She made one of the best arcade games of the 1980s.

@lunarmodule6419

2 жыл бұрын

100% true!

@musicfan300

10 күн бұрын

Centipede was still in arcades long after most others had gone by the wayside... I'm sure that was due to her.

Assembly language programmers were a whole other breed of programmer. Every one that I've worked always stood out from the crowd for right or wrong reasons, and all of them were absolute geniuses. Much respect to this woman!

@erictoombs4842

2 жыл бұрын

I had a customer who would come into the office supply store where I worked that was a beta tester for Microsoft. On his not supported anymore Windows XP machine, he would write his own device drivers for any of the latest hardware he wanted to use with it. Much respect.

@user-fl3it3cq7t

4 ай бұрын

Low level languages is a lost art. 6502 assembly consumed alot of my time in the early eighties.

She was far from unsung. As a 12 year old boy in Sweden 1983, I know who Dona Bailey was! She was marketed by Atari as the first female game designer and as a consequence I read about her in Swedish gaming & computer magazines and even in a 1982 book about video games which was translated into Swedish. But I DIDN'T know about Ed Logg who was the main designer of Centipede and many other Atari classics like Asteroids and Gauntlet. I would say almost all game programmers back then were unsung - all BUT Dona Bailey, and perhaps Eugene Jarvis and Jeff Minter too. Right ... I used to read about Carol Shaw back then too...

@lunarmodule6419

2 жыл бұрын

You are the Original King Geek! Hail to OKG! :-)

Writing a game in assembly is pretty fucking impressive.

@insect212

9 жыл бұрын

***** So it's not easy and it's not some great feat, so could you say it's impressive?

@youtubesuresuckscock

9 жыл бұрын

Brock Jones To be fair, though, writing a modern game in C is far more impressive than writing the simplistic games they made in assembly. It's especially true of Centipede, which was really just a Space Invaders ripoff on better hardware with a trackball. There really wasn't a lot of innovation there. The truly impressive classic games are the ones that pulled new gameplay mechanics out of thin air: Space Invaders, Jump Bug, etc.

@insect212

9 жыл бұрын

HowAbout NoSon Yes but Assembly just has that macho feeling where even though the scope of the game may be orders of magnitude smaller than some c games, assembly is just plain hard to work in.

@insect212

9 жыл бұрын

Deathbrewer Yeah pretty much. I mostly work in c++ but I've touched assembly before and it just seems impressive.

@IAmSoMuchBetterThanYou

8 жыл бұрын

+Long Sword All the UK coders used to do it (write in assembler) on the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga in the 80s and 90s. We used to get horrible ports of games from the US written in C, running at 4 seconds per frame (yes, that's right - one frame every four seconds) and it was up to our guys to fix it. The graphics weren't too great either - I had to fix those.

"The best thing that ever happened to games is the app." And the worst thing that ever happened to games is the microtransaction.

@GiordanDiodato

2 жыл бұрын

nah, the glitch

@Grabbalee

Жыл бұрын

@@ObsidianContraption what did u type this comment on?

@ObsidianContraption

Жыл бұрын

@@Grabbalee bacon is the best thing to happen to scallops

That woman at retrocade, 'I'm an up and coming female' haha

Sadly, this appears to be the one and only released arcade game she ever worked on (she worked on a few prototypes that never made it to production though). She then left video games altogether. It's worth pointing out that Dona co-created _Centipede_ with Ed Logg, a legend in the video game industry who created many classics: Asteroids (1979) Othello (1980) Super Breakout (1981) Centipede (1981) Millipede (1982) Gauntlet (1985) Gauntlet II (1986) Xybots (1987) Tetris (Atari arcade) Carol Shaw of Atari (3D Tic-Tac-Toe) and Activision (River Raid) is worth mentioning too.

I recall reading about her in an 80's gaming mag. I recall she said something that she liked pastels for the color palette, or something of that nature. Which is why Centipede is so vibrant in color.

I'm surprised no one mentioned how much more exciting Centipede is from Space Invaders. The trackball controls were amazing. Keeping track of the spider, the centipede, and the obstacles atop the screen made it a very difficult, but exciting game to play. And assembly language is some of the most difficult to program in the world. I didn't know who programmed this, or that it was a woman. This is the point of the video.

