Follow-up from the first part of the memorial page.

Table of contents

• "Standard interview"
• Power Play Interview
• A tribute by Brian Moriarty

"Standard interview"

Note: this interview was not lead by me, but is her "standard" interview she prepared for her Ozarksoft site

-What got you interested in writing games?

After years of therapy I think I know the answer to this - when I was a kid the only times my family spent together that weren't totally dysfunctional were when we were playing games. Consequently I believe games are a wonderful way to socialize. Also, I'm a bit of a "control freak" and love making rules for other people to follow.

-If you didn't get into the game business, what field might you have gotten into?

I graduated in '74 with a degree in Industrial Engineering which is the discipline responsible for operations research and systems simulation. In my first job I did mathematical modeling of various urban systems for the National Science Foundation. It was the closest thing to building games I could find and I guess I'd go back to it if I wasn't in the games biz.

-What's the story behind the publication of your first game?

My first game was a four player business management game with a real-time auction for the Apple II 16K cassette machine titled "Wheeler Dealers". The Apple didn't have a 4 player input device so I built some and included them with the game. I convinced my publisher (Speakeasy Software of Canada) to underwrite the construction of 500 of these, to put them in a printed box and to sell them at $35 a piece (when other games sold for $15 max and came in a ziploc bag). We sold 50 copies. However, this game was the launching pad for my career and was successively replicated in "Cartels and Cutthroats" (SSI) and "M.U.L.E." (EA).

-Was the experience of writing your early games, like Computer Quarterback, different than that of more recent titles like Global Conquest?

Yes, of course. "Computer Quarterback" was written only for myself and friends to play on the computer at work. I later converted it from Fortan on a mini-computer to Basic on an Apple II and sent it to Strategic Simulations. Design and development was a leisurely one person job. By the time I designed "Global Conquest" I had 2 programmers, 2 artists, a sound/music person, a writer and a director of play-testing to coordinate the development with (not even mentioning all the publisher's people). In some ways my job had gotten easier since I wrote very little code and debugged none of it. But in other ways my job had gotten much worse since I was responsible for bringing home enough money to pay seven people's cost of living rather than just my own.

-When and why did you switch from being a lone wolf developer to working with a group of people?

From the beginning I used groups of people to "play test" my games and from that group I acquired a design helper and my first programmer assistant. That was as far back as "Cartels & Cutthroats". The next game I did was "Cytron Masters" and we added another programmer to help with graphics and the Atari port. At that point we were all part-time except me. When Trip Hawkins approached me about writing M.U.L.E. for Electronic Arts the 4 person group we named Ozark Softscape was in place full-time.

-Prior to M.U.L.E., your games were visually spartan. Was the change for commercial reasons?

Actually M.U.L.E. was the first game where we started development in a graphical environment — the Atari 800 vs. the Apple. However, EA was also very supportive of that move. Also, we had a graphics person on staff at that point. I can't draw worth a flip myself and still care more for the content of the interactions than the sizzle in games I design.

-How did the design for M.U.L.E. develop?

There are several threads here. 1) Trip Hawkins wanted to get the rights Cartels and Cuttroats (a standard business strategy game I wrote for SSI) but the publisher wouldn't let it go. I told him I could do a better original. Nine months later we shipped "M.U.L.E." for the Atari 800. 2) "Wheeler Dealers" (see above) showed me how engaging a real time auction could be. The rest of the game was devised to support that activity given the two criteria that the underlying model be very easy to describe and where ever possible decisions be entered into the computer by "doing" rather than "telling". 3) The design evolved and was balanced by exhaustive play-testing. We had "M.U.L.E." testing parties several times a week to try out features and tweak numbers.

-How did the game get its name?

Part of the design of the game was inspired by a section of "Time Enough For Love" by Heinlein where in order to colonize planets the pioneers used bio-engineered mules. Our mechanized mules and their funny antics convinced us at Ozark Softscape that an acronym for mule would be cool but EA wanted "Moguls from Mars". We showed them how well M.U.L.E. looked on the title screen. That and some shrewd procrastination got them to go along.

-Who else worked on M.U.L.E.? And what did they do?

My brother, Bill Bunten, helped with design and the play-testing logistics; Jim Rushing helped with programming (especially the solo opponent); Alan Watson took care of the graphics; Roy Glover did the sounds and music and our producer at EA was Joe Ybarr.

