Carol Shaw (video game designer)

Carol Shaw
Born	1955 (age 62–63)
Alma mater	University of California, Berkeley
Occupation	Computer programmer Video game designer
Years active	1978-1990
Known for	River Raid (Atari 2600)

Carol Shaw (born 1955) is a former video game designer, notable for being one of the first female designers in the video game industry. While working at Atari, Inc. in 1978, Shaw designed the unreleased Polo game and designed 3-D Tic-Tac-Toe the same year, both for the Atari 2600. Shaw's official job title at Atari was Microprocessor Software Engineer. Later she joined Activision, where she programmed her best-known game, River Raid. According to the River Raid manual, she is also a “scholar in the field of Computer Science.”

Shaw was born in 1955 and was raised in Palo Alto, California. Her father was a mechanical engineer and worked at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. She did not enjoy the stereotypical girl activities as a child like playing with dolls. Instead, she would mess with her brother's model railroad set. Shaw first became interested in computers in high school when she used a computer for the first time and discovered she could play text-based games on the system. Shaw attended the University of California, Berkeley and graduated with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in 1977. She went on to complete a master's degree in Computer Science at Berkeley.

Shaw was hired at Atari, Inc. in 1978 to work on games for the Atari VCS (later called the 2600). While there she wrote Video Checkers (1978), 3-D Tic-Tac-Toe (1978), and, with Nick Turner, Super Breakout (1978). Co-worker Mike Albaugh later put her on a list of Atari's "less publicized superstars":

I would have to include Carol Shaw, who was simply the best programmer of the 6502 and probably one of the best programmers period....in particular, [she] did the [2600] kernels, the tricky bit that actually gets the picture on the screen for a number of games that she didn't fully do the games for. She was the go-to gal for that sort of stuff.

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