I love this comment section. This is the reason that the social justice types and feminists have made a mistake coming after the tech industry. The fact is nobody gives a single shit about what you've got inbetween your legs or, for that matter, any other piece of personal information about you. It's all about your skills in coding and the quality of your ideas, nothing else, that defines how you will be treated in the tech industry.

@riggermortisfpv526

9 жыл бұрын

DejaVoodooDoll LOL...So you believe women and trans only work in the indie scene ? lol.....keep on fighting for that social justice ROTFL !

@riggermortisfpv526

9 жыл бұрын

DejaVoodooDoll AAA and indie will happily hire anyone that is qualified....FFS they have ball pits in the offices of some AAA producers....try grasping at some other straws to hate men.

@riggermortisfpv526

9 жыл бұрын

DejaVoodooDoll BS utter BS, look at who buys games and who plays them, there is a good reason there are many games for male consumers, but to say they only make for male consumers is easily disproved by talking to a female gamer. You simply put are full of crap. You sound like a recording.

@nialln

9 жыл бұрын

DejaVoodooDoll Shiny new male power fantasy. I thoroughly enjoyed your interpretation there. Anyway, it is ridiculous for anyone to expect games to be representative of anything other than the market. The fact that there are next to no transgender based games is not a testament to discrimination but rather a reality resulting from the fact that the majority of the market, by an extreme margin, is not transgender. Furthermore it is incredibly difficult, if not impossible to incorporate transgender issues into a gameplay focused character. In places where money is not important and therefore game development is not driven by the market but rather by individual developers interests and ideas, such as the indie market, we tend to find games that engage more with social issues and minority representation. The upshot of this is that if any single game in this environment becomes popular enough the AAA developers will begin to pick up the idea. They do this purely because the concept has demonstrated its appeal to a wide audience and so the company can reasonably assume a high marketability. This mechanic is massively evident in the evolution of games over the past 20 years and is not likely to abate any time soon, just as the people incessantly whining about a lack of representation of every denomination of human being will continue also. The fact is the industry at large doesn't care who you are when you are developer as long as you are competent. Although we certainly do see a gap in diversity between AAA development companies and indie dev companies this is surely more representative of the idea that people will, when able, chose to work on things they are passionate about and interested in as opposed to imagined institutional oppression or x-ism/x-phobia. TL;DR; In short, although AAA will be fully representative that is simply a symptom of the market. And since equal opportunities to develop are offered to all indiscriminately the gap in diversity between AAA and indie is, as I believe you implied, due to individuals choosing to pursue their own interests as they have the freedom to do so. In other words the opposite of oppression, blanket freedom in a meritocratic system feeding of of a capitalist market control.

@riggermortisfpv526

9 жыл бұрын

***** :) I hear ya, I have been pegged an asshole before...lol...Im ok with it.

And what about Carol Shaw?

Centipede is an awesome classic, no matter who programmed it. Thank you Ms. Bailey for helping to create this masterpiece. You were truly a pioneer in this industry!:)

Great story, would like to have heard more.

@KoKoKen

9 жыл бұрын

Yeah, it felt a bit short. I'm excited for more of this series.

@lunarmodule6419

2 жыл бұрын

Me too!!!!

Co-developer and one of the programmers. The bulk of the game's programming and design was done by project head Ed Logg. Donna was added to the project by him to help with coding the plotted graphics and a few other things.

@b.o.353

5 жыл бұрын

Martin Goldberg that doesn’t fit he narrative. It’s true what you say but...

@williamcorcoran8842

3 жыл бұрын

I think this is consistent with everything Dona has said in her interview. It’s definitely unfortunate that her efforts, how large or small, are being diminished if not dismissed as trivial some 30 years later. There ain’t no i in team. If you’re suggesting that Dona’s contribution amounted to nothing more than mere grunt work then shame on you because there was no doubt a glass ceiling for women in this industry at that time. It wouldn’t have been easy for Dona to obtain mentoring to the same extent as her male peers at that time. Nowadays, a lot has changed for women and many companies are quite progressive. But,, I think it’s a tad disingenuous to disparage a teammate for assisting with a breakthrough and highly successful product some 30 years later. Edit: 2020:12-26 Furthermore, I just watched an the Atari marketing video from 1982. It’s clear Dona had a significant role in the design of the centipede. In particular, the “cartoonish” and “mischievous” spider. In fact, the 1982 marketing video snippet with Dona is actually incorporated in the video above, but regrettably it’s hard to tell.

