Jim Levy was initially a music industry executive. He is known better for his efforts as the founding Chief Executive Officer for Activision.

Activision was originally founded on giving their game designers a lot of recognition for their work. It is for this reason that he promoted his game designers like rock stars. Each game's instruction booklet would have a brief biography of the developer, as well as their autograph. He also was a driving force in the acquision of Infocom. In 1986, he resigned his position, also at a time when games required more than one person to be involved in a game, therefore his style of recognition became less effective.