Cammie Middleton has lent her talented voice to our clients' games since 2019, and her impressive credits include Jam City/Netflix's Wild Things and Super Gaming's Jane Austen Solitaire: Pride & Prejudice. She's also a jazz and blues vocalist, a stand-up comedian, and an actor for both stage and screen. Cammie and our founder Lisa Brunette go waaaaay back, the two of them having met in the 1990s through their work as volunteers for an environmental group. Cammie was kind enough to share her thoughts on work, laughter, and a unique get-rich-quick scheme (involving duck-sized horses)!

What do you enjoy most about being a voice actor?

It is one of the few professions where I can legally do my job while wearing pajamas and no makeup. That's just heaven!

What's your favorite thing about doing VO for games?

There's something intimate about doing VO for video games. The player and the characters become one. They have this relationship that becomes embedded in the game itself. You kind of leave a part of yourself––or a piece of you gets to live––inside the game. Forever. It's pretty neat!

What's your VO "dream role"?

I would love to be the voice of God... Morgan can't do it forever!

How do you like to spend your personal time?

I like to spend my personal time laughing. I don't care where or how, but laughter keeps me young and happy. It reflects in my heart, my work, and onto others around me.

Would you rather fight a horse-sized duck or 25 duck-sized horses?

Oh my! 25 duck- sized horses! But I would fight them with laughter. Really? How cute is that? I know I would definitely be rich, because every little kid would want to have their own duck-sized horse! Giddy up, Quackers!

What's your favorite movie or TV show? Why?

My new favorite movie is Everything Everywhere All At Once. It's like someone cracked my brain open, recorded my thoughts, and turned it into a soundtrack. Filmmaking at its best!

Sara Hardin and Dexter Woltman posing for a 'sweet' portrait.

On January 22, the St. Louis Game Developers Co-op celebrated a long-awaited in-person event with a holiday party at a local St. Louis brewery. The St. Louis Game Developer Co-op is a great resource for local game developers looking for fellowship and network opportunities. In addition to fostering a welcoming place for game industry folks to collaborate, they also signal-boost small creators and serve as an educational source for developers and creatives across all gaming mediums.

Dexter Woltman and Sara Hardin attended as Brunette Games representatives and enjoyed an evening socializing with local game-industry professionals and hopefuls. In addition to local game developers, designers, and programmers, there were a couple of games available to demo. Sara and Dexter had a great time trying out an in-development project from Shiny Dolphin Games called Zap Blastum: Galactic Tactics, a top-down, twin stick shooter.

The event took place at Earthbound Beer, a well-known St. Louis brewery.

To top off the event, the organizers acknowledged participants' released games from 2022 and commemorated their achievements with patches. Brunette Games repped with an impressive list of released titles featuring our narrative work over the last few years:

Jane Austen Solitaire, Super Gaming (2020)
Disney Frozen Adventures, Jam City (2020)
Crime Mysteries: Find Objects, G5 Entertainment (2020)
Ava's Manor: A Solitaire Story, Uken Games/Mighty Kingdom (2020)
Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff, Jam City (2021)
Family Guy: Another Freakin' Mobile Game, Jam City (2021)
Animal Island, Gear/Tilting Point (2021)
Kingdoms of Heckfire, A Thinking Ape (2021)
Cooking Confidential, Archosaur (2021)
Magnum Quest, Tuyoo Games (2021)
Jellipop Match, MicroFun (2022)
Merge Mansion, Metacore/Supercell (2022)
City Escape, Sparkling Society (2022)
M&M'S Adventure, Gear/Tilting Point (2022)
Mergeland: Alice's Adventure, NewBornTown (2022)
Jigsaw Puzzle Villa, ZiMAD (2022)
Solitaire Grand Harvest, Playtika (2022)
Cash Journey, Jumbo (2022)

These milestone patches were awarded to local developers.

As a St. Louis-based company, participating in St. Louis Game Developer Co-op events is just one way Brunette Games engages with the local community. We frequently hold in-person meetings and workshops at the Mid-County Chamber of Commerce, through which Brunette Games has supported small, local businesses for years via continuous membership. The Chamber has shown its own support for Brunette Games by featuring us in a Business Spotlight and a Founder Feature on Lisa Brunette.

We look forward to attending future St. Louis Game Developer Co-op events, where we can congregate - and commiserate - with the area's best and brightest in the gaming field! 

Lisa Brunette was named an ironSource top Medium contributor of 2022 after her article, "The top 5 mistakes game mystery writers make — and how to avoid them" became one of LevelUp's most-loved pieces of the year.

In her article, Lisa pulls from both game-industry and book-publishing experience to identify the most common pitfalls writers face when crafting a mystery for a game. She uses examples from popular mobile games to illustrate her points and offers advice for navigating the complex work that is creating a successful mystery story (a feat that can easily baffle even the most adept writers).

Here's an excerpt:

Whether it’s the vaudeville relic of the mustache-twirling villain or the über-perfect heroine, painting with too broad a brush is tempting when you’re writing game mysteries. But some of the best-known characters in the genre are… complicated. The PI who’s battling her own drug addiction while trying to track down her brother’s killer. A boy who’s pushed to murder his own father in a fit of wild self-preservation. Maybe even the perpetrator of a justified revenge murder. We want to know more about people whose lives occupy the grey areas. The ones in mere black or white? We’ve seen ’em all before.

Our other contributions to ironSource Medium include Dexter Woltman's article, "Punchline: How to use humor to bridge player connection," and Sara Hardin's article, "Who Goes There? The Importance of Writing Distinct Character Voices."

Fans of Brunette Games can expect more industry articles from the team in the future. "We've enjoyed a wonderful partnership with ironSource LevelUp over the past year," says Lisa. "Both our studio and their company share a commitment to furthering knowledge in the game industry, so we're a natural fit. It's awesome to see that readers have responded well, and I'm excited to have the Brunette Games team continue to share our expertise in articles planned for 2023."