Mark Crowe
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Mark Crowe is an American
video game designer Video game design is the process of designing the rules and content of video games in the Video game development#Pre-production, pre-production stage and designing the gameplay, environment, storyline and characters in the Video game development ...
, 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-solving. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based m ...
s for
Sierra On-Line Sierra Entertainment, Inc. (formerly On-Line Systems and Sierra On-Line, Inc.) was an American video game developer and publisher founded in 1979 by Ken and Roberta Williams. The company is known for pioneering the graphic adventure game ge ...
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 (1990 video game), ''Red Baron'', the puzzle video game, puzzle game ''The Incredible Machine (video game), The Incredible Mach ...
. 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 hapless janitor named #Protagonist, Roger Wilco, who campaigns through the galaxy for "truth, justice, ...
'' series, mostly with his fellow "Guy from Andromeda", Scott Murphy.


Biography

Crowe started working at Sierra 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'' 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 was originally released in 1985 for PC DOS/ PCjr, and later made available for the Apple II/Apple ...
'', before collaborating with Scott Murphy 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 hapless janitor named #Protagonist, Roger Wilco, who campaigns through the galaxy for "truth, justice, ...
''. 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 in video gaming, 1991 graphic adventure game by Sierra Entertainment, Sierra On-Line, and the fourth entry in the ''Space Quest'' series. The game was released originally on floppy di ...
'' 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 ...
'', ''
Leisure Suit Larry ''Leisure Suit Larry'' is an adult-themed sex comedy video game series created by Al Lowe. Drawing inspiration from '' Softporn Adventure'', the ''Leisure Suit Larry'' series centers on Larry Laffer—a middle-aged man known for his balding ...
'', and ''
Police Quest ''Police Quest'' (or ''SWAT'') is a series of police simulation game, simulation video games produced and published by Sierra On-Line between 1987 and 1998. The first five were adventure game, adventure simulation game, simulation games, the f ...
''. After ''Space Quest IV'', Crowe moved to work at
Eugene, Oregon Eugene ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Lane County, Oregon, United States. It is located at the southern end of the Willamette Valley, near the confluence of the McKenzie River (Oregon), McKenzie and Willamette River, Willamette rivers, ...
, 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 (1990 video game), ''Red Baron'', the puzzle video game, puzzle game ''The Incredible Machine (video game), The Incredible Mach ...
, where he developed ''
Space Quest V ''Space Quest V: Roger Wilco – The Next Mutation'' is a graphic adventure game, created by Dynamix, and released by Sierra Entertainment, Sierra On-Line for MS-DOS on February 5, 1993. The game is the fifth entry in the ''Space Quest'' series, 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 to start their own company called Guys from Andromeda. Following a successful
Kickstarter Kickstarter, PBC is an American Benefit corporation, public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York City, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative project ...
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 product or work, but (unlike a traditional prequel or sequel) does not explicitly continue th ...
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 game A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controlle ...
{{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 American video game artists