Rebecca Heineman, a trailblazing transgender video game developer who fled a miserable home life as a teenager, taught herself to code and was crowned the first champion of a large-scale national video game tournament in the United States before becoming a respected programmer and entrepreneur, died on Nov. 17 in Rockwall, Texas. She was 62.
Her son, William, said her death, in a hospital, was from adenocarcinoma, a type of cancer that begins in the glands that line organs.
Ms. Heineman, who taught herself to program at the dawn of the home video game era, in the 1970s, made her name as a founder of a number of game studios, including Interplay Productions (now Interplay Entertainment), Logicware and Contraband Entertainment. She was known as well for her innovative work on the development of the popular game Doom for 3DO, a type of console introduced in the 1990s.
In 1983, while still working under her birth name, Bill Heineman, she joined the noted game developer Brian Fargo, along with Jay Patel and Troy Worrell, to start Interplay.
Among the projects she developed or helped develop were the popular fantasy role-playing games Dragon Wars, released in 1989 for computers like the Commodore 64 and Apple II, and The Bard’s Tale III: Thief of Fate, a title that was released a year earlier. It was included in the exhibition “The Art of Video Games” at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington in 2012.
Uncomfortable with a male name that did not fit her identity, Ms. Heineman often programmed under a pseudonym, Burger, she told “The Transgender Show” podcast in 2021. “I did not want to leave a trail of games with a name that I would have to disavow in my later years,” she explained.
It was a long odyssey, both personally and professionally, that began in her teens, when she taught herself to code. But she was no ordinary tech prodigy. For her, the path into the industry was less about ambition than survival.
She was born on Oct. 30, 1963, in Whittier, Calif. Her home life was traumatic, she told “The Transgender Show.” When the podcast’s host, Emily Kailyn, inquired about her parents, Ms. Heineman responded: “You should have asked the question, ‘Did I have parents?’ During my youth, I was beaten emotionally and physically by my parents.”
As a child, she had no idea what “transgender” was, Ms. Heineman said. All she knew was that she was different, which seemed to explain the abuse. “When I was being beaten, I noticed that my father didn’t beat my two younger brothers. I was the only one being singled out,” she said. “So that, in my own mind, allowed me to take the abuse, because I thought I deserved it.”
She added: “It wasn’t until I was around 14-ish when I got the courage to just say, ‘You know what, I don’t know what’s out there, but it’s definitely better than what I’m dealing with here.’”
She ran away from home only to find that what was “out there” was not much. For a while, she was homeless, living near a dumpster behind a grocery store. She eventually founder shelter with friends and found jobs at a gas station and later in the toy department of a JCPenney store, where she began selling the Atari 2600 game console, an early unit that would help pave the way for the home-gaming revolution.
Before long, Ms. Heineman had fallen in love with the game console. As she recounted in an interview for the 2018 book “Women in Gaming: 100 Professionals of Play,” by Meagan Marie, she was too penniless to afford Atari 2600 cartridges, so out of necessity she taught herself how to copy game cartridges, building an extensive, if pirated, game library. She then learned to reverse-engineer the games, to see how they worked.
Her gaming skills were growing rapidly, to the point that in 1980, a friend urged her to enter the regional qualifier in Los Angeles for Atari’s First National Space Invaders Competition, which drew more than 10,000 contestants. “I had no faith in myself in even making the Top 100,” she told Ms. Marie. “I was shocked I won, and even more shocked that I won the championships in New York a few months later.”
With her newfound prominence, Ms. Heineman dropped out of high school and began writing for Electronic Games magazine. Lying about her age, she moved to Maryland to take a job as a programmer with Avalon Hill, which was known for its complex war-themed board games and was expanding into video games.
She eventually returned to California to take a job with the Boone Corporation, where she worked alongside her future Interplay colleagues and programmed early 1980s games like Chuck Norris Superkicks and Robin Hood.
Life took a big turn in 2003, when the industry giant Electronic Arts lured her with “a giant bag of money,” she told “The Transgender Show.” Soon after beginning her work with the company, she looked over its human resources manual and found that it contained a detailed plan on how to transition. “That is when I first entertained the idea of coming out,” she said.
Within six months, she was ready. “I told my manager who I was,” she said.
His response: “‘Can you still code?’ And I go, ‘Yeah.’ ‘Still going to do your job?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Then get back to work.’”
In 2013, Ms. Heineman married another prominent transgender figure in the industry, Jennell Jaquays, who had worked on tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons and on video games like WarGames, adapted from the 1983 film of the same title, with Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy. Together, Ms. Heineman and Ms. Jaquays banded with the industry veterans Maurine Starkey and Susan Manley to form the gaming company Olde Sküül, for which Ms. Heineman served as chief executive.
In addition to her son, she is survived by two daughters, Maria and Cynthia Heineman, from an earlier marriage, to Jessica Victoria Heineman, that ended in divorce; a stepdaughter, Amanda Jaquays; a stepson, Zachary Jaquays; and four grandchildren. Ms. Jaquays died last year at 67.
After years of hiding her identity, Ms. Heineman began openly discussing it in interviews. Then again, she never had much choice.
“I’m too famous,” she told “The Transgender Show.” “I would literally have to restart my life under a new, assumed name — go into the witness protection, for all intents and purposes, in order for me to hide the fact that I am transgender.”
Alex Williams is a Times reporter on the Obituaries desk.
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