Legacy and Rebirth

Despite efforts to turn the company around, Mediagenic fortunes continued to decline, posting a loss of $26.8 million on revenues of only $28.8 million in 1991. The BHK Corporation headed by Robert Kotick subsequently acquired Mediagenic with Kotick replacing Bruce Davis as the CEO. Completely restructured, the company changed its name back to Activision in 1992 and moved its headquarters to Los Angeles.

“The Activision name, however, still had value,” Crane noted. “When Bobby Kotick bought the company, that was mostly what he was buying – that, and huge debt left him by Bruce Davis. Bobby pared the company down to three or four people, moved it to Los Angeles, and managed to work through all of the debt issues. Under his leadership the company has come back strong, and he is to be commended for that. But it isn’t the Activision that I knew and loved,” Crane said.

Completely focused on games, Activision got back on its feet in 1994 with the success of Return to Zork. Over the next decade Activision published a string of important titles like Mechwarrior 2, Quake II, Interstate ’76, Spycraft: The Great Game, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and Tony Hawk Pro Skater.

Moving into the new century Activision regained its former glory, building on a solid foundation of popular franchises like Call of Duty, Doom 3, Guitar Hero, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, becoming one of the largest independent video game publishing companies in the world.

“Before the founding of Activision, game cartridges were only developed by the company who made the game consoles. Activision changed that,” Crane explained. “We were the first ever third-party developer of video game cartridges, and we knew that we were opening up a whole new business. And it wasn’t just a matter of being in the right place at the right time. We built the necessary technologies, fought the lawsuits, and battled through Atari’s attempts to close off the retail channels to our product.”

Reflecting on the importance of Activision’s accomplishments for the game industry, Crane said; “I recently attended the Game Developer’s Conference, and I looked out on the mass of people in the game business and guessed that 95% of them worked for a third-party developer or publisher. Is my estimate low?”

Further Reading

'Playing Catch Up: Conflict 2500’s William Volk' by Alistair Wallis

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=13563

'Playing Catch-Up: A Boy And His Job: Activision's David Crane' by Frank Cifaldi

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=7412