Artist Turned Innovator
- Sam Eldridge
- Jun 8, 2023
- 7 min read
Priscilla Firstenberg
Innovative, impactful, and ambitious: Those three adjectives describe Pie Trap Studios’ co-founder and art director, Priscilla Firstenberg. Priscilla and her partner, Chris Whitaker, founded the Seattle-based game studio and game development consultation company back in 2020. Both Firstenberg and Whitaker were dead-set on creating a game that had a positive real-world impact.
Pie Trap Studios isn’t Firstenberg’s first rodeo in the games industry. In fact, she’s a seasoned veteran artist with 18 years of experience to her name. Beyond that, she’s been passionate about art and gaming her entire life. Before Pie Trap Studios, before all of her environmental art and illustrations, and before she knew the games industry was a viable career path, Priscilla Firstenberg was just a young girl devoted to art.
“There was that kid that was always drawing at lunch or not paying attention during lessons because they were drawing in their notebook,” Firstenberg explained, “I was that kid.”
Priscilla has been an artist for as long as she can remember. Even as early as kindergarten, her attention to detail garnered her positive feedback from her peers. When Firstenberg got to high school, her decision to pursue art in college was solidified by an unlikely source.
“I got a D-minus in chemistry!” Priscilla laughed, “Being Filipino and female, it’s sort of locked in that you will be a nurse no matter what. And I didn’t want to be a nurse, but I felt like that was the destiny [I] had.”
Priscilla started to think of her future and as college applications loomed, she felt familial expectations and pressure building. Firstenberg said, “I needed to go to the biggest university and go to medical school and prepare for this life that I didn’t really want.”
That D-minus in chemistry put into perspective what Priscilla already knew: nursing wasn’t the path she wanted to take. After stressing about the liability to patients she would face by going to medical school, Firstenberg decided she would explore her other options in the medical field through a college fair. When she got there, however, the Art Institute of Seattle sang their alluring siren song via a standard college fair pitch, “They pitched well. They said that ‘Hey, did you know there’s a lot of art jobs out there that you can get?’”
Finally, she had a direction. The Art Institute of Seattle would allow her to follow her dreams, and she had direct evidence that doing so wouldn’t leave her unemployed for life, if she could only convince her parents.
“I had to essentially present a PowerPoint to my parents that I was going to go into art school, and my mom, who’s Filipino, was devastated. My dad was a lot more encouraging… but I had to talk [my mom] into going,” Priscilla said jokingly.
Once she enrolled, her good grades were all the evidence that Firstenberg’s parents needed that she was right where she needed to be.
Much like realizing she could pursue art, Priscilla found out about the games industry in Seattle by happenstance.
“I thought all games were made in Japan or something. You know, that’s where Sony and Nintendo are… I was completely wrong. I didn’t know that Seattle was a hub, but, you know, this is where Halo is made. This is where Nintendo’s headquarters is. This is where Microsoft makes the Xbox. I was oblivious to all of that, and that’s where all of the graduates were going, so I was like, ‘wow, okay, this is an option,’” Priscilla said. With many of her courses interweaving video game creation into the curriculum, the games industry seemed like a perfect fit. So, when Firstenberg graduated from college, she landed a job with Oberon Media in 2006, a now-defunct multi-platform casual games company.
“Casual games– I don’t think they mean the same thing now as what they did back then. Casual games back then were called ‘mom games’… like hidden object games, Bejeweled games,” Priscilla said.
She spent her days as an illustrator working on Oberon Media’s first title of the successful Dream Day Wedding franchise, Dream Day Wedding. Firstenberg was responsible for creating the backdrops to levels within the game and ensuring that all the hidden objects blended with the final level design. After Priscilla left Oberon Media, she bounced around as a contract artist at other game studios, such as Microsoft, ArenaNet, and Camouflaj, mostly doing environment art.
“Honestly, when it comes to a development team, environment is significantly larger than the character team or concept team usually. And when you’re scraping by trying to find work, those are usually what’s available to you,” Firstenberg said.
That was Priscilla’s life for a decade, finding steady work until the game finished development, followed by freelance. 2D transitioned to 3D, the games industry experienced highs and lows, and through it all, Priscilla Firstenberg endured and thrived, but not without some struggles.
