Jason Rubin (born 1970) is an American video game director, writer, and comic book creator. 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.[1][2] He was the president of THQ[3] before its closure due to bankruptcy on January 23, 2013.[4] Rubin is the vice president of Metaverse Content at Meta Platforms.
Rubin and Andy Gavin formed Naughty Dog in 1984. 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: a role-playing game called Keef the Thief.[5] He took a brief hiatus from school and game design to move to Los Angeles and attempt a career as a screenwriter, but after little success, he returned to school and game design.[6]
While Gavin was an undergraduate in Haverford College and Rubin was attending the University of Michigan, they collaborated with each other on their next title: a role-playing game called Rings of Power.[7] 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 started designing Way of the Warrior, which was heavily inspired by Mortal Kombat, for the 3DO console. They demoed the game at CES and 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 Bandicoot turned out to be an enormous success, and Sony used the main character as their unofficial PlayStation mascot for several years. Due to the impressive visuals which the developer was able to achieve from the PlayStation console,[8] the game served as a quality benchmark that all other game developers aimed to match, and the series spawned three sequels by Naughty Dog selling over 26 million units.[citation needed] The series continues with other development teams, having sold more than 40 million units worldwide.[citation needed]
After their success with Crash Bandicoot, Rubin and Gavin began working on Jak and Daxter, a franchise that sold 9 million units through the various Naughty Dog incarnations.[citation needed] The series continued with other developers and as of 2017 had sold 15 million copies sold worldwide.[9] Before Jak and Daxter's release, Sony purchased Naughty Dog, which became a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony Computer Entertainment America in 2001. As a result, Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy was developed exclusively for the PlayStation 2.
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,[11] Rubin publicly announced his departure from Naughty Dog.[12]
On May 29, 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 laid off hundreds of its employees[13] and the stock had lost over 99% of its value from its high.[14]
According to Game Industry International, "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".[15]
To save the teams and products management took the company through a restructuring. As part of that process, THQ filed for Chapter 11[16] with the intention to sell off its assets at auction.[17]
Soon after, THQ management announced a stalking horse bid for the company by Clear Lake Capital for $60 million.[18] Handling the sale of THQ was Centerview Partners[19] Skip Paul,[20] a former colleague of Jason Rubin.[21]
Creditors said the proposed sale of THQ in bankruptcy court benefited current THQ management, including Rubin.[22] Early creditor objections and court documents were not kind to THQ management.[23] Though not as widely publicized as the initial criticism, Judge Walwrath put an end to the entire mismanagement line of argument when she called it a "conspiracy theory" on the record.[24] Additionally, same Creditors that made the initial accusations ultimately took the unusual step of releasing THQ Management, including Rubin, of any malfeasance in the company's Official Plan of Liquidation[25]
Rubin's public statements made at the time are clear. Management was always open to, and actively seeking, higher bidders at the same time as they tried to hold the company together, both for the benefit of the Company and the Creditors:
Our Chapter 11 process allows for other bidders to make competing offers for THQ. So while we are extremely excited about the Clearlake [stalking horse] opportunity, we won't be able to say that the deal is done for a month or so. Whatever happens, the teams and products look likely to end up together and in good hands. That means you can still pre-order Metro: Last Light, Company of Heroes 2, and South Park: The Stick of Truth. Our teams are still working on those titles as you read this, and all other rumored titles, like the fourth Saints Row, the Homefront sequel, and a lot more are also still in the works.
Judge Mary F. Walrath decided to have an auction for the individual assets,[27] and competing offers for the separate parts of THQ prevailed. Though many employees lost their jobs in the bankruptcy, the development teams at Relic (bought by Sega), Volition (bought by Koch Media), and THQ Montreal (purchased by Ubisoft) remained intact, as did much of Vigil which became Crytek USA, and all of the THQ products in the works survived the bankruptcy have come or are scheduled to come out soon.[28][29][30][31]
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.[32]
During E3 2014 it was announced that Rubin joined Oculus VR, heading up the Oculus first-party content initiatives in Seattle, San Francisco, Menlo Park, Dallas and Irvine.[33][34]
In 2021, following Oculus parent company Facebook's rebranding as Meta, Rubin became VP of Metaverse Content, leading the company's VR and Metaverse Content production teams, the internal Studios, Publishing, and Developer Ecosystem teams.[35]
Other projects
Rubin also created two comic book series. The Iron Saint, originally known as Iron and the Maiden, was published by Aspen Comics,[36] and including artwork designed by artists as Joe Madureira, Jeff Matsuda, Francis Manapul and Joel Gomez. "Mysterious Ways" was published by TopCow Comics[37] and includes artwork from Tyler Kirkham.
