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.