Active Visionary - David Crane Answers Eight Eighties Questions

This week’s Eight Eighties Questions are being answered by the legendary video game designer David Crane, who helped to shape the childhood of 1980s kids with his contributions to the video game industry.  He began his programming career at Atari by creating video games for the Atari 2600, and he helped to design the operating system for the Atari 800 Home Computer System.  He was a co-founder of Activision and created Pitfall! – one of the greatest titles from the golden era of gaming.  Pitfall! was named Game of the Year in 1982 and is the #2 bestselling game of all-time for the Atari 2600, second only to Pac-Man.  David is still a programmer, and was kind enough to make time in his schedule to answer Eight Eighties Questions.

1.  When you were growing up, video games and personal computers didn’t exist.  How did you become interested in computer science?

Growing up my older brother had an interest in the sciences, making rocket fuel with his chemistry set to stuff into cardboard tube rockets, etc.  (He went on to become a systems analyst for IBM.)  But he was much older and after he went off to college I got heavily into electronics.  I subscribed to a “kit of the month” club containing science experiments and rudimentary electronic projects.  My parents quickly learned that as each kit arrived they could get me to do anything - up to and including cleaning my room - before I was allowed to open the box.  One such kit was the “Digital LogicMicrolab”  that was first an assembly project, and then a platform for wiring up digital logic gates to learn logic.  I was hooked.

Before I was out of high school I had taken apart and reassembled a TV set, built a 7-segment digit display, and created a tic-tac-toe machine out of rotary switches.

David Crane in 1979

2.  You had a hand in developing the Atari 800 Home Computer, which was more powerful and had more sophisticated graphics and sound capabilities than the Apple II.  It was revolutionary for its time because it was a fully functioning computer and a video game console in one. What can you tell us about your role in developing it?

Ironically, Atari created the 400/800 computer to compete with Apple, but the engineering department used the budget instead to create a better video game system.  In truth, there was very little market for a personal computer at the time for any of the classic reasons.  When the storage device was a cassette tape and the output device was a 40 character printer that used adding-machine paper, it was a tough sell.  Sure, you could balance your checkbook with it, but no better than with a calculator.  Word processing made no sense without the ability to print a page at least as attractive as what a typewriter could do.  But we in engineering knew that a better, higher-resolution video game was needed to replace the aging Atari VCS.

This split came from the highest levels.  The senior VP of engineering told management what they wanted to hear: “Of course we are making you a personal computer at least as good as the Apple II.” At the same time he told us to make the best video game hardware and software we could.  Obviously, with management and marketing trying to sell a different product than what engineering was developing, the 400/800 never got marketed correctly or sold very well.

We did end up with a nice new generation video game console, but saddled with personal computer elements like a full keyboard made it too expensive.

3.  Like all 1980s kids I loved Pitfall! and still play it on my 2600 – my favorite obstacle continues to be the pond that would disappear and reappear.  What inspired you to create Pitfall!? 

I was driven to make a game with a realistic human character, before the game console hardware really had the capability of rendering a recognizable human figure.  The hardest part of making Pitfall! was Pitfall Harry himself.  Once I had him looking good by carefully selecting every pixel, his side-view perspective lent itself to transitioning from screen to screen in a larger world.  That made Pitfall! so much more expansive than the typical single screen Atari 2600 game.

I tried to find a good game concept into which I could insert the running man, but I failed several times.  After each failure I went off and made another game, vowing to come back to the running man again.  When I finally settled on a side-view adventure format, there were a couple of inspirations from other media.  Raiders of the Lost Ark was in theaters, and that likely gave me the idea to place the adventure in a jungle.  The alligators came from a cartoon from my childhood: Heckle and Jeckle.  These were two “talking magpies” (don’t ask me why) who always got into trouble and barely escaped.  A sequence in the opening credits showed the characters running through the open mouths of alligators, each of which snapped closed an instant too late to munch the magpie.  As I was adding the water hazards to Pitfall! I added the alligators as an homage to Heckle and Jeckle.

David Crane in 1985

4.  You created many early games besides Pitfall!, including Grand Prix, Dragster, and Fishing Derby.  In those days, one person would design an entire game by themselves.  How long did it take to design, create, and program a game in the early days of video gaming?

