To get to the point in the article where it introduces the subject, scroll about half-way down or search for “Why look for Ban Tran in the first place?”
And that's the gist of it: someone making a documentary on female video game protagonists went looking for a developer of Wabbit, which can be considered (one of) the first of that category.
almost everything I read is of similar nature, it's getting quite exhaustive
What other possibilities are there?