I recently had the terrific opportunity to interview Jim Levy, who co-founded Activision, which started off as a third-party publisher for the Atari 2600. The interview originally appeared in Old School Gamer Magazine. Enjoy!
BRETTWEISS: How did you get involved with Activision?
JIM
LEVY: I started it. That’s the short answer. Activision was founded by five
people. The four game designers who came out of Atari and me. I was the
founding chairman and CEO. That’s how I got involved. I created it.
WEISS:
Who approached whom? Could you tell me a little bit more about the genesis of
the company?
LEVY:
There are two parallel paths that came together. The Atari guys began to look
for a way to get out of there and do game programming on their own as an
independent design group. As I recall, their idea was to do that work and then
license it or sell it to marketers or publishers.
WEISS:
So their original idea was not to create their own new company?
LEVY:
No, it was not. First of all, none of them had the management chops to do that
experiment. What the were was game designers. So, at the same time this was
happening, which was he early part of 1979, I was at a company that had been
failing for some time but had a little startup division that was working on
personal computer software publishing. In the very early days of personal
computers. That division of the company reported to me. I was the corporate
vice president. I started shopping the idea in the investment community of
forming a company to do personal computer software. Around the second week of
June of that year, I got a call from a friend of mine who was a lawyer, who I
had been working with for a couple of years. He had been involved with me
shopping the personal computer software. He called me up and said, “I have your
design team in my office.” And that was the four games from Atari.
WEISS: David Crane, Larry Kaplan, Alan Miller, and Bob Whitehead.
LEVY:
They had been referred to him for guidance about how to go about what they
wanted to do, which was to form this independent design group. So, they showed
up at my house that afternoon. Over the next couple of weeks, we had extensive
discussions. I convinced them that the thing to do was to start a company doing
game cartridges for the Atari VCS. The would be the design team, and I would
run the business. So, basically, I took the core of the business plan that I
had been working on and rewrote it to fit the video game profile. At the same
time, I had been talking to one venture capitalist who was very interested in
backing the personal computer software idea. He was ready to do so when I went
back to him and said, “I think we have a better idea here.” And they became the
primary backers of Activision.
WEISS:
Interesting.
LEVY:
In the summer of ’79, most of the guys were still working at Atari, and I was
working on a business plan. I eventually got the money secured from the venture
capital investors and introduced them to the game design team. We had a deal by
September. The two parallel paths were the game designers who wanted to leave
Atari and do their own thing, but not form a company like Activision, and me,
who was ready to form a company to publish personal computer software. We came
together, and that’s how Activision was formed.
WEISS:
That’s great how that worked out. Activision had a lot of great marketing
ideas: the color-coded boxes, treating designers like rock stars, having the
designer’s tips, trips, and photos in the instruction manuals. Was most of that
your idea? I know the programmers wanted more recognition, but the actual
marketing—was that your doing?
LEVY:
That was all me. If you look at Activision in its early days, the four
programmers were in a lab, designing games. I didn’t muck with them much. They
would come out and tell me what they wanted to do, what they were working on,
and I just let them run. I came out of creative industries: the publishing
industry and the music industry, so I was used to dealing with creative people
at arm’s length. Occasionally providing general guidance in terms of how marketable
certain products might be and so forth. But I was not involved in the process
of what these guys did and how they did it. I was only allowed in design lab
about once a week [laughs].
WEISS:
[laughs] You let them do their job.
LEVY:
Yes. They designated one of their guys to be the liaison to the business side
of things. He was the guy who I would deal with in terms of information flow
back and forth. All of the work that created what you have seen as the face of
Activision, including the name, which was mine, the logo, the flying V design,
and how the packaging and manuals were put together, all that stuff, that was
my responsibility in the development of the company. It was a lot of fun.
WEISS:
I’ll bet it was.
LEVY:
My background was primarily from a skillset was primarily marketing, and also
entrepreneurial management in development ventures.
WEISS:
Activision was definitely marketed well. Very distinctive packaging and
everything. Is it true the programmers wanted more credit for their work? I
know money was the main reason they left Atari, but were they also wanting more
recognition?
