Dona Bailey

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Dona Bailey is a game programmer responsible for creating, with Ed Logg in 1981, the Centipede video game, one of the first videogames to incorporate AI. She was one of the only female game programmers in the industry at that time. As a highly successful arcade game produced by Atari, Centipede also earned a name for itself for being the first game to begin luring women into the video arcades across the US.

The object of the game was to destroy a centipede that winds itself faster and faster through a maze of mushrooms along with other insect enemies that invade the field. As the player shoots the centipede's segments, the insect fragments itself into smaller, faster sections, making the destruction even more difficult.

Dona Bailey currently teaches at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, including a class geared specifically toward students training in game design.