David Crane

Born on 30 December 1953 in Nappanee, Indiana, David Crane developed a passion for games and electronics at an early age, and received an artistic education from his mother. As a teenager, he designed a tic-tac-toe machine and then a similar computer while at university at the DeVry Institute of Technology in Phoenix, Arizona.

He graduated in electrical engineering in 1975. He began working for National Semiconductor but he was already interested in video games at the time, going to the industry's very first trade fair at his own expense, Gametronics '76. Then his tennis partner Alan Miller recruited him in 1977 to the programming division ofAtariwhere he adapted Atari 2600 arcade games such as Outlaw (1976) and worked on the microcomputer operating system Atari 800.

But Crane left Atari in 1979 to co-found Activision with Miller, Jim Levy, Bob Whitehead and Larry Kaplanto be better credited as game creators. At Activision, he designed several award-winning titles, the best known of which is Pitfall! (1982), the second best-selling game on the 2600 after Pac-Man. He also co-created the innovative Little Computer People (1985) on microphones, which will influence The Sims fifteen years later. In 1987, David Crane left Activision to join Absolute Entertainment with Garry Kitchen.

Although the new company is based in New Jersey, Crane programs from his home in California, where he designs games such as A Boy and His Blob (1989) or David Crane's Amazing Tennis (1992). Having researched this technology himself, Crane also joined the NEMO to create a console based on the full motion video on behalf ofHasbro. The machine was never marketed, but having participated in the project, Crane worked on what would become Night Trap (1992).

In 1995, together with Garry Kitchen, he founded a new company called Skyworks Technologiesa pioneer inadvergaming. In 1997, she created Candystand.comone of the first large-scale online platforms for licensed video games. At the end of 2008, Skyworks entered theiPhone and in the space of two years, it has five apps that have been No.1 on theApp Storeand twenty-one in the top 100.