Brøderbund | Code Like It's 198x

Brøderbund began in a rented house in Eugene, Oregon, with a lawyer who had taught himself to write games on a TRS-80 and a brother who knew how to sell them. It grew into one of the largest software publishers in America, and it did so mostly with other people’s programs. Dan Gorlin’s Choplifter, Doug Smith’s Lode Runner and Jordan Mechner’s Karateka and Prince of Persia came in from outside, and the company put their authors’ names on the boxes. Then it found a second business that outlasted the games: The Print Shop, which turned a home computer and a dot-matrix printer into a greetings-card factory, and Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?, a detective game that children ended up playing at school. In 1993 it published Cyan’s Myst.

Fast facts

Founded: 1980, in Eugene, Oregon, by Doug and Gary Carlston; their sister Cathy joined by 1981.
Based: San Rafael, California, by 1982.
Best known for: Choplifter (1982), Lode Runner (1983), Karateka (1984), The Print Shop (1984), Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? (1985), Prince of Persia (1989), and as publisher of Myst (1993).
Public company: from November 1991.
Bought by: The Learning Company, in 1998, for $420 million.

Two brothers and a Japanese neighbour

Doug Carlston was a Harvard-trained lawyer with a practice in Maine who had bought a TRS-80 in the late 1970s, officially for the office. He wrote a space strategy game, Galactic Empire, and followed it with Galactic Trader and Galactic Revolution; other publishers sold them, and by 1979, Retro Gamer later reported, he was earning more from programming than from law. He drove west to see his brother Gary, who had studied Scandinavian languages, coached a women’s basketball team in Stockholm and was then living in Eugene. Doug proposed that they go into software publishing together.

The brothers started in 1980 with a few thousand dollars borrowed from their mother, her sister, their brother Don and a credit card. They looked for advertisements from people selling programs and telephoned them; by May 1980 they had sales of about $900 a month. At the West Coast Computer Faire Gary had an Apple II on his stand. The Japanese company on the next stand, Star Craft, had brought Apple games but nothing to show them on, so Gary lent them his computer and then bought the American rights to their games. One, Apple Galaxian, a copy of Namco’s Galaxian, sold $100,000 worth in a single month. “The Star Craft games were technically superior to anything produced in the US,” Gary said, “and American programmers wanted to meet the Japanese guys and find out how they did it, so they contacted us.”

By 1981 Cathy Carlston had joined as office manager, and the company was still a household business: Cathy did the accounts in the kitchen, Gary took phone calls in the living room and Doug packed disks. That year it sold more than $1 million of software. It moved to California soon after; BYTE still gave its address as a post-office box in Eugene in December 1981, and by September 1982 its advertisements came from Fourth Street in San Rafael.

Why the ø

The slashed o is a joke on the computer habit of writing a zero as Ø. Gary Carlston told Retro Gamer that the name had a less comfortable origin: Doug had used “Broederbond” for a group of traders in one of his games, taking it from the Afrikaner secret society in South Africa, which he knew about from teaching in Botswana in the 1960s. The brothers changed the spelling to a Scandinavian form, which Gary said means “association of brothers” in any Germanic language, “to make it more benign”.

Games from outside

Gary ran product development. The company promoted its programmers on its packaging and in its advertisements, and even let David Snider name his pinball game David’s Midnight Magic. In December 1982 it won Electronic Games’ award for computer game of the year.

In 1982 a musician called Dan Gorlin walked into a computer shop in Los Angeles with a helicopter game he had written on a borrowed Apple II, and the shop told him to call the Carlstons. Choplifter, in which the player flies in to rescue hostages from the Bungeling Empire, was “technically top notch and just plain fun”, Gary said, though he asked Gorlin to make the helicopter easier to fly. When the teenage Jordan Mechner sent Brøderbund an Asteroids-style game, Doug Carlston rang to turn it down, calling it “a little bit last year – kind of 1981”, and posted him a copy of Choplifter with joysticks to play it. Mechner’s answer was Karateka (1984), a martial-arts game animated from film of real people. Gary said he originally turned it down “because it didn’t seem to have much gameplay”, but it filled an empty monitor on the company’s stand at the Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago, drew a crowd, and was signed.