@mrmojorisin8752

2 жыл бұрын

@@williamcorcoran8842 She never even mentions Logg. Inexcusable.

@bigcrackrock

10 ай бұрын

@@williamcorcoran8842 It's almost as if they were giving her special attention even back then for being a woman. It was the same "OMG a woman did something mostly guys are interested in" thing you see today. That mentality is far worse now and women are still a small portion of programmers so I'm not buying the gatekeeping narrative. I don't know how much she contributed to the game but considering it was obviously built on the back of Logg's previous work he definitely shouldn't be left out of the conversation.

This isn't entirely true...Atari had claimed a female made Centipede for a marketing ploy targeting female arcade players as they were for fewer than their male counterparts. Atari thinking if a female made the game would bring more females to the arcades. "Actually, Ed Logg had a lot more to do with Centipede than Dona Bailey. In an anonymous Atari designers words: "Dona Bailey couldn't program her way out of paper bag..." Remember the famous 8-6-4 GM cadillac engine from 1980-81 that used to catch fire?? Guess who designed this, and used to work at GM before they got 'fired', and ended up working at Atari? I feel it was smart marketing by Ray Kassar and Frank Ballouz to advertise the game as being designed by a woman, but I'd only give her a very slight amount of partial credit for the concept only and no code in Centipede....

Throughout this whole biography, Dona Bailey didn't tell us WTH is that humanoid head from Centipede that is the playable character.

I haven't heard of any programmers for Atari. They're all unsung.

@maboroshi1986

9 жыл бұрын

RangerAmbient atari in the beginning had a policy of "no credit" for its programmers, as far as upper management was concerned the designers were no more a part of the production in a game than the guy on the assembly line screwing the cartridge shut. that's the reason why companies like electronic arts and activision were formed. they may be soulless shells of their former selves but when they were originally founded they were founded to be places where game programmers could be treated with respect.

@Higgins8

9 жыл бұрын

maboroshi1986 Interesting. So for Vice to insinuate that this woman was unsung just because she's female is misleading and narrative driven when all programmers were never acknowledged. When I was growing up with Atari, 99% of women/girls showed no interest in video games. If you told a girl you played video games she looked at you as a nerd and couldn't give a damn. Anyone alive during this time would know this. The amount of women in gaming was miniscule because they simply weren't interested.

@maboroshi1986

9 жыл бұрын

RangerAmbient her gender still has a point because she was a genuine rarity, a female programmer (assembly no less) in the 70's-80's. in america there still weren't many prominent female programmers. you had someone like roberta williams say, though i think she was a designer not a programmer. also the topic of girls and games. were they disinterested because it was video games as a thing? or because the games catered to your demographic and left women in general behind? also it depends on how old you are. let me assume you were a child in the 80's, yes there were likely more men playing video games than women and gaming was a niche market. today one of the fastest growing markets in gaming IS women. for someone my age (21) and not a piece of shit the idea that a woman likes video games or even >gasp< wants to MAKE some isn't exactly uncommon.

@Higgins8

9 жыл бұрын

Yes, I am an 80's child and I can tell you for a FACT it was 99% boys playing games, barely any older men were even playing. My arcade at the mall was 100% young male, grammar school through HS kids. Not because there was a "no girls allowed" sign hung out front, but because girls really hated video games and they were more then happy to shop the rest of the mall. Girls back then were >gasp I understand that gaming is completely different now. Sure, millions of girls play now and some of them are interested in programming or the like, but I'm not talking about how many girls played LoL, Halo or Candy Crush in 2014. I know some of this is hard to believe, but I was there and that was what it was like in the 1980s and no one had a problem with it.

@maboroshi1986

9 жыл бұрын

RangerAmbient i'm not saying that it's a bad thing to have macho male power fantasies (i'm a dude, i get it) but so much of gaming back then was a male power fantasy, it doesn't surprise me that there was such a gender imbalance. but to say that there were nearly no women playing is flat out uninformed.

I think it's awesome she invented Centipede. I love that game. But, I don't really care about what her gender is. I just see a bad ass programmer.