“Starting out in my career, games were still for boys, and making games were for men. As a woman, I did feel like I had to work twice as hard to have equal standing with my colleagues. I did a lot of free overtime, a lot of crunching, just for someone to say, ‘Yeah, you’re cool. I would be cool with working with you again.’ Priscilla explained, “I think I got by pretty well, as I was perceived as ‘one of the guys.’ I was typically one of the few women at the company all the time. My first job, there was me and one other woman and our producer, but then there’s the other 70 guys that work there. And then my next job, it was me and another woman and like 200 guys that worked there.”
Thankfully, she feels the industry has gotten better, and credits a lot of the change to her and her male colleagues that weren’t afraid to step up to call out the wrong behavior. “I feel it’s important that men understand that women can’t fix the problem alone and that we need allies. Typically, it’s men that can hold other men accountable for bad behavior. A sexist man won’t care what a woman thinks, but is significantly fragile when they think their standing with other men is lowered by their poor behavior towards women,” Priscilla said.
Working for game studios led Priscilla to meet Chris Whitaker, her current partner. After both Firstenberg and Whitaker were laid off from a game company, they began to hang out.
“We were talking a lot about life goals and things like that, and we wanted to make a game essentially that we could call ours,” Priscilla said. She knew she wanted to explore making impactful games, taking inspiration from an experience with her grandmother. However, with her and Chris having full-time jobs, they struggled to find the time to make the game a reality.
It was Chris who proposed making a company first. He convinced Priscilla to quit her job, so they could make the game. “Chris had to talk me into trying, like, ‘Hey, let’s make a company and get this game out of our system. It’ll completely fail, and then we can go back to our normal job lives.’,” Priscilla said, “I’m not a big risk taker, honestly… but I just grew tired of helping other people make their dreams come true.”
Accordingly, Pie Trap Studios was born. Priscilla and Chris both quit their jobs and spread the news to their friends that they were finally taking the big first step of making a company together. In turn, their friends provided them with connections, giving them stable client services work to help fund their game.
Today, as art director and co-founder of Pie Trap Studios, Priscilla wears several hats, from leading her team of around twenty to being a creative director for Pie Trap Studio’s first and upcoming title, Forage Friends.
“I would describe myself as the [head] of a locomotive train… I have nine carts behind me, basically, and I have to constantly make sure that the rails are clear ahead at all times because otherwise there’s going to be a crash,” Firstenberg said.
This dedication and leadership culminate into the reason why she and Chris started the company in the first place, to make a difference through games. Priscilla prides herself on the fact that she cares about her team. Her face lights up when she talks about them, and this energy continues when she speaks about Forage Friends, a mobile game with lofty fitness goals.
“Forage Friends is a personal project that has gone rogue. Basically, I’ve struggled with my health all my life. There are times when I’m doing great and I’m eating well, working out, losing fat, gaining muscle. You know, blood tests are good… and then sh*t happens,” Priscilla said. “Life throws you curveballs…it happens to everyone and you’re doing everything you can to just keep yourself together. And so you just can’t be bothered with looking at your macros and your calories and all this stuff. So for years, I’ve been trying to, like, crack the code of my own health. Basically, how do I manage it when I’m feeling down? That’s the biggest thing. I know what to do when I’m feeling good, but when I’m feeling bad, how do I overcome that? And I noticed that games were one of the things that we tend to gravitate to for a lot of people. Like, when I’m depressed, I game, and it makes me feel better.”
Firstenberg took to researching other health apps first but noticed the ones that were based around game mechanics were severely lacking.
“There just wasn’t really anything out there that I felt was robust, that felt like an actual game, they were just sort of health apps with tacked on XP points,” Priscilla said. This was the impact that she was looking for; an app that’s a real game that motivates you to continue your fitness journey. Taking inspiration from cozy games like Stardew Valley, Pokemon GO, and Boyfriend Dungeon, Priscilla and her team aim to make a game that turns good habit-building into the in-game currency that can be used in the game. Pie Trap Studios has plans to incorporate a cast of (romanceable!) companions your character can converse with to help build good habits, a farming mechanic, and even learn about gardening in real life.
Priscilla claims she isn’t a risk-taker, but with her goals being positive impact and innovation through video games, it’s clear that risk is second nature to her. She risked her future to pursue art in college, despite what her family thought, and banked her entire career on creating Pie Trap Studios. Maybe she doesn’t call herself a risk-taker because, to her, these things aren’t risks. To Priscilla Firstenberg, the need to create a game that will make a difference isn’t a risk, but a necessity.
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