Centipede creator sees lack of diversity in the game industry

Industry veteran Dona Bailey paid a visit to NYU-Poly's Game Innovation Lab recently to talk about her experience in Atari's coin-op division in the early 1980s, where she co-developed Centipede along with Ed Logg in 1981. The talk was brief and touched on Bailey's time in the industry, her experiences as the only woman in her division, and the strides yet to be taken in the industry at large. "So much progress has been made in the development cycle and the way games are developed," says Bailey, whose Centipede was one of the first games to utilize AI. "It seems like there hasn't been enough progress in the diversity of game designers and gender equality for game designers." Bailey left Atari in 1982 and now teaches at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.