Women have to fight against it instead of doing their work...its called competition and ability.

I never heard of her before today. I'd only been aware of Carol Shaw, the programmer for Activision's hit River Raid.

There is no reason to bring her gender into it. Just celebrate her accomplishments, not her vagina.

this is the video that made me subscribe to mothrboard. I love how humble she is, she truly is a pioneer

This is cool, inspiring, and empowering on so many levels =D Thanks, Motherboard.

Imo Centipede is one of the greatest coin-ops of it's time. Back when A1Up first came around and announced their 1st gen line up of cabs and Centipede was one of them...instant pre-order 👍

Great interview!!

I used to play Centipede aaaaallll the time. Though I don't really think being an Atari developer is very impressive at all, now it certainly was back then. So good on you! You have a commercial.

I am a Gen-X 1983 Southeast MA State Champ on 'Centipede' - Dona Bailey a Pioneer? That's an understatement! Dona you changed and influence the world of gaming, you rocked the world! I need to meet you!!!

There's plenty of girls studying computer science with me at uni

@mmmodafoca

9 жыл бұрын

M Dubzem there were a shit load of dudes studying engineering courses with me as well.. doesn't mean they will all become engineers. the failure rate is above 60%.

@mjw789234

9 жыл бұрын

mmmodafoca I think failure rate is about 40% in my course

@rubbad

9 жыл бұрын

M Dubzem This was like 30 years ago man, it was a little bit different.

@maboroshi1986

9 жыл бұрын

M Dubzem that's good. what makes her notable is that she was one of the few female programmers at that time, much less making video games. her game came out in 1982, that's 33 years ago, a female programmer was almost impossible to find. that's why i hope more female programmers start making games, we need another roberta williams.

@brianedwards1910

9 жыл бұрын

M Dubzem Sweet.

Thank you for making my youth fun at the arcades. Your talent will not be forgotten. God Bless.

One of my all time favorite games. So addictive. Love it. Thank you.

She is legend. Centipede came out of the Big Bang of video games.

awesome!!! as a new developer/engineer glad to see one of the women that created content for an amazing company. although I don't play pc games anymore, that where it all started... wanting to know how to make that for others to enjoy

This was my favorite game of all time when growing up. Thanks Dona for creating at all time classic.

Great to see her interviewed but that aint Santa Barbara at the start - that's the amusement arcade/carousel building on Santa Monica Pier...

Does anyone have any idea how to deactivate the kill screens in the original stand up centipede games? High scores are really limited by how often the game throws kill screens at you in the higher levels.

This was cool. Wish it was a little longer though

Donna was not the developer & coder behind Centipede. She was a helper on the game. Ed Logg was the main developer and coder of the game. Donna only helped out on some parts of the game.

@shnoooooo

Жыл бұрын

I never bought this story. Where does all the fastness, the sound, the elegance, the brutality comes from - from her? Hahaha. Smart marketing!

@Zeffarian

6 ай бұрын

@@shnoooooo In the several interviews with her over the years, she mainly mentions working with the colors and sprite work.

Great video

Anyone else notice the video gets reversed at the 3:05 mark? Trackball is shown on the left instead of the right and the Atari logo is backwards.

@brunoignaciogi

8 жыл бұрын

thats mirrored perhaps, reversed would be a video playing backwards (Y)

When she said she didn't want to program for GM, she wanted to program for Atari, it brought tears to my eyes. I have always loved Atari and I had the pleasure of buying an Arcade1UP arcade Centipede Legacy Edition machine last week that I got at Ross, that was on clearance for $51.99 and it came with the riser!!. I haven't put it together yet but I will soon. The main reason I bought it was, we ll 1 I just wanted an arcade machine, but this particular one has not only Centipede and Millipede, but also has Asteroids which is by far my most favorite classic arcade game and includes Asteroids Deluxe, Tempest, Missile Command and a few others. 14 games in total. Oh and I work at Ross, so I got it 20% off as well. So just over $44 with tax!

"Programmers mean just as much for us as the workers mounting screws in cartridges" -Atari

This is not about video games, this is about gender.

This is my favourite Atari games ever , played it so much as a kid

Thumbs up if you played this game in an arcade during the 80's?

