Garry Kitchen - President/CEO
A true video game pioneer, Garry has more than 25 years of interactive electronics experience. Starting way back, his patented, hand-held electronic game Bank Shot, marketed by Parker Brothers, was named one of the 10 best toys of 1980 by Omni magazine. In 1982, he designed and programmed the smash hit Donkey Kong for the Atari 2600 video game console which eclipsed $100 million in sales. Moving onto Activision, another of Garry’s creations: Gamemaker, a top-seller for the Commodore 64, earned him the title of Video Game Designer of the Year in 1985.
In 1986, Garry founded Absolute Entertainment, Inc., building it into one of the leading video game developers in North America. Under his leadership, Absolute created more than 120 software titles while working with such leading entertainment companies as Nintendo, Sega, Sony, 3DO, Paramount Pictures, MCA, 20th Century Fox, Acclaim, and Electronic Arts. Garry’s 1991 release, The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants, published by Acclaim Entertainment, was praised by Variety magazine as a breakthrough in the video game licensing of television properties. The "Bart vs...." line of Simpsons’ games went on to sell more than 2 million units, establishing Bart and family as a mainstay property in entertainment software. Garry’s 1992 release, Super Battletank, was named Best Simulation Game by Game Informer Magazine.
Launching Skyworks Technologies, Inc., Garry has leveraged his passion for video games and keen awareness of audience expectations to create “serious games” for a who’s who of Fortune 500 companies. Take a peek at our client list.
Garry has received numerous awards for his work, including a Lifetime Achievement Award in Video Games and a nomination as Entrepreneur of the Year in New Jersey in 1993. His knowledge and experience in creating robust, interactive experiences is well respected, with numerous television appearances including CNBC, ABC Eyewitness News, NBC’s Today Show and CNN as well as interviews in numerous consumer and trade publications.
David Crane - Chief Technology Officer
David is a founder of Activision and simply one of the world’s most successful designers of entertainment software. Worldwide sales of over 10 million games and wholesale revenues of nearly 200 million dollars are just the beginning.
His award winning video games, led by Pitfall!, Ghostbusters, A Boy and His Blob, and Amazing Tennis are acknowledged as some of the most innovative and popular in the interactive entertainment industry.
David's industry awards mount with each new product. Pitfall! maintained the top slot on the Billboard charts for 64 weeks and was named video game of the year in 1982. Besides selling millions of copies worldwide, it spawned a Saturday morning television cartoon and numerous other spin-offs. Pitfall II: Lost Caverns was also the number one rated game in the country for over six months and won the 1984 Golden Floppy award for best game and the Video Adventure Game of the Year award for 1984 from Electronic Games. The Activision Decathlon was in the top 20 video games for more than one year and won several sports game awards. Reviewers Katz & Kunkel called Decathlon a "masterwork and a true classic."
David´s Little Computer People was awarded the 1985 award for the most innovative program of the year by the Computer Entertainer. A Boy and His Blob received the best of show award at Consumer Electronics Show at its introduction and was named video game of the year for 1989 by numerous publications. Further, the Parents´ Choice Foundation awarded A Boy and His Blob™ the 1990 Parents' Choice Award for portraying "positive human values", "high quality software", "intelligent design", and the "ability to hold the player's interest." Video Game Update, Video Review and Computer Entertainer named David designer of the year in 1983 and 1984. His works have been called "beyond belief" and "offering the most remarkable breadth of any videogame(s) yet produced" by Electronic Games Magazine.
While often overshadowed in the public eye by his software products, David's hardware accomplishments are equally impressive. In addition to a variety of custom development systems, he has designed two integrated circuits for video game use - The Display Processor Chip or DPC, which was awarded a patent for its unique video memory system, and a chip which offered the most innovative method of bank selecting in the industry. With Absolute Electronics, David and Skyworks President Garry Kitchen developed the Video One Touch, a breakthrough remote control for use with the RCA DSS Satellite Dish. Wherever there is new technology or new entertainment opportunities, David can be found at the forefront.
Bill Wentworth - Executive Vice President of Creative Development
Bill is an award-winning creative designer with 20 years experience creating interactive multimedia and print-based marketing projects, as well as published entertainment software and video games.
Under Bill’s creative leadership, Skyworks pioneered the category of client-branded online games with the creation of Lifesaver’s Candystand in 1997. Since then, Skyworks has created over 300 unique client-branded games for Abbott Labs, BMW, Buick, Campbell Soup, ESPN, Ford and Lincoln, Fox Sports, GlaxoSmithKline, Kraft Foods, Mattel, Microsoft, MTV, Nabisco, Pepsi, Post Cereal, Toyota, and many others.
Over 1 billion Skyworks’ client-branded games have been downloaded from clients’ websites. Over 40 million client-branded games are downloaded each month.
As Vice-President of Creative Services at Absolute Interactive, one of North America’s largest developers of Nintendo games, Bill managed an in-house interactive agency responsible for the design, writing, authoring and production of marketing material for on-line, CD-ROM, and print media. His clients included AT&T, Johnson & Johnson, Nabisco, Siemens Corporation, and Ferguson Associates.
Bill’s interactive design expertise and his vast experience with multimedia and video game production provides Skyworks with the creative leadership necessary to produce imaginative and compelling multimedia and interactive game experiences across multiple platforms from online to offline to wireless mobile… which is a fancy way to say cellphones and PDAs.