Lena Raine: TRANS
Is Lena Raine trans? Yes, she is. Lena Raine is a video game developer and composer. She founded Celeste, an indie game that has sold over one million copies in three years. Raine holds a master’s degree in Game Design from Carnegie Mellon University and an undergraduate degree in Music Composition & Theory from the University of Michigan. Raine’s early work includes the game Agents of Mayhem and the award-winning mobile augmented reality game, Find Your Way Home. She has released music on independent labels like Digital Translations, Turbo Recordings, Gnomic Music, and her own indie label Raine Force Productions. Along with composing for games, Raine has also composed for film, theater, and visual arts. Her music is frequently featured in award-winning indie films.
Is Lena Raine trans?
Lena Raine is a game developer who was born male and transitioned to female. After transitioning, she was in the middle of developing her first video game when she found out about celeste. Lena is now wondering if she should write celeste as a trans character or not. She admitted being a transgender woman before being a game developer.
“I was in the middle of developing my first video game and at that point, I had never thought of celeste. I started thinking about how to represent myself on the screen as a character, and how to present myself in my games. But I needed to see what other female developers were doing with celeste because it was something that I hadn’t seen before. So, the first title to come out of the gate in terms of celeste was Celeste for Nintendo Switch by Mattie Brice, and I started watching it. It showed me a version of celeste that I had never seen before. A celeste that you could play as both male and female. And my whole perspective changed, and I was like, ‘Oh my god! I could do that.’ At that moment, it just changed the view of myself in game development”.