Jessica Curry, film music and video game music composer

Jessica Curry (b. 1973) is a British composer known for composing the soundtrack to Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, which won a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award for best music. She also presented a radio series called High Score on video game music with Classic FM in 2017, and in 2019 began presenting the weekly show Sound of Gaming with BBC Radio 3. Curry is a co-founder of The Chinese Room game studio, though she has since left her role with the studio citing personal health issues as well as negative treatment from big-name companies in the gaming industry.

Her original announcement post is no longer available, but Polygon cited in an article from the time that:

“I’ve had journalists assuming I’m Dan’s [personal assistant], I have been referenced as ‘Dan Pinchbeck’s wife’ in articles, publishers on first meeting have automatically assumed that my producer is my boss just because he’s a man, one magazine would only feature Dan as studio head and wouldn’t include me. When Dan has said ‘Jess is the brains of the operation’ people have knowingly chuckled and cooed that it’s nice of a husband to be so kind about his wife. I don’t have enough paper to write down all of the indignities that I’ve faced.”

“This is not a rejection of [Pinchbeck] but of the society that still can’t cope with the fact that a woman might just be as talented as the man she shares her life with.”1

Inspired by International Women’s Day posts highlighting gender pay gaps and industry discriminations, in 2021 women employees at The Chinese Room created a tradition of “Women of TCR” meetings to celebrate each other and discuss needed industry improvements. To address issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion in the game industry, the #RaiseTheGame pledge and website was launched where companies can make a visible statement about their commitment to changing the game industry culture.2

On March 7, 2022 in a #RaiseTheGame post, the Women of TCR wrote, “We are lucky to work for a company where all issues that are brought up are investigated, and a range of potential improvement options are offered. This is the reason why our meetings are always a celebratory, creative space where we can bring up our ideas, big and small, with the awareness that we will be heard. It’s a rare and precious instance in our male dominated industry—the solidarity we have with each other contributes to a tight, inspiring, and cohesive work environment.”3

Footnotes

  1. Charlie Hall, “In a Heartbreaking Letter, Jessica Curry Says Goodbye to The Chinese Room,” Polygon, https://www.polygon.com/2015/10/10/9493789/in-a-heartbreaking-letter-jessica-curry-says-goodbye-to-the-chinese.
  2. #RaiseTheGame, https://www.raisethegame.com/.
  3. The Chinese Room Communications Team & Women of TCR, “International Women’s Day 2022: Women of TCR,” March 7, 2022, https://www.raisethegame.com/news/international-women-s-day-2022-women-of-tcr.

Image credits: (Header) Screenshot of The Chinese Room Communications Team & Women of TCR from the “International Women’s Day 2022: Women of TCR,” #RaiseTheGame, March 7, 2022, https://www.raisethegame.com/news/international-women-s-day-2022-women-of-tcr; Colin Davison, “Jessica Curry,” CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jessica_curry.jpg.