HELLO WORLD OF 2023
Hi there, I'm Craig D. Adams, founder and creative director at Superbrothers A/V.
In spring 2023 I'm starting on a fresh videogame design adventure.
- I'm designing a new pixel videogame project and establishing the necessary production framework.
- I'll be out and about a bit in 2023, and I'll be scouting out a few experiened devs to work with starting in winter/spring 2024, when this new project is slated to start staffing up.
- Production on this new project is planned to run for a coupla years from 2024.
- If you're a fellow dev-type in the vicinity of Montreal or Toronto and you find this intriguing, then keep an ear to the ground, Superbrothers-wise.
So, that's what I'm up to these days, alongside taking it easy, raising a family, and whatnot else.
Are you curious about how one finds their way into the videogame industry? Understandable.
I'm afraid any wisdom or advice I might have is stale and unreliable, other than this:
- Figure out what disciplines are involved, study up on the discipline(s) that suit you, and then get out and meet like-minded people wherever they might congregate. Maybe get started on some project or other as a way to climb up on tools and knowledge. Look out for 'game jams' in your city and make a plan to participate.
- Here are a coupla other ideas if you're not ready to dig in deep just yet:
- Scout out some relevant podcasts and tune in, maybe starting with the AIAS Game Maker's Notebook podcast. You'll hear stories of how people got started and what they've been getting up to with their careers.
- If you're seriously interested, you might consider dipping in and beginning to traverse the 22-hour Psychonauts 2 making-of documentary PsychOdyssey. It's an excellent window into how a world-class studio struggles with the tough task of creating a videogame.
For a look-see at what we've gotten up to at Superbrothers A/V over the years, here's a YouTube playlist that'll take you from 2005 to 2023.
If you're wondering how all that work got done, where I'm coming from, and how I got to where I am now, here's the full scoop.
- I grew up in the 80s and 90s on Canada's west coast, I was inspired by Commodore-64, Nintendo and 90s PC videogames.
- I studied illustration and in 2003 I founded Superbrothers, and I began using that name for pixel illustration gigs for newspapers and magazines.
- In 2004 I was attempting to create DIY videogames in Game Maker, but it was early days for that kind of thing, and my lack of programming chops and the lack of easily-available support slowed me down.
- In 2005 I tried my hand at pixel animation, and over the following few years I created a series of little music videos with music by Toronto singer/songwriter Jim Guthrie.
- In 2006 I took a course in 3D art production for videogames, getting my feet wet with Unreal Engine and 3DSMax and assembling a portfolio.
- In 2006 I took my first videogame industry job at a Japanese company in downtown Toronto, working on an early Unreal Engine science fiction racing videogame and an action adventure set in the bronze age. I had the opportunity to chip in on a lot of aspects from skies and lighting, to art direction and trailer-making, to previz and concept art, to prototyping and pitching new concepts.
- Then I blinked and it was 2008, YouTube existed and so did Indie Games, and so I relaunched Superbrothers and began to scout out and attend events where DIY videogame people congregate, from TOJam (a videogame jam in Toronto) to the nascent Hand Eye Society (a DIY videogame arts org in Toronto) to GDC (the Game Developers Conference that happens in March in San Francisco).
- Through these efforts in 2009 I was was able to connect with some like-minded people at a studio in Toronto called Capy Games, we hit it off and began work in mid-2009 on the videogame Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP, which was released to some fanfare and acclaim in 2011.
- From 2011, with the modest but meaningful success of #sworcery, I could afford to leave Toronto and move to the edge of the woods of southern Quebec, where my wife works in forestry, and we started a family.
- Since ~2013 I began work on a complex and ambitious 3D narrative-driven science fiction action adventure with an old pal of mine who lives in Japan. It took us years to carve the vision out and get it all stood up, and then getting it done was another whole adventure where I brokered partnerships with platform-holders, we staffed up, and then led a team working remotely for about two years through the pandemic, with the team-size reaching up to 30 people, presenting various communication and production challenges for us to overcome together.
- JETT: The Far Shore shipped in 2021, and we followed it up with a new campaign called JETT: Given Time in early 2023. JETT was appreciated for its good qualities, it's a cool project with an intricate universe and we're plenty proud of it, but it was tough for us to make, and it took a long time.
- Now in 2023 I'm just out from under JETT, and I'm laying out what's next. Going forward, I'm eager to work on more tightly scoped projects within a more finite design space, and I'm eager to return to 2D and pixels.
JETT'S CREATION ETHOS + MYTHOS
On second thought, I likely won't have much to say about JETT in this specific web space for a bit. There's plenty of that going on elsewhere, but for the sake of continuity with the above post it feels as if I oughta get something up here to corral some recent JETT-related materials from across the internet that feel most relevant to C SPACE.
I've been on some shows lately, in connection with JETT's liftoff in fall 2021.
- I'll see if I can gather a few more, until then go scrub @craigdadams
Here are the PlayStation Blog posts about JETT that I've been in the mix for:
Plus, there's a JETT book on the way!