Power Play Interview

This interview was published in the German games magazine Power Play, issue January 1995. The interview was lead by Brenda Garno and edited by Volker Weitz. Re-translated from German to English by Goethe in October 1999. Brenda, if you read this and can provide me with the original English interview text, this would be very nice. :-)

Games like "M.U.L.E.", "Seven Cities of Gold" or "Command HQ" have already become evergreens in the gaming scene. We spoke to the more than unusual woman who stands behind all those products.

Only a few game designers are left who influenced the gaming industry actively sind 1978. If you look at the "Hall of Fame" of those early games designers, you will unavoidably find the name Dan Bunten. But - you will not find him anymore. On November 15th 1992, a very special birthday for him, Dan became "Danielle Paula Bunten", a self-confident woman who conquers the obstacles in her way.
He (back then) and she (today) has written more multi-player games than anyone else in the scene: "Wheeler Dealers", "Computer Quarterback", "Cartels and Cutthroats", "Cyrton Masters", "M.U.L.E.", "Robot Rascals", "Modem Wars", "Command HQ" and "Global Conquest". Adding the single-player bestseller "Seven Cities of Gold" makes Dani a real game master, who has spoken several times at the "Computer Game Developers Conference", among other tasks.
In this interview, Dani reveals details about her personal change, her role in the industry, the direction in which she expects it to evolve and her hope of a revival of her popular game "M.U.L.E.".

-You've been creating games for 16 years now - an almost unbelievably long time. This gives you an advantage over people who only entered the games industry in the mid-eighties or even nineties. You've had plenty of time to see the market grow and develop. What's your opinion on the industry today?

Good question - there are a lot of different ideas behind it. Great things have happened. There are a lot more people involved, and there are a lot of more possibilities than in the past. Game design is, comparable to other sectors in the entertainment industry, a process of communication between the developer, designer and the audience. The more audience we have, the better - and we surely have more than in 1978. Apart from that, the hardware has become significantly better.

-You're referring to the "good old times" of cassettes...

My first game, "Wheeler Dealer", was a 16K-Cassette for the Apple. One constantly knocked against some technical borders, even with the programs we made for the Atari and Commodore - too little memory, too little speed. But even today, with many more technical possibilities, we are again knocking against borders - but that's probably a part of the profession of a game designer. The difference is that one can play around much longer until those borders are reached. With the PC for example, with its high resolution and 256 colors, we have a totally different "canvas" to realize our conception. CDs are also a welcomed innovation which primarily solve the problem of pirate copies. These pirate copies were always our problem because they touched the developer's purse directly. As much as we like it that our products are being liked - enthusiastically making a copy of the game for your friends is not what we originally intended...

-How seriously were your games affected by that?

I had lots of problems with it, but with M.U.L.E. it was worst. According to many people, the game has been the most pirated piece of software ever on this planet - and we have facts and numbers which prove that: "Seven Cities of Gold" sold 150.000 copies, "M.U.L.E." only 30.000. But: everyone has played it. I know more people who have a (pirate) copy of M.U.L.E. somewhere than of "Seven Cities of Gold". The game was enormously successful - just not commercially. Basically I hate to raise my moral index, and I can imagine why pirate copies are so fascinating - but the losses are significant. I've emerged as a loser from this story.

-As positive as the new developments against software piracy and the new graphical possibilities may be - didn't the games lose something?

It's strange: Some things have become better in the past, but the seamy side of the general development has become more noticable. The creativity behind earlier games and the diversity of products has disappeared almost completely. Today we're in a world where every game is bound to a specific genre. We have groups of categories - and that's all we will ever see. It is even more extreme with the cartridge machines - meanwhile, there are enough people who've had enough of fiddling with the joystick, always playing variations of one and the same game principle. It's almost as if a higher instance has decided that there are just two genres left, "sports" and "action": games which require fast reflexes and high speed or games where you have to shoot at something. The phenomenal success of "Doom" for example doesn't help us a bit. Though it is a graphically very nice variation of the good old "Wolfenstein", it is still bound to the same idea: Shoot everything which moves. That's not exactly my connotation of game design. Of course it is very successful commericially, but is that the only criterium which counts? It's almost as if today's publishers were thinking exactly like that. If a certain game doesn't reach a certain revenue in a certain amount of time, it is thought of as a let-down. In my opinion, this is an unfortunate development which constantly becomes worse. If you take a look at Electronic Arts' software catalogue of 1983, for example, you see an unbelievable variety of products. Today however, their palette is rather conventional, conservative and regressive. The casually appearing innovative game gets almost no support in the marketing division. Of course, that's only one case of many; but it seems to be a secret agreement for the whole market.

