Kim Swift - Swift Portal

Kim Swift (born 1983) is an American video game designer best known for her work at Valve with games such as Portal and Left 4 Dead. Swift was featured by Fortune as one of "30 Under 30" influential figures in the video game industry. She was described in Mental Floss as one of the most recognized women in the industry and by WIRED as "an artist that will push the medium forward".

Career

A graduate of DigiPen, Kim Swift and a group of her fellow graduates developed Narbacular Drop, a portal-based game that was later presented to Valve, which led to Gabe Newell personally offering to hire them so that they could create the critically acclaimed game Portal. Kim Swift was both the leader of the Portal team as well as a level designer. She was credited along with writer Erik Wolpaw in Portal's Game Developers Choice Awards for design, innovation, and game of the year.

Besides Portal, Swift has been involved in other Valve projects, most notably Left 4 Dead and its sequel, Left 4 Dead 2, where she also played a leading role in development.

In December 2009, Swift left Valve to join Airtight Games. There, in cooperation with Square Enix, she led the team that developed Quantum Conundrum.

Amazon announced in April 2014 that they had brought Swift in to help build games in their internal studio. Swift described her role as senior designer for as yet undisclosed projects. In January 2017, Electronic Arts announced they have hired Swift as a design director within their Motive Studios for a yet-specified project.