LEVY:
I don’t recall from our early conversations that that’s what they came to the
table with originally. It was an automatic for me, having dealt with artists in
the music industry for most of the 70s. The paradigm was that the artist was in
fact the brand. I don’t know how many people could tell you what label the
Eagles are on and whether it matters or not. My whole view of game design was
that the programmers were the stars. They were the creators; they were the
authors; they were the musicians. And eventually they would have their own
brand. David Crane, Alan Miller, Bob Whitehead, Larry Kaplan—they would
establish their own identities for the games they designed. Activision itself
was a brand within the trade and was the name above the title, and was a
presenting and producing organization, but the work was created by the guys.
Pitfall!, for example, which was the best-selling game in the early days, was
designed by David Crane. If you went and talked to a hundred people who played
that game, they could tell you both that it was an Activision game, and that
David Crane had designed it. That worked to our benefit the next time David
designed a game. So, it was just like working with recording artists, like the
next album from the Eagles.
WEISS:
That was definitely a new way to go about things for the video game industry.
LEVY:
Yeah. I came to the table with that. I don’t recall that it was as big of an
issue for the designers early on. I do recall they were very upset with how
they were being paid by Atari. They were being treated as if they were just
mechanics and had no name value or financial value other than being workers in
a lab.
WEISS:
How did the high score patches program come about? Where did you get the idea?
LEVY:
Okay, I’m going back 39 years now, when this first happened [laughs]. Of the
first four games we released, the big title was Dragster. David Crane’s first
Activision game. It was a drag racing game. I don’t know whether you’ve ever
seen it.
LEVY:
It was a killer of a game, and it was a joystick breaker. Shortly after the
game was released in the fall of ’80, people started sending us Polaroid
pictures of their scores. Somebody would get a score of 6.9 seconds or
whatever, and we’d get a picture. This flow of mail from users and purchasers
of the game led us to think about how to respond from a customer relations
standpoint. How to talk to them. At first, we sent congratulatory thank-you
letters. And then we started thinking that maybe we should put a newsletter
together and build a mailing list. So there was a newsletter we put together
called “Activisions.” I do not recall exactly who came up with the idea for the
patch. It was either me or one of the other people in the customer relations
marketing crew. The idea to form a club, a club of Dragster players. I don’t
think there was a threshold required. If you sent us a picture of your best
time, we would send you a patch. You were a member of the Dragster club.
Eventually, over a period of time—that first year we were releasing product—not
every game was as competitive as Dragster. But if you communicated with us
regarding the playing of any of our games, and your achievement with the game,
you were going to get a patch. Ultimately, every game ended up with its club.
There was a Tennis club and a Skiing club. Bob Whitehead’s Skiing game did have
timed results. This developed over time, so every time we released a game, we
created a patch, and it was a way of rewarding feedback from game players.
WEISS:
Brilliant idea.
LEVY:
The patches and the newsletter were our primary ways have contact with
customers. This was before the days of electronic communication, so everything
was on paper. We were getting thousands of pieces of mail per week. At one
point we had an organization—10 or 12 people who would answer the mail.
WEISS:
Wow, that’s a lot [laughs].
LEVY:
Before I talked to you, I reached out to the leader of that organization—the
woman that I hired to run it. Unfortunately, she’s in an advanced stage of
Alzheimer’s disease, so obviously she wasn’t going to be much help with this
article.
WEISS:
Oh, no, I’m sorry to hear that. Do you recall who manufactured the patches?
LEVY:
No, I don’t, but I think it was a promotional products company. Activision was
also in the clothing business [laughs]. Not to make money. All of our people
had jackets and T-shirts and hats. We were in the luggage business. Our entire
sales team had Activision luggage so they could be identified in airports. For
a few years, you couldn’t go through an airport without seeing somebody
carrying or wearing some piece of Activision paraphernalia.
WEISS:
Great branding.
LEVY:
Yeah, and the patches continued as we went into PC games instead of just
console games. That era is what one writer called Activision 2.0. That was sort
of the redefinition of the company after Atari caved in and blew big hole in
the industry.