Rubin also co-founded an Internet startup called Flektor with Naughty Dog co-founder 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.[38] Fox 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.[39]
THQ Inc. was an American video game company based in Agoura Hills, California. It was founded in April 1990 by Jack Friedman, originally in Calabasas, and became a public company the following year through a reverse merger takeover. Initially working in the toy business, it expanded into the video game business through several acquisitions before shifting its focus away from toys entirely. THQ continued its trend of acquiring companies throughout the 2000s.
Jak and Daxter is an action-adventure platformer third-person shooter video game franchise created by Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin and owned by Sony Interactive Entertainment. The series was originally developed by Naughty Dog with a number of installments being outsourced to Ready at Dawn and High Impact Games. The first game, Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy, released on December 4, 2001, was one of the earliest titles for the PlayStation 2, and the series collectively is regarded as a defining franchise for the console.
Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back is a 1997 platform game developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation. It is a sequel to Crash Bandicoot (1996), and is part of the Crash Bandicoot series.
Crash Bandicoot: Warped, known in Europe as Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped, is a 1998 platform game developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation. It is the third game in the Crash Bandicoot video game series following Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back.
Naughty Dog, LLC is an American first-party video game developer based in Santa Monica, California. Founded by Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin in 1984, the studio was acquired by Sony Computer Entertainment in 2001. Gavin and Rubin produced a sequence of progressively more successful games, including Rings of Power and Way of the Warrior in the early 1990s. The latter game prompted Universal Interactive Studios to sign the duo to a three-title contract and fund the expansion of the company.
Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy is a 2001 platform video game developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation 2. It is the first game of the Jak and Daxter series. The game follows Jak, a young teenager, on his quest to help his friend Daxter after he is transformed into an "ottsel", a fictional hybrid of an otter and a weasel. With the help of Samos the Sage, a master of the mysterious energy known as eco, the pair endeavors to save their world from the rogue sages Gol and Maia Acheron, who plan to flood the world with dark eco, which corrupts all it touches.
Andrew Scott Gavin is an American video game programmer, entrepreneur, and novelist. Gavin co-founded the video game company Naughty Dog with childhood friend Jason Rubin in 1986, which released games including Crash Bandicoot and Jak and Daxter. Prior to founding Naughty Dog, Gavin worked in LISP at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
Crash Bandicoot is a video game franchise originally developed by Naughty Dog as an exclusive for Sony's PlayStation console. It has seen numerous installments created by various developers and published on multiple platforms. The series consists predominantly of platform games, but also includes spin-offs in the kart racing and party game genres. The series was originally produced by Universal Interactive, which later became known as Vivendi Games; in 2008, Vivendi merged with Activision, which currently owns and publishes the franchise.
Game Oriented Assembly Lisp is a programming language, a dialect of the language Lisp, made for video games developed by Andy Gavin and the Jak and Daxter team at the company Naughty Dog.
Rings of Power is a 1992 role-playing video game developed by Naughty Dog and published by Electronic Arts (EA) for the Sega Genesis. The player takes on the role of an apprentice sorcerer named Buc, whose quest is to assemble a team of adventurers and collect eleven rings to defeat the evil god Void.
Crash Bandicoot is a 1996 platform game developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation. The player controls Crash, a genetically enhanced bandicoot created by the mad scientist Doctor Neo Cortex. The story follows Crash as he aims to foil Cortex's plans for world domination and rescue his girlfriend Tawna, a female bandicoot also created by Cortex. The game is played from a third-person perspective in which the camera trails behind Crash, though some levels feature forward-scrolling and side-scrolling perspectives.