Once the JETT dust eventually settles, once JETT is more or less put to bed (might be a little while...), once I've had an afternoon to sit and read Adam's book, once I've caught up on some other press and things, and once I've had a good amount of time to restore my spirit after this long haul, maybe then, in the year ~2037, I'll have something to add to the story of JETT's creation here on C SPACE. For now, if you're curious, go ahead and tumble down the above rabbit holes.
As for what's next in C SPACE, I have another coupla weeks of winding down and planning to get to, and then I'll be eager to explore some other topics, looking to the past and looking to the future, looking to recent science fiction film and television, surfacing observations on a recent videogame or two, or whatever else feels fresh for me to think about and speak on.
CARVING OUT SOME C SPACE
Hi there, this is c aka Craig D. Adams aka @craigdadams.
So, the last time I had some real headspace it was early 2013.
JETT got rolling a few months later.
The kiddoes came along in 2014 and 2017.
I got busy, haha.
Back in early 2013, J and I were invited to do a cool thing in Switzerland in the spring, and we got in some snowshoeing up around the Matterhorn. I had taken this pic and I had thought to myself 'I oughta carve out some space on the internet to quietly post a pic or two, maybe attempt to muster up an occasional blog post, just for pals and folks with a similar spirit, separate from but still somehow inside the Superbrothers schtick'.
I created this SuperbrothersHQ page back then, and I even wrote a whole pile of blog post drafts for this journal, including this post, with that pic up top, and a wealth of other material, but I didn't get around to committing to publishing anything.
It just seemed like it'd invite too much noise and draw too much focus from the ever-deepening JETT co-creation effort.
Now JETT's out (huzzah!), and the kiddoes-care isn't as heavy-duty as it once was, and so for the first time in a long long while I can feel some headspace starting to open up.
Reader, it feels *great*.
As this headspace opens up, I'm having ideas, and revisiting old ones, and it feels like I ought to get around to carving out a place to air them.
So, here we are.
. . .
This is what this new little C SPACE journal is intended to be.
Since ~2013, when this impetus to carve out a space for a web journal occurred, I have learned and experienced and grown so so much on the long haul JETT adventure.
I'm eager to put this hard-won experience and expertise to use, both in my own work, or in the service of helping friends, if I can find the right way to go about things.
Ideas and material that may be surfaced in this journal aren't likely to be 'creative concepts for new videogames', although I do have those lyin' around. I'm not intending to break news here, or anything like that. I'd love for C SPACE to be a helpful quiet little corner, a place for fellow devs and director types to check in on occoasionally, and otherwise I'm looking for this material to kinda fly under the radar.
To get a crisper sense for what might appear in this journal, it'll be this kind of thing:
-"IRL is nice now that I'm out from under JETT dev, here's a general flavor of what's up"
-"tidbits surfaced from ten years of JETT - deep cuts, observations, process and production notes"
-"whatever homebrew personal productivity system I may have cooked up??"
-"thinking about and attempting to write semi-capably about other videogames and media"
-"figuring out who on Earth might be good to someday work alongside, and on what"
If you're a pal or fellow dev, or some creative-type, you might read this journal and think:
-it'd be cool to chat to this c person someday maybe
-maybe it'd be cool to plug this c person into project X as a creative consultant, or a contributor
If those thoughts occur, fear not!
While I live in the woods and have been pretty heads-down, I'm not a full-on hermit.
In fact, as of now I'm starting to emerge from JETT's long winter, blinking in the spring sunlight, if you get what I mean.
It would be good to chat!
Thursday evenings from 8pm to 10pm ET is my most comfotable hang-out time. Fall 2021 is pretty busy, with plenty of JETT things for me to process, but from mid November things'll settle a bit. From that time onwards, a life goal of mine is to have time for chit chats.
So, what have I missed? What are you up to? How's it going?
If you don't know me, or only kinda know me, then I probably oughta to get a bit of an authoritative fellow dev-facing bio together, so you can get a sense for where I'm coming from, my inspirations and tastes and blindspots, and the types of experience and expertise I've accumulated.
Here goes.
I was born in 1979 and I grew up on Canada's west coast, on Vancouver's north shore, on the slopes of Hollyburn mountain beside the Capilano, before it was all fancy and built up. There were dirt lanes and woods and creeks and beaches a-plenty. The rainclouds collected there, impeded by the snowy mountains at our backs, and so it was pretty consistently damp and misty down where we were. It was, in a way, 'the kingdom of the cloud'. In this context I had the very fortunate opportunity to grow to love hiking, sailing and snowboading. I was around music a fair bit too, playing clarinet in a youth band, like a cool person, and I appreciate music a fair bit. I loved and treasure all of this.
I grew up around videogames, first for the Vic-20 and Commodore-64, then for the NES, then 486 PC and SNES. Growing up, these were some of the big ones: Downhill Skiing, Lazy Jones, Space Taxi, Super Mario Brothers, Prince Of Persia, Another World, Actraiser, TIE Fighter, Syndicate.
