Bob Whitehead

Robert A. Whitehead (born November 1, 1953) is an American video game designer and programmer. While working for Atari, Inc. he wrote two of the nine Atari Video Computer System launch titles: Blackjack and Star Ship. After leaving Atari, he cofounded third party video game developer Activision, then Accolade. He left the video game industry in the mid-1980s.

Career

Whitehead attended San Jose State University and received a BS in Mathematics.

Whitehead worked for Atari, Inc. in the late 1970s developing games for the Video Computer System (later renamed to the Atari 2600). He developed several games, including a VCS implementation of chess, a feat many other programmers considered impossible for the system.

Whitehead is sometimes credited as co-author, together with the rest of the Gang of Four, of the operating system for the Atari 400/800 computers. It has been however clarified both by Al Miller and by Whitehead himself that he was not involved in the OS development, although he took part in developing applications for the computers.

Eventually the Gang of Four, disgruntled by the management's decline to provide more recognition and fair compensation to the developers, decided to leave Atari and start their own business. Whitehead together with Miller, Crane and Kaplan co-founded Activision, the first third-party video game developer, in October 1979. Whitehead said of the contemporary state of the industry: Too dark and derivative for my taste. The console and computer gaming business is too narrowly defined by the 14 [year old] male mentality and all his not-so-honorable fantasies. It's being driven by what has worked and afraid of what a 10 million dollar development bust will entail. It has lost its moral compass.

Commodore 64 4th & Inches (Accolade) HardBall! (Accolade)