High Impact Games was an American video game developer based in Burbank, California, formed in 2004 by former Insomniac Games and Naughty Dog members. In 2007, the company released Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters for the PlayStation Portable, with a PlayStation 2 port released the next year, and Secret Agent Clank in 2008, also for the PlayStation Portable. On November 3, 2009, the company released its third game, Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier, for the PlayStation Portable and PlayStation 2. The game was based on the Jak & Daxter series made by Naughty Dog. In 2010, High Impact Games was developing a remake of Crash Team Racing for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii, but the publisher Activision canceled the game before the initial prototype was made. In 2011, an environmental artist who had worked on some games, revealed that High Impact Games was working on a new project for the Wii. This game was revealed to be Phineas and Ferb: Across the 2nd Dimension.
Flektor was a web application that allowed users the ability to create and “mashup” their own content and share it via email, on social networking websites MySpace, Facebook, Blogger, Digg, eBay or on personal blogs. The company’s website (Flektor.com) launched on April 2, 2007 and over 40,000 people began utilizing its features just one month later. Flektor closed down in January 2009.
Way of the Warrior is a fighting game developed by Naughty Dog and published by Universal Interactive Studios for the 3DO. It was released in North America on August 30, 1994.
Babak "Bob" Rafei is an Iranian video game art director, character animator and concept artist. He is the CEO of Big Red Button Entertainment, a video game development studio he co-founded with Jeff Lander in 2009.
Bruce Straley is an American game director, artist, designer, and studio director. He previously worked for the video game developer Naughty Dog, known for his work on the video games The Last of Us and Uncharted 4: A Thief's End. Straley's first video game work was as an artist at Western Technologies Inc, where he worked on the Menacer six-game cartridge (1992) and X-Men (1993). Following this, he formed a company, Pacific Softscape, where he worked as a designer on Generations Lost (1994). After the company disbanded, Straley was eventually hired at Crystal Dynamics, where he worked as a designer on Gex: Enter the Gecko (1998) and was initially game director for Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko (1999); he left the company partway through development of the latter.
Charles Steve Zembillas is an American character designer, art director, educator, and author. Zembillas designed early concept art for games such as Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon, and Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy, as well as animated television series such as Wish Kid, Where's Waldo?, James Bond Jr., and Ghostbusters.
Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy is a 2017 platform game compilation developed by Vicarious Visions and published by Activision. It includes remasters of the first three games in the Crash Bandicoot series: Crash Bandicoot (1996), Cortex Strikes Back (1997), and Warped (1998); which were originally developed by Naughty Dog for the PlayStation. Initially released for the PlayStation 4, it was later ported to Nintendo Switch, Windows, and Xbox One in 2018.
Evan Wells is an American video game designer and programmer and former president of Naughty Dog. Wells's first video game was at Sega, where he worked on ToeJam & Earl in Panic on Funkotron, before moving to Crystal Dynamics in 1995 to work on Gex and Gex: Enter the Gecko. He was employed at Naughty Dog in 1998, working on several Crash Bandicoot and Jak and Daxter titles before becoming co-president of the company alongside Stephen White in 2005; White was replaced the following year by Christophe Balestra, who retired in 2017. The two oversaw the release of the Uncharted series, and The Last of Us. Wells remained the sole president, overseeing the release of The Last of Us Part II, until Neil Druckmann's promotion to co-president in 2020. Wells announced his retirement in 2023.
↑ "Company— About". Naughty Dog. July 25, 2007. Retrieved February 10, 2012. Although we have sometimes claimed to have started in 1986, we were just working on garage titles back then.
↑ In Re: THQ, Inc., et al., Case No. 12-13398-MFW (Bankr. Ct., D. Del.), Transcript of Hearing on January 4, 2013 (pp. 238-239); lines 24-2. A copy may be viewed at the Office of the Clerk, District of Delaware Bankruptcy Court, or by contacting Transcriber Reliable at 302-654-8080.
↑ In Re: THQ, Inc., et al., Case No. 12-13398-MFW (Bankr. Ct., D. Del.), Disclosure Statement for the First Amended Chapter 11 Plan of Liquidation of THQ, Inc., and Its Affiliated Debtors, May 28, 2013, p. 154 (Dkt. No. 0710). A copy may be retrieved at http://www.kccllc.net/thq/document/1213398130528000000