WEISS:
Have you seen the prices of the patches recently on the collectibles market?
They go for quite a bit. Around $20 to $70 each, depending on the patch and the
condition.
LEVY:
I’ve heard about it.
WEISS:
I think that speaks to people’s fondness of the games while growing up.
LEVY:
My daughter, who was in her teens when Activision was roaring along, she
actually worked for the company one summer as a writer. She wrote manuals. She
may have been the best single manual writer we ever had. She was really good. I
have a whole collection of Activision memorabilia: posters, games, cutouts of
Pitfall Harry, stuff like that. She has told me in no uncertain terms that I am
not to destroy or give away any of that. She wants to come and go through it
with me piece by piece. She said to me, complete sets of original games, which
I have are pretty valuable. She hasn’t mentioned the patches, per say, but
she’s made me aware of there being a huge market for original Activision
material. I’m sure I have a whole bunch of the patches, but I’m not sure if I
have a complete set.
WEISS:
About 12 years or so ago, retro gaming started getting mainstream. Prices on all
this stuff started going way up. Now it’s just crazy, some of the prices
[laughs].
LEVY:
I’m not really watching that. I’m pretty detached from the game industry now
because it’s so totally different from what it was when we started Activision.
But I do have occasional situations where I’ll run into someone, and they’ll
ask me what I did, and I’ll tell them I was with this video game company in the
’80s called Activision, and they go nuts.
WEISS:
Oh, yeah, I’ll bet!
LEVY:
They’ll says something like, “Oh, my god, I spent my childhood playing those
games. I thank them for helping me build my house.”
WEISS:
[laughs] If you don’t mind me asking, what are you up to these days?
LEVY:
I’m retired. I’m not actively involved in any business venture, but I am on a
couple of boards for small, startup companies. My wife and I live in Sonoma,
California now, and we’re very involved with some local organizations. I’m on
the board of the Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, a regional theater
group. She’s on the board of the local hospital. That’s the kind of thing we’ve
been doing. Before Activision, I had a radio background. Before and after
Activision, I had a broadcasting background. I did some local broadcasting work
the first 10 years or so I was retired, but things are quieter now. We travel
quite a bit and work on the local organizations. That’s pretty much life as we
know it today.
WEISS:
Well, fantastic. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it!
LEVY:
They cosponsored a 40th Activision reunion a couple of months ago. There were
about 100 people there. I’d say close to 40 ex-Activision employees. There were
some groups of patches that people brought in and put up in the archive corner.
WEISS:
Yeah, I took some photos of the patches last time I was there to get some good
pictures for the article.
LEVY:
Someone sent me a photograph from one of the current gaming conventions, where
they had encountered a whole wall of Activision patches, but I’m pretty much
out of it now.
WEISS:
Understood. Thank you again, I really appreciate it. It’s been fascinating
talking to you.
LEVY:
Thanks, I look forward to seeing the article.
I'm
absolutely THRILLED to show you guys and gals a video preview of my forthcoming book, The NES Omnibus: The Nintendo Entertainment System and Its Games, Volume
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This company also published my SNES Omnibus books and The 100 Greatest Console
Video Games: 1977 to 1987. This fun video has an excellent voiceover intro by
Patrick Hickey Jr., author of The Minds Behind the Games series. In addition to
showing you book pages and revealing some details about the book, I also
discuss Kickstarter , where you can pre-order a signed copy
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The NES Omnibus Vol. 1 is a massive hardcover coffee table book with a 1200-word
foreword by The Goldbergs creator Adam F. Goldberg, a HUGE NES fan. He
absolutely LOVES the console and tells some great stories in his foreword. More
than 350 games are featured in this expansive tome, including popular titles like
Adventure Island, Castlevania (a personal favorite of mine), Contra (which I
absolutely LOVED back in the day), Ghosts ‘n Goblins (SO danged difficult), and
The Legend of Zelda (so epic, so great), as well as all the obscure titles.
EVERY original U.S. release for the NES from A to L is featured, and each game
gets at least one full page of gameplay info, history, box art, screenshots, reviews,
and quotes from vintage magazines and respected writers.
