IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2022 - 19

crash and the car visibly slowing down.
The moments between hearing the
sound and seeing which car was slowing
down gave both players time to hope
that it wasn't their car that was about to
stop. Over time, the players would come
to dread hearing that " screech " -this
was the drama and suspense that Weisbecker
wanted to achieve. She was having
so much fun coding the game that
she didn't worry about how fast things
would move on the screen.
After her first iteration, she had proved
that she could create drama and suspense
in a fast-paced game, but the maximum
speed was too slow, " like molasses, " she
says. So, she scrapped it and started fresh,
this time focusing on code efficiency. This
version ran well enough to be " challenging
on the corners " for maximum speed.
In fact, she had tightened the game up
so much that she had a good bit of room
left in memory, just not enough for a full
second game.
She already had collision detection and
had mastered movement and response.
She realized that if she removed the
racetrack, and left a blank screen with
a wraparound infinite field, she could
reuse code and build Tag. She designed
an interesting two-player video game
where every 10 s the program switched
which player was " it. " This, she decided,
was " good enough for a bonus game, "
and it fit nicely in the extra space.
In 1978, RCA launched the Studio
II but by the end of the year they
had canceled it. Meanwhile, RCA had
received so many requests from hobbyists
for more VIP game listings that
they decided to publish the VIP Game
Manual. Weisbecker contacted the publisher
and asked to freelance for them.
Speedway had been so much fun-she
knew that was what she wanted to do
for games, " something with drama that
you really get into. " She loved how in
Speedway the player got " that tunnel
vision on the part of the screen where
the action was " and forgot about the
low-end graphics.
She was hired, but she was at college
and studying for the actuarial exams,
with limited time to spend designing and
coding games. There was no advertising
and no box on which to explain the
game, and so all games had to be simulations
of familiar games, nothing experimental.
She created three: Sequence
Shoot was like Simon, Slide was an
electronic version of shuffleboard, and
SumFun was an educational math game
where two players raced to see who could
answer a single-digit arithmetic problem
first, designed so that the answer, too,
was always a single digit.
Programming these games did not
excite her as much as Speedway. " This
was when I decided to never work for a
video game company unless it had the
style of game with dramatic moments
and suspense released as part of the natural
game play. Otherwise there were
more interesting things to do that paid
better, " says Weisbecker.
Looking Ahead
Within the span of 14 months, Weisbecker
had discovered the kind of game she felt passionate
about making and decided that she
didn't want to pursue writing games
for a living. " I was on a prototype
system, there was no
video game market yet,
and I still had college
and the actuarial
exams to get
through. So that
was on the back
burner until I had a
real job, " she says.
She could envision
where the computer
industry was heading,
though, and she knew that
both math and programming would be
useful in a decade or so when there would
be a burgeoning home entertainment
market and the chance to start her own
game development company.
This is why she chose Rider University.
They had a Bachelor of Science
in Commerce program, and with
this business-oriented degree she
could study computers but all of her
core courses would be in marketing,
finance, and accounting, which meant
she would not need a second major in
business administration.
She knew this would be beneficial;
even if she didn't start her own company,
any start-up wants people who
understand business. Or, if she decided
to work on the creative side of game
development, a business background
would help her get her foot in the door
as opposed to being an outside play tester
trying to reach the ear of anyone on
the inside. " If you're on the inside, working
on the business end of things, you're
in the meetings, you know the budget,
you're there with the right people to
pitch your ideas, " she says.
No matter what, with a business
She loved
how in Speedway
the player got " that
background and a heavy focus on math,
she knew she could find a high-paying
job and not need funding for her startup
one day. Like her father, she would be
able to develop her games at home on a
shoestring budget.
She majored in both actuarial science
and decision science and
computers. Actuarial science
contained the data
analysis and signal
p r oce ss i n g
she
tunnel vision on the part
of the screen where the
action was " and forgot
about the low-end
graphics.
had always been
so interested in.
Decision science
focused on operations
research and
simulation: all of
the rules-based business
decision making
that could be automated.
This, she says, was " the closest
thing to AI I could get in college. "
Upon graduation, Weisbecker took
a job as an actuary in the research and
product development department at a life
insurance company and then at a property
casualty company, performing what
today is called predictive analytics.
DECEMBER 2022
IEEE WOMEN IN ENGINEERING MAGAZINE
19
IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2022

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