Legendary game designer, programmer, Space Invaders champion, and LGBTQ trailblazer Rebecca Heineman has died - OG troon game programmer Burger Bill has died

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PC Gamer (Archive)

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Game developer Rebecca Heineman has died after being diagnosed with cancer last month. The news was shared to Bluesky by Heineman's friend, Heidi McDonald, while the most recent post on Heineman's GoFundMe is a goodbye message stating that her health was rapidly deteriorating, and she was entering palliative care. Heineman was 62, and the GoFundMe will remain live to help her family make final arrangements.

Born in 1963, Heineman initially made a mark on the industry by winning a national Space Invaders tournament in 1980 in New York, becoming the first formally recognized US champion of any videogame. She went on to have a far-reaching career, being credited on 67 games according to MobyGames.

Heineman co-founded Interplay in 1983 alongside Brian Fargo, Jay Patel, and Troy Worrell. The developer and publisher was the source of many foundational PC games, including Wasteland, Fallout, and Baldur's Gate. Heineman designed and programmed a number of games at Interplay, with her most prominent design credit being The Bard's Tale 3: Thief of Fate.

Heineman's friend and colleague from Interplay, Brian Fargo, shared a remembrance of the developer on X. "Rebecca Heineman sadly passed away," Fargo wrote. "Known her since the 80s when I'd drive her to work, one of the most brilliant programmers around. A real gut punch earlier today when she messaged me: 'We have gone on so many adventures together! But, into the great unknown! I go first!!!'"

Later, in the '90s and 2000s, Heineman made a name primarily as a programmer, particularly on ports like the Macintosh versions of Wolfenstein 3D, Baldur's Gate, and Icewind Dale. The saga of Heineman overcoming a deranged businessman to solo program the ill-fated 3DO port of Doom in mere weeks has become a bit of an internet legend: Here's Digital Foundry and Heineman herself recounting the tale.

Heineman publicly came out as transgender in the 2000s, and was married to fellow games industry legend Jennell Jaquays. Heineman was the recipient of Gayming's 2025 Gayming Icon award, with the site writing that "her advocacy for LGBTQ+ inclusion, accessibility, and diversity in tech has inspired countless developers and players."

Jaquays died of complications from Guillain–Barré syndrome in January 2024, and Heineman was blindsided last month by an aggressive cancer diagnosis. She turned to GoFundMe to help with the costs of treatment, where fans, friends, and industry peers showed up to support the developer.

Heineman shared the message last night that her health was rapidly declining.

"It's time. According to my doctors. All further treatments are pointless," Heineman wrote. "So, please donate so my kids can create a funeral worthy of my keyboard, Pixelbreaker! So I can make a worthy entrance for reuniting with my one true love, Jennell Jaquays."

Game developers have begun sharing their own condolences and remembrances in the wake of Heineman's death.
 
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thx1138 said:
So today I went down this trail of breadcrumbs. Come to find out that TSR artist and creator Paul Jaquays who did some pretty good art for D&D back in the day trooned out, and was married to this other dude, who just died.

What a weird fuckin' world it's become.
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Fuck, I need to wash my dice in holy water now.
 
He worked on the DOS version of Dragon Wars.
Burn in hell, fag. I played that game from beginning to end and the save system was absolutely retarded on levels I cannot tell you. Also you can easily soft lock yourself without anything telling you that you did it. Item system was atrocious. What a astronomical pain.
Fun part was carrying around the bodies of four dead elementals and using them for item storage. Don't ask where I stuck key items.
 
Anime=Tranime said:
Most important western one is still Roberta Williams who co founded Sierra with her Husband.
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Roberta Williams is inconvenient because she has had kind of elitist opinions on who belongs in gaming and who does not, and the soylennials carry a grudge against her for that reason.
 
Duane Dibbley said:
Why does gaming cause people to troon out?
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People who constantly, obsessively project themselves onto player characters do so because they have no sense of self in the first place. They have to play as "player character" IRL to feel real. Total Cluster B Death cannot come soon enough.
 
To be fair to him, he got fucked hard on 3DO Doom. Anyone would lose their mind after having to program a game in about 10 weeks by yourself. Does it justify what he became? Probably not, but it helps explain it a bit.
 
Buzz Killington said:
To be fair to him, he got fucked hard on 3DO Doom. Anyone would lose their mind after having to program a game in about 10 weeks by yourself. Does it justify what he became? Probably not, but it helps explain it a bit.
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For the era, 2.5 months doesn't seem like a crazy short time for a port. Doom was developed in less than 12 months and the Jaguar port was done in a few weeks by id themselves. The 3DO port was based on the Jaguar port, so there was optimization work done that helped Bill. It amuses me these days that modern remasters of 90s games often have considerably longer development times than the original game.
 
guiltyspark85 said:
For the era, 2.5 months doesn't seem like a crazy short time for a port. Doom was developed in less than 12 months and the Jaguar port was done in a few weeks by id themselves. The 3DO port was based on the Jaguar port, so there was optimization work done that helped Bill. It amuses me these days that modern remasters of 90s games often have considerably longer development times than the original game.
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Considering the manpower and management of the project, I'd say there was a lot more wrong with 3DO Doom than just the dev time. Remember, the project was ran by an absolute retard who thought you could just draw new weapons and have them show up in game.
 
Buzz Killington said:
Considering the manpower and management of the project, I'd say there was a lot more wrong with 3DO Doom than just the dev time. Remember, the project was ran by an absolute retard who thought you could just draw new weapons and have them show up in game.
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I get the pedo that contracted Bill caused all kinds of headaches, but there seems sort of mythology that what Bill achieved with the 3DO port was some sort of miracle. Again, look at the Jaguar port that id did. It was basically a two man team: John Carmack porting over to a console he had no experience with and had less RAM than PCs at the time with Sandy Petersen helping him by optimizing the levels. Once Bill had the Jaguar source code and assets from id, he working on the port in isolation. The work Carmack and Petersen did with the Jaguar port would have helped Bill immensly and saved him a large amount of time.
 
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