Rebecca was well known in emulation circles for her high quality work on various games of the era, often pushing the hardware in unusual ways. This article is one of my favorites, detailing the wacky tricks she used to get Another World's 3D rendering system running acceptably on a Super Nintendo
She also somehow pulled off the port of Doom to the hopelessly underpowered hardware of the 3DO in just a few weeks, after others had tried and failed for much longer than that. The final release had a reduced viewport and a bad framerate, but the background music was great (recorded with a band and stored as audio tracks on the game CD).
Also, 62 years is much too young! And one month from diagnosis (because of being short of breath) to dying is really rough - although there's a lot of progress on cancer treatment, some forms have symptoms at such a late stage that they're unfortunately still a death sentence...
I will never get over the company CEO sending here PNGs of new weapon models and saying, essentially, "Yeah so you can just copy & paste these into the game, right?"
Having a bard in your party let you choose a soundtrack and their songs brought magical effects. For example, the Rhyme of Duotime let your party attack more frequently in combat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oR4j7w4FIY
The first "Boom & Bust" episode of Netflix's series "High Score" series told the story of her winning the first Space Invaders U.S. national championship as a kid.
Admittedly I didn't dive much into this to get the full context, but it's saddening to me that a legendary game designer had a GoFundMe. I was hoping achieving that level of status in a traditionally well-paid industry would leave one well off, financially.
The United States is the wealthiest nation on the planet according to Forbes, richer than the subsequent three nations combined.
It’s a tragedy that our own citizens are not the direct be beneficiaries of that wealth.
I think a lot about the scene in Star Trek IV when McCoy is in a hospital and says “what is this the dark ages?”
Gofundme is like a kafkaesque tragic absurdity that - hopefully - will be looked at as an indictment of the inequitable K shaped economy we’ve built, and hopefully fixed in the future.
Communities passing the plate for someone in need isn’t new. It's been done in churches for centuries, and crowdfunding is just a modern version of the exact same thing.
As is often said, capitalism is the worst economic system, except for all the others. When it comes to things like advanced cancer treatment, capitalism is why something exists worth raising money for. If this situation is an indictment of anything, it is the U.S. stubbornly refusing to implement some form of single-payer baseline healthcare, like most other capitalist economies have had for decades.
As for whether this represents a "kafkaesque tragic absurdity" we would need intimate knowledge of a lifetime of financial decisions. Maybe she was really bad with money, and frittered it away in casinos. Maybe she was amazing with money, and donated to others more than will ever be donated to her.
The Churchill line is about democracy, but the adapted version is a common variation. It works as a standalone maxim without need of attribution to some famous person.
Considering the James Van Der Beek of Dawson's Creek fame is having to hold a fundraising auction of his memorabilia to fund his cancer treatment, cancer is expensive in the US.
actually a difference is also how many players along the supply chain siphon money out of the process. the more greed is allowed and acted on for the treatment, the more expensive it gets. introduce layers of insurances, hedgefonds, pension funds, lobbyism, ... it adds up to riddiculous amounts far beyond the original R&D/infrastructure/treatment costs.
And also downsides, e.g. many treatments just aren't available, and many others would never have had their discovery funded without the market-based system existing.
Governments can (and do) directly fund medical research including drug discovery. This is in part because governments of even just middling competence have an incentive to keep their workforce (which also includes their military) healthy.
This… is a think that people believe, but it’s not as simple as that. Most basic research is universities, all over the place. Many drugs are developed in Europe. A lot of medical machinery is developed and made in Europe (Siemens, Philips and Roche are huge in this space). Like most things, med tech is fairly globalised.
And let's not forget that a substantial amount of medical research performed in the USA is not market-based but rather publicly funded through the NIH.
I'm wondering if she actually got the fundraiser money, considering how quickly this moved - the last update implied it would have to go to her funeral, and I hope it pays for the bills or helps her family.
What a true legend. The amount of people she has touched with her work is enormous.
Feeling a bit of regret. I feel like I made a poor first impression on Rebecca when I first met her a few years back at VCF East. I saw her again recently but was suffering from severe undiagnosed sleep apnea so much so that I was practically asleep at the event. I didn't know about the cancer. Thought I would have another chance. This is happening more and more in my life. :/
Let us cherish all the great moments that she helped bring to us.
