And yet these are only two of the many great games in Dani's long career. But I could tell from Seven Cities of Gold alone that Danielle Bunten Berry was a designer's designer, a game developer who insisted on getting it right and refused to compromise her principles. Dani's story was not always a happy one, and in later years I felt she had a shadowed, slightly haunted look, even when she was smiling. As only you newcomers will need to be told, Dani was transsexual. Most people who do it have trouble with their families, lose their jobs, and develop problems with banks, landlords, credit bureaus, and the government.
Nobody does it without a great deal of inner turmoil and personal pain.
I admire Dani all the more for her courage and perseverance through it all. At the same time, she was also in the middle of her transformation, which, of course, included the surgery, and everyone who knew her well was secretly wondering about it. Soon afterwards, at some industry function or another, Russell Sipe, then publisher of Computer Gaming World , came up to her. I decided not to. Russell was taken aback.