Lode Runner (1983) came from Doug Smith. Gary first thought it looked like a copy of Apple Panic, then reached “about level 30” and decided the puzzles were “really clever”; the company paid Smith a $10,000 advance to expand it, and it shipped with 150 screens and an editor for making more. It and Choplifter were licensed to Japanese arcade manufacturers, a rare journey for American computer games; Irem made the Lode Runner coin-op in 1984. Will Wright’s first game, Raid on Bungeling Bay, also came out through Brøderbund, and when he made SimCity, Maxis published it with Brøderbund as its distributor. Later outside games included Steve Waldo’s Wings of Fury, reviewed as new in 1988, and in 1989 Prince of Persia, which Mechner made in offices he shared with the company. Origin used Brøderbund as its distributor from 1987 until it “graduated” in 1989.

In Britain the games were first sold under other names. From 1985 Ariolasoft, the software arm of the German record company Ariola, released Lode Runner, Choplifter, Spelunker and Karateka, and later Domark handled Prince of Persia.

The Print Shop and Carmen Sandiego

The Print Shop, by David Balsam and Martin Kahn, came out for the Apple II in 1984. Electronic Games explained the appeal: pick a border, a picture and one of eight typefaces, and the program “prints out exactly the number of copies needed” of a greetings card, a sign or a banner. It sold for years, and in 1987 Brøderbund settled a “look and feel” lawsuit against Kyocera Unison, whose PrintMaster resembled it, with Kyocera making “a substantial payment”. Brøderbund also published the Bank Street Writer word processor, developed with the Bank Street College of Education.

Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? (1985) was one of Gary’s personal projects. He remembered the Carlston children “constantly quizzing each other on everything from state capitals to tallest mountains”. The box held a copy of The World Almanac; the player chased Carmen’s gang round 30 cities, with, the advertisement promised, “10 possible suspects” and “nearly 1,000 clues”. Dane Bigham, who programmed it and designed its gameplay, said it was deliberately “a game first and educational second”, and was filed under “explorational” because “educational” sounded boring. “Carmen wasn’t meant for the educational market,” Gary said: it “languished for about 18 months” until teachers found it. Sequels followed, among them Where in the USA Is Carmen Sandiego? and, in 1989, Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego?.

Growing up

The family partnership did not last. Gary left in 1989, and Cathy with him. “When I finally left in 1989, I remember saying that I wanted us all to go back to being a family; that I couldn’t stand being business partners any more,” he said. Doug stayed as chief executive, with Ed Auer as president.

In March 1991 Brøderbund and Sierra On-Line signed a letter of intent to merge, in a stock swap the Wall Street Journal valued at over $88 million; Sierra’s Ken Williams would have run the combined company. The deal fell through, and in November 1991 Brøderbund sold its own shares to the public. It grew with the CD-ROM: the Living Books series of animated storybooks began in 1992 with Mercer Mayer’s Just Grandma and Me, which Computer Gaming World expected to become “the Carmen Sandiego of the talking book genre”, and Brøderbund’s children’s catalogue included Kid Pix.

In 1993 Brøderbund published Myst, made by Rand and Robyn Miller’s studio Cyan, first for the Macintosh on CD-ROM. Retro Gamer later put its sales at six million copies and called it the best-selling PC game until The Sims. In February 1994 Brøderbund agreed to merge with Electronic Arts in a deal worth about $400 million, but in May the two called it off after falls in their share prices, with Brøderbund paying Electronic Arts $10 million to end the agreement. In 1995 it bid for The Learning Company and lost to SoftKey. In 1997 it set up its own games label, Red Orb Entertainment, which published Mechner’s The Last Express and the Myst sequel Riven.

After 1998

In August 1998 the company that had beaten it to The Learning Company, and had taken that name, bought Brøderbund for $420 million, including Red Orb. Computer Gaming World suspected that the lure was Myst, Riven and Carmen Sandiego, and noted that more than $607 million of sales over the previous three years had made only $31 million in profit. About 500 employees were laid off, and Doug Carlston left.

Mattel bought The Learning Company in 1999 and gave it to Gores Technology Group in 2000. In 2001 Gores sold the entertainment titles, Myst and Prince of Persia among them, to Ubisoft, and the educational and home programs to the Irish company Riverdeep, later part of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. The Brøderbund name lived on as a brand on programs such as The Print Shop, published by Encore under licence, and in 2017 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt offered the Brøderbund and Print Shop names for licensing. In 2012 Gary Carlston told Retro Gamer that a reunion had drawn “hundreds of people”.

