In the ’80s, she was a video game pioneer. Today, no one can find her
polygon.com
polygon.com
Go look at virtually any female video game (staff, developer, etc) on Twitter and you'll immediately see numerous reasons based on the type of audience they get.
You exist in Experian, does that mean that automatically gives me the right to bother you and tell people online to bother you on socia lmedia?
None of this is opt in, all of it is extremely unwanted, and those companies really should not exist.
Disclaimer: I also work in gaming, and deal with streamer security.
I don't know how they match it in the backend, often it's wrong (and results in innocent parties being attacked).
I usually recommend completely prepaid lines for this to prevent hijackers from using the good old social engineering trick to hijack their accounts via customer service by providing last 4 of various identifiers. But these still eventually show up after you add the number to enough 'traditional' accounts. One of my friends (female, streamer) has gotten police at her house at 3 am with guns drawn so many times it's ridiculous. At least in many parts of, if not the entire US, trying to swat someone is legitimately trying to do your hardest to murder them.
This honestly should be made illegal, there is no reason for these services to exist, or for public records to be made available at all other than rate limited, in person without the ability to take a copy. Exceptions can be made for elected officials.
I checked and it appears they lack Canadian data; and so perhaps I was correct in presuming that such egregious breaching of personal privacy would be troublesome up here. Or maybe WP just doesn't have the data.
FWIW, there are cheap providers of SMS over SIP, now. I have a DID through voip.ms that can send and receive SMS, and it's cheap.
[1] https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/slate-st...
[2] https://reason.com/2020/06/24/slate-star-codex-dox-scott-ale...
[3] https://arcdigital.media/slate-star-codex-and-the-gray-ladys...
Let's not go for the pitch forks so readily, shall we?
I don't think someone making a documentary about pioneers in any given subject -- in this case, women and female characters in early videogames -- would be engaging in "harassment and stalking" because he's trying to contact said pioneers who might still be alive. Now, if once contacted the subject said she didn't want to appear in the documentary, her wish must be respected. But without contacting her, how can the documentary maker know?
What part of the article in particular do you think puts "the bar really low"? I don't see it. It seems respectful and not at all intrusive, well within the subject matter and not including extraneous or irrelevant personal information.
I meant her involvement in the video industry does not justify such privacy invasion.
I understand the part where they would like to know a bit more about it, but sending pages and pages of physical letters, at least to me, I find this creepy and weird/obsessive
The people that are accusing me of trying to remove women or some 'damsel in distress' thing don't seem to understand that in the gaming space, people calling in threats or attempting to kill you in person because you made a disliked game balance change is real, applies to males, and is a baseline behaviour, or that females in gaming are subject to significantly worse harassment by orders of magnitude; look at the cesspool that is/was pokimanehot.
We'll never know which it is if we don't ask. If she asks to be left alone, people should respect that but they shouldn't assume that.
As an example, I recommend the documentary Searching for Sugar Man.
What does it take to be left alone? What does a person have to say/do for it to be taken as anything but an invitation to search for them?
I one time found the author of the book that got me interesting in programming as a kid back in the 80s, and after sending her a message on FB she was happy to find someone remembered it, let alone kept the book on their shelf as a memento.
On the contrary, it'd be hard not to have an extremely low profile with such a common name.
Add in the fact that it's been 40 years, and nobody has cared one single bit for the first 35 of those years.
Add in the fact that she probably didn't get any author credit for the game, so probably didn't even realize people knew her name.
Remember that the internet didn't exist in the eighties. I wrote a few video games in the 80s, and this is probably the first acknowledgement on the internet ever that the Bryan Larsen that wrote games for T&D software is this Bryan Larsen. And I'm much easier to find than most, since I'm the type of guy who uses my real name on forums like this.
I highly doubt anybody is going to care about my games, and I'm sure she never thought anybody would ever care either. She was wrong, but I'm sure I'm not.
It was a trailblazer in all kinds of ways: a side-"scrolling" adventure type game where you have to explore, talk to people, gather inventory, raise your skills, and solve puzzles. You can play as either of two rival factions. As you play you can really feel the depth of world-building and backstory. There is no set order to do the various things required to win. You can play any of five characters, who have different levels of strength and "spirit skill". And it did it all with four colors and a single joystick button. It is at least as innovative as King's Quest (also 1984), maybe more.
It has an intro sequence that explains the goal, but it's quite terse, so you might want to read the Wikipedia page. The game was commissioned by a fantasy author and intended to be a sequel to one of her books.
