Specialty: Video Game Design
Major Contributions:
Game Designer for Atari 2600 Console
EPIC IPIOP Fellow Intellectual Property Attorney
Carla Meninsky learned computer programming in high school but shifted her focus to neuropsychology and brain modeling at Stanford University, earning her bachelor’s degree in 1977. Seeing the potential for using computers to change the animation process she tried to find backers to pursue this path, but others couldn’t quite understand her vision.
Hired by the gaming company Atari in 1980 she was quickly moved into game design and programming. With no experience with the Stella emulator used in the Atari 2600 console she was given a list of names of potential games and told to make one.
And that’s just what she did by creating the car crash maze game Dodge ‘Em. Earning good reviews, it was given an Honorable Mention in the category of “Best Solitaire Game” at the 3rd annual Arkie Awards.
The next year she was responsible for the console version of the game Warlords, a multi-player battle between four warlords trying to destroy each other’s fort and the warlord icon at the center. The game was well received and won multiple awards at the time and was even ranked the 25th best video game of all time in 2009 by Game Informer.
After her time at Atari, Meninsky started her own computer consulting business working as a systems architect. Still trying to find venture capital and to prove herself as a “woman” game designer she and a colleague agreed to work on a game project only to have to back out after discovering another programmer was using stolen code on the project. While reflecting on that experience, among others dealing with theft of code and trade secrets, and the fact that she negotiated all the contracts for her business, she decided to change careers.
Attending the George Washington University School of Law, she earned her degree and began practicing law in 2004. Meninsky has been Senior Vice President and Assistant General Counsel at Bank of America, taught international financial law courses at London School of Economics, and is a Financial Servies and FinTech Attorney at Meninsky Law in San Fransisco.
Written by Angela Goad
Sources:
Will Nicholes: A Conversation With Carla Meninsky
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