If you’ve recently watched the Netflix documentary series “High Score,” then chances are you might be familiar with this week’s story of a man who took his passion for video games and made a career out of it, bringing a level of representation not often seen in the digital media at that time. Gordon Bellamy used not only his Harvard engineering background, but his creativity and determination to a fledgling franchise that has now become the iconic face of football, the Madden Football Series.

During the early days of the video game craze, there were few sports games that players had access to. This was even more so when it came to seeing players that were similar to themselves. Even the famed Tecmo Bowl of the Nintendo Entertainment System had players who all looked the same and played the same. When the Washington, DC born Bellamy joined video game designer Electronic Arts in the 1990s, he began to embark on an innovative technique that created players to look just like their NFL counterparts. It truly brought the Madden video game franchise to a whole new level, prompting EA to use their now famous slogan, “If it’s in the game, it’s in the game.”

As a result of Bellamy’s ingenuity, it resulted in both Madden and the Sega Genesis console, which was in a heated battle with Nintendo for video game supremacy, launching all time records in sales at the time. In addition to his groundbreaking work for EA, he went on to become an executive consultant for MTV, creating the highly popular Spike TV Video Game Awards and GameTrailers TV. From there, he has gone on to serve on designing games with THQ and Activision. He has also served as Chairman of the Board for the International Game Developers Association.

It is his work with Madden that demonstrated how his contributions to the digital world gave young black players something to be proud of when they turned on their consoles. “For marginalized people,” Bellamy states in the documentary, “a lot of energy is devoted to justifying your existence in spaces.” He also discussed in his story about how being gay alienated him from playing sports in real life, although he did get an opportunity to fulfill that dream as well playing for the soccer team the San Francisco Spikes.

Bellamy was recently honored at Games for Change with the prestigious Vanguard Award for his contributions as a video game leader and LGBTQ+ champion.