Sources

Mike Bevan, “From the archives: Broderbund”, Retro Gamer Collection volume 6, 2012, pp. 182–187: the Carlstons’ backgrounds, the founding in 1980, family loans and early sales, Star Craft and Apple Galaxian, Cathy Carlston, 1981 sales and the move to San Rafael, the name, David Snider, Dan Gorlin and Choplifter, Doug Smith and Lode Runner, the arcade licences, Will Wright, Karateka at CES, Prince of Persia, Carmen Sandiego (Gary Carlston, Dane Bigham, Gene Portwood and Lauren Elliott), Myst’s sales, Gary’s and Cathy’s departure, The Learning Company’s lay-offs, Ubisoft, and the reunion.
BYTE vol. 6 no. 12, December 1981, p. 42: Brøderbund Software at Box 3266, Eugene, Oregon.
Computer Gaming World issue 6, September 1982, p. 5, and Antic vol. 1 no. 5, December 1982, p. 109: Brøderbund Software, 1938 Fourth Street, San Rafael.
David Crookes, “Turning back time”, Wireframe issue 37, April 2020, pp. 18–19: Mechner’s rejected game, Doug Carlston’s call and the copy of Choplifter.
Electronic Games vol. 2 no. 17, December 1984, p. 54: review of The Print Shop by David Balsam and Martin Kahn (Brøderbund, Apple, 48K disk).
COMPUTE! issue 54, November 1984, p. 6: Brøderbund advertisement for Bank Street Writer, “developed in association with” the Bank Street College of Education.
Family Computing vol. 3 no. 12, December 1985, p. 115: Brøderbund advertisement for Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? by Dane Bigham (©1985; The World Almanac, 10 suspects, 30 cities, nearly 1,000 clues; 17 Paul Drive, San Rafael).
Computer Gaming World issue 51, September 1988, p. 18: review of Wings of Fury (Brøderbund, designer Steve Waldo), “the new arcade-style air combat simulator”.
Computer Gaming World issue 88, November 1991, p. 26: the withdrawn 1987 share offering, Origin’s distribution and 1989 “graduation”, and the Print Shop settlement with Kyocera Unison.
Computer Gaming World issue 82, May 1991, p. 58: the Sierra–Brøderbund letter of intent of 8 March 1991, Doug Carlston, Ed Auer and Ken Williams, and the Wall Street Journal’s $88 million valuation.
Info issue 46, January 1992, p. 18: Brøderbund going public after the proposed merger with Sierra “fell through”, and its affiliated-label agreement with Maxis.
Computer Gaming World issue 96, July 1992, p. 56: Living Books and Just Grandma and Me.
COMPUTE! issue 152, May 1993, p. 86: Just Grandma and Me, the first Living Books title, and Brøderbund’s children’s programs including Kid Pix.
Edge issue 4, January 1994, p. 66: Myst, Mac CD-ROM, publisher Brøderbund, developer Cyan.
PC Player (Germany), May 1994, p. 83: Myst review, with Robyn and Rand Miller as co-founders of Cyan.
Computer Gaming World issue 117, April 1994, p. 13: the Electronic Arts–Brøderbund merger agreement of 9 February 1994, worth about $400 million.
“Broderbund, Electronic Arts call the whole thing off”, Computer Business Review, 4 May 1994 (web, secondary, now at Tech Monitor): the end of the merger and the $10 million payment. https://www.techmonitor.ai/technology/broderbund_electronic_arts_call_the_whole_thing_off
Computer Gaming World issue 166, May 1998, p. 236, and issue 167, June 1998, p. 284: The Last Express and Riven under the Red Orb label.
Edge issue 63, October 1998, p. 9, and Computer Gaming World issue 172, November 1998, pp. 58 and 375: The Learning Company’s purchase of Brøderbund in August 1998 for $420 million, including Red Orb; Myst, Riven and Carmen Sandiego; sales and profits.
“Broderbund Software”, International Directory of Company Histories vol. 29 (1999), via company-histories.com (web, secondary): the founding in 1980, Gary Carlston’s departure in 1989, Ed Auer, the November 1991 share offering, Kid Pix (1991) and Red Orb (1997). https://www.company-histories.com/Broderbund-Software-Company-History.html
Wikipedia, “Broderbund” (accessed September 2026) (web, secondary): the 1995 bid for The Learning Company, the 2001 division of the business between Ubisoft and Riverdeep, Encore’s licence and the 2017 licensing offer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broderbund