David Brevik | |
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 Brevik at GDC 2016 | |
| Born | February 14, 1968 Madison, Wisconsin, U.S. |
| Notable work | Diablo |
David Brevik (born February 14, 1968) is an American video game designer, producer and programmer who served as the co-founder and president of Blizzard North. He is best known for the critically acclaimed Diablo franchise. Currently he serves as game designer and founder of his independent studio, Graybeard Games.
Brevik was born in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. [1] He was educated at California State University, Chico from 1986 to 1991.
Following his position as lead technical director at Iguana Entertainment, Brevik left to form Condor / Blizzard North, holding a position as president of the company from September 1993 to 2003. GameSpot named him as 1996's fourth most influential person in computer gaming for his role in the inception and development of Diablo . [2]
Brevik resigned from Blizzard and co-founded Flagship Studios (in 2003) as well as Ping0 (in 2006), a sister company to Flagship Studios. After the company dissolved it was announced that he was appointed new creative director for Turbine and its new West coast studio.
In 2009, David Brevik began at Gazillion Entertainment in San Mateo, California working in the Gargantuan Studio. [3] In 2011, Gargantuan became Secret Identity Studios and David Brevik was named president and chief operating officer of Gazillion Entertainment. [4] Eventually he was promoted to Chief Executive Officer of Gazillion Entertainment in 2013. [5] He left the company to pursue "other opportunities" on January 6, 2016. [6] As of October 18, 2016, Brevik has been working as an advisor on the Chinese release of Path of Exile for Grinding Gear Games. [7]
After leaving Gazillion, Brevik founded an indie studio called Graybeard Games. In May of 2019, Graybeard Games released an action role-playing video game titled It Lurks Below. [8]
In 2016, Brevik revealed that he was once approached by Sabeer Bhatia in 1996 to form an email company in which he will get 10% of the shares. Brevik flatly rejected the offer, thinking it was the "stupidest idea." 14 months later, when the company, later known as Hotmail, sold for $400 million, Brevik expressed his regret over that decision, calling it the "worst business decision of my entire career." [9]
Brevik and Bill Wang, a former employee of Perfect World Entertainment, announced the formation of Skystone Games in May 2020, a publishing and development studio aimed to help smaller indie studios with multiplatform releases. [10]
Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and publisher based in Irvine, California. A subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, the company was founded in February 1991 as Silicon & Synapse, Inc. by three graduates of the University of California, Los Angeles: Michael Morhaime, Frank Pearce and Allen Adham. The company originally concentrated on the creation of game ports for other studios' games before beginning development of their own software in 1993, with games like Rock n' Roll Racing and The Lost Vikings. In 1993, the company became Chaos Studios, Inc., and then Blizzard Entertainment soon after being acquired by distributor Davidson & Associates early in the following year. Shortly after, Blizzard released Warcraft: Orcs & Humans.
Origin Systems, Inc. was an American video game developer based in Austin, Texas. It was founded on March 3, 1983, by Richard Garriott and his brother Robert. Origin is best known for their groundbreaking work in multiple genres of video games, such as the Ultima and Wing Commander series. The company was purchased by Electronic Arts in 1992.
Flagship Studios was an American video game developer founded by Bill Roper along with Max Schaefer, Erich Schaefer, and David Brevik, former high level Blizzard North executives. The core personnel of Flagship Studios had been collaborating as a team since 1993 when they founded Condor Studios and in addition to creating the Diablo franchise many were key high level executives in the development of Warcraft, StarCraft and World of Warcraft games. Flagship Studios was formed following the resignation en masse of Blizzard North management following a dispute with Blizzard Entertainment parent company Vivendi regarding the potential fate of the company, development team, and titles, which were in doubt at that time. Flagship Studio's primary target platform for their games was the PC.
Blizzard North was an American video game development studio based in San Mateo, California. The studio was the Bay Area division of Blizzard Entertainment, known for its Diablo series. The company was originally based in Redwood City, California, before moving a short distance away to San Mateo, with Blizzard proper being based in Irvine, southern California.
In video games, loot is the collection of items picked up by the player character that increase their power or level up their abilities, such as currency, spells, equipment and weapons. Loot is meant to reward the player for progressing in the game, and can be of superior quality to items that can be purchased. It can also be part of an upgrade system that permanently increases the player's abilities.
Stieg Hedlund is a computer and video game designer, artist, and writer who has worked on more than thirty games in the video game industry. He is best known for his work in action RPGs, and has also worked on games on real-time strategy, tactical shooter, beat-'em-up and action-adventure games.
Michio Okamura is a computer game developer and artist. He was the lead artist for the popular computer game Diablo, and senior artist on Diablo II. He designed many of the game's characters, including the title character. He is currently the art director for Rumble Entertainment.
Christopher Vincent Metzen is an American game designer, artist, voice actor, and author known for his work creating the fictional universes and scripts for Blizzard Entertainment's three major award-winning media franchises: Warcraft, Diablo and StarCraft. Metzen was hired by Blizzard Entertainment as an animator and an artist, his first work for the company was with the video game Justice League Task Force.
