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ACTIVISION CO-FOUNDER AND LEGENDARY GAME DESIGNER David Crane was part of a group of fourAtari programmers who, with the help of music industry executive Jim Levy, left the thendominant global force in 1979 to form Activision. Publishing games for Atari's own console-the 2600-Activision became the world's first third-party video game publisher.
At Atari, Crane and his peers were often left uncredited in the games they designed and coded, but at Activision, the games took on a more novel approach-in both senses of the word. Activision games were treated as individual pieces of art, with the author's name and often photograph displayed prominently on the packaging.
Crane's early 1980s output at Activision includes several titles still talked about today, such as DRAGSTER, FREEWAY, GHOSTBUSTERS, LITTLE COMPUTER PEOPLE, and of course, the adventurous pioneer of the modern platformer, PlTFALL! (and its subsequent sequel, subtitled LOST CAVERNS).
"Activision became the giant of the early 1980s by recognizing that a game is a creative product and requires a creative environment," Crane says. "Bruce Davis' biggest mistake was to treat video games as commodities rather than creative products. I only mention this because it explains why I could no longer associate with the company."
Bruce Oavis took over as CEO of Activision in 1985 and is often the subject of discontent when discussing the publisher's fall from grace, which includes the closure of text adventure giant lnfocom and a move to creating business applications, which ultimately resulted in Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
"After the management change, and with the working environment completely screwed up, I left the company," Crane says.
In 1985, Activision programmer Garry Kitchen spun off a game development group from Activision, working for them remotely.
"This was at the beginning of the downturn in the U.S. video game market," Crane explains, "and Activision was happy to reduce internal development costs by working with outside development houses." The company developed exclusively for Activision for three years until, in 1988, Activision failed to renew its exclusive relationship...