After 36 years at the legendary FPS studio, Raven Software co-founder Brian Raffel is retiring

Raven Software lobby — (Image credit: Raven Software)

Brian Raffel, who co-founded Raven Software in 1990 with his brother Steve, is retiring from game development after 36 years.

Brian has been Vice President of Raven since its inception, and Studio Head since 1997. In 2024, he began sharing this position with Dave Pellas, who joined Raven in 2011. Raffel has also served as Vice President of Activision since 1997, following Raven's acquisition by the publisher.

"It's hard to put into words what this journey has meant for me," Raffel posted on LinkedIn. "From those early days building Raven to becoming the first studio acquired by Activision, I'm grateful for the people, the culture and the games we created together. Most of all, I want to thank my brother Steve. Taking this path together and choosing Activision was one of the best decisions of our lives."

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Raven's first title was Black Crypt, a first-person RPG in the vein of Wizardry. This was followed a year later by ShadowCaster, a more advanced take on the idea released on DOS. But it was the studio's third game, Heretic, that would come to define its future. Published by id Software, Heretic infused Raven's dark fantasy worlds with the grisly, lightning-fast action of Doom. It was one of the first shooters to feature inventory items and the ability to look up and down, and still plays great today thanks to a recent remaster by Nightdive Studios.

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Heretic's success defined Raven as an FPS specialist, further explored in games like HeXen and the gloriously gory Soldier of Fortune games. Perhaps the highlight of Raven's early period was its two Jedi Knight sequels, Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy, which are still held in high regard thanks to their innovative lightsaber combat.

Raven's middle period brought 2009's Wolfenstein reboot and the underrated time-manipulating shooter Singularity. Since then, Raven has worked almost exclusively on Call of Duty, leading the design for Call of Duty: Warzone as well as working on the campaigns for Black Ops: Cold War, Black Ops 6, and Black Ops 7. The first two of these are among the better Call of Duty campaigns of recent years. Black Ops 7 was a mess, however, causing Activision to rethink its approach of back-to-back releases in the same series.

In a message to IGN, Doom cocreator and longtime Raven collaborator John Romero congratulated Raffel on his career and reminisced about their days working together. "Brian did a great job steering 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 today—36 years! I definitely give credit to Brian for making that happen."

Rick has been fascinated by PC gaming since he was seven years old, when he used to sneak into his dad's home office for covert sessions of Doom. He grew up on a diet of similarly unsuitable games, with favourites including Quake, Thief, Half-Life and Deus Ex. Between 2013 and 2022, Rick was games editor of Custom PC magazine and associated website bit-tech.net. But he's always kept one foot in freelance games journalism, writing for publications like Edge, Eurogamer, the Guardian and, naturally, PC Gamer. While he'll play anything that can be controlled with a keyboard and mouse, he has a particular passion for first-person shooters and immersive sims.

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