“That’s a word we use a lot, and it’s something that we really highly prioritise as a team. “You mention sustainability,” said Kasavin. Kasavin chalks that up to a conscious focus on health and personal growth. Ten years later, all seven people from the company’s Bastion days are still there, alongside ten others that have been hired during other projects. Whether due to burnout, layoffs, or other equally pernicious factors, many video game studios have high turnover rates. That’s the real secret sauce between the buns of Supergiant’s sustained success. The glue that holds the company together, Kasavin thinks, is the collection of personalities on the team and Supergiant’s ability to retain them. We said our games, the concepts, are a reaction to the previous game, but they also are just funded by the previous game.” “It’s like, if we’re gonna be around for the long haul, we can’t operate the same way we did when we were just getting started.” And to have worked on games that we love that have found an audience, which enables us to sustain ourselves. “We still exist in that space, but we’ve been fortunate to have our chemistry and bond get us through. “We’ve been remarkably lucky to not have to navigate some of the really extreme pressures that independent game companies find themselves under because a game doesn’t quite pan out how they thought, or development goes a little bit longer, or the market changes,” said Rao. On the Switch, the game feels more cohesive. The combat system, while interesting and creative, was sometimes tedious to control. I loved Transistor when I first played it on PC, but I struggled with some aspects of the game. Rao and Kasavin recognise they’ve been fortunate, between being in the right time and place with Bastion’s release during the late-2000s indie boom and Supergiant’s subsequent games’ continued ability to find an audience. Meanwhile, other mid-size development studios like Double Fine, Obsidian, Ninja Theory, and inXile have all gotten purchased in the past couple years (and all by Microsoft, no less). Most recently, it became one of the first developers to sign an exclusivity deal with the Epic Store in December of last year, providing even more financial stability for early access roguelite Hades while simultaneously dodging the brunt of the anti-Epic Store rage and abuse that followed for other developers who signed exclusivity agreements. Each of the now 17-person studio’s games has been an entirely new series - no sequels - and each has made a splash big enough to keep Supergiant afloat and independent. Miraculously, Supergiant has yet to come even close to rolling snake eyes. You roll dice more times over time, and, you know, you might roll snake eyes one day.” “It’s the games industry, man,” said Kasavin. So it’s like we all get to be surprised along with everyone else.” We don’t know how we’re gonna feel whenever we reach whatever that point is where we have to start thinking about the next one. We don’t know how Hades is gonna do overall. “Because our games are reactions to the last game, so I don’t know how we’re gonna feel. “Someone can be like ‘Hey what’s next for you after Hades?’ and I can say ‘I don’t know,’ and that’s actually just true,” said Rao. They’re always focused on their current game. Studio director Amir Rao and writer and designer Greg Kasavin said that when fans ask them what’s next, they can’t answer, because they never know. Still, though, the developers’ long string of successes still seems to surprise them, in a good way. The team’s big secret? Everybody’s actually happy about working there.Īt least, that’s what two of Supergiant’s co-founders insisted in an interview with Kotaku at PAX West. Since then, the studio has released Transistor, Pyre, and Hades, every single one receiving critical acclaim and financial success. The team put all of their hopes into the studio’s debut game, Bastion, an action-RPG with a narrator. It’s been ten years since Supergiant Games opened its doors.
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