Brøderbund

This article is about the software company. For the organization formerly known as the Broederbond, see Afrikanerbond.

Brøderbund Software, Inc.

Fate	Purchased by The Learning Company
Successor	The Learning Company
Founded	1980
Defunct	1998
Headquarters	Eugene, Oregon San Rafael, California Novato, California
Key people	Doug Carlston Gary Carlston Cathy Carlston Brisbois Edmund Auer
Products	Computer software and video games
Website	www.broderbund.com

Brøderbund Software, Inc. was an American maker of video games, educational software and productivity tools. Brøderbund is best known for the 8-bit computer game hits Choplifter, Lode Runner, Karateka, and Prince of Persia (all of which originated on the Apple II), as well as the The Print Shop—originally for printing signs and banners on dot matrix printers—and the Carmen Sandiego games. The company was founded in Eugene, Oregon, and moved to San Rafael, California, then later to Novato, California. Brøderbund was purchased by The Learning Company in 1998.

Many of Brøderbund's software titles, such as The Print Shop, PrintMaster and Mavis Beacon, are still published under the name "Broderbund" ("o" instead of "ø"). Games released by the revived Broderbund are distributed by Encore, Inc.

Corporate history

Brøderbund was founded by brothers Doug and Gary Carlston in 1980 for the purpose of marketing Galactic Empire, a video game that Doug Carlston had created in 1979. Their sister, Cathy, joined the company a year later. Before founding the company, Doug was a lawyer and Gary had held a number of jobs, including teaching Swedish at an American college. Galactic Empire had many names taken from African languages; a group of merchants was named Broederbond, Afrikaans for "association of brothers". To emphasize its family origin while avoiding a connection with the white-supremacist South African organization of the same name, the Carlstons altered the spelling when naming their company "Brøderbund".

By early 1984 InfoWorld estimated that Brøderbund was tied with Human Engineered Software as the world's tenth-largest microcomputer-software company and largest entertainment-software company, with $13 million in 1983 sales. That year it took over the assets of the well-regarded but financially troubled Synapse Software. Although intending to keep it running as a business, they were unable to make money from Synapse's products, and closed it down after a year.

Brøderbund's The Print Shop software produced signs and greeting cards. Brøderbund started discussions with Unison World about creating a version that would run on DOS. The two companies could not agree on a contract, but Unison World developed a DOS product with similar function and a similar user interface. Broderbund sued for infringement of their copyright. Broderbund v. Unison (1986) became a landmark case in establishing that the look and feel of a software product could be subject to copyright protection.

Sierra On-Line and Brøderbund ended merger discussions in March 1991. By this time Brøderbund was developing most of its software, as opposed to publishing software others had developed; Doug Carlston stated the company needed "to control our own sources, to control our future". After an unsuccessful Initial Public Offering in 1987, it became a public company in November 1991; its NASDAQ symbol was BROD. When Brøderbund went public The Print Shop comprised 33% of total revenue, and the Carmen Sandiego series 26%. The company's stock price and market capitalization climbed steadily to a maximum of nearly US$80/share in late 1995, and then fell steadily in the face of continued losses for a number of years.

Brøderbund acquired PC Globe in July 1992. The Learning Company purchased Brøderbund in 1998 for about US$420 million in stock. Brøderbund had initially attempted to purchase the original The Learning Company in 1995, but was outbid by Softkey, who purchased The Learning Company for $606 million in cash and then adopted its name. The Learning Company then bought Brøderbund in 1998 and in a move to rationalize costs, The Learning Company promptly terminated 500 employees at Brøderbund the same year, representing 42% of the company's workforce. Then in 1999 the combined company was bought by Mattel for $3.6 billion. Mattel reeled from the financial impact of this transaction, and Jill Barad, the CEO, ended up being forced out in a climate of investor outrage. Mattel then gave away The Learning Company in September 2000 to Gores Technology Group, a private acquisitions firm, for a share of whatever Gores could obtain by selling the company. In 2001, Gores sold The Learning Company's entertainment holdings to Ubisoft, and most of the other holdings, including the Brøderbund name, to Irish company Riverdeep. Many of Brøderbund's games, such as the Myst series, are published by Ubisoft.

