Programmers and Multiple Companies

[Tempest]

As I've been reading the DP guide and the AtariAge archives I noticed that many programmers seemed to jump from company to company.

 

For instance, David Lubar wrote games for Spectravision, 20th Century Fox, Atari (sentinel), and Activision (RR II). Ed Salvo wrote games for CBS, Apollo, Wizard, and Sunrise. Alex Leavens wrote games for CBS, Atari, First Star, and Telesys. You get the picutre.every few months? I've always been curious.

 

I guess smaller companies like Wizard and First Star didn't

 

I guess my question is were these guys just free lance programmers moving from one assignment to the next or did they really just change companies have in house programmers so they just hired out, but what about the bigger companies? Were all their games done in house or did they hire free lancers every now and then?

 

Tempest

[robsterman]

Tempest:

 

I know that Activision was formed by six Atari 2600 programmers, who broke off to create their own company. One beef with them was that in Atari, they were not given credit for their work. This lead to the infamous first Easter Egg in Adventure.

 

One perk with Activision was that programmers were not only given credit, but soon became household names.

 

It was probably easier in the early 1980s for a programmer to freelance because entire games were written by one individual in 6-9 months.

 

In today's time, multiple people work on one game for years.

 

Hope this helps.