-A secret agreement?

On the one hand, there are the distributors as a junction between the publisher and the audience. They look at the games without knowing anything about the matter: How does the packaging look like? Is it being advertised as the "hottest product of this-and-that genre"? etc. Then they make their decisions, without having played the game even once. Because of these people who absolutely do not care about the game's contents, we have problems. Everything they do is to put a package into stores as good as possible, in terms of marketing. With that, they decide what is being produced. That's a shame - I can't express it differently without endangering my own future potential.

-Are there still any games which are not mainstream?

There are... casually. "Lemmings" for example - a nice, extraordinary idea. Or "The Incredible Machine" - in my opinion, this game belongs to a genre that has been forgotten too early. There were a few games I would describe as real "toys". You can't win or lose them, but you play around with them. "Sim City" also was such a game where entertainment and education were well balanced. While you are building the cities you also learn about municipal construction. In "The Incredible Machine", you learn something about physics, but only by the way, in a convenient manner. These are wonderful games which also offer something for the intellect.
The best products are those which can't be connoted with a specific genre, like e.g. "General Chaos" from Sega which is a strange mixture between strategy game and shoot 'em up. It's really fascinating how it crossed the borders of the respective genre.

-This has also been a multiplay game...

There you can see my personal favourites... It was a game for four players. If you can play with many people, that makes the game more entertaining and challenging. I've held a lecture on that topic a few years ago on one of those "Developer Conferences". Nobody says on his deathbed: "I wish I had interacted with more things - I've spent too much time with my family and friends". On the contrary: Most people are interested in other people. We interact with things because we want to find an exit from our inability to communicate - but that does not mean that it is our greatest wish...
I believe in a not too distant future we will look back and say: "Do you remember the time when playing computer games meant to sit alone in a closed room?!" This image of "playing" is something for boys before puberty who really make everything you can do with buttons and joystick movements - the keyword is intensity. I don't want to teach them to behave differently, because they seem to enjoy it. But I believe that there is enough room for different kinds of fun and entertainment.
This was the main problem with "M.U.L.E.". Sega came and EA came and wanted more of "the same" - not different games. Hence I tried to apply something of the desired intensity to "M.U.L.E." - and it failed. I would really like to see it republished: It is my best game according to many people's opinion and clearly my most entertaining, I think. The only thing it needs is a kind of facelifting: better graphics and details. I believe the game content is still well balanced and appealing - there are still people left who love this game, ten years after its release. Hence, there must be something about it!

-Do you think that the large companies like "Sony" and "Time Warner" supress the small, creative developers?

Absolutely! But in the long run, everything might turn out well. I have constructed a scenario for myself where creative working will still be possible. Hand in hand with the development of the "Big Players" which is orientated towards multimedia and Hollywood standards, a scene is growing which concentrates on network gaming and alternative publishing methods. I just critizised "Doom" for its lack of game content - but on the other hand it is a nice example for an untraditional publishing method. With a minimum of costs it was possible to reach a large audience and still earn a lot of money.

-Is that something you could imagine?

I would be happy and satisfied if I could merely develop multiplayer games which let people interact! And: I already had a lot of success with that. Some of my games weren't successful commercially but are still alive because they have been distributed to other people. A good example for that is "Global Conquest", my last game for Microprose. We knew it was tricky and constantly touched the borders of a strategy-, war- or board game; I don't even know in which genre I should put it. It was something like "Empire", like our previous game - but additionally it was challenging, highly addictive, and you could play it with four players over modem or network. Currently it is not published anymore, but is still alive in the various networks. Though I don't get any money for that, it is still a reward to see that. If I had enough cash, I would release such games as shareware and then get sent $20 from the people - this would be seven times as much than I get from a publisher. But the market will find different possibilities, and then times for creative minds will get better.

