Rebecca Heineman, video game legend and co-founder of Interplay, dies

Rebecca Ann Heineman, programmer, designer, and lifelong advocate for video game historypassed away on November 17, 2025, at the age of 62, after a battle with lung cancer that she had made public in recent weeks. She was, first and foremost, a competitive gamer: the first champion of a national video game tournament in the United States thanks to Space Invaders, a title that turned an entire generation into believers in the cultural potential of the medium.

Her name will forever be linked to a long list of games and systems, but also to an idea that spans four decades of the medium’s history: video games as a deeply artisanal craftas patient engineering, and as a space where dissident identities finally found a way to be seen.

From Space Invaders champion to world architect

Born in 1963 in Whittier, California, Heineman grew up unable to afford cartridges for her Atari 2600, so she decided to teach herself how they worked. She copied, took apart, and understood those games to the point where she began writing her own code, at a time when there were almost no manuals or tutors, only curiosity and persistence.

In 1980, she traveled to Los Angeles to participate in the regional phase of the Space Invaders national championship. She didn’t even expect to make it into the top 100, but ended up winning both the qualifier and the grand final in New Yorkbecoming the first champion of a national video game tournament in the United States.

That victory led her first to write guides and articles, and then to enter the industry as a programmer. She worked at Avalon Hill, where, at just 16 years old, she helped define engines, tools, and internal documentation. She later returned to California and, in 1983, co-founded Interplay with Brian Fargo and other partners, participating in seminal games such as Wasteland, The Bard’s Tale, and The Bard’s Tale III: Thief of Fateas well as adventures such as Dragon Wars and ports of influential titles such as Out of This World and Battle Chess.

Over the years, as Interplay grew into a large company, Heineman decided to return to smaller, almost intimate structures. He founded Logicware and, later, Contraband Entertainment, studios from which he led both original games and a notable number of versions for Mac and other platformsincluding ports of Aliens vs. Predator, Baldur’s Gate II, Heroes of Might and Magic IV, and Jazz Jackrabbit 2, among many others. Among them, the small miracle of converting Doom for 3D0 in just 10 weeks stands out (the worst conversion of ID’s game that exists, but quite a programming feat given the time it took and various technical considerations).

Among his most successful achievements is the conversion of Out of this World (Another World) to Super Nintendo, a technically very complicated conversion due to the lack of speed of the Japanese console’s processors: “When I was designing Out Of This World for Super Nintendo, they kept telling me that it was impossible to make that game. Not only did I show that it could be done, but I generated a lot of money for Interplay. Being capable of the impossible is what gives me energy day after day before the keyboard.”

Her technical career was not limited to video game development: she collaborated with companies such as Electronic Arts, Microsoft, Sony, and Amazon, working on engine optimization, console kernels such as PSP and PlayStation 4and training development teams for Xbox 360. In 2013, she co-founded Olde Sküül, where she served as executive director until her death, and from where she continued to combine programming, preservation, and technical consulting for new and classic projects.

A leader in different fields

Rebecca served on the board of the Videogame History Museum and the board of GLAADthe historic LGBTQ+ rights advocacy organization, and took on internal leadership roles as trans chair of the Glamazon group at Amazonwhere she worked as a software architect. In 2017, she was inducted into the International Video Game Hall of Fame, and in 2025, she received the Gayming Icon Award, explicit recognition of her role as a pioneer and role model for several generations of queer gamers and developers.

At the same time, he became a key voice for the preservation and memory of computer video games. In recent years, she spoke openly about the importance of preserving source code, tools, and documentationrevealing that the code for games such as Fallout and Fallout 2 had been saved despite corporate orders to destroy ita confession that once again placed her on the side of history and those who want to understand how those worlds were built.

Her illness, an aggressive adenocarcinoma diagnosed in October 2025, also found her in public: she shared the process, launched a GoFundMe campaign to cover medical costs, and spoke, with a mixture of bluntness and tenderness, about how strange it was to read elegies while she was still alive. The campaign is still active for a funeral worthy of my keyboard, Pixelbreaker! So I can make a worthy entrance for reuniting with my one true love, Jennell Jaquays”

In one of the last farewell messages circulated among colleagues, Brian Fargo described her as one of the most brilliant programmers he had ever worked with and shared the last message he had sent her: “We have gone on so many adventures together! But, into the great unknown! I go first!!!”.

Rest in peace.

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