You can run it on dosbox. I highly recommend trying it out!
Anyway, yes, it's a great game. The C64 version is better than the DOS version (better graphics, polyphonic sound), but a little harder to get hold of. Worth playing on any platform as a piece of adventure game history (and much better than the original King's Quest in my opinion).
Even if shes not aware, the only way to find out is to find her and hold the magnifying glass of internet dickery over her.
And all for what? because someone remembered her and thought "I wonder what shes doing, lets get obsessed, I bet its a conspiracy"
its just not worth the heartache.
And that's the gist of it: someone making a documentary on female video game protagonists went looking for a developer of Wabbit, which can be considered (one of) the first of that category.
almost everything I read is of similar nature, it's getting quite exhaustive
What other possibilities are there?
Apollo was in Richardson, just N of Dallas.
IE, my grandmother received, and signed, checks as Doris and yet her given name was something else entirely.
I keep thinking about when my wife searches for herself, she found a over a hundred people with her name in Santa Clara county alone.
The only debate left is who has access to this data - everyone or everyone but us. My preference is that access isn't limited to the same powerful (Gov/LEO/Corp) jackwads that leverage us and ruin lives for their own agendas.
For any evidenceless assumption that calamity happens when basic public records (what was called a directory for 100 years) become easily available to the public - FL records have public for a long while. https://flvoters.com/ It's been hugely helpful and the sky is right where we left it.
However, what strikes me the most of this article is actually in the comments section...
... people don't know who Roberta Williams is, or what Sierra Online was!? In a videogame website?
Wow. How quick we videogame fans are to forget our own history. This reminds me of the multiple times I've seen people here on HN ask who Carmack was and why it mattered what he had to say about tech.
A lot of these people are interested in playing games, not on history. Sadly, lots of people seem to be unbothered by being ignorant of the history of their own favorite pastimes.
Your John Carmack example betrays our age. His most important contributions to gaming (at least from a history perspective) was arguably early 90s Shareware/Apogee/Id era almost 30 years ago now, I don't expect my kids to know who he is. Heck, why would a young gamer even know what "shareware" was? The idea of sharing and distribution at large scale via end users cloning physical media (floppies) is pretty much absurd in 2020s and of little use to know, despite being hugely important to Carmack's early successes.
People just want to play fun games and that's fine. We shouldn't discourage it on basis you "don't appreciate the history properly" or be ashamed of this.
> Your John Carmack example betrays our age. His most important contributions to gaming (at least from a history perspective) was early 90s Shareware/Apogee/Id era almost 30 years ago now, I don't expect my kids to know who he is.
First, Carmack is still relevant today. He still writes about tech, and he still takes part in groundbreaking tech developments. Here is for example a headline from 2019: https://www.engadget.com/2019-11-13-john-carmack-agi.html
It's relevant because he is a proven achiever, not just a "visionary" like we're used to in this industry. I'm similarly starting to read about people in tech/software who don't know who Stallman is! And I suppose eventually this will happen to Torvalds as well.
Second, are readers of HN "kids"? I used Carmack as an example of someone who readers here on HN occasionally don't know.
> People just want to play fun games and that's fine. We shouldn't discourage it on basis you "don't appreciate the history properly" or be ashamed of this.
That's ok. However, this happened in the comments section of a website which also has commentary and articles beyond "just playing games", and specifically in an article about videogame history. And Roberta Williams was a huge influence. I suppose in 30 years people will similarly ask, "Nintendo what?". It's sad, though I suppose inevitable.
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edit: giobox, I don't know why you got downvoted, yours was a polite response. I upvoted your comment because I value the conversation.
Seeing as how FPS games are one of the biggest (if not the biggest) genre of video gaming out there, Carmack has had an immeasurably massive impact on the industry.
It's fine if people want to just play games, but don't belittle the titan whose shoulder countless subsequent developers have stood atop.
MULE, Seven Cities of Gold, Heart of Africa > the entire sierra catalog
> MULE, Seven Cities of Gold, Heart of Africa > the entire sierra catalog
Those are awesome, groundbreaking games, and the technical limitations they had to work around are very interesting. However, the entire Sierra catalog, and in particular the first two Space Quest games (text interfaces!) hold a special place in my heart. I learned English with them. So I must respectfully disagree :)
Also in the 80s, many Vietnamese people had strong feelings about the US involvement in the Vietnam war ;) and moved as the result.
