Kim Swift

	This article is a stub. Maybe you can help by expanding it.

Kim Swift
Biographical information
Born	c. 1983
Title(s)	Level designer Project lead
Time period	July 2005 - November 2009
Nickname(s)	Tactical Socks

 

Kim Swift is a level designer who worked at Valve from July 2005 to November 2009. She is best known for her work on Portal, which was based on her student project Narbacular Drop.

Biography

Swift attended DigiPen Institute of Technology. As part of her senior game project, she took part in the making of the video game Narbacular Drop, as part of the team Nuclear Monkey Software. Following Narbacular Drop’s release, most of Nuclear Monkey Software was hired by Valve to adapt Narbacular Drop’s core mechanics (i.e. its portal technology) to the Source engine, eventually leading to the creation of Portal, for which she worked as project lead and level designer.

Following the release of Portal, she received the "Innovation", "Game of the Year" (both with Erik Wolpaw) and "Game Design" (with Realm Lovejoy and Paul Graham) awards at the 2008 Game Developers Choice Awards.

In early December 2009, Swift left Valve for independent developer Airtight Games to work as project lead on the video game Quantum Conundrum, a higher position relative to her job at Valve.

Work for Portal

• Aperture Science Weighted Storage Cube
• GLaDOS
• Level design

Selected gameography

• Narbacular Drop (2005)
• Half-Life 2: Episode One (2006)
• Half-Life 2: Episode Two (2007)
• Portal (2007)

External links

• Narbacular Drop - Interview
• The Portal Interview
• Video - Our Journey From Narbacular Drop To Portal
• Video - Kim Swift Left 4 Dead 2 TGS 2009 Interview