Tragic news hit the Los Angeles newspapers tonight, as a longtime game industry veteran Brigitte Burdine was identified as the victim of a hit-and-run accident. Burdine, age 48, was a veteran of the game industry who owned her own voice acting and casting company. She has worked with some of the largest companies in the the business, including EA, Sony, Microsoft, and Blizzard. According to her IMDB profile, she was currently working on a Mortal Kombat game and had just finished up a voiceover training workshop on December 20th.
Brigitte was hit by a dark sedan early December 29th at 1:45am, and at this time the driver of the car who struck her and then fled the scene has not been found or identified. She was thought to be coming home from a date with her boyfriend at a hamburger restaurant.
A commenter on the LA Weekly article had the following to say about Burdine:
“This is a huge loss. I met Brigitte three years ago, working on Guitar Hero, and she stood out as one of the most positive, hard working, wonderful people I have met. Working with her was fun, something you looked forward to, something that was full of laughter. I just talked to her last month, and she was a bright and bubbly as the first day I met her. Terrible.”
With women being a clear minority in the game industry, it is such a shame to lose such a wonderful asset and role model. We applaud Brigitte Burdine for all of her hard work on some of our favorite games, and our condolences goes out to her friends and family for their immense loss.
Brigitte Burdine, Top Video Game Director, Killed By Hit-And-Run Driver In Playa Del Rey (LA Weekly)
The comments about this on Kotaku are pretty depressing…