Brian Raffel, who co-founded developer Raven Software with his brother Steve in 1990 and has served as co-studio head since, is retiring from the studio after 36 years during which he worked on major pop culture franchises from Star Wars to Star Trek to Marvel and most recently Call of Duty. Steven retired in 2017.
“In 1990, inspired by a shared love of storytelling, Brian and his brother Steve began building something of their own,” Raven said in a statement announcing Brian Raffel’s retirement. “What started as a small creative endeavor known as Black Crypt grew into something much, much bigger. Over the years, his leadership guided our studio through a wild and changing industry and shaped it into what it is today.
“From dark, alien realms to places that reached far across galaxies, Brian has created stories that have left a lasting mark on players around the world. His work includes titles like Hexen, Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy,
Raven Software is based in Madison, Wisconsin – a location that wasn’t known as a hotbed of game development in 1990. That changed, however, as Raven eventually spawned numerous other studios, including a new Respawn Entertainment satellite studio focused on developing Apex Legends and the now-shuttered Prey (2006) developer Human Head Studios, along with a thriving emerging development scene anchored by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where Brian Raffel graduated and which Raven supports through a mentorship program.
While Raven has worked on Call of Duty for the past decade – including designing Warzone and the campaigns for Black Ops: Cold War, Black Ops 6 and Black Ops 7 – the studio’s history before that is incredibly diverse. Raven rose to fame by working closely with id Software – which also started in Madison before the team moved to Texas just before Wolfenstein 3D was released – on 1994’s Heretic, a medieval Doom-style first-person shooter built on the Doom engine. They followed that with a more role-playing influenced sequel called Hexen before making a Hexen sequel on the Quake 1 engine and a formally numbered Heretic sequel on the Quake 2 engine.
When IGN contacted legendary Doom designer John Romero, he had this to say about his relationship with Brian Raffel and Raven Software: “Brian is the one who answered the phone in the winter of 1991 when id Software had recently moved to Madison, Wisconsin. An ad in the local newspaper looking for programmers caught my attention and the company name, Raven Software, sounded like a gaming company, so I called. I asked Brian if they were a gaming company, and they were, and I explained that I I’m at a small company called id Software that makes PC games. Do you mind if we come over and say hi?
“The four of us, Tom Hall, John Carmack, Adrian Carmack and I, got into our cars and drove over. It was night, we were still working and thought it would be a nice break. We met Ben Gokey, Steve Raffel and Brian Raffel. We briefly said hello to Paul Radek, a friend of theirs who would license us his 32-bit sound libraries for DOOM a few years later.
“We hung out and got to see Black Crypt, their latest game. We talked about computers and their passion for Amiga gaming and showed us Super Cars II (I was a big Super Sprint fan). Their art quality really impressed me and when we got back to the office after dinner I talked about the possibility of licensing our Commander Keen 4 engine to them so they could enter the PC market. We worked out a deal between us and Apogee to finance them, but the deal fell through. I told Brian I would contact him again in the future and see if they change their mind.
“After Wolfenstein 3D was released and we had done some experimentation with a Wolfenstein 3D++ engine, I asked Brian if they would be interested in trying out our latest 3D engine with some improvements. This time they were really excited about making PC games, so we licensed that engine to them for Shadowcaster. I told Brian I would contact him after our next game.
“Just after I released DOOM, I contacted Brian again and asked if he would be interested in making a game for us using DOOM technology. YES, they were interested! I bought a bunch of NeXTSTEP computers, sent them to Raven and flew there to set up all the computers and connect them together. I showed Ben how the development worked with our cross-development setup, I showed Michael Raymond-Judy and Eric Biessman how DoomEd worked to create levels, and let them work on my game idea, Heretic.
“The development went great, they were super smart and learned our technology quickly, finishing Heretic within a year. I uploaded the shareware version of Heretic from my home on December 23, 1994. From there we continued to work together, creating Hexes and starting work on Hecatomb before I left id Software and the close relationship ended.
“Brian did a great job of leading the company through those turbulent early days, transitioning from an Amiga-only studio to a PC studio that made great games. Their acquisition by Activision worked out well for Brian and Steve, and I was happy for them. It’s a rare team that can survive from 1990 to now – 36 years! I certainly credit Brian for making that possible.”
And in a gaming world where licensed games for years equated to bad games, Raven went on to work on a series of excellent, critically renowned titles based on massive IPs like Star Wars (Star Wars: Jedi Knight 2 – Jedi Outcast and Star Wars Jedi Knight: Academy), Star Trek (the 2000 first-person shooter Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force), Marvel (X-Men Legends and its sequel, Marvel Ultimate Alliance and X-Men Legends: Wolverine).
Raven also returned to work directly with id Software again, authoring Quake 4 and the Wolfenstein reboot in 2009. And we can’t forget the then-groundbreaking, limb-severing violence of 2000’s Soldier of Fortune and its sequel, both first-person shooters based on the magazine of the same name that allowed you to target and destroy individual limbs as you shot your enemies.
I spoke with Brian Raffel about all these projects and his career – he was a teacher and track coach before getting into game development – in Episode 54 of my feature-length interview series IGN Unfiltered. You can listen to or watch that interview.
Today, Raven Software employs more than 300 developers. Co-studio head David Pellas, who has been with Raven for nearly 12 years, will remain the sole studio head.
Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s editor-in-chief of previews and host of IGN’s weekly Xbox show, Podcast unlockedas well as our semi-retired interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He’s from North Jersey, so it’s “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter @DMC_Ryan.