-Do you think your reputation as designer and programmer has been changed by your personal change?

I don't think so. I had been planned as a woman - just my body didn't fit. Hence I chose the way to adapt my body to my soul.

-And then you've been to the Computer Games Developers Conference. How did people react?

As far as I can judge it - maybe it will be different in the future - I did not feel any discrimination. Neither as a "changed person" nor as a woman. I think that is very positive and also a good sign for this industry. As I went to the conference as "Danielle" instead of "Dan", people were very open-hearted, supported me and were happy for me. I didn't have any negative reactions: Nobody came and said: "Gawd, what happened to you!" or "Who are you?". It was really fun. My "coming out" at the conference was my key experience. The whole thing is a little bit uncomfortable; and when you get support, it is something great! Besides, I think my job opportunities have widened instead of getting worse.

-What happened?

I've just finished being a consultant for "Interval Research". The aim of the study was to develop attractive games for girls. I don't think they chose me if I had not become a woman. The whole thing was a lot of fun. On the other hand, I had to manage a little crisis when "M.U.L.E." for the Sega Genesis had been cancelled. I came back to Little Rock, Arkansas and just said: "Finished. I'm finished with this industry. I surrender". Hence I printed out my course of life - before my work as a programmer I had been a conventional engineer - which had grown quite considerable during the course of time and walked to the next job exchange. At first, my salary expectations were cut down considerably - and even after that, it didn't even come to a first job hearing. I can swear: If I had come as a man, with all my experience as an engineer and a programmer, I would have been in a leading position in no time! There is a lot of discrimination, especially in the South of USA, but in this case it was "only" directed to me a "woman", not as a "changed person".

-To tell it everyone would be like walking on the street and always shouting "I'm a woman!".

Possibly - there's something true about it. Really: I think of my as a woman. I'm not anymore in any shifting phase; I'm "ready". The changing has something to do with the story how I became a woman - it has nothing to do with who I am now. My children call me "mommy" - that's the way it works. I feel a lot more like being "mommy" than I ever feeled being "daddy".

-I as someone who has always been a woman cannot see anything "typically female" about me - apart from the physical differences of course. Maybe it's because I never needed to think about it - I simply am who I am. How did you realize that you actually are a woman?

There were a variety of small, even unnoticable things. I had the body of a man and played the role which society imprinted on me: The role of a husband, a father. But that has always been a conscious acting; more of a role than an actual "being so". Looking back, I have the feeling that I acted all the time. Now I don't need to act anymore - and that's rather ironic because I had to learn a lot to actually "count" as a woman! I had to learn how to walk, speak, dress as a woman. Those little things which are necessary that other people don't react alienated.There's a little summary someone gave me to make clear what being a woman means: As a woman you have to sing when you speak, dance when you walk, and you have to open your heart... I know how stereotypical that sounds, but it is true! Speech for a man is something completely different: The melody of speech is fast, monotone and decreases at the end of a sentence. Sometimes, this still happens to me, and people are always irritated. Female speech is a little bit like song - we have a lot more melody and different speech patterns. Walking is really a bit like dancing: slower and connected with a lot of subtile movements - I enjoyed it at once. Besides, I had to stop going strictly through the world like I had done it before. That was typically male for me.

-Now you know both sides. Can you explain why there are so few female game designers?

There are overall few women in the industry - that's not connected to the job of a game designer specifically. Somehow this industry doesn't seem to be attractive for women. I can explain it: My own priorities have shifted. Now, the job comes after family, and also personal relationships outside family have become more important for me than before - though I'm still a workaholic. But I don't identify myself with the job as strong as before.
From the view of the game player, there's the problem for girls that they don't interact with humans. As I made the consulting job for "games for girls", my first intuition was: "Drop the things, concentrate on interaction". I'm against stereotyping the sexes because this is culturally derived anyway. Girls are grown up with other preferences: they are more building up, interactive, supporting. They learn more communication and sensitivity. Boys are a lot more oriented towards an aim. In connection to that, something springs to my mind which perfectly describes the "little difference": One of the sadest changes I had to deal with after my operation was the fact that I couldn't aim anymore when urinating. Boys - I have two little sons and a daughter - simply love to aim. As someone who was able to do that for years and who cannot do it anymore now, I suddenly had to deal with a lot more changing world - a world I couldn't control very well anymore. Socially, it's maybe as simple as this: Men aim and women are devoted to an event, or something similar. Such have our cultural roles evolved. Back to the topic: There's no equivalent in the computer world to our feelings in the real world - no love, no touching, no nuances. That's a big problem.

