centipede is a video game that I
programmed for Atari
I was one of maybe a handful of women in
America who had a simply language
experience at all
I don't want history to die untold I'm
Donna Bailey and I was the software
developer software engineer on centipede
I don't know what the creator really is
I always felt that I was a programmer it
feels weird to say that I was a pioneer
but I guess I was a pioneer I was living
in Santa Barbara and I had a best friend
who owned a record store so the
pretenders had their first album that
there was one track that I really grew
to like it and the title is space
invaders and I tapped him on the arm and
said what is the space invaders and he
said space invaders is this amazing
video game and they said what is a video
game so he picked me up and drove me
down to the grass shack my friend Phil
gave me a quarter I put the quarter in
and things started moving and I got
killed three times Bam Bam Bam I
couldn't tell what to do I couldn't tell
what I was but when I could
was that the display of space invaders
looked a lot like the display that I
worked with Aegean on the Cadillac so I
thought I don't want a program for a GM
anymore I want a program for Atari
discover a world beyond your wildest
dreams
discover Atari I knew that I wasn't
nearly as technically experienced as
many of the guys that I worked with but
I knew that I was one of maybe a handful
of women in America who had had assembly
language experience at all and I felt
like that made me one of the most
qualified women in America to be hired
by Atari to try to make a game
so we're gonna go to Z 82 retro arcade
in Sherwood I haven't been to an arcade
in 20 years maybe
knowing that she was one of the first
female programmers is really awesome
because I'm an up-and-coming female in a
industry that is dominantly male I'm not
your typical female I like working with
electronics I like building things
that's me some people did and some
people didn't want to hire a female
designer I always say it's the closest
to working in a frat that I'm never
gonna get to their method of getting me
started was here's your cubicle they'll
make a game and I didn't have a game
idea Atari would take people on
brainstorming and there was one idea
described in one sentence as a multi
segmented insect crawls onto the screen
and is shot by the player
it didn't seem bad to shoot a bug and so
that was the one that that I picked and
and that was the beginning of it after
you do something people think that you
knew what you were doing but we had no
idea we were just doing stuff and some
of it worked out some of it
centipedes and it came out sort of
because I don't like spiders this that's
a lot of how that happens and and the
spider in that is very cartoonish and
mischievous and irritating really and I
like I like you know having my way over
a spider women make up 10% of the work
force in video games at this point and
that really isn't much growth after 30
years I think that the best thing that
ever happened to games is the app I play
fruit ninja occasionally candy crush I
think that programming apps would be a
lot more fun because a woman could
actually get really good at that and not
have to involve a whole lot of other
people I hate that women have to fight
against something instead of just being
able to do their work