Jason Rubin
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Jason Rubin (b. 1970) is an American video game director, comic book creator, and Internet company founder. He is best known for the Crash Bandicoot and 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.
[edit] 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: Keef the Thief.
Their next epic was 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 unreleased 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.
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.
[edit] 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. 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. 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 of 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 presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama.
Rubin continues to work for Fox Interactive Media while pursuing Iron and the Maiden as well as other endeavors.