Broderbund, with an "o" instead of the "ø" character, is now the brand name for Riverdeep's graphic design, productivity, and edutainment titles such as The Print Shop, Carmen Sandiego, Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, the Living Books series, and Reader Rabbit titles, in addition to publishing software for other companies, notably Zone Labs' ZoneAlarm.

The Broderbund line of products is published by Encore, Inc under license from Riverdeep. Under the terms of the agreement, Encore now manages the Broderbund family of products as well as Broderbund’s direct to consumer business. In May 2010 Encore acquired the assets of Punch! Software

In 2014 Doug Carlston donated a collection of Brøderbund's business records, software and a collection of games that includes Myst, Prince of Persia and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? to The Strong National Museum of Play. The Strong National Museum of Play forwarded the collection to the ICHEG museum for preservation.

Products

Main article: List of Brøderbund products

Brøderbund scored an early hit with the game Galactic Empire, written by Doug Carlston for the TRS-80. The company became a powerhouse in the educational and entertainment software markets with titles like Fantavision, Choplifter, Apple Panic, Lode Runner, Karateka, Wings of Fury, Prince of Persia, The Battle of Olympus, In the 1st Degree, The Last Express, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, The Guardian Legend, and Myst, which stayed the highest grossing home video game for years. The company's first title for the Apple II, Tank Command, was written by the third Carlston brother, Professor Donal Carlston

Brøderbund was easily one of the most dominant publishers in the computer market of the 1980s, having released video games for virtually all major computer systems in the United States. This included not only the IBM PC-DOS personal computer, but also the leading home computers from the decade, notably the TRS-80, the Apple II, the Commodore 64, the Atari 8-bit and the Amiga. The company even went on licensing some of its titles to British and Japanese companies who ported Brøderbund's games to the different home computers of these regions, such as the Amstrad CPC, the MSX and the ZX Spectrum.

Brøderbund published the Print Shop series of desktop publishing making programs, Family Tree Maker (a genealogy program supported by hundreds of CDs of public genealogy data), 3D Home Architect, a program for designing and visualizing family homes and Banner Mania, a program for designing and printing multi-page banners. By the end of the 1980s, games represented only a few percent of Brøderbund's annual sales, which by then were heavily focused in the productivity arena and early education and learning areas.

Just before being acquired by The Learning Company, Brøderbund spun off its Living Books series by forming a joint venture with Random House Publishing. Despite the success and quality of the Living Books series, the joint venture was marginally successful and was dissolved with The Learning Company deal.

For a brief time, Brøderbund was involved in the video game console market when it published a few games for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) through its New Ventures Division. All of Broderbund's games for the NES, including the port of its own franchises Lode Runner, Spelunker and Raid on Bungeling Bay, were developed by third-party Japanese companies. Brøderbund published some titles that were produced by companies that didn't have a North American subsidiary, such as Compile's The Guardian Legend, Imagineer's The Battle of Olympus, and Legacy of the Wizard, the fourth installment in Nihon Falcom's Dragon Slayer series. Brøderbund also developed and marketed an ill-fated motion sensitive NES controller device called the U-Force, which was operated without direct physical contact between the player and the device. In 1990, Brøderbund sold its New Ventures Division, including manufacturing equipment, inventory, and assets, to then-fledgling company THQ.

Brøderbund released in the United States Arsys Software's 1986 third-person action RPG shooter WiBArm,

Brøderbund briefly had a board game division, which published Don Carlston's Personal Preference, along with several board game versions of its video games.

Etymology and pronunciation

The word "brøderbund" is not an actual word in any language but is a somewhat loose translation of "band of brothers" into a mixture of Danish, German, and Swedish. The "ø" in "Brøderbund" was used partially as a play on the Norwegian/Danish letter ø but was mainly referencing the slashed zero found in mainframes, terminals and early personal computers. The three crowns above the logo are also a reference to the lesser national coat of arms of Sweden.

The company's name was pronounced /ˈbruːdərbʌnd/ instead of the popularly used /ˈbroʊdərbʌnd/.

See also

• List of companies based in Oregon
• Red Orb Entertainment — Broderbund's game publishing division, later supported by Mindscape

External links

• Broderbund Official website
• Archive of Brøderbund website
• Profile at MobyGames
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