Rebecca Ann Heineman, a beloved game designer, programmer, software archivist, and pioneer, has died at the age of 62.
Heineman herself shared the imminent news of her death in an update on GoFundMe The page was created to help her fund the fight against adenocarcinoma, an aggressive form of cancer. “Please donate so my kids can have a funeral worthy of my Pixelbreaker keyboard! So that I can be reunited with dignity with my one true love, Jennelle Jacase,” she wrote. Jacquet, Heinemann's wife and fellow pioneer, died in 2024. She is survived by five children.
Heineman's accomplishments are so vast that her fingerprints can be found on virtually every part of American video game history.
The versatile developer had a storied career, founding several game studios and designing and programming games throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Among her best known works A Bard's Tale III: Stealer of Destiny, disobedienceAnd Dragon Wars. In 1983, she, Brian Fargo, Jay Patel and Troy Worrell founded Interplay Productions, the studio that eventually created Fall out And Wasteland. She worked as a programmer on the last game.
She later founded two more studios, Logicware and Contraband Entertainment, and later did programming for companies such as Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Bloomberg, Amazon, Microsoft and Sony. High-profile projects during this period included teaching other developers how to develop for the Xbox 360 and contributing to the core code for the PlayStation Portable and PlayStation 4.
Heineman was also a pioneer in developing games for transgender people, coming out mid-career in 2003 and going on to break through programming at prominent companies. She served on the board of directors for the LGBTQ rights organization GLAAD and was honored by the organization this year. Gaming Icon Award.
Celebrating “one of the most brilliant programmers” in video game history
Industry colleagues love Fargo, Tim SchaeferAnd Jordan Mechner shared a tribute to her on social media. Fargo called her “one of the most brilliant programmers in the world” and shared his latest message with him. “We've been through so many adventures together! But into the great unknown! I'm going first!!!”
Heineman was exceptionally prolific in discussing her work, leaving a long trail of stories. on her YouTube channelon panels and in interviews with publications such as Game Developer (then Gamasutra). Her relentlessly optimistic attitude was demonstrated in 2010 interview where the self-proclaimed “old timer” described what keeps her in the world of game development.
“What drives me is that I constantly want to learn, to improve as an engineer, to become a better person,” she said at the time. “I'm constantly looking for something better.”
