Beth Daggert has been a game designer, software engineer, lead programmer, director of engineering, and vice president of engineering, within and without the gaming industry. Having worked on such historic franchises as Lode Runner and Star Wars, she recently accomplished a bucket-list item of contributing to the development of an Ultima-inspired role-playing game — for the Apple II computer, where her passion for digital storytelling started decades ago.
In this podcast, Beth and I talk about the early encounters with Richard Garriott and Tim Sweeney that led her to pursue a career in the games industry; how leading a team of engineers is no different from being a Dungeons & Dragons DM; the long hours and burnout that’s been endemic of the games industry, from her time there in the 1990s through today; whether and how to encourage women to pursue careers in tech; and what it was like to return to her roots and contribute to 6502 Workshop’s Nox Archaist.
Stream the audio edition of this interview below or from Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify, Overcast, Pandora, Pocket Casts, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, RadioPublic, or the Internet Archive. Click past the jump for a transcript and links to resources mentioned in this episode.
Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:11:49 — 42.1MB) | Embed
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