The Charisma+2 journalists at Kombo For Women was privileged enough to catch up with one of the most inspiring women in gaming, Corrinne Yu.



If you don't know who Corrinne Yu is or what she has done, you are in for a special treat. Corrinne Yu is Principal Programmer at Microsoft's Halo team, and first party Halo Lead. She is the first and only female Technical Lead of the whole Microsoft Game Studios. She has worked as Director of Technology of several 3D game companies. She is the first female founding member of Microsoft's Direct 3D Advisory Board and Graphics Advisory Board. Besides gaming, she had programmed on the Space Shuttle Project at Rockwell International California. She had designed and conducted accelerator experiments at LINAC in California and the accelerator at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Her nuclear physics research had won her a national award from the U.S. Department of Energy. She volunteered time in the past to advise on CUDA, visual computer and GPU simulation at NVidia. She remains active on the GAB and continues to volunteer time to review the designs of new Direct 3Ds. Check out this interview with Corrinne Yu, Halo Team Principal Programmer.

C+2 kombo: What is the first programming language you used?
Corrinne Yu: Fortran 77 is the first programming language I used professionally on the Space Shuttle project.

C+2 kombo: How have programming languages evolved since then?
Corrinne Yu: There are tiny improvements that trickled down to pragmatic languages I use every day. Type trait in C++ is an enhancement that can allow us to skip expensive constructor calls in our own code if we so choose. Lamba expression is an interesting method to write compact code, but I am still exploring its practicality. Restrict and noalias are invaluable pointer annotations that compile performance critical functions into fewer instructions. I am interested in little things like that and how to exploit them for performance.

C+2 kombo: What kind of games do you play?
Corrinne Yu: Work has been so busy the last games I played through were Halo 3, Metal Gear Solid 4 and Brothers In Arms. I am ashamed to admit that my regular gaming has been Shredder Chess.

C+2 kombo: When did you start gaming?
Corrinne Yu: The first game I played was Lemonade Stand on Apple 2.

C+2: kombo What inspired you to work in the game industry?
Corrinne Yu: I started to create games before there were many profitable game companies. I was grateful that Sierra Yosemite became a successful game company. I was living in Oakhurst California and was able to take advantage of it. Co-workers like Frogger programmer John Harris and managers like King's Quest lead programmer Chris Iden certainly were inspiring in their love for the industry.

C+2 kombo: What is the hardest part of your job?
Corrinne Yu: Competing against brilliant 3D engine companies is challenging, but exhilarating.

C+2 kombo:What were your favorite games to work on?
Corrinne Yu: I enjoyed programming Treasure Mathstorm, Anachronox, Brothers In Arms, Borderlands, and Aliens: Colonial Marines. My current favorite is the game I am working on at the Halo team.

C+2 kombo: As far as competitive gaming is concerned, what can we see with the future of Halo?
Corrinne Yu: Immersive player interaction will play a big part. Xbox live is already leading in competitive player interaction. I expect Xbox live to play a larger and more immersive role. In the past single game match was too much of the primary and only story of the competition experience. In the future I expect games and competition to take place across more than one game and even outside of the game. I want competition stories to continue when players are away from Xbox set tops. In the airport I see players packing Xbox set tops with them. My first thought is it is a shame they won't be playing while flying. In the future I expect to see a world of competitive players immersed in our games around the clock.

C+2 kombo: What does your husband Kenneth do?
Corrrinne Yu Kenneth Scott is the Senior Art Director of the Halo team. He was the Art Director of Doom 3 and the Art Director of id software.

C+2 kombo: Do you two spend much time working together?
Corrinne Yu: Kenneth and I spend a lot of time working together. He is making an incredibly intricate Halo creature now and I am looking forward to loading this onto my console development kit.

C+2 kombo: If so, what is it like working with your husband?
Corrinne Yu: Kenneth is a phenomenal co-worker and art director. I, as a 3D engine programmer, am lucky to have him as an art director. John Carmack was lucky to have him. I am so fortunate and grateful to work with our Halo studio creative team.

C+2 kombo: Do you ever struggle with any personal issues from home out of the workplace?
Corrinne Yu: Neither of us is the stereotypical house "wife" of the family. We would be glad to play games and program games and create game art all week. We can become quite lax with our home maintenance. Home maintenance is just not intriguing or challenging enough for either of us. We wish we could convince the other spouse to be a house "wife" once in a while. One of us ought to be a better housekeeper. I just get too engrossed in engine programming.

C+2 kombo: Do you personally program the games yourself?
Corrinne Yu: I personally program the games myself. I seldom veer far from engine development.

C+2 kombo: Do you act in a management and advisory role?
Corrinne Yu: I am in an advisory role in some of the projects. I am very deeply involved in programming in at least one of the projects.

C+2 kombo: Has it always been this way?
Corrinne Yu: I have been in management and directorship for a very long time now. I was Lead Programmer of the Prey engine and Lead Systems Programmer on the 3D military game Spec Ops. We built some worthwhile pieces of technology with those engines, especially Prey. I was Director of Technology of ION Storm, which put out some niche games like Anachronox and Deus Ex. I was Director of Technology of Gearbox Software. I enjoy engine programming very much and often program directly with the team.

C+2 kombo: You are one of the individuals who came up with the concept of 3D gaming before it was around. Can you tell us a bit about how you came up with that idea and your involvement in the game industry's transition from 2D to 3D?
Corrinne Yu: I was big a Dungeons and Dragons and Wiz-War player. One of my first programs was to keep track of D&D games and Wiz-War games. Wiz-War especially lent itself to represent itself in 3D perspective graphics. 3D vanishing point projection just seemed such an obvious interesting thing to program. I remembered doing 3D engine demonstrations for Sierra owner Ken Williams. He was aghast at the absurd effort people like me put in when he could hire artists to paint beautiful backdrop paintings and rasterize these into low resolution image graphics. GT (Good Times) Interactive was one of the forward thinking publishers that see the good in us.

C+2 kombo:What message or bit of advice can you offer to aspiring females to get their foot into the game industry?
Corrinne Yu: You have more talent and potential than you give yourselves credit for. Diversity as a first class citizen is not merely about race or gender or creed. It is diversity of creativity and intellect and technological innovation. If we use only the same people and the same kind of people to create games , our technology and our games will stagnate. This industry needs fresh ideas and novel insights. Any of you have the chance and the potential to do great things and create innovative games as well or better than game industry veterans. I welcome your talent and your accomplishment.

The Charisma+2 journalists at Kombo For Women would like to thank Corrinne for taking this time out of her busy schedule to write such an informative, impassioned and encouraging response to all of our questions.