For a moment there I thought I had left videogames behind, and then the N64 era dragged me back in with the revelations of Super Mario 64, WaveRace, F-Zero X, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time and so on. I was glad to encounter WipeOut somewhere in there too, and PlayStation's fresh approach to things. After another break of a few years I was glad to encounter Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, Katamari Damacy, Pikmin, Metroid: Prime, and so on into the slightly more modern era.
After a relatively brief foray studying climate science at a university in Victoria, BC, I moved to Toronto in ~2000 to attend art school, studying illustration for a few years at Sheridan, grad 2004, and then art production for videogames at Seneca in 2006.
I founded Superbrothers A/V in 2003. It began as my confusingly amusing pluralized Nintendo-evoking moniker for my freelance illustrator work. I had hit on a fresh painterly style of pixel illustration inspired by Canaletto, Gustav Klimt, Mike Mignola with a cinematic vibe in the vein of the work of Eric Chahi and Jordan Mechner.
In ~2003 in my mind's eye I could see a new world of DIY videogames with style and soul and interesting ideas, made collaboratively at a smaller scale, outside the confines of a normal studio. I began to carve out prototypes, but it was tough for me to make headway, as this was several years before 'indie videogames' became a thing. Around this time I played Metanet's N, then a flash game, and it was a beacon for me. Then, when Queasy's Everyday Shooter landed on PS3, I could see this new world coming into focus.
In ~2005 I met Toronto singer/songwriter and composer Jim Guthrie, this was start of a collaborative relationship that led to the music video Children Of The Clone and others, leading to Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP.
I worked in the console videogame industry for a spell from late 2006 to mid 2009. I took an offer to climb aboard at a local-to-me Japanese-owned videogame company in downtown Toronto, where we shipped a console videogame or two, and I learned a lot of ropes. Painting skies and lighting levels in pre-release Unreal Engine 3, steering art direction and visual concepts, lending a hand on marketing and trailer editing, and so on. That's where I ended up having a good chunk of time to study up on bronze age Aegean civilization, as part of one project's pre-production, leading in aroundabout way to the flavor of The Scythian in Sword & Sworcery.
At that Japanese company is also where I met Patrick McAllister, aka Pine Scented, working alongside on a videogame involving low-flying aircraft whipping around natural landscapes. From as early as 2007 we began to imagine building something JETT-like, asking ourselves interesting inane questions like "what would Ico feel like on a motorbike". The thing that propelled us was the thought of flying low over natural landscapes, with a snowboarding feel, leaving a trail, with atmospheric music to soak in and engaging things to go and do, ideally while some interesting heartfelt narrative swirled around us.
Somewhere in the midst of shipping console videogames, indie videogames and iPhones happened. It occured to be me I ought to get Superbrothers off the shelf and a bit more on the internet. I got up a new website, uploaded my pixels clips to the new-fangled YouTube, and crossed my fingers, hoping the material would connect with art directors at a magazines and newspapers - it was always a treat to turn around an illustration commision after hours - but also in the hopes that it might connect with some smaller-scale A/V driven indie videogame squad, somewhere in the wide world.
In 2009 I met Kris and Nathan at Capy, who also lived in Toronto. We hit it off, and in pretty short I order leapt into a co-creator role on Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP. It was a bit of a wild ride, learning the ropes while doing the following jobs: director, creative concepts, narrative and writing, AV design, music co-ordination, PR & strategy. It was a very collaborative project with Kris sharing co-creative lead and design roles, Nathan and Jim contributing meaningfully creativey too. I was on deck to paint every pixel and write every word, but it was all made possible by Capy, a legit Toronto videogame studio with chops.
In 2011, sworcery went out, and that was the start of a new adventure, as it ended up being a slam dunk, in a lot of ways. The right thing at the right time, with a story to tell, inside and outside the videogame. I love that all this happened. Ten years worth of dreams came true - getting to work with Jim Guthrie, getting to create a Nintendo-inspired videogame on an Apple machine, having it end up in the pockets and headphones of literally millions of people (IDK how many, say 5?), getting to rub shoulders and even get to know notable people in the industry, as well as IRL things like wiping out my student debt, getting married to my love and partner J.
In mid 2011, Jim Guthrie and I put together an event at TIFF Bell Lightbox that we called the Midsummer Rockshowcase, it was a slideshow and a trailer show that put a spotlight on Toronto's then white-hot feeling DIY videogame scene, with a rockshow to top it off - Jim and his cohorts playing the music of Sword & Sworcery onstage - followed by an after party. A high note, for sure, a good place to leave things.
Then, almost immediately after, J and I were gone - out of town, and off the internet.
Or, so the story goes, anyways, haha.
The story of the very pleasant, lowkey woodsy early years of JETT is probably what I'll describe next, to tee up whatever the next C SPACE ought post ought to be.