Her current video game project is called The Girl Who Sees, which showcases Filipino history and culture set during the Japanese occupation in World War II. The game was featured on large news networks, including NPR and Newsweek. She now works as a video producer at Bethesda Softworks, which has made popular video games like Fallout and The Elder Scrolls.ĭatu has designed and worked on multiple games, including Factitious, a game that tests your sense to distinguish real news from fake news. “You will always be conscious about what makes you different, but you have to realize that what makes you different makes you special.” So when people see me in a room, I think immediately the respect is there because people understand from the get-go that it’s such a rarity, that this person must be talented in order to make it.” Difference makes you specialĮven if you’re a minority in your field, Datu says you can use your unique background to your advantage and bring a different perspective. “If you see a woman in a newsroom in a male-dominated field, she had to work twice as hard to get there. “I have greater emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills because I had to learn to charm my way into getting things, and that’s something as a woman that we learn really fast,” she said. Having to work extra hard as a woman and ethnic minority puts a lot of pressure on her to succeed and try harder, she said. “But what I’ve learned going forward is that people may have initial misgivings about you.” “I definitely don’t fall into what your perception of a video editor or game designer or video producer would look like,” she said. Her freelance gigs led to a news editor job for a social media show on Al Jazeera. Internship, freelance work furthers careerĭatu went on to graduate with a degree in film, then later interned for an international news show and worked as a freelance video editor. But when she started working part time at the university equipment room, she realized that pursuing work in film was an option. Her best subject in school was English, so when she moved for college, she planned to major in communications. More: Siblings open salon to follow in mother's footsteps More: Young Guam filmmaker creates films only with iPhone “Growing up, the only kind of career options that seemed available were like lawyer, doctor, teacher, and I’m just really bad at science and math,” she said, laughing. for college, and has lived in the area since.

After graduating from Academy of Our Lady of Guam in 2007, she moved to Washington D.C. With a master’s degree in game design, and video editing credits to her name at Al Jazeera and ESPN, Cherisse Datu has nearly a decade of experience and advice to share with Guam’s youths to find opportunities in fields they might otherwise not know about.ĭatu, 28, was born in the Philippines and raised on Guam. A Guam-raised game designer is creating representation for Filipinos in the video game industry, with an indie Filipino fantasy-adventure game.

Filipino indie game the girl who sees