Jason Rubin

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Jason Rubin
Born January 6, 1970 (age 43)
USA
Nationality United States
Occupation Co-Founder and Co-President of Naughty Dog (1985–2004)
President of THQ (2012–2013)

Jason Rubin (born 1970) is an American video game director, comic book creator, and Internet company founder. He is best known for the Crash Bandicoot 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.[1][2] He was the president of THQ[3] before its closure due to bankruptcy on January 23, 2013.[4]

Contents

Career [edit]

In 1983, Rubin met Andy Gavin in school[citation needed]. Together, at the age of 15, they formed Naughty Dog in 1986. Later that year, they published their first game together — a budgetware title called Ski Crazed. In 1989, Rubin and Gavin sold their first game to Electronic Arts: an RPG called Keef the Thief.[5]

While Gavin was an undergraduate at Haverford College and attending the University of Michigan, he collaborated with Gavin on their next epic: an RPG called Rings of Power.[6] 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, which was 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 franchise 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 II (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.[7]

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,[8] Rubin publicly announced his departure from Naughty Dog.[9]

On 29 May 2012, Rubin joined the struggling video game publisher THQ as President, and was responsible for all of THQ’s worldwide product development, marketing, and publishing operations. At the time Rubin joined THQ, the company had already laid off over hundreds its employees [10] and the stock had lost over 99% of its value from its high.[11]

Rubin joined the company too late to reverse its fortunes. According to Game Industry International, a leading industry website, "Placing Jason Rubin at the company's helm was unquestionably a good move - the Naughty Dog founder has an enviable track record and quite rightly commands the respect of the industry - but by the time he took the role, THQ's stock had already crashed and layoffs were well underway. The company was mortally wounded; Rubin's failure to resuscitate his terminally ill patient should not reflect in any way on his own talents and abilities."[12]

To save the teams and products Rubin took the company through a restructuring. As part of that process, THQ filed for Chapter 11 [13] and sold off its assets at auction.[14]

One notable event occurred in December 2012, THQ partnered up with The Humble Bundle Team at Wolfire Games to make the Humble THQ Bundle raising over 5 million dollars, much of it going to charity. Rubin donated over $10,000 to charity as part of the event.[15]


Current projects [edit]

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.[16] 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 Naughty Dog co-founder Andy Gavin and former HBO executive Jason Kay (whom Rubin met when Kay worked for game publisher Activision). In May 2007, the company was sold to Fox Interactive Media, which is a division of News Corp.[17] 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.[18]

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.[19] Most recently, he announced a return to gaming with his frequent business partner Andy Gavin via a new social game startup Monkey Gods.[20] Monkey Gods is developing a new version of the classic puzzle game Snood along with a new "enlightened wordplay" game called Monkwerks.

Gameography [edit]

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 (video game) 2006 PlayStation Portable Special Thanks
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune 2007 PlayStation 3 Special Thanks
Authority control

See Also [edit]

References [edit]

  1. ^ Cork, Jeff (25 July 2007). "From Crash To Comics: The Jason Rubin Interview". GameInformer. Archived from the original on 18 Aug 07. Retrieved 10 Feb 2012. "Jason Rubin was a longtime fixture of the gaming industry, founding Naughty Dog with Andy Gavin in 1986." 
  2. ^ "Company — About". Naughty Dog. 25 July 2007. Retrieved 10 Feb 2012. "Although we have sometimes claimed to have started in 1986, we were just working on garage titles back then." 
  3. ^ http://kotaku.com/5919322/thqs-new-boss-says-no-more-udraw-primary-focus-will-be-aaa-games
  4. ^ http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-01/24/thq-asset-sale
  5. ^ http://www.mobygames.com/game/keef-the-thief-a-boy-and-his-lockpick
  6. ^ http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,26212/
  7. ^ http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/devs-dont-need-producers-naughty-dog
  8. ^ http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1876636950994293221
  9. ^ http://archive.gamespy.com/articles/march04/dice/rubin/
  10. ^ http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/36472/THQ_Lays_Off_200_Employees_Closes_Australian_Studios.php#.UOuvO4njluI
  11. ^ http://ycharts.com/companies/THQI
  12. ^ http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-01-25-thq-a-victim-of-market-change-and-corporate-inertia?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=european-daily
  13. ^ http://articles.marketwatch.com/2012-12-19/markets/35905348_1_thq-stock-thq-shares-bankruptcy
  14. ^ http://venturebeat.com/2013/01/23/thq-auction/
  15. ^ http://www.joystiq.com/2012/12/12/humble-thq-bundle-ends-earns-5-million-from-885-000-bundles/
  16. ^ Pham, Alex (12 August 2007). "Speech balloons are his newest thing". Los Angeles Times. 
  17. ^ http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/05/15/myspace-to-acquire-flektor/
  18. ^ http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1572991/20071029/index.jhtml
  19. ^ http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1649/naughty_dog_new_tricks_an_.php
  20. ^ http://venturebeat.com/2009/05/14/crash-bandicoot-creators-speak-out-on-forming-new-game-company/
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