In 1983, the final game that Shaw completely programmed and designed herself, Happy Trails, released just as the video game market crashed. With the industry in shambles, Shaw took a break from making games but returned in 1988 to oversee the production of River Raid II, her final swan song in the world of console gaming. The couple formed the company On-Line Systems (later called Sierra) and became the dominating force in computer games. By the time Williams retired in 1996, she was credited with more than 30 top computer games, the majority of which she wrote and designed, including Kings Quest and Phantasmagoria. After its release to instant success, Bailey disappeared from the video game industry only to resurface 26 years later as a keynote speaker at the 2007 Women in Games Conference. Bailey revealed it was the pressure and criticism from her male counterparts that drove her from the business. Today, Bailey encourages women to pursue careers in games. She works as a college instructor teaching numerous courses about game design. In addition to her work as a programmer and developer, Westfall also served on the Game Developer Conference board of directors for six years. Westfall and Freeman renamed their company Free Fall Games, although Westfall herself has spent the last several years as a medical transcriptionist. Jensen continued her work in computer adventure games with the line of Agatha Christie and The Women’s Murder Club PC titles. She developed her dream project, Gray Matter, with Wizarbox, and then opened a new game development studio named Pinkerton Road with her husband, Robert Holmes. Jenson also writes fiction under the name Eli Easton. In the 1990s, Laurel continued her work as one of the strongest voices in virtual reality research and development with her company Telepresence. She also co-founded Purple Moon, one of the first software companies to specialize in developing games for girls. Laurel works as a consultant, speaker, and professor, teaching 2D and 3D interaction design. In 1983, Briggs worked at the text game adventure company Infocom as a tester. Her strong writing skills and go-getter spirit convinced the bosses to greenlight her concept for a text adventure-romance game for girls, Plundered Hearts. After writing and designing Hearts, Briggs co-wrote Gamma Force: Pit of a Thousand Screams and co-designed portions of Zork Zero. Briggs left the gaming industry in 1988, returning to school to earn her graduate degree. Today, she continues to write and owns a company that specializes in human-factors engineering and cognitive psychology Self was featured in the documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, when Pac-Man world champion Billy Mitchell presented her with a Q*Bert arcade machine, spurring the then 79-year-old Self to start competing again.
