Minimize Costs

Two other events occurred around the same time as the Infocom merger. One, Levy's original premise of individual credit was becoming harder to enforce due to the greater workload required by any individual game. Two, the internal Activision mindpool grew all the smaller as programmer Garry Kitchen formed his own independent studio.

Due to the recent implosion of the industry, Activision was happy to minimize costs by moving development off-site. Then, when Bruce Davis took over Levy's role as CEO, Pitfall! developer David Crane left his parent company to work with Kitchen, leaving Activision with none of its founders intact.

In a recent interview with GamaSutra, Crane explained that "Activision became the giant of the early eighties by recognizing that a game is a creative product and requires a creative environment. Bruce Davis’ biggest mistake was treating video games as commodities, rather than creative products. I only mention this because it explains why I could no longer associate with the company."

Mass Bewilderment

For a few years Kitchen's studio continued its long-distance relationship with Activision; eventually Activision chose to drop its end of the tether, leaving Kitchen and Crane to dub their company Absolute Entertainment, and try their hand at self-publishing – resulting in such objects of mass bewilderment as A Boy and his Blob (pictured).

The same year Davis' Activision dropped its relationship with Absolute, and around the time it shut down Infocom for good, Davis chose to transition Activision away from videogames as its major focus, putting emphasis instead on more general business applications.

The overall company name changed to Mediagenic, while Davis retained the Activision brand for its console game ventures. One curiosity to come from this period is Mediagenic's publication of Cyan's seminal CD-ROM adventure game The Manhole, setting Cyan (and the CD-ROM format) up for later success with its follow-up Myst. Overall, though, this decision was perhaps the biggest disaster in Activision's history. In 1991, Mediagenic filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy. Two years later, a former 4Kids executive named Bobby Kotick picked up the pieces, renamed the company Activision, and moved it from northern to southern California, shedding much of the company's staff in the process.

By this point Activision had ceased maintaining its own internal development team, in favor of acting as publisher to outside development teams – occasionally purchasing those teams outright. To this end, some of Activision's first high-profile work under Kotick – Zork Nemesis and Pitfall the Mayan Adventure – was produced by Zombie Entertainment. Later purchases would include such respected indie developers as Raven (Hexen) in 1997, Neversoft (Tony Hawk) in 1999, Treyarch (Spider-Man) in 2001, Infinity Ward (Call of Duty) in 2003, and Toys for Bob (Star Control) in 2005. Of note is that nearly all acquisitions have occurred since the debut of the Sega Dreamcast – in other words, within the now-passing console generation.