Jason Rubin

Jason Rubin
Jason Rubin, circa 2003
Born	1970 (age 41–42) USA
Nationality	United States
Occupation	Video game director

Jason Rubin (born 1970) is an American video game director, comic book creator, and Internet company founder. He is best known for the Jak and Daxter series of games which were produced by Naughty Dog, the game development studio he co-founded with partner and childhood friend Andy Gavin in 1986.

Career

In 1983, Rubin met Andy Gavin in Hebrew school. Together, at the age of 15, they formed Naughty Dog in 1985. Later that year, they published their first game together - a budgetware title called Ski Crazed, and in 1989, Rubin and Gavin sold their first game to Electronic Arts, an RPG called Keef the Thief.[1]

While Gavin was an undergraduate at Haverford College and he was at University of Michigan, he and Gavin collaborated on their next epic, an RPG called Rings of Power. The game began as a PC title, but during meetings at Electronic Arts, Gavin spotted a reverse engineered Sega Genesis, pitched a slightly modified version of the title to Trip Hawkins, and the title became the duo’s first console game. Rings of Power still has a cult following today.

After much persuasion from Hawkins, Rubin and Gavin took a leap of faith and starting designing Way of the Warrior, which was heavily inspired by Mortal Kombat, for the 3DO console. They demoed the game at CES, and immediately received interest from Skip Paul, former Chairman of Atari’s Coin-Op division and then head of the new Universal Interactive Studios. Skip signed the pair to a three title development deal at Universal, moving them out to the Universal Studios lot and introducing them to Mark Cerny, who worked with the pair on the design of their next title, a Donkey Kong Country inspired 3D platformer called Crash Bandicoot.

Crash turned out to be an enormous success, and Sony used the main character as their unofficial PlayStation mascot for several years. The game served as a quality benchmark that all other game developers aimed to match, and the series spawned three sequels by Naughty Dog. The series continues with other development teams, having sold more than 25 million units worldwide. After their success with Crash, Rubin and Gavin began working on Jak and Daxter, a game recognized for making PlayStation 2 the foremost console for platformers.

Over the years, Naughty Dog’s game catalogue has spanned across a wide array of different platforms. After Sony saw the company’s games slated for development, they decided to purchase Naughty Dog, which became a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony Computer Entertainment America in 2001. Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy was developed exclusively for the PS2 and became a hit in 2001. In their 18 years running Naughty Dog, they created fourteen original games including Math Jam (1985), Ski Crazed (1986), Dream Zone (1987), Keef the Thief (1989), Rings of Power (1991), Way of the Warrior (1994), Crash Bandicoot (1996), Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back (1997), Crash Bandicoot: Warped (1998), Crash Team Racing (1999), Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy (2001), Jak 2 (2003), Jak 3 (2004) and Jak X: Combat Racing (2005). Together these games have sold over 35 million units and generated over $1 Billion in revenue.

Just days after making a controversial speech at 2004’s D.I.C.E. Summit that criticized publishers for not recognizing and promoting talent responsible for creating games, Rubin publicly announced his departure from Naughty Dog.

Current projects

Referred to by the gaming press as an “industry visionary” and a “thoughtful,” albeit “outspoken” member of the business, Rubin began work on a new comic book entitled Iron and the Maiden, which was published by Aspen Comics [2]. The comic includes artwork designed by well-known artists Joe Madureira, Jeff Matsuda, Francis Manapul and Joel Gomez.

Shortly after, he co-founded a new Internet startup called Flektor with his former business partner Andy Gavin and former HBO executive Jason Kay, whom he first met when the latter worked for game publisher Activision. In May 2007, the company was sold to Fox Interactive Media, which is a division of News Corp. Fox has described the company as: “a next-generation Web site that provides users with a suite of Web-based tools to transform their photos and videos into dynamic slideshows, postcards, live interactive presentations and video mash-ups.” In October 2007, Flektor partnered with its sister company, MySpace, and MTV to provide instant audience feedback via polls for the interactive MySpace / MTV Presidential Dialogues series with then-presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama.

Rubin has left Fox Interactive Media to continue work on Iron and the Maiden as well as a new, rumoured comic book based on a new set of characters.[3] Most recently, he announced a return to gaming with his Naughty Dog co-founder Andy Gavin via a new social game startup Monkey Gods. Monkey Gods is developing a new version of the classic puzzle game Snood along with a new "enlightened wordplay" game called Monkwerks.[4]

Gameography

Game title	Release	Platform	Role
Math Jam	1985	Apple II	Lead programmer
Ski Crazed	1986	Apple II	Lead programmer
Dream Zone	1987	Commodore Amiga, Apple II	Lead artist
Keef the Thief	1989	Commodore Amiga, Apple IISega Mega Drive/Genesis	Director
Rings of Power	1991	Sega Mega Drive/Genesis	Director/Game designer
Way of the Warrior	1995	3DO	Producer/Director/Game designer
Crash Bandicoot	1996	PlayStation	Director
Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back	1997	PlayStation	Director
Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped	1998	PlayStation	Director
Crash Team Racing	1999	PlayStation	Director
Jak & Daxter: The Precursor Legacy	2001	PlayStation 2	Director
Jak II	2003	PlayStation 2	Director
Jak 3	2004	PlayStation 2	Director
Jak X: Combat Racing	2005	PlayStation 2	Extra Special Thanks
Daxter	2006	PlayStation Portable	Special Thanks
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune	2007	PlayStation 3	Special Thanks