-Is that an insight from your work on "female" games?

Absolutely yes. When I took a look at my productes, I realized very fast where the problem was: to express emotions in a digital world. There are simply too little details which are needed for example to let a computer character tell how it feels. Technology and graphics are completely irrelevant - the emotions simply aren't there. Of course you can, like in a movie, prepare a set of fixed emotions and behaviourisms so that the spectator can see: "Oh, now he or she is sad". But one can't produce computed versions of these emotions which could be used algorithmically. Additionally, there's the problem how an artificial intelligence can know when she's happy and when she's sad. That's the cause for the fact that there are so little "female" products, at least that's what I think. It's simply not possible. It's a lot simpler to produce fast cars, spaceships or other technical gimmicks!

-However: I as a female entity and computer games player like hardcore games like "Doom" nevertheless which have absolutely nothing in common with the mentioned "female" qualitities.

I can imagine that - I also like playing games, even when I'm not currently programming something. "Road Rash" was such a case: Though I've driven a motor cycle only two times in my life. But that left a constant impression on me, hence I really enjoyed riding the nitro-bike and hitting my enemies with chains and karate kicks. That was really fun. I just didn't like the ending, when the girl joined me on the bike - that's not exactly what I had in mind.

A tribute by Brian Moriarty

REPRINTED FROM: GAME DEVELOPER volume 5, number 10 ( OCTOBER 1998)

Dani was presented with the Computer Game Developers Association's Lifetime Achievement Award at the CGDC in Long Beach, Calif., last May. Dani's longtime friend and fellow game designer Brian Moriarty honored her at that ceremony with a laudatory speech, which we have excerpted here. We'll miss you, Dani. - The Editors

A TRIBUTE TO DANI BUNTEN BERRY
BY BRIAN MORIARTY

It's fair to characterize tonight's honoree as an old-timer. Her first published title, WHEELER DEALERS was released back in 1978. This Apple II cassette was rather unusual. It came in a cardboard box instead of a ziplock bag. It sold for thirty-five bucks at a time when most games sold for ten or fifteen. Strangest of all, it wasn't designed for a single user. An array of push-buttons included in the box allowed up to four people to join in a real-time stock market simulation. WHEELER DEALERS sold only around 50 copies. But it marked the beginning of a preoccupation with a design issue 20 years ahead of its time: multiplayer gaming.

COMPUTER QUARTERBACK, published in 1979, was originally designed to support exactly two players. It was ported to Apple BASIC from a mini-computer simulation written in Fortran. In an amusing reversal of recent industry practice, it was the single-player mode that was reluctantly added at the last minute at the request of the publisher, Strategic Simulations.

Nineteen eighty-one saw the release of a second Apple title for SSI, CARTELS AND CUTTHROATS. An economic simulation designed for up to six simultaneous players, the box copy promised that the game was "so much fun you may overlook its use as a superb educational tool." One of the early admirers of CARTELS AND CUTTHROATS was a game theorist fresh out of Harvard with the curious nickname Trip.

The theme of war makes its first appearance in 1982, with CYTRON MASTERS for SSI's RapidFire? label. This two-player design offered a curious conjunction of strategy and real-time action in a game that pushed the Apple II hardware to its limits.

Just after CYTRON MASTERS was released, the aforementioned Harvard graduate expressed a desire to obtain the publishing rights to CARTELS AND CUTTHOATS for a new game company he was launching. When SSI refused to let it go, the original designer gamely offered to produce a superior knock-off.

Nine months later, Electronic Arts bamboozled the industry with a flattering new vision of what computer gaming was all about. Their slick and glamorous promotional campaign turned publishers into record labels, developers into movie studios, and game designers into rock stars. For a few short months, the prospect of fame, wealth, and a matching wardrobe inspired game designers to new heights of personal ambition and creativity; an ideal atmosphere for creating a masterpiece.

