BRIAN RAFFEL

When Brian was six years old a fortuneteller read his palm and foretold "As an adult you will sit in a chair for twelve hours a day and have no social life." It was clear he was destined to either work at a video game company or be the world’s first professional D&D player. In the spring of 1990, he and his brother Steve Raffel started a small company called Raven Software which went on to produce such hit games as Black Crypt, ShadowCaster, Heretic and Hexen. Knowing a good thing when they saw it, Activision acquired Raven Software in 1997 and made Brian the studio head. He is also the father of three awesome children (Kelson, Ashlyn, and Bryce), and has a beautiful wife named Renée who finds his MMO RPG addiction charming but she does wish he’d stop yelling “For the Horde” during family outings.  Brian also has a strange fascination for medieval methods of torture, which explains why an iron maiden was recently installed in Raven’s break room. And although he has watched Raven Software grow from just himself and his brother to its current staff of over 160 people, Brian catches himself wondering what his life would have been like had he played D&D professionally. Read more about the Birth of Raven.