In that era we coined the job description “Game Designer” to call attention to the fact that we were a lot more than programmers.  We each came up with an original game concept, drew every pixel of art, developed every sound effect, programmed every line of code, and then did all of the play testing.  A typical project would take approximately 1000 hours of work over 6-9 months.

Some of my game concepts came from real life.  (I still remember riding in a bus to CES in Chicago and watching a man try to cross 10 lanes of rush-hour traffic on Lake Shore Drive to avoid a $10 parking fee.  I remarked to my seat companion “There’s an idea for a video game.”  Freeway was born.)  But more often I would experiment for several weeks trying to make the Atari 2600 hardware do something not intended by its designers.  I achieved that many times, making games like Dragster and Grand Prix possible.  That added to my development workload, but I was among the fastest coders of the time and still managed to turn out about 1.5 games per year.

5.  You are a co-founder of Activision (which produced some of the most memorable games of the 1980s, including River Raid), which was the first company to make games independently for other platforms.  What can you tell us about founding Activision, and the unique culture that centered around game designers?

Activision was founded by 4 game designers from Atari and one executive from the record business.  One of the founding principals was that a video game is the work of an author, and that the author should be given credit for his work.  So each of our games featured the designer’s name and a designer’s tip that we would create.  Once the game player could know who made a game, they might decide to add a game to their collection based as much on the game as the author.  We all tended to have our own style.

Because of his background, our CEO Jim Levy embraced the concept and included it into the company’s marketing.  That resulted in a little bit of fame which was nice.  That said, I am always quick to point out that my typical groupie was a 12-year-old boy… It wasn’t quite rock star status.

We also designed the games in an open cubicle farm.  Everybody’s TVs faced the open center, so anyone in the room could kibbutz on the games.  That made every game a little better since it first had to pass the approval of the top collection of game designers in the industry.  In that same way we could bring the new game designers along and help them out.  I remember one day in the lab when Carol Shaw was working on River Raid.  She wanted to play a warning siren sound effect for low fuel.  All sound effects on the Atari 2600 were actually programmed algorithms.  I called across the room and gave her a dozen program instructions to type in.  She did so and it created the siren effect that is in the game to this day.

6.  You are still a game designer, and programming has come a long way since the late 1970s and early 1980s.  Video games are lot more sophisticated in every way than their early predecessors.  What is it like creating a video game today as opposed to the early years?

Video game design has gone from one man projects completed in less than a year to 100+ person projects taking several years and tens of millions of dollars.  This did not occur as a revolution, but rather as an evolution, and I was able to evolve with it.  Having produced games through the entire period I am familiar with how to make a successful game regardless of the size of the project.  After all, the goal is still to provide a fun and entertaining diversion that a player can enjoy for a few hours.

As it happens, having the ability to wear any hat on a given project helped me a great deal.  Look at any successful movie maker.  You can bet he or she knows a lot about every discipline required.  To frame a particularly difficult scene, Steven Spielberg still climbs the camera boom and sits behind the viewfinder to tweak the scene.  Any successful game has to have that someone who can make the tough decisions so that the end product lives up to its potential.

7.  Today you are an independent game programmer and have a phenomenal career, having created over one-hundred video games.  What can you tell us about your current projects?

David Crane today

I am currently an independent game designer simply because there is a bias in the industry against anyone over 30.  People who don’t understand the creative process think it makes sense that you have to be a part of the target market in order to relate to a target market.  I prefer working with others like myself who have a proven track record of being able to produce a game on time and on budget that is still fun to play.  But we are all expensive and it is hard to raise the budget needed to staff a project with all seasoned professionals.

As a result I have several projects in the very early stages that I am thinking about developing more fully.  I will likely choose one of those to take into the cutthroat world of project funding before I have anything I can talk about.

8.  What is one piece of life advice that you would like to share?

I often have people ask me how to get into game development.  My first answer is “Why?  Do you really like working all-nighters and never seeing your family?”  But for those so inclined I suggest that they get involved in a game development project at whatever level they can get into - even as an unpaid intern.  Or if you know how to program, make a game on the iPhone.  You may not sell any more copies than you have friends, but you can go into the next project as a “published game developer.”  Bigger developers will take you more seriously at that point.

To turn this into “life advice,” at the end of the project honestly ask yourself if that was the most fun thing you have ever done.  And only if the answer is yes pursue it further.  Only a fraction of a percent of people become successful in game development.  If you are having the time of your life, you can fail and still feel like a success.