From Heretic to Warzone, one of first-person shooters’ quiet architects is stepping away. Brian Raffel, who co-founded Raven Software with his brother Steve in 1990, is retiring from game development after 36 years steering the studio through PC shooters’ defining eras.
A 36-Year Run At Raven
Raffel has served as Raven’s Vice President since its inception and took over as Studio Head in 1997. He also became a Vice President at Activision that same year following Raven’s acquisition by the publisher. In 2024, he began sharing the Studio Head role with Dave Pellas, a veteran who joined Raven in 2011, signaling a planned leadership transition.
“It’s hard to put into words what this journey has meant for me,” Raffel wrote 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.” Steve Raffel retired from Raven in 2017.
From Black Crypt To Heretic
Raven’s debut, Black Crypt, was a first-person RPG in the Wizardry mold. A year later came ShadowCaster on DOS, a sharper, more ambitious take on dungeon-crawling. Momentum truly shifted with the studio’s third game, Heretic, published by id Software. It spliced Raven’s dark fantasy sensibilities with Doom’s blistering speed, and introduced forward-looking ideas like usable inventory items and the ability to look up and down. Thanks to a recent Nightdive Studios remaster, Heretic still holds up for modern players.
That success cast Raven as an FPS specialist. HeXen expanded Heretic’s formula with hub-based levels and class-driven combat, while Soldier of Fortune chased gritty realism and notorious gore. Perhaps the brightest spot in that early stretch arrived with Star Wars: Jedi Knight II — Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy. Both games remain fan favorites, largely because of lightsaber combat that felt adventurous and technical instead of canned.
Reboots, Experiments, And The Call Of Duty Era
Raven’s middle period mixed big-name revivals with original ideas. The studio delivered 2009’s Wolfenstein reboot and followed it with Singularity, a stylish shooter built around time manipulation that many players still call underrated. Shifts inside Activision soon put Raven on a different path.
Over the past decade-plus, the studio has worked almost exclusively on Call of Duty. Raven led the design of Call of Duty: Warzone and contributed to mainline campaigns, including Black Ops: Cold War, Black Ops 6, and Black Ops 7. The first two campaigns stand among the stronger recent entries in the series, while Black Ops 7 struggled, prompting Activision to rethink back-to-back releases in the same sub-brand.
Even with that pivot, Raven’s fingerprints on FPS design never faded. Warzone’s live-service cadence and map stewardship demanded the kind of institutional knowledge you only get from decades inside the genre. That’s the throughline of Raffel’s tenure: adapting to industry swings without losing the studio’s feel for moment-to-moment combat.
Leadership And What Comes Next
Colleagues who were there in the beginning credit Raffel for that steadiness. In a message to IGN, Doom co-creator and longtime Raven collaborator John Romero said, “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.”
With Pellas sharing studio leadership, Raven enters a new chapter that still looks firmly connected to Call of Duty. The studio has the experience to keep Warzone humming and to ship sturdy campaigns when called upon. Nightdive’s recent Heretic remaster also keeps Raven’s roots visible, a reminder that the team built its name on bold, mechanical ideas before live-service schedules existed.
Raffel’s retirement doesn’t erase that DNA. If Raven finds space between annual obligations, the crew that once imagined Heretic, HeXen, and Singularity could surprise everyone again. Either way, modern shooters owe plenty to the studio he helped build—and players will keep feeling those choices every time they sprint, swap weapons, and push through a firefight.