Rest in peace, Burger Becky! I really enjoyed her interview with CoRecursive a few years ago about porting DOOM to the 3DO[1] and highly recommend a listen.
I was lucky to catch some of Becky's livestreams on YouTube over the years.
More than a brilliant programmer she was truly a kind soul. She never approached topics with any kind of ego. Just a joy and love for the things she'd worked on and the people she'd worked with
Offtopic: several of the embedded Bluesky posts at the end of the article show "The author of the quoted post has requested their posts not be displayed on external sites." Seems not to phase the PC Gamer "journalists".
[0] is a good article about this; not least that this has been happening since at least 1889 (to the point where I'd say we could now probably consider it a valid alternate spelling.)
These are quote-posts; the quote-post isn't protected but the quoted-post is. Bad choice by whoever wrote the article (in fairness the default Bluesky interface doesn't make this particularly clear), but nothing is being displayed that shouldn't be displayed.
Very sad news. This one hit pretty hard for me as not only was she so awesome and contributed so much to so many great games, but the short timeline between "oh dang I have cancer and we're fighting it" to, well, today... was just way too short :(
You are not alone being hit hard by the pace of the cancer's progression. Dr Makis talks about his shocks lately as an oncologist. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gIYQCjB_NU
You are not alone. I can only think that her post about being very vulnerable after chemo from immune system supression made me realize how lucky you have to be to beat cancer with chemo.
As a retro-enthusiast, I was captivated by the stories she shared in her interviews,
particularly about working on the cancelled Half Life port to Classic Mac OS (supposedly it even ran on 68k Macintoshes, How amazing is that !?).
She said that she still had a CD of the gold master on her shelf.
I really fear that work may never see the light of day now...
Aww I’m very sad to hear this. She was close friends to a partner of mine and I met her about ten years ago through that connection. She seemed to be a lovely person.
Wow. What an impactful person. I'm somewhat embarrassed to say that I did know about her till her death though I've played many of the games mentioned in the WP article about her. RIP.
Rebecca was well known in emulation circles for her high quality work on various games of the era, often pushing the hardware in unusual ways. This article is one of my favorites, detailing the wacky tricks she used to get Another World's 3D rendering system running acceptably on a Super Nintendo
https://fabiensanglard.net/another_world_polygons_SNES/
Rest in piece, you absolute legend.
She also somehow pulled off the port of Doom to the hopelessly underpowered hardware of the 3DO in just a few weeks, after others had tried and failed for much longer than that. The final release had a reduced viewport and a bad framerate, but the background music was great (recorded with a band and stored as audio tracks on the game CD).
https://github.com/Olde-Skuul/doom3do
Also, 62 years is much too young! And one month from diagnosis (because of being short of breath) to dying is really rough - although there's a lot of progress on cancer treatment, some forms have symptoms at such a late stage that they're unfortunately still a death sentence...
Gonna link SSFF's enjoyable telling of the 3DO port story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxF1_wg2d_Q
I will never get over the company CEO sending here PNGs of new weapon models and saying, essentially, "Yeah so you can just copy & paste these into the game, right?"
Today I learned...
"Super Fami-Com ("FAMIly COMputer")"
Doh!
It was a sequel to the Famicom.
Many years ago I played one of her works, Bard's Tale 3: Thief of Fate and enjoyed it very much.
It was a masterful blend of RPG, dungeon crawl, and puzzles and had a memorable soundtrack.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ru5kg35dNso
Having a bard in your party let you choose a soundtrack and their songs brought magical effects. For example, the Rhyme of Duotime let your party attack more frequently in combat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oR4j7w4FIY
BT3 is available on the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/msdos_The_Bards_Tale_3_-_Thief_O...
The original Bard's Tale was my first RPG and I've been hooked ever since.
BT3 was wonderful, lots of nostalgia for me. Sad to hear of her passing.
ahh i have fond memories of this game... and the silly anti piracy attempts (decoder ring) they shipped it with.
