IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2022 - 18

works in a factory that makes games,
not that he invents games, " she says.
Designing Video Games
After Joseph invented FRED, a few people
in RCA were interested in its 8-bit architecture,
and soon after, RCA became
interested in competing with other companies
that were selling microprocessors.
This resulted in the two-chip microprocessor
COSMAC 1801, and Joseph started
creating consumer products based on it.
The budget was small. RCA left programming
new games for the systems up to
volunteers eager to take on an assignment,
but overall, these were " small projects
for the typical RCA engineers, and
they came with little fanfare or bragging
rights. " Joseph saw an opportunity for his
family to help contribute. His daughters
had learned to program on FRED, although
Joyce was the one who was most
interested. Her father talked to RCA and
recommended her, and this was the beginning
of her programming career.
The COSMAC video interface processor
(VIP) was a single-board hardware
development kit based on FRED. Engineers
would build the computer and then
key in programs written in CHIP-8, a language
developed by Joseph, via hex keyboard.
RCA needed a number of programs
to ship with the kit, all printed as program
listings in a manual so that engineers who
were just learning how to program could
manually key them in and show people
what they were learning to do with a computer.
Joseph wanted game listings to be
included, and RCA reluctantly agreed.
" They're putting the word out to all the
guys. You don't get paid for it but you will
get your name in the manual as credit, so
it looks good on a resume, " Weisbecker
was told by her father.
This is how Weisbecker came to write
her first two games. Jackpot was a random-number-generated
slot machine
game, and for the second Joseph was
looking for the " smallest listing " possible
that would still be engaging, look
fun, and " make you want to show it
18
to your friends and family. " He didn't
expect any volunteers at RCA to take that
on, so he suggested she try that, too.
She came up with Snake Race, a game
where the player watches two
random lines move across
the screen propelled by
two random-number
generators. " It was
emb a r ra s s i ngly
simple but
t hey
needed something
like that, " says Weisbecker.
Both of these
games were published
in the game manual.
Weisbecker received credit
but was not paid.
Next came the Studio II, RCA's home
She designed
wouldn't get to brag about all of the
problems you solved or how good it
turned out, " says Weisbecker. The job
was open, and Weisbecker agreed to create
the game as an independent
contractor.
This time she was
a racetrack that
had a few long straight
sections followed by
many short stretches
that were likely to
cause crashes.
video game console. It featured monochrome
graphics, attached keypad controls,
and interchangeable ROM game
cartridges. Under Joseph's prompting,
RCA was looking for an educational
quiz game.
Earlier, Joseph had created a quiz
game prototype on FRED to show RCA.
The game read the question, took your
answer from the console, and then controlled
a cassette tape, forwarding the
cassette tape to play the appropriate
response. He employed Jean Ruth to
read the questions. " My mother was a
teacher, had a nice voice and this was
going to give the project some educational
street cred, " Weisbecker explains.
Joseph convinced RCA to build their
own quiz game. RCA had recently bought
Random House, and Joseph thought
it was a good opportunity for Random
House to publish books and educational
materials that would be supplements to
computer programs for the home computer
or for an entire educational market.
This was the educational aspect that
would allow Random House to get their
foot in the door in the home education
and school market. " It was important
that it get done, but it wasn't really anything
you could do a lot with, and nobody
wanted to do it if it wasn't fun and you
IEEE WOMEN IN ENGINEERING MAGAZINE DECEMBER 2022
compen s a t ed . But
not much. RCA had
agreed to an hourly
rate, close to minimum
wage, with a
cap, and Weisbecker
would write the
games on spec. RCA
also agreed to look at
any other games she created.
She was paid somewhere
around US$250 for TV School House I.
Joseph suggested that she next
consider writing a car race game. RCA
wanted one, but they were again having
trouble recruiting volunteers. This car
race, with its low-resolution black-andwhite
block graphics (the screen was
64 × 32 pixels), was going to be a very
primitive game, and Weisbecker knew
it was going to be hard to capture the
excitement and feel of rushing around a
track. She thought she had an idea why
no one was volunteering to do it.
It took two tries to get Speedway
right. She wondered if she could make
the players care more about not crashing
than about winning. It would still be
a game about racing cars, but crashes
that resulted in the car slowing down to
a stop and then slowly accelerating again
would shift the focus to suspense and
create opportunities for drama. It also
made the game a lot simpler: just four
buttons instead of a steering wheel, no
brakes and no gas pedal. She designed
a racetrack that had a few long straight
sections followed by many short stretches
that were likely to cause crashes. This
provided a natural dramatic rhythm to
the gameplay. Weisbecker added a shrill
" screech " sound effect when a car collided
with something, but made sure
there was a noticeable delay between the
IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2022

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