“The first thing she drew was the Bastion,” Rao recalls. She was ready for a change of pace and more responsibility.īefore landing as Supergiant’s art director, Zee came on as a three-month contractor while she continued her day job. Gaia Online was her professional gig and she was mostly focusing on environmental work. Zee, who knew she wanted to be an artist ever since seeing Tetsuya Nomura’s character art for Final Fantasy VII in a video game magazine, calls the timing “serendipitous” as she was starting to think more about where she could grow as an artist. When Rao said they were looking for an artist, Ahad thought of his co-worker who he happened to sit in the cubicle across from: Jen Zee Alex Ahad, best known for his work on Skullgirls, knew Rao’s best friend from high school. The duo soon recruited their third member through another friend connection. “It’s just like, ‘This is what’s going to happen and I’ve no idea how it will go.’ is just what I always wanted to do.” “I didn’t really even sit down and think about or weigh the pros and cons about, ‘Is this a good idea or not?” says development director Gavin Simon. Both Rao and Simon quit their jobs at EA and got to work, officially becoming co-founders of Supergiant Games. Their primary office? The living room, which is where they made the entirety of Bastion, Supergiant’s debut game. “And so, he let us work out of his house and we formed Supergiant Games in 2009.” “My dad was encouraging me to start a company as well, because he felt I was young enough that if it didn’t work out, I could always try to find a job again,” he says. That’s when we started thinking, ‘What would we do if we could ever do something like this?’Īs ideas percolated, Rao turned to his dad for guidance. “These games were made by just a handful of people, but they’re really well-crafted and just more interesting in a lot of ways than what was happening then in the big triple-A space. “It was really inspiring,” says creative director Greg Kasavin. The trio worked together on the Command & Conquer franchise, quickly forming close friendships and learning each other’s talents and how they complement one another.Īround 2008, they all were playing games like World of Goo, Braid, Castle Crashers, and Plants vs. When Supergiant co-founder and studio director Amir Rao took a job at Electronic Arts, it led him to meeting two key players on the Supergiant Games roster: Gavin Simon and Greg Kasavin. Sometimes the stars align, bringing us together with the right people at the right time. This is the story of how “the Kid” came to be and changed the lives of a young group of developers forever. The journey to getting Bastion off the ground wasn't easy, and it took a team of talented individuals believing in themselves and each other to turn it into the success we know it as today. The narrated action/RPG not only helped establish the studio, but set the standard for what we’d come to expect in terms of art, music, narrative, and gameplay – especially the way all these elements combine to create impact in Supergiant’s games. Today, we’re starting with Supergiant’s formation to create its debut game: Bastion.īastion is approaching its 10-year anniversary this July, and it was the beginning of everything for Supergiant. To celebrate the studio, we’re going to be posting the stories behind the games as told to us by the team who created them. Our latest issue contains a studio profile on Supergiant Games – a small independent group of developers that keeps surprising us with inventive ways to tell meaningful stories punctuated by stellar gameplay.
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