The History of Activision

Gamasutra has put together a five-page history of Activision, covering the video game company’s successes and “pitfalls” from 1979 to the present. Since Activision is responsible for bringing us the original Battletech RPGs, Nihilistic’s Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption, and Troika’s Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, I figured some of you might be interested in such an article:

Activision’s offer to buy Infocom seemed to provide a way out for the struggling company. However, as the deal was being inked, Activision’s board of directors decided to replace Jim Levy and brought in Bruce Davis as the new CEO. Davis was unhappy with the merger and felt that the purchase of Infocom was too costly for Activision. What was to be an (Info Wedding) quickly turned sour. Davis was a San Francisco lawyer who had previously overseen the dissolution of Imagic and after the deal was finalized in 1986, Activision filed a lawsuit in attempt to recoup money from Infocom’s shareholders.

Under Activision’s guidance Infocom moved toward producing graphic adventures, creating Zork Zero, James Clavell’s Shogun, and publishing Westwood’s BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk’s Inception. The new Infocom’s profits never matched their early years and by 1989 Activision shut the company down, later publishing The Lost Treasures of Infocom I and II CD-ROM collections in 1991 and 1992 as testament to Infocom’s past achievements.

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