The secret cow level, or simply the cow level, is a level featured in the action role-playing hack and slash video game series Diablo, developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment. It first appears as postgame content in 2000's Diablo II, where it is officially known as the "Moo Moo Farm". Players may access the level after collecting a special combination of items to conjure a portal leading to the level. The player character is confronted upon arrival by a large horde of armed anthropomorphic cows led by a boss character called the "Cow King".
Bill Roper is an American video game designer and producer. He is a co-founder and the current Chief Executive Officer at Lunacy Games. Previously he was Chief Creative Officer at Web3 start-up Midnight. He has also served as co-founder and Chief Creative Officer at AuthorDigital and was Chief Creative Officer at Improbable. Roper was Vice President/GM at Disney Interactive Studios from 2011–2016, and headed video game studios and creative and development departments for two decades, including divisions at Blizzard Entertainment, Flagship Studios, and Cryptic Studios. He is also an accomplished musician, and a founding member of the folk band The Poxy Boggards.
Matt Uelmen is an American video game music composer and sound designer. He is best known for his work in Blizzard Entertainment's Diablo series, which was recognized with the inaugural Excellence in Audio award by the IGDA in 2001. He also worked as a sound designer for the real-time strategy game StarCraft, and worked on World of Warcraft's expansion The Burning Crusade in 2007. From 2009 until the studio's closure in 2017, Matt Uelmen worked as a member of the Runic Games team, as a composer and sound designer for the Torchlight games.
Josh Mosqueira-Asheim is a game designer of both tabletop games and video games, and was game director during the creation of Diablo III at Blizzard Entertainment.
Marvel Heroes, also known as Marvel Heroes 2015, Marvel Heroes 2016 and Marvel Heroes Omega, was a free-to-play massively multiplayer online action role-playing video game developed by Gazillion Entertainment and Secret Identity Studios. Characters such as Iron Man, Captain America, Deadpool, and Wolverine were playable characters that could be unlocked in the game. The story was written by Brian Michael Bendis. Players who pre-purchased a game pack received early access to the game on May 29, 2013. The game was officially launched on June 4, 2013, on Microsoft Windows. An OS X version followed in November 2014. The game was renamed to Marvel Heroes 2015 on June 4, 2014. The game was renamed Marvel Heroes 2016 in January 2016.
Patrick Wyatt is a game programmer and one of the three co-founders of ArenaNet. He was the leader of the Network and Technology teams and a programmer for Guild Wars. Before the founding of ArenaNet, he was working in Blizzard Entertainment where he was the Vice President of Research and Development and a senior programmer. Wyatt was the leader of Battle.net gaming network's programming and a major contributor on the multiplayer parts of Blizzard's popular games including StarCraft, Diablo and Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness. Having been in Blizzard for more than eight years, his work also includes earlier Blizzard games like Lost Vikings and Rock N' Roll Racing.
Mythos was a multiplayer role-playing video game that was originally under development by Flagship Studios Seattle, a subdivision of Flagship Studios, a video game company composed largely of ex-Blizzard North employees who were lead producers of the Diablo series. Due to financial issues at Flagship Studios, Flagship Seattle was subsequently dissolved, leaving the intellectual property rights in the hands of the Korean game company HanbitSoft. HanbitSoft's corporate partners will continue to develop Mythos for a planned release in South Korea and North America.
Diablo is an action role-playing dungeon crawler video game series developed by Blizzard North and continued by Blizzard Entertainment after the North studio shut down in 2005. The series is made up of four core games: Diablo, Diablo II, Diablo III, and Diablo IV. Expansions include the third-party published Hellfire, which follows the first game; Lord of Destruction, published by Blizzard and released after the second game; and Reaper of Souls, which follows the third game. Additional content is provided through story elements explored in other types of media forms.
Diablo is an action role-playing video game developed by Blizzard North and released by Blizzard Entertainment in January 1997, and is the first installment in the video game series of the same name.
Gordo 106 is a 1993 platform video game developed by Tenth Planet Software and published by Atari Corporation in North America and Europe exclusively for the Atari Lynx. Set in the installations of N. Human Laboratories, players assume the role of an exploited laboratory monkey named Gordo, who unintentionally gained intelligence as a result of experimentation with radiation in order to free other animal test subjects and escape from the building, while defeating scientists and employees of the complex along the way. Its gameplay consists of platforming and exploration with a main three-button configuration.
George Fan is an American video game designer who currently works as the creative director of All Yes Good. He designed Insaniquarium (2001), Plants vs. Zombies, Octogeddon (2018), and Hardhat Wombat (2023). Before going into game design, Fan graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2000 with a degree in computer science. After graduating, he worked under Arcade Planet to develop games for their website, Prizegames.com. He eventually formed Flying Bear Entertainment and created Insaniquarium, which became a finalist for the 2002 Independent Games Festival. He then joined Blizzard Entertainment and worked there while simultaneously developing Insaniquarium further for PopCap Games, releasing the "Deluxe" edition in 2004.
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