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| Founded | 2015  |
|---|---|
| Founder | Forest Willard Marcus Bromander |
| Headquarters | |
Number of employees | 5 (2021) |
| Website | www.innersloth.com |
Innersloth is an indie game studio based in the United States. In 2020, its revenue was estimated to exceed 60 million USD. [1] [‡ 1]
Innersloth is registered as a limited liability company (LLC). [2] [3] [4] The team consists of three video game developers [5] [6] [7] and is based in Redmond. [8] [9] [10]
Innersloth was founded in 2015 as a joint venture by video game developer Marcus Bromander and his colleague Forest Willard, after the latter left his job at Microsoft. [‡ 2] The developers rarely meet in person and prefer to work remotely. [11] [12] [13] [14]
All three members of the Innersloth team first met at Oregon State University, and after graduating, they began developing video games together. [15] [16]
Bromander works as an artist, animator, and game designer, [17] [18] while Willard serves as a computer programmer and head of company management for Innersloth. [17]
Amy Liu is an artist, designer, and animator for Innersloth. She was hired as an artist shortly after the company's founding.
The Innersloth team attended PAX, a video game convention, during the early stages of development and was inspired by seeing Nuclear Throne . [15]
During early game design, the team creates prototypes with rough visuals, refining the art design later after resolving core gameplay mechanics. [19] [20]
In an interview with Kotaku , Bromander discussed the strengths and weaknesses of Innersloth's developers. He admitted that they struggled with promoting their products, stating, “We are really bad at marketing.”
Bromander keeps followers updated on Innersloth’s developments via Twitter and his YouTube channel, which had 80,000 subscribers as of September 2020. [21]
Kotaku analyzed the efficiency of Innersloth's development team and concluded that the company succeeded in improving its products even after an initial phase in which they did not gain much popularity. The developers at Innersloth focused on the player experience beyond microtransactions. [22]
Based on their work, the Innersloth developers appreciated internet memes and shifted their focus toward creating an enjoyable user experience for players. Liu mentioned that he started following video game publishers to gain more ideas for artistic development at Innersloth.
Since October 2017, all three members of the Innersloth team have been working full-time for the company. In 2020, [23] [24] Innersloth faced challenges due to its sudden success. After the surge in popularity that year, Innersloth planned to improve server performance by August 2021, according to Willard.
In 2020, Innersloth encountered issues with hackers attacking their servers, prompting the company to adjust its systems and servers in response. Innersloth also implemented changes to enable in-game moderation and allow players to report issues to the development team. [14] [25]
The company gained international recognition through the widespread popularity of the video game Among Us . Innersloth released the game on June 15, 2018.[ citation needed ]
For several years, the player numbers were so low [‡ 3] that the game was not profitable. However, in June 2020, Twitch streamer Chance "Sodapoppin" Morris unexpectedly made the game popular. Following this, many other Twitch streamers and YouTubers began playing Among Us, leading to a rapid increase in player numbers. [‡ 3]
The game received multiple awards, including recognition at The Game Awards 2020 .[ citation needed ]
Other games by Innersloth include The Henry Stickmin Collection and Dig2China, as well as Among Us VR , released in 2022. [‡ 4] [‡ 5]
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