Donna Williams Powell (born 10 December 1978) is a British

game designer Game design is the art of applying design and aesthetics to create a game for entertainment or for educational, exercise, or experimental purposes. Increasingly, elements and principles of game design are also applied to other interactions, in ...

and businesswoman. She is the co-founder of

Neopets ''Neopets'' is a virtual pet website. Users can own virtual pets ("Neopets") and buy virtual items for them using one of two virtual currencies. One currency, called Neopoints, can be earned within the site, and the other, Neocash, can eithe ...

and

Meteor Games Meteor Games was an independent online gaming studio formed in 2007 by Neopets founders Adam Powell and Donna Powell. According to a statement released by the company, its games will "cross the appeal of social networks, web-based casual games ...

Biography

Williams-Powell grew up in

Surrey Surrey () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South East England, bordering Greater London to the south west. Surrey has a large rural area, and several significant urban areas which form part of the Greater London Built-up Area. ...

where she met business partner and then-boyfriend Adam Powell while they were high school students. Williams-Powell attended the

University of Nottingham The University of Nottingham is a public university, public research university in Nottingham, United Kingdom. It was founded as University College Nottingham in 1881, and was granted a royal charter in 1948. The University of Nottingham belongs t ...

and from September 1997 to July 1999 she ran marketing and web design for Powell's company Shout! Advertising, which operated the third largest click-through program on the Internet by mid-1999. From July 1999 to early 2000, she worked at Speedyclick.com, handling website development and Internet advertising services.

Neopets

In September 1999, Williams-Powell created

with Powell. She led site management and operations, which included content planning and game design but later expanded to include managing product promotions and licensing. She expanded Neopets into previously-untapped offline markets, including console games, soft toys, fast-food promotions and

collectible card game A collectible card game (CCG), also called a trading card game (TCG) among other names, is a type of card game that mixes strategy game, strategic deck building elements with features of trading cards, introduced with ''Magic: The Gathering'' in ...

s. In 2003, she helped establish the partnership with

Beckett Media Beckett Media is a media company that specializes in coverage of sports card and sports memorabilia markets. The company was founded in 1984 by James Beckett as Beckett Publications. History James Beckett was a statistics professor before launch ...

to publish the bi-monthly ''Neopets: The Official Magazine''. Under Williams-Powell's management and product expansion, Neopets went from its initial launch to over 140 million accounts and 5 billion pageviews per month, and in 2005 was sold to

Viacom Viacom, an abbreviation of Video and Audio Communications, may refer to: * Viacom (1952–2006), a former American media conglomerate * Viacom (2005–2019), a former company spun off from the original Viacom * Viacom18, a joint venture between Par ...

for US$160 million.

Meteor Games

In 2008, she and Powell launched

, an independent game studio in West Hollywood, California.

' first project was

Twin Skies Meteor Games was an independent online gaming studio formed in 2007 by Neopets founders Adam Powell and Donna Powell. According to a statement released by the company, its games will "cross the appeal of social networks, web-based casual games ...

, with the first public demo of the game being shown at the

Penny Arcade Expo PAX (originally known as Penny Arcade Expo) is a series of gaming culture festivals involving tabletop, arcade, and video gaming. PAX is held annually in Seattle, Boston and Philadelphia in the United States; and Melbourne in Australia. PAX w ...

(PAX) in

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

. The game was originally planned to be in 3D, but was later changed to become a 2D Flash game. In December 2011, Meteor Games laid off 90% of its staff, shut down the Viacom-backed game ''Treasure Keepers'', and subsequently wound down all operations.

Personal life

Williams-Powell married Adam Powell in 2008.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Powell, Donna 1978 births Living people Alumni of the University of Nottingham British video game designers Neopets British game designers Women video game designers 21st-century British inventors