David Brevik (born February 14, 1968) is an American

video game designer Video game design is the process of designing the content and rules of video games in the pre-production stage and designing the gameplay, environment, storyline and characters in the production stage. Some common video game design subdiscipline ...

, producer and

programmer A computer programmer, sometimes referred to as a software developer, a software engineer, a programmer or a coder, is a person who creates computer programs — often for larger computer software. A programmer is someone who writes/creates ...

who served as the co-founder and president of

Blizzard North Blizzard North (formerly known as Condor) 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 ba ...

. He is best known for the critically acclaimed ''Diablo'' franchise. Currently he serves as game designer and founder of his independent studio, Graybeard Games.

Biography

Early life

Brevik was born in

Madison, Wisconsin Madison is the county seat of Dane County and the capital city of the U.S. state of Wisconsin. As of the 2020 census the population was 269,840, making it the second-largest city in Wisconsin by population, after Milwaukee, and the 80th-lar ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. He was educated at

California State University, Chico California State University, Chico, or commonly, Chico State, is a public university in Chico, California. Founded in 1887, it is the second oldest campus in the California State University system. As of the fall 2020 semester, the university had ...

from 1986 to 1991.

Career

Following his position as lead technical director at

Iguana Entertainment Acclaim Studios Austin (formerly Iguana Entertainment) was an American video game developer based in Austin, Texas. The company was founded in 1991 by Jeff Spangenberg, previously lead designer for Punk Development, and originally located in Sa ...

, Brevik left to form Condor / Blizzard North, holding a position as

president President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) *President (education), a leader of a college or university *President (government title) President may also refer to: Automobiles * Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ful ...

of the company from September 1993 to 2003.

GameSpot ''GameSpot'' is an American video gaming website that provides news, reviews, previews, downloads, and other information on video games. The site was launched on May 1, 1996, created by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and Jon Epstein. In addition ...

named him as 1996's fourth most influential person in computer gaming for his role in the inception and development of '' Diablo''. Brevik resigned from Blizzard and co-founded

Flagship Studios Flagship Studios was a computer game company founded by Bill Roper along with , , 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 found ...

(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 A turbine ( or ) (from the Greek , ''tyrbē'', or Latin ''turbo'', meaning vortex) is a rotary mechanical device that extracts energy from a fluid flow and converts it into useful work. The work produced by a turbine can be used for generating e ...

and its new West coast studio. In 2009, David Brevik began at Gazillion Entertainment in San Mateo, California working in the Gargantuan Studio. In 2011, Gargantuan became Secret Identity Studios and David Brevik was named president and chief operating officer of Gazillion Entertainment. Eventually he was promoted to Chief Executive Officer of Gazillion Entertainment in 2013. He left the company to pursue "other opportunities" on January 6, 2016. As of October 18, 2016, Brevik has been working as an advisor on the Chinese release of

Path of Exile ''Path of Exile'' is a free-to-play action role-playing video game developed and published by Grinding Gear Games. Following an open beta phase, the game was released for Microsoft Windows in October 2013. A version for Xbox One was released in ...

for Grinding Gear Games. After leaving Gazillion, Brevik founded an

indie studio An indie game, short for independent video game, is a video game typically created by individuals or smaller development teams without the financial and technical support of a large game publisher, in contrast to most "AAA" (triple-A) games. ...

called Graybeard Games. In May of 2019, Graybeard Games released an action role-playing video game titled ''It Lurks Below''. In 2016, Brevik revealed that he was once approached by

Sabeer Bhatia Sabeer Bhatia (born 30 December 1968) is an Indian businessman who co-founded the webmail company Hotmail.com. Career Bhatia briefly worked for Apple Computer, as a hardware engineer and Firepower Systems Inc. He, along with his colleague Ja ...

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 Outlook.com is a webmail service that is part of the Microsoft 365 product family. It offers mail, Calendaring software, calendaring, Address book, contacts, and Task management, tasks services. Founded in 1996 by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smit ...

, sold for $400 million, Brevik expressed his regret over that decision, calling it the "worst business decision of my entire career." Brevik and Bill Wang, a former employee of

Perfect World Entertainment Perfect World Co., Ltd. ( zh, 完美世界股份有限公司) is a Chinese mass media company based in Beijing. It was founded in 2004 by Chi Yufeng. The company consists of two business segments: Perfect World Games, a video game publisher, an ...

, announced the formation of Skystone Games in May 2020, a publishing and development studio aimed to help smaller indie studios with multiplatform releases.

Works

* ''

Gordo 106 ''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 ...

'' (1993) – Programmer * ''

Aero the Acro-Bat ''Aero the Acro-Bat'' is a 1993 video game developed by Iguana Entertainment and published by Sunsoft. It was released for both the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega Genesis. Aero the Acro-Bat, a red anthropomorphic bat, was created ...

'' (1993) – Programmer * ''

NBA Jam ''NBA Jam'' (sometimes "Jam" for short) is a long-running basketball video game series based on the National Basketball Association (NBA). Initially developed as arcade games by Midway, the game found popularity with its photorealistic digiti ...

'' (1993) – Programmer * '' Justice League Task Force'' (1995) – Programmer * '' Diablo'' (1997) – Lead Programmer, Senior Designer * ''

Diablo II ''Diablo II'' is an Action role-playing game, action role-playing hack and slash, hack-and-slash video game developed by Blizzard North and published by Blizzard Entertainment in 2000 for Microsoft Windows, Classic Mac OS, and macOS. The game, ...

'' (2000) – Project and Design Lead * '' Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos'' (2002) – Additional Game Review * '' Hellgate: London'' (2007) – Game Visionary, Lead Programmer, Story Editor * '' Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited'' (2009) – Creative Director * '' Marvel Heroes'' (2013) – Creator * ''The Nonomancer'' (2016) – Creator * ''It Lurks Below'' (2018) – Creator

Biography

Early life

Career

Works

References

Bibliography

External links