Joyce Weisbecker (born 1958) is an American retired engineer and actuary. She became the first female commercial

video game designer Video game design is the process of designing the content and rules of video games in the pre-production stage and designing the gameplay, environment, storyline and characters in the production stage. Some common video game design subdiscipline ...

in 1976. She considers herself the first

indie developer An indie game, short for independent video game, is a video game typically created by individuals or smaller development teams without the financial and technical support of a large game publisher, in contrast to most "AAA" (triple-A) games. ...

, given that she did her work as an independent contractor.

Life and career

Weisbecker was born in

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delawa ...

as the daughter of

Joseph Weisbecker Joseph A. Weisbecker (September 4, 1932 – November 15, 1990) was an early microprocessor and microcomputer researcher, as well as a gifted writer and designer of toys and games. He was a recipient of the David Sarnoff award for outstanding tech ...

, an engineer with

RCA The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Comp ...

who constructed computers in his spare time. Joyce Weisbecker learned how to program her father's prototypes. While a student at

Rider University Rider University is a private university in Lawrence Township, New Jersey. It consists of four academic units: the Norm Brodsky College of Business, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the College of Education and Human Services, and West ...

, Weisbecker created games for the

RCA Studio II The RCA Studio II is a home video game console made by RCA that debuted in January 1977. The graphics of Studio II games were black and white and resembled those of earlier Pong consoles and their clones. The Studio II also did not have joysticks ...

console. As demonstration projects she developed two games for the RCA

COSMAC VIP The COSMAC VIP (1977) IP means Video Interface Processorwas an early microcomputer that was aimed at video games. Essentially, it was a COSMAC ELF with a supplementary CDP1861/CDP1864 video display chip. For a price of US$275, it could be purc ...

, ''Snake Race'' and ''Jackpot''. The games were included in the computer's manual as

type-in program A type-in program or type-in listing was computer source code printed in a home computer magazine or book. It was meant to be entered via the keyboard by the reader and then saved to cassette tape or floppy disk. The result was a usable game, ...

s in

CHIP-8 CHIP-8 is an interpreted programming language, developed by Joseph Weisbecker made on his 1802 Microprocessor. It was initially used on the COSMAC VIP and Telmac 1800 8-bit microcomputers in the mid-1970s. CHIP-8 programs are run on a CHIP-8 ...

source code. Weisbecker's first commercial game was ''TV Schoolhouse I'', a quiz game for the RCA II that she programmed in a week in August 1976, and was paid $250 for. In October 1976, she developed ''Speedway'' and ''Tag'', two action games. Her main challenge was to get the Studio II's 64 by 32

pixel In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a raster image, or the smallest point in an all points addressable display device. In most digital display devices, pixels are the ...

display to show any meaningful graphics. In the racing game ''Speedway'', the cars were plain rectangles. The Studio II console was a commercial failure and ended production in 1978. Weisbecker programmed three more games for the COSMAC VIP in 1977 – ''Slide'', ''Sum Fun'', and ''Sequence Shoot'' – before deciding to focus on her education instead of continuing to work in the then minuscule video game business. She graduated with degrees in computer engineering and actuarial science in 1980 and worked for a time as an actuary. In 1998, Weisbecker obtained degrees in

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

and

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

, then worked as a radar signal processing engineer.

Life and career

References

See also