Raven Software
American video game development company / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Raven Software Corporation (formerly Raven Software, Inc.) is an American video game developer based in Middleton, Wisconsin and part of Activision. Founded in May 1990 by brothers Brian and Steve Raffel, the company is most known for its dark fantasy franchise Heretic/Hexen, the first two Soldier of Fortune games, as well as licensed titles based in the Star Wars: Jedi Knight series and Marvel Entertainment's X-Men characters, including 2006's Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. Since 2010, Raven has been developing multiple Call of Duty games as both lead and support developer.
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Formerly | Raven Software, Inc. (1990–1997) |
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Company type | Subsidiary |
Industry | Video games |
Founded | May 1990; 34 years ago (1990-05) |
Founder | Brian Raffel Steve Raffel |
Headquarters | 8496 Greenway Blvd, Middleton, Wisconsin , US |
Area served | Worldwide |
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Products |
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Number of employees | 350 (2022)[1][2] |
Parent | Activision (1997–present) |
Subsidiaries | Raven Software Shanghai |
Website | ravensoftware |
Raven's first game, Black Crypt (1992), was conceived in the late 1980s by Raffel brothers to be a paper-and-pen role-playing game, until Christopher Erhardt convinced the two to retool the project from scratch to become a video game. While it did not perform well commercially, its well reception by critics and technology efforts led to John Romero approach Raven to develop new titles for personal computer starting with ShadowCaster (1993), which was powered by Raven Engine, a modified Wolfenstein 3D engine version designed by John Carmack. The game's success impressed id Software and Strategic Simulations, who signed a deal to help publishing the next games developed by Raven, who had grow to two different teams to work on 1994's CyClones and Heretic. The latter, inspired by Brian Raffel interest to make a Dungeons & Dragons–inspired game, was critically acclaimed and spawned multiple sequels.
In 1997, Raven made an exclusive publishing deal with Activision and was subsequently acquired by them. After the acquisition, many of the studio's original developers, largely responsible for creating the Heretic and Hexen: Beyond Heretic games, left to form Human Head Studios.