"I think that the best thing that ever happened to games is the app" I couldn't disagree more. Smartphone games may be the best thing that ever happened to the video game _industry_ since so many people are willing to pay for useless things in games like Candy Crush Saga. You can make a game by yourself and it certainly doesn't have to be an iPhone or Android app.

@sinclairdino1780

9 жыл бұрын

Well this is a 50 year old women, so what do you expect her to say? "Cod is the best you nobs! Now get out of the way before you ruin my kill streak!"

There were sung programmers behind Atari's Centipede? I don't think I've ever heard of any of them.

@Zeffarian

6 ай бұрын

Dona is the sung programmer. There were lots of articles and interviews about her over the years regarding Centipede. Ed Logg was the unsung programmer of the game.

Hats off to you, Dona Bailey. Also to Carol Shaw, River Raid, Activision.

LMAO why is she crying, wtf..? 2:45

@xedn

6 жыл бұрын

lol

Aside from the steering wheel on Pole Position, there weren't a lot of games that didn't use the typical joystick. Games like Centipede, Tempest and Battlezone offered a whole new experience for the player. Loved this game!

It would be cool if you guys had asked her more questions about the development and history behind the game. Its really great that the men at Atari were not sexist and all. But I already assumed that, so its kind of a non story. I'm not saying its not worth mentioning that women were and still are a minority in the industry, But the work she did is far more interesting to me. Its like if, for example, you interviewed Warren Spector. I'd much much rather hear him talk about the development of Deus Ex, System Shock or Ultima Underworld than watch a short 5 minute clip of him talking about how he's Jewish and how no one at Ion storm or Looking Glass was antisemitic.

@BlueAmpharos

9 жыл бұрын

Cha4k Yeah, this video was really boring because of, other than her being involved with the game and having something to do with the spider, there wasn't much information here other than what was already common knowledge. Did she code the spider herself or did she just come up with the idea? I was hoping for more information on her involvement, but nah instead of talking about that, why don't we go for three minutes about how women are a minority in the video game industry because many of them don't study programming? That's what people want to spend five minutes watching right, right? I think it would be great if more women were interested in programming games too, but I disagree on her about mobile games being the greatest thing to happen in video games.

Played it once on gameboy and always thought its weird and wonder who come up with it, now I got my answer, thanks Dona and Motherboard! :D

I feel like Jade Raymond is doing pretty well in the gaming industry.

hi, I loved your video. do you have brain storming videos from Atari or nintendo from 70s or 80s ? thanks

come to think of it, Centipede had always had a plus that other video games didn't . Now i understand what. A female programmer. How i am still hooked on this game 40 years later.

“I guess I was a pioneer,” Dona Bailey says while shrugging. Read More on MOTHERBOARD: bit.ly/1RlHfkp

@SadalDay

9 жыл бұрын

***** To MB Can I help shed light on this unsung hero using this "Your" content?

@mbe102

9 жыл бұрын

***** wait, did you type this twice, or did she say this twice?

@Jakeshell12034454

9 жыл бұрын

Centiped is the best game of all games today I have so much memory's from my first time playing it =')

one of my fav games on the Atari vcs :D

Thank you Dona for making one of the greatest games ever invented. It still challenges me to this day.

The lady that is the first woman video game programmer is very impressive, to think that she chose to write Centipede because she didn't care for spiders is remarkable.

I use to love that game; interesting back story!

I’d heard of her. So she didn’t credit Ed Logg at all in this video. He did half the work. She coded half the game. I hope you edited out her talking about him. Everyone that played back then knew Donna worked on it, or created it as the PR dept said. Her idea to use the track ball because she couldn’t use all the buttons Logg wanted to use and her idea for the colors made the game a classic. But it was a group effort. One of my favorite games and one which my wife loves to play too. Great game but credit where credit is due.

@Zeffarian

6 ай бұрын

He was also the lead programmer of Centipede. You would think the lead programmer should get some credit for the game.

@b.o.4492

6 ай бұрын

@@Zeffarian nope doesn’t fit that narrative.

I love that game. I played for hours. All my quarters! Gone. : ) Thank you for creating such a wonderful game for my teenage years. Wish I could play it again! :D

One of my favorites

I appreciate her contribution to the industry. But in the early 80's if you took a survey in the mall - Hey, lady do you like computers? No. Hi little girl, do like electronics? No. How about you gals, do you like programming? No.

ahhhh video arcades. The ones in Tokyo in the 80's were completely mind blowing.