This breaks my heart, I will miss Burger Becky, she was the sweetest kindest person and a legendary programmer.
https://www.burgerbecky.com/becky.htm
The first "Boom & Bust" episode of Netflix's series "High Score" series told the story of her winning the first Space Invaders U.S. national championship as a kid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Score_(TV_series)
I knew I'd seen her somewhere before, that was it!
Admittedly I didn't dive much into this to get the full context, but it's saddening to me that a legendary game designer had a GoFundMe. I was hoping achieving that level of status in a traditionally well-paid industry would leave one well off, financially.
The United States is the wealthiest nation on the planet according to Forbes, richer than the subsequent three nations combined.
It’s a tragedy that our own citizens are not the direct be beneficiaries of that wealth.
I think a lot about the scene in Star Trek IV when McCoy is in a hospital and says “what is this the dark ages?”
Gofundme is like a kafkaesque tragic absurdity that - hopefully - will be looked at as an indictment of the inequitable K shaped economy we’ve built, and hopefully fixed in the future.
Communities passing the plate for someone in need isn’t new. It's been done in churches for centuries, and crowdfunding is just a modern version of the exact same thing.
As is often said, capitalism is the worst economic system, except for all the others. When it comes to things like advanced cancer treatment, capitalism is why something exists worth raising money for. If this situation is an indictment of anything, it is the U.S. stubbornly refusing to implement some form of single-payer baseline healthcare, like most other capitalist economies have had for decades.
As for whether this represents a "kafkaesque tragic absurdity" we would need intimate knowledge of a lifetime of financial decisions. Maybe she was really bad with money, and frittered it away in casinos. Maybe she was amazing with money, and donated to others more than will ever be donated to her.
> As is often said, capitalism is the worst economic system, except for all the others.
I've only heard it said that "democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time", not capitalism and economics: https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/the-worst-form...
The Churchill line is about democracy, but the adapted version is a common variation. It works as a standalone maxim without need of attribution to some famous person.
> the adapted version is a common variation
Got any evidence for that?
It works insofar as quotes that sound wise but have no kind of evidence backing it up often do.
Considering the James Van Der Beek of Dawson's Creek fame is having to hold a fundraising auction of his memorabilia to fund his cancer treatment, cancer is expensive in the US.
Cancer is expensive everywhere, the difference is who pays for it.
actually a difference is also how many players along the supply chain siphon money out of the process. the more greed is allowed and acted on for the treatment, the more expensive it gets. introduce layers of insurances, hedgefonds, pension funds, lobbyism, ... it adds up to riddiculous amounts far beyond the original R&D/infrastructure/treatment costs.
And those are just the downsides of a market-based system. There are also upsides of single-payer systems, like monopsony buying power.
And also downsides, e.g. many treatments just aren't available, and many others would never have had their discovery funded without the market-based system existing.
Governments can (and do) directly fund medical research including drug discovery. This is in part because governments of even just middling competence have an incentive to keep their workforce (which also includes their military) healthy.
Nobody is advocating for eliminating a market-based system. My country (Australia) has both single-payer and a market-based private healthcare system.
You can imagine how that system, like most, is actually getting its medical advancements from the US.
This… is a think that people believe, but it’s not as simple as that. Most basic research is universities, all over the place. Many drugs are developed in Europe. A lot of medical machinery is developed and made in Europe (Siemens, Philips and Roche are huge in this space). Like most things, med tech is fairly globalised.
Most of that is funded by the NIH and not by the local systems. Spending money is easy.
And let's not forget that a substantial amount of medical research performed in the USA is not market-based but rather publicly funded through the NIH.
And performed by researchers that received free education in their home country before moving to the US because they hope for a better career there...
This is either intentional bad faith trolling or you are not aware of the per capita spending on healthcare in the US.
https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-...
Cancer and US Medical Care has a tendency to drain any savings you have. Also, it was sudden so it’s not like she was ready to retire at all.
Not just legendary game designer, but co-founder of a game studio and publisher (Interplay).
The games industry is not traditionally well paid, unfortunately.
This. It's consistently lower-paying than the rest of the software industry.
