the Xbox Live Network if sexist comments were made.[12]

Wolfkill has been working in the gaming industry for 20 years now. Wolfkill's experience with racing led her to become one of the artists for the racing game studio, later becoming an art lead and art director after continuing to work for Microsoft.[4] Wolfkill was an art director for the Project Gotham series, which is exclusively on Xbox.[13] Wolfkill's success has been recognized. In 2013 Fortune magazine named her one of the top 10 Most Powerful Women in Gaming.[14] The Tribeca Film Festival, which is planned for 2021, will feature a variety of games, some that are competing to win the Tribeca Games Award.[15] An advisory board was recently created to help the decision with the award, as well as make sure the festival highlights new and up and coming video games that will be introduced. Wolfkill is part of the advisory board, along with Hideo Kojima, Sam Lake, Bing Gordon, and Geoff Keighley.[16]

References
  1. Aubrey, Dave (2019-04-18). "343's Kiki Wolfkill: We've Had Growing Pains over the Years as a Studio, Now We're Excited for What's Coming to the Halo IP". Wccftech. Retrieved 2020-10-28.
  2. "Meet Kiki Wolfkill, one of Fast Company's 100 Most Creative People 2017". Fast Company. Retrieved 2020-11-10.
  3. Beresford, Trilby (2016-09-28). "Meet Kiki Wolfkill: Head of Transmedia at 343 Industries Game Studio". Medium. Retrieved 2020-11-10.
  4. Beresford, Trilby (2016-09-28). "Meet Kiki Wolfkill: Head of Transmedia at 343 Industries Game Studio". Medium. Retrieved 2020-10-28.
  5. http://www.washingtontimes.com, The Washington Times. "Wolfkill slays competition". The Washington Times. Retrieved 2020-11-25.
  6. "Kiki Wolfkill | Racing career profile | Driver Database". www.driverdb.com. Retrieved 2020-11-10.
  7. "Halo 4". Metacritic. Retrieved 2020-11-11.
  8. Boorstin, Julia (2012-11-12). "Microsoft's 'Halo 4' Sets New Record". www.cnbc.com. Retrieved 2020-11-11.
  9. "Halo: The Master Chief Collection". Metacritic. Retrieved 2020-11-11.
  10. "Halo Master Chief Collection pulls in 3 million players during Reach's launch week". PCGamesN. Retrieved 2020-11-11.
  11. Johnston, Casey (2012-11-01). "Good riddance: Halo 4 creators threaten permabans for sexist comments". Ars Technica. Retrieved 2020-11-10.
  12. "Halo 4 gets tough on sexist players". Engadget. Retrieved 2020-11-10.
  13. Staff, Ars (2018-04-28). "Life in (virtual) pit lane: The war stories of video game car design". Ars Technica. Retrieved 2020-11-10.
  14. "Kiki Wolfkill (2018)". Cre8con - Portland Creative Conference. Retrieved 2020-11-10.
  15. Spangler, Todd (2020-09-24). "Tribeca Film Festival Elevates Games for 2021, Opens Submissions for First Games Award". Variety. Retrieved 2020-11-10.
  16. Kerr, Chris. "Tribeca launches inaugural Games Award, assembles high-profile advisory board". www.gamasutra.com. Retrieved 2020-11-10.
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