Is the trackball on the right 3:00 or the left 3:06 ?

when i was applying for a job someone actually asked the boss "are you sure you wantvto hire a girl?". good thing he said "as long as she knows how to code." :o it's really troublesome though that there are many people oit there who think you can't code because you're a woman.

I programmed in Assembly, back in the '70s and '80s... but thought it was just too much of a Mind Grind, so I let it go, in favor of the 4th GLs... Like Pascal, COBOL, etc... It's been a long time since I even heard the words "Assembly Language"... :-)

She's a legend and I wish they would've made this a little less political, it taints this documentary. The reason that even today just 10% of females are in the game industry is because even today just 10% of females choose to do so, whereas the other 90% have different interests. Courses are yours to choose. You can teach yourself anything with internet access. This is not sexism, this is freedom of choice.

So she develops a game called Centipede, but calls the main enemy a spider, instead of a centipede...

@FixedFace

9 жыл бұрын

Lol!

@WizzleThump

9 жыл бұрын

***** Please, do go on.

Amazing Story, What an incredible woman.

The fact that the entire segment doesn’t even mention Ed Logg is inexcusable. She deserves all due credit for her contribution, and I admire her for being a woman in what was essentially a male sphere. Nevertheless, her failure to credit the rest of the team, especially Logg, is a very bad look. Steve Golsen never mentions Ms. Pac-Man without mentioning the entire team of four that worked on it.

@Zeffarian

6 ай бұрын

I know. Ed Logg was the lead programmer and Dona got all of the credit.

A woman who knows Assembly. I'm impressed.

what a legend,

WOW The trackball wuz & still iz like magic to me for her game. Thank you very much Dona Bailey for your pioneering. Centipede iz so much fun 🐛⚪️🐛⚪️🐛⚪️🐛⚪️🐛⚪️🐛 🎃👾🚀SHMUPZ🤖👾🚀

Only 5 minutes?

She admitted to being ignorant. Thirty years later she's kicking around the idea of making an app....uhhhh.. what?

Respect

You too Motherboard? You too?!?

If Dona Bailey was born a male would this segment be named "Meet the Unsung Male Programmer Behind Atari’s Centipede" ?

@Zeffarian

6 ай бұрын

The funny thing is the Ed Logg is the real unsung programmer of Centipede. He was the LEAD PROGRAMMER and Dona got all of the credit.

She looks like she'll be a cool mum

The Worst thing to happen to games is the App Store Monopolies, Play and Apple Store, etc. - where politically motivated corporations can erase top sellers because of their racism and hate. Gone are the days of writing a program and selling it on cassettes from the back of a magazine ad...

I stand and bow in front of this video game pioneer.

hate to say this but ok most people dont care who makes the games but if the game is good or not

Plot twist: she is omnipanmetaturbosexual

Centipede is awesome

The girl acts like she has to defend being a programmer 🤷‍♂️

"Blasting bugs" ... programmer reference

Brilliant video,that woman is a true pioneer for female programmers! A very inspiring video to say the least

Hey. You. Person wanting to read the comments. Scroll back up.

@weenomatic6137

9 жыл бұрын

ShermTank7272 I didn't listen. =/

@BlueAmpharos

9 жыл бұрын

ShermTank7272 I already watched the video though...

@ye0w00

9 жыл бұрын

I should have listened to you... =__=

@joebazooks

9 жыл бұрын

ShermTank7272 y r ppl so predictable. not only can u find hate in every comment section, but u can find a comment almost identical to the one above...

@regularchickens

8 жыл бұрын

This may be the worst comments section.

What about Milipedes? ;)

A true feminist, strong and determined. Saw hurdles in life, not walls.

used to be top of the line played it a lot

Nice

Wow

wow

a lot of the comments are being mad that "female" was added to the title as they believe it's a feminist move to do something like that, when if you actually pay attention to what most women say, they dislike that men are "programmers" and they are "female programmers" they'd rather be called programmers as well. you know... equality

Thumbs up

Thats a cool lady.

Neat😎

This story should told. I build arcade cabinets to keep these games alive.