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Countdown to CGE 2007 ~ July 2007 ~ 28 JUL 2007 |
Classic Gaming Expo Distinguished Guest:
ALAN MILLER
Alan
Miller is one of the early and enduring pioneers of interactive
entertainment. He joined Atari in
February 1977 and was one of the first four Atari 2600 game designers.
At Atari, he designed the VCS games Surround,
Hunt and Score/A Game of Concentration, Hangman (the first
4k byte game), and Basketball (the first "3D" home game).
In late 1978 and early 1979, he co-authored the operating system
for the Atari 400/800/1200 computers with Dave Crane, Larry Kaplan, Gary
Palmer, and Ian Shepard. His last
project at Atari was Basketball for the Atari computer, one of the
very first ROM games for the system.
In late 1979, he co-founded Activision with Dave Crane, Jim Levy, and Bob Whitehead. Activision was the first independent video game publisher. Activision rapidly grew to $159 million in revenue in 1983, its third year of sales, becoming the fastest growing company in U.S. venture capital history up to that time, an accomplishment that eventually passed on to Lotus and Compaq. In the early years of Activision, Mr. Miller served as Vice President of Product Development and also designed several games for the Atari 2600 including: Checkers, Tennis, Ice Hockey, Star Master, and Robot Tank.
In 1984, Mr. Miller co-founded Accolade with Bob Whitehead. During his ten years at Accolade, he designed only one game, Law of the West for the Commodore 64, and then devoted himself to management. He served initially as Vice President of Product Development and in a few years rose to Chairman and CEO. Accolade was purchased by Atari/Infogrames in 1999.
Consumers around the world have purchased over $3 billion of entertainment software products from Mr. Miller's two companies.