Elonka Dunin facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Elonka Dunin
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Dunin in 2006
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| Born | December 29, 1958 Santa Monica, California, U.S.
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| Occupation | Video game developer |
Elonka Dunin (born December 29, 1958) is an American video game developer and a cryptologist. A cryptologist is someone who studies and solves secret codes.
Elonka worked at Simutronics Corp. for many years, from 1990 to 2014. Later, in 2015, she was a Senior Producer at Black Gate Games. She also helped start the International Game Developers Association's Online Games group. She was a director for the Global Game Jam from 2011 to 2014. Since 2020, she has been working as a management consultant at Accenture.
Elonka has written a book about classical cryptography, which is the study of old ways to make and break codes. She also runs websites about famous unsolved codes, like Kryptos. This is a sculpture at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that has a secret message hidden in it. People often say she is the world's top expert on Kryptos. In 2010, the famous author Dan Brown even named a character in his book The Lost Symbol after her. The character's name, Nola Kaye, is an anagram of Elonka.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Elonka Dunin was born in Santa Monica, California. Her father, Stanley Dunin, was a mathematician from Poland. Her mother, Elsie Ivancich, was a dance expert from Croatia who worked at UCLA.
Elonka finished high school in 1976. She then started college at UCLA but left during her first year.
Later, Elonka joined the United States Air Force. She worked as an avionics technician, which means she helped fix the electronic systems on airplanes. She worked at air force bases in the United Kingdom and California. After leaving the Air Force, she studied digital electronics at a two-year college called Yuba College.
Career in Games
Early Online Games
In the 1980s, Elonka became interested in BBS culture. These were early online communities where people could connect using their computers. In 1989, she started playing early multiplayer games. These were games where many people could play together online.
In 1990, Elonka moved to St. Louis and began working for Simutronics, an online game company. Simutronics launched its own website, play.net, in 1997. Elonka became the General Manager for their online games. She helped manage the online community for Simutronics.
She was also a product manager for games like GemStone III. She was an executive producer for Alliance of Heroes, a game based on the TV shows Hercules and Xena: Warrior Princess. Elonka worked on many other games at Simutronics. These included CyberStrike, Modus Operandi, DragonRealms, and Tiny Heroes.
Elonka also helped create the International Game Developers Association's Online Games group. She edited several reports about the online game industry for this group. These reports covered topics like "Web and Downloadable Games" and "Persistent Worlds."
Games Elonka Worked On
During her 24 years at Simutronics, Elonka worked on many different games. Some of these include:
- GemStone III
- GemStone IV
- DragonRealms
- CyberStrike
- CyberStrike 2
- Alliance of Heroes
- Modus Operandi
- Orb Wars
- Fantasy University
- Tiny Heroes
Cryptography Work
Elonka Dunin has written books and articles about cryptography, which is the study of secret codes. She has also been interviewed on TV and radio about topics like Kryptos. This is a famous sculpture with a secret message. She also talks about the Smithy Code and Ricky McCormick's encrypted notes, which are other mysterious codes.
In 2000, Elonka solved a puzzle called the PhreakNIC v3.0 Code. This made her more interested in famous unsolved codes. Because Kryptos is on CIA grounds, it's hard for people to see it up close. In 2002, Elonka gave a presentation to CIA experts. She was one of the few people who got to see Kryptos in person. She even made rubbings of the text on the sculpture. After her visit, she started a website about Kryptos. She also helped lead an online group trying to solve the sculpture's secret messages.
In 2003, Elonka put together a team that solved the codes on Cyrillic Projector. This is another sculpture that is like a sister to Kryptos.
When the artist who made Kryptos, Jim Sanborn, found a small mistake on the sculpture in 2006, he asked Elonka to share the news. In 2007, Elonka appeared on the PBS show NOVA scienceNOW as an expert on Kryptos. In 2009, she wrote two articles about the sculpture for a book called Secrets of The Lost Symbol. This book was a guide to Dan Brown's novel The Lost Symbol. Elonka helped Dan Brown with his research for the novel. He even named a character, Nola Kaye, after her in the book.
In 2006, Elonka put together a book with hundreds of code puzzles. It was published as The Mammoth Book of Secret Codes and Cryptograms in the U.S. and The Mammoth Book of Secret Code Puzzles in the UK. The book also shares some details about unsolved codes, like Kryptos.
In 2013, Elonka asked the NSA (National Security Agency) for documents about Kryptos. The documents showed that the NSA started trying to solve the Kryptos puzzle in 1992. By 1993, a small group of NSA code-breakers had solved the first three parts of the sculpture.
Public Speaking
Elonka Dunin has given many talks about Kryptos and the Cyrillic Projector. She has spoken at events like the National Security Agency's Cryptologic History Symposium, Def Con, and Shmoocon. She has also given lectures at the International Game Developers Conference. In 2021, she gave a TEDx talk about cryptography called "2000 years of ordinary secrets."
Personal Life
Elonka Dunin is an editor on Wikipedia. She has made tens of thousands of edits to articles.
Works and Publications
- (editor) IGDA Online Games White Paper, 2002. PDF
- (editor) IGDA Online Games White Paper, 2003. PDF
- (editor) IGDA Web & Downloadable Games White Paper, 2004. PDF
- (editor-in-chief) IGDA Persistent Worlds White Paper, 2004. PDF
See also
In Spanish: Elonka Dunin para niños