I'm wondering if she actually got the fundraiser money, considering how quickly this moved - the last update implied it would have to go to her funeral, and I hope it pays for the bills or helps her family.
>Heineman's cancer fundraiser is now collecting for her funeral.
Am I crazy or does that sentence have, I don't know how to explain it, the 'rhythm' of a joke? Feels like accidental rhyming, a mark of bad writing?
It unfortunately reads a bit like an unintentional punchline, yes.
What a true legend. The amount of people she has touched with her work is enormous.
Feeling a bit of regret. I feel like I made a poor first impression on Rebecca when I first met her a few years back at VCF East. I saw her again recently but was suffering from severe undiagnosed sleep apnea so much so that I was practically asleep at the event. I didn't know about the cancer. Thought I would have another chance. This is happening more and more in my life. :/
Let us cherish all the great moments that she helped bring to us.
Im reading this wearing a CPAP.
Rest in peace, Burger Becky! I really enjoyed her interview with CoRecursive a few years ago about porting DOOM to the 3DO[1] and highly recommend a listen.
[1]: https://corecursive.com/doomed-to-fail-with-burger-becky/
"Legend" barely begins to describe. She is up there with the Carmacks et al.
She was probably the first programmer I knew by name as a kid, following the games industry as a kid.
I was lucky to catch some of Becky's livestreams on YouTube over the years.
More than a brilliant programmer she was truly a kind soul. She never approached topics with any kind of ego. Just a joy and love for the things she'd worked on and the people she'd worked with
Yeah, that's the impression I got from everyone who's saddened by her loss.
We lost a legend.
She was responsible for a large part of my early gaming years, without me even knowing it. Another legendary account retired.
Offtopic: several of the embedded Bluesky posts at the end of the article show "The author of the quoted post has requested their posts not be displayed on external sites." Seems not to phase the PC Gamer "journalists".
It's faze, not phase. It's a common mistake.
[0] is a good article about this; not least that this has been happening since at least 1889 (to the point where I'd say we could now probably consider it a valid alternate spelling.)
[0] https://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001166.... (no, I've no idea why they're behind the wrong subdomain certificate)
These are quote-posts; the quote-post isn't protected but the quoted-post is. Bad choice by whoever wrote the article (in fairness the default Bluesky interface doesn't make this particularly clear), but nothing is being displayed that shouldn't be displayed.
Looks to me like it's the quoted post that's not to be displayed, not the post itself.
RIP, https://www.mobygames.com/person/343/rebecca-ann-heineman/
Very sad news. This one hit pretty hard for me as not only was she so awesome and contributed so much to so many great games, but the short timeline between "oh dang I have cancer and we're fighting it" to, well, today... was just way too short :(
You are not alone being hit hard by the pace of the cancer's progression. Dr Makis talks about his shocks lately as an oncologist. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gIYQCjB_NU
You are not alone. I can only think that her post about being very vulnerable after chemo from immune system supression made me realize how lucky you have to be to beat cancer with chemo.
My understanding is the cancer had already metastasized by the time it was discovered. Chemo was always a hail Mary sadly :(
I'd heard the 3DO doom port story linked here before and it is absolutely wild stuff. Legend.
As a retro-enthusiast, I was captivated by the stories she shared in her interviews, particularly about working on the cancelled Half Life port to Classic Mac OS (supposedly it even ran on 68k Macintoshes, How amazing is that !?). She said that she still had a CD of the gold master on her shelf. I really fear that work may never see the light of day now...
Aww I’m very sad to hear this. She was close friends to a partner of mine and I met her about ten years ago through that connection. She seemed to be a lovely person.
Wow. What an impactful person. I'm somewhat embarrassed to say that I did know about her till her death though I've played many of the games mentioned in the WP article about her. RIP.
RIP, Burger.
I played BT1, BT2, and BT3 for hours and hours.
Damn I knew she had cancer but never thought it is so quick.
“We have gone on so many adventures together! But, into the great unknown! I go first!!!“
Such a legend. RIP.
@dang could we have a black banner please?
For posterity, we have gotten a black banner. Farewell to a true hacker. She will be missed.
RIP Burger. Thanks for all the epic games and stories.