M.U.L.E. was multiplayer from the ground up. It used the joystick array of the Atari 800 to connect four people in an unprecedented example of computer-moderated parlor gaming. By combining the resource management of CARTELS AND CUTTHROATS, the auctioneering of WHEELER DEALERS and the futuristic setting of CYTRON MASTERS, M.U.L.E. sustained an exquisite play balance of teamwork and rivalry, bitter cooperation and delicious treachery. Although the original version sold only 30,000 copies, M.U.L.E. developed a base of passionate fans that remains active even today. It is required study for anyone interested in the design of multiplayer computer games.

M.U.L.E. was the first title attributed to Ozark Softscape, an Arkansas design collective marketed by Electronic Arts as a hip back-country boutique, computer gaming's answer to the Allman Brothers. Expectations were high after the induction of M.U.L.E. into Computer Gaming World's Hall of Fame. Astonishingly, their next EA release actually lived up to the hype.

SEVEN CITIES OF GOLD was a solid commercial triumph. It brought together real-time action, strategy, and exploration in a historical adventure with a genuine smudge of educational value. In fact, the much-despised term "edutainment" was originally coined to describe this game. With sales of 150,000 copies across several platforms and numerous design awards, SEVEN CITIES catapulted Ozark into the ranks of the elite developers; and nobody complained about the fact that it was designed for only a single player.

Ozark wanted to follow up SEVEN CITIES with a computerized edition of one of the classic Avalon Hill board games, but Electronic Arts had other ideas. Some executive arm-twisting and a substantial cash bribe resulted in a sequel, HEART OF AFRICA for the Commodore 64, which continued the formula of action and strategy, exploration and history. It achieved less than half the sales of its predecessor. A few years later, another designer tried his hand at that old Avalon Hill game, CIVILIZATION.

HEART OF AFRICA was to be the last product Ozark ever designed for a single user. In fact, their next design took the multiplayer option to a provocative new extreme. Not only did ROBOT RASCALS have no single-player mode, it actually required the participation of no less than four human players. Daringly billed as a "family game," this peculiar fusion of turn-based action and strategy, augmented by a deck of real playing cards, received a polite but puzzled critical receptiontion, and was carefully ignored by everybody else.

A final title for Electronic Arts broke even more new ground. 1988's MODEM WARS was the first game released by a major publisher to support modem-to-modem multiplay. A futuristic synthesis of toy soldiering and football, MODEM WARS was a technical tour de force, offering a surprisingly brisk interactive experience within the severe constraints of 1200-baud modems. Many of the latency and synchronization challenges faced by today's network game engineers were solved first by MODEM WARS.

Microprose took up the cause of modem-based wargaming in a big way with the 1990 release COMMAND HQ, which boasted a simple, clean user interface that made historical strategy more accessible than ever, and racked up impressive sales.

Its successor, 1992's GLOBAL CONQUEST, was the first four-player network game released by a major publisher. Its absorbing mix of real-time action and resource development was the design prototype for an entire generation of combat simulations, including DUNE II, WARCRAFT and COMMAND AND CONQUER.

The constellation of classic games you see here is just one dimension of a professional career in which the joy of communication has played a central role. Her long list of publishing credits includes columns and articles for virtually all of the leading industry journals. She delivered the first keynote address at the legendary 1988 Game Developer's Conference in Milpitas, and hosted a series of highly-regarded lectures, seminars, and roundtables at most of the subsequent conferences.

In an industry where many celebrity designers have become remote and unapproachable, she has never failed to remain near the center of social activities, freely sharing her company and expertise with the shakers and the shaken.

In the early 90s, this beer-guzzling Arkansas code wrangler undertook a transformation which dramatically exemplified the gamelike nature of social reality. The broadened perspective gained by her friends and business associates as a result of this transformation has been one of her most precious contributions to the industry.

It is no exaggeration to characterize tonight's honoree as the world's foremost authority on multiplayer computer games. Nobody has worked harder to demonstrate how technology can be used to realize one of the noblest of human endeavors, bringing people together. Historians of electronic gaming will find in these eleven boxes the prototypes of the defining art form of the 21st century. On behalf of the community of game developers and game players worldwide, it is my great pleasure to present this Lifetime Achievement Award to one of the pioneers of interactive entertainment, my courageous teacher and fascinating friend, Dani Bunten Berry.

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