She's fighting cancer and can't do it alone.
Rebecca Ann Heineman, Interplay co-founder, transgender icon, creator of Bard’s Tale 3, and the first formally recorded US video game champion, has asked for help in her fight against adenocarcinoma.
“I’m in pain,” Heineman wrote on her GoFundMe page. “I’ve been diagnosed with adenocarcinoma a few weeks ago and I went from being an active outgoing computer nerd into a nearly bedridden cancer patient who is non stop exhausted.”
Heineman said she noticed she was out of breath climbing “a single flight of stairs” at PAX West back in August and September, before tests in Dallas started her adenocarcinoma diagnosis.
“My cancer is aggressive so to say I’m scared is an understatement,” she added. “Insurance is helping, but some of my treatment[s] are out of network so I’m getting huge bills.”
Through a win at a Space Invaders tournament in New York back in 1980, Heineman was named the first formal US champion of any video game. She followed up this achievement by co-founding Interplay with Brian Fargo, Jay Patel, Chris Wells, and Troy Worrell. There, she created titles including Dragon Wars and The Bard’s Tale 3.
In recent years, Heineman has put her famously-doomed (pun intended) 3DO port of Doom on GitHub, going into great detail on how rushed and ill-informed the project was. You can watch her YouTube video, above, for more information on the port.
Heineman is a transgender icon, vocal about her own experiences. In the documentary High Score, she explained why she connected with video games as a child, saying, “it allowed me to be myself. It allowed me to play as female.” She’s also served as a board member of GLAAD.
If you’d like to assist Heineman in her fight against cancer, you can do so by donating on GoFundMe. Thankfully, she’s already raised $70,284 USD of her $75,000 USD goal at the time of writing.
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