Dani Bunten (creator of M.U.L.E.): A Tribute
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/20...ten/index.html
A very touching article. It also shows just how far companies like Electronic Arts have fallen.
For those who don't know, Dani Bunten created one of the greatest, most influential games of the 1980s: M.U.L.E., a sci-fi strategy/resource management/board game hybrid that inspired countless game designers. She is also probably the most famous transsexual in the history of video games (discounting Raiden, of course).
A choice excerpt:
Quote:
When Bunten became more reclusive in the early 1990s, Computer Gaming World's Sipe was one of the few people in the industry she kept updated on her personal life. This included the looming, final phase of what Bunten called the "pronoun change," completed in 1992. Not long after, Sipe ran into Dani at one of Crawford's game design conferences, sporting a perm. He asked how "it" went.
"I had to call it off," Bunten said. "They wanted to add guns and bombs in there."
The two had a good laugh when they realized Bunten thought Sipe was talking about her other life's struggle: to remake M.U.L.E. for the '90s.
"Some asshole at E.A. insisted there had to be combat in it," says Crawford, although company founder Hawkins says he has no recollection of that.