So I guess the best way to search would be to ask in /r/Vietnam
Edit: Nevermind, as I see one of the links in the article is actually to a forum post there!
There's some great sites, podcasts and youtube channels aiming to preserve their stories, but some people just aren't interested. To some it was just a job they did 40 years ago
Take for example RMC interviewing Gale Wellington the other day on the development of the Commodore CDTV, a name that probably next to no-one in the scene knew https://youtu.be/BJMADu4eo3o
https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/how-a-long-lost-indian-disco-...
There's that awkward moment where the announcer goes "Mr. and Mrs... Uh. <both their names>"
In fact, it’s worked well enough for us that if we were to have another child we’d consider giving him or her a different last name again instead of picking one of the three we already have.
(The only reason we sometimes wish she'd change her name is that hers is extremely common, and so she's constantly getting mixups with other people with the same name and has to sign things every time we buy a house or get a loan, etc. to say she isn't that other XXX YYY that has the bad credit rating or outstanding loan or criminal record, etc.)
What's weird is these are people with generally left-wing political views, and socially liberal on most things. But on women's issues, pretty backwards. It weirds me out.
The "problems" you describe are just...nonexistent, and really not a big deal. I have literally never encountered confusion about our marital status, problems with forms, or difficulty being introduced.
Islam does it, and there are no issues at all.
The very least when you have kids and their teachers or any official you encounter assume that the parents have the same name as the kids. (This can't be your kid!)
We know a couple where she had hyphenated surnames. Almost always confused the officials, colleagues and friends when they lived in Switzerland.
We decided against my wife not changing her name, since it was not worth the troubles.
The original post was talking about changing surnames in general so I thought that it was criticising the norm, and my reply was in similar fashion - "why does the norm exist?"
Should have clarified, sorry. It [not changing names] really wouldn't work out well if it wasn't the norm in place as you say, there are plenty of issues that could happen.
I'm currently engaged and plan on taking her last name after the wedding. Life would go on very large the same way if I didn't the same way it will if I do. The whole problem is overblown.
That's really interesting! Can you explain it a little more? I can't read Chinese, so it's a bit opaque what's going on...
For the example, I used the names of two historical people who did historically marry; I picked them based on Soong Mei-ling being mentioned in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_titles#Women , under the title I wanted to talk about.
For Chinese address in general, the example posits a woman named 宋美龄 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soong_Mei-ling ), whose family name is 宋 and whose personal name is 美龄, marrying a man named 蒋介石 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiang_Kai-shek ), whose family name is 蒋 and whose personal name is 介石.
Chinese titles appear after the noun being titled, not before. So the ordinary address for 宋美龄 (before or after she marries[1]) is 宋小姐 ("Ms. Song"), where 小姐 is the courtesy title for women, and the ordinary address for 蒋介石 is 蒋先生 ("Mr. Jiang"), with 先生 being the courtesy title for men.
The 夫人 ("Lady") title is unusual; it is applied to the name of the woman's husband, not to the name of the woman herself. (Compare an American letter addressed to e.g. "Mr. and Mrs. John Smith".) Thus, 蒋介石's wife can be referred to as 蒋夫人, regardless of what her name might be.
Wikipedia suggests that the title 太太 ("wife") is also applied to the husband's name.
[1] I'm following the convention of government forms here, in which 小姐 and 先生 are opposed options for how the form addresses you, and 女士 doesn't appear. The wikipedia section linked above states that 小姐 applies to unmarried women and 女士 applies to married women. My -- limited -- understanding is different; I see 女士 as being used to convey a higher degree of respect, such as in professional communications. For example, I was once advised by a Chinese person to address the mother of a child I was tutoring as 孟小姐; I can only assume that the use of 小姐 did not convey the fairly insulting impression that I believed she was unmarried.
You should probably ask her. No one is forced to change their name, but some do.
The traditional practice as I learned it doesn't involve this. Instead, where boys are given three names at birth, girls are given two in the expectation that they will one day marry. Then, when Susan Floyd marries John Robert Sinclair, she becomes Susan Floyd Sinclair.
Compare Mary Ann Maxwell marrying William Henry Gates to become Mary Maxwell Gates.
> It’s that cultural norms around marriage make it harder to keep track of them.
A strange segue explaining marriage to us. Yes, it's common for people to keep their original published name in academia and the arts and anything else. I guess video game designers might have taken a while to realise they were being published. That might be an interesting point if it lead there.