Carol Shaw: A true female Atari story

Carol Shaw: A true female Atari story

Antti Mutta

Carol Shaw is a real game-changer and an industry icon as one of the very first female game developers. ⁠

Shaw started her career at Atari, Inc. in 1978. The same year Atari released her first game, 3-D Tic-Tac-Toe, for the 2600 system. This was followed by Othello (together with Ed Logg), Video Checkers (in 1980) and Super Breakout (1981, with Nick Turner). She also worked as a developer on software for Atari's 8-bit computers.⁠


Shaw left Atari in 1980 and after a stint at Tandem Computers, she landed a job at Activision in 1982. Her first game for the company was one for the ages. River Raid for Atari 2600/VCS became a smash hit, selling over a million cartridges. That's not even counting the ports to other platforms, which Shaw handled the Atari 8-bit computer and Atari 5200 ports herself. ⁠




“Probably one of the best programmers period…” 
– Mike Albaugh commented on Carol Shaw in an interview.⁠

Carol Shaw received the Industry Icon Award in 2017 at The Game Awards. ⁠

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