Mark Crowe
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Mark Crowe is an American video game designer, artist, and writer who developed several
adventure game An adventure game is a video game genre in which the player assumes the role of a protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and/or Puzzle video game, puzzle-solving. The Video game genres, genre's focus on story allows it to draw ...
s, mostly for Sierra On-Line and its subsidiary
Dynamix Dynamix, Inc. was an American developer of video games from 1984 to 2001, best known for the flight simulator ''Red Baron'', the puzzle game '' The Incredible Machine'', the '' Front Page Sports'' series, ''Betrayal at Krondor,'' and the online ...
. He later worked at
Pipeworks Software Pipeworks Studios is an American video game developer based in Eugene, Oregon. The company was founded in November 1999 by Dan White and Dan Duncalf and works to provide full development, co-development, and live operations to video game publis ...
as Studio Design Director. Crowe is best known for creating the ''
Space Quest ''Space Quest'' is a series of six comic science fiction adventure games released between 1986 and 1995. The games follow the adventures of a hopeless janitor named Roger Wilco, who campaigns through the galaxy for "truth, justice and really cl ...
'' series, mostly with his fellow "Guy from Andromeda",
Scott Murphy Matthew Scott Murphy (born January 26, 1970) is an American entrepreneur and politician. He represented parts of New York state's Capital District (excluding the city of Albany) in the United States House of Representatives for a portion of one ...
.


Biography

Crowe started working at
Sierra Sierra (Spanish for "mountain range" and "saw", from Latin '' serra'') may refer to the following: Places Mountains and mountain ranges * Sierra de Juárez, a mountain range in Baja California, Mexico * Sierra de las Nieves, a mountain range i ...
in its Art Department, creating designs for boxes and manuals. Crowe worked on several Sierra games, including ''
Winnie the Pooh in the Hundred Acre Wood ''Winnie the Pooh in the Hundred Acre Wood'' is a single player adventure game created by Al Lowe for Sierra On-Line, released in 1986. It is based on Disney's ''Winnie the Pooh'' franchise. Plot The Hundred Acre Wood was populated with characte ...
'' and ''
King's Quest II ''King's Quest II: Romancing the Throne'' is the second installment in the ''King's Quest'' series of graphic adventure games by Sierra On-Line. It uses the same AGI game engine as '' King's Quest I: Quest for the Crown'' and features King Graham ...
'', before collaborating with
Scott Murphy Matthew Scott Murphy (born January 26, 1970) is an American entrepreneur and politician. He represented parts of New York state's Capital District (excluding the city of Albany) in the United States House of Representatives for a portion of one ...
on '' The Black Cauldron''. Crowe was the Art Director for the game when Murphy was added as a programmer. During the development of ''The Black Cauldron'', Murphy and Crowe discovered their mutual fondness for science fiction. Eventually, they created a four-room concept to propose to Sierra founder Ken Williams that would eventually become the beginning scenes of ''
Space Quest ''Space Quest'' is a series of six comic science fiction adventure games released between 1986 and 1995. The games follow the adventures of a hopeless janitor named Roger Wilco, who campaigns through the galaxy for "truth, justice and really cl ...
''. First released in 1986, ''Space Quest'' was a quick hit among adventure game fans and Murphy worked with Crowe to develop another three games, ending with ''
Space Quest IV ''Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers'' is a 1991 graphic adventure game by Sierra On-Line. It was released on floppy disks on March 4, 1991, and released on CD-ROM in December 1992 with full speech support and featuring ''Laugh-In'' ...
'' in 1991. During this time, Crowe also worked on games from other series, including ''
King's Quest ''King's Quest'' is a graphic adventure game series, released between 1980 and 2016 and created by the American software company Sierra Entertainment. It is widely considered a classic series from the golden era of adventure games. Following th ...
'', ''
Leisure Suit Larry ''Leisure Suit Larry'' is an adult-themed sexual video game series created by Al Lowe. It was published by Sierra from 1987 to 2009, then by Codemasters starting in 2009. The first six ''Leisure Suit Larry'' titles, along with ''Magna Cum Lau ...
'', and ''
Police Quest ''Police Quest'' (or ''SWAT'') is a series of police simulation video games produced and published by Sierra On-Line between 1987 and 1998. The first five were adventure simulation games, the first three of which were designed by former police ...
''. After ''Space Quest IV'', Crowe moved to work at
Eugene, Oregon Eugene ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Oregon. It is located at the southern end of the Willamette Valley, near the confluence of the McKenzie and Willamette rivers, about east of the Oregon Coast. As of the 2020 United States Census, Eu ...
, home of Sierra subsidiary
Dynamix Dynamix, Inc. was an American developer of video games from 1984 to 2001, best known for the flight simulator ''Red Baron'', the puzzle game '' The Incredible Machine'', the '' Front Page Sports'' series, ''Betrayal at Krondor,'' and the online ...
, where he developed ''
Space Quest V ''Space Quest V: Roger Wilco – The Next Mutation'' is a graphic adventure game released for MS-DOS on February 5, 1993. Premise ''Space Quest V'' is unusual in the series in that it is primarily a specific parody of '' Star Trek''; while there a ...
'' without Murphy's input. During his time at Dynamix, Crowe worked on several other games, including the '' Earthsiege'' series. Following major layoffs at Sierra and Dynamix in 1999, Crowe joined some of his former co-workers from Dynamix at
Pipeworks Software Pipeworks Studios is an American video game developer based in Eugene, Oregon. The company was founded in November 1999 by Dan White and Dan Duncalf and works to provide full development, co-development, and live operations to video game publis ...
, where he served as Studio Design Director. At Pipeworks, Crowe worked on a number of games including '' Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee'' and '' Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian''. In 2012, Crowe left Pipeworks to join with Murphy and
Chris Pope Chris Pope is an American internet personality, video game developer, producer, social media professional, podcast A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of ...
to start their own company called Guys from Andromeda. Following a successful
Kickstarter Kickstarter is an American public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". As of July 2021, ...
campaign, they began work on a project called ''SpaceVenture'' as a
spiritual successor A spiritual successor (sometimes called a spiritual sequel) is a product or fictional work that is similar to, or directly inspired by, another previous work, but (unlike a traditional prequel or sequel) does not explicitly continue the product lin ...
to the ''Space Quest'' series. In 2015, after Murphy needed some time away from the project for personal reasons, Crowe and Pope shifted focus on to a portion of ''SpaceVenture'' that didn't require as much writing. The game sequence features a character called Cluck Yegger and is built to play a key role in the game. To bring more funding into the project, Crowe and Pope decided to make the Cluck Yegger sequence into a game and release it to the public. The game was named '' Cluck Yegger in Escape From The Planet of The Poultroid''. It was released privately to backers of SpaceVenture on October 29. 2015, and then was greenlit on Steam and released publicly on November 9, 2015.


References


External links

*
''Mark Crowe''
profile at
MobyGames MobyGames is a commercial website that catalogs information on video games and the people and companies behind them via crowdsourcing. This includes nearly 300,000 games for hundreds of platforms. The site is supported by banner ads and a small ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Crowe, Mark Year of birth missing (living people) American male video game actors American video game designers Living people Sierra On-Line employees Space Quest Video game artists