Editing David Crane (programmer) (section)

===Activision===
Crane and Miller left Atari in August 1979. They had a plan to create an independent development and publishing company to produce games for Atari's VCS console, which had not been attempted previously.{{sfn|Fleming|2007}} Crane was suggested by a lawyer to [[Jim Levy]] in 1979.{{sfn|Covert|1984|p=48}} Levy had been working for [[GRT Records]] and was raising money to go into business making cassette tape software and believed abilities in marketing and the business skills to help create their new company [[Activision]].{{sfn|Fleming|2007}}

Initially working out of Crane's apartment, Miller and Crane began programming a development system for Activision. Whitehead and Kaplan joined shortly after.{{sfn|Fleming|2007}} Activision had a five-year business plan, to initially make video games during the slow growth of the home computer and switch over to computers in the future.{{sfn|Donovan|2011}} Activision's first games came out in 1980, including Crane's ''[[Dragster (video game)|Dragster]]'' and ''[[Fishing Derby]]''.{{sfn|Fleming|2007}}{{sfn|Hunt|2010|p=87}} The following year saw the release of Crane's ''[[Freeway (video game)|Freeway]]'' while Crane also contributed to other developers' games, such as the graphics code in Kaplan's ''[[Kaboom! (video game)|Kaboom!]]''.{{sfn|Fleming|2007}}{{sfn|Hunt|2012|p=81}} In 1982,  Activision released Crane's game ''[[Pitfall!]]'' which was one of the company's biggest sellers.{{sfn|Fleming|2007}}{{sfn|Blanchet|1982|p=C6}}

Activision went [[Public company|public]] in 1983. Crane spoke positively about working at the company in the early 1980s, saying that due to their rapid success "everyone wanted to work [at Activision]. [...] When Activision reached sales of $60 million, we had 60 employees. People have to work pretty hard for a company to have revenues of $1 million per employee."{{sfn|Fleming|2007}} Crane followed ''Pitfall!'' with two games: ''[[The Activision Decathlon]]'' (1983), which was developed with the impetus that the [[1984 Summer Olympics|Olympics]] would be returning to the United States in 1984, and a sequel titled ''[[Pitfall II: Lost Caverns]]'' (1984).{{sfn|Drury|2021|p=87}} Crane stated he made the sequel to ''Pitfall!'' "at a time when the Atari 2600 should have been replaced by a new gaming system." and designed a custom [[Integrated circuit chip|computer chip]] called the Display Processor Chip that was unique to ''Pitfall II: Lost Caverns''.{{sfn|Hunt|2012|p=83}}{{sfn|Weiss|2014|p=172}}{{sfn|Mercer|2004|p=11}}

Following the [[video game crash of 1983]] and the release of ''Pitfall II'', Crane began focusing to transition into developing computer games at Activision.{{sfn|Donovan|2011}}{{sfn|Mott|2007|p=102}} Crane felt the [[Commodore 64]] (C64) had sold well enough to be a good platform to design games for.{{sfn|Mott|2007|p=102}} Crane reflected on adapting to programming for the C64 as a "mixed blessing", specifically finding that the tools he had been using were now obsolete and that they needed to create new development systems, compressors and decompressors, audio and sound effect drivers.{{sfn|Drury|Fisher|2022|p=31}} He summarized it as "imagine, in whatever your job might be, that every two years or so, everything changes."{{sfn|Drury|Fisher|2022|p=31}} The first game he made, ''[[Ghostbusters (1984 video game)|Ghostbusters]]'' (1984) which was finished in six weeks using work Crane had been developing for a game called ''Car Wars''.{{sfn|Mott|2007|p=101}}{{sfn|Drury|2021|p=87-88}} The game went on to become the Activision title that was received the most ports across consoles and home computers.{{sfn|Mott|2007|p=103}} His next game, ''[[Little Computer People]]'' (1985) was a critical success while failing commercially.{{sfn|Hunt|2010|p=93}} Crane later said that "there was so much programming in [''Little Computer People''] that it cost more to produce than it made at retail. We had dozens of ideas for follow-up products, but if those ideas were going to lose money the company couldn't afford to produce them. I regret that we were unable to follow those ideas to see what might have become of the first large-scale simulated life form on a computer."{{sfn|Hunt|2010|p=93}} In 1985, Activision began the process of acquiring game company [[Infocom]]. As the deal was signed, Activision's board of directors replaced Levy and brought in [[Bruce Davis (video game industry)|Bruce Davis]] as the new CEO.{{sfn|Fleming|2007}} Crane left Activision in 1987, later explaining that Activision's management "had no creative vision at all, I left when I could no longer affect the future of the company."{{sfn|Mott|2004|p=95}} He also noted a pay issue, saying that "the new president, Bruce Davis, asked me to take a fraction of my salary, with the rest made up through an incentive bonus. I asked him to put the bonus in clear terms in writing and he couldn't [...] He just slashed my salary without a compensating bonus. So I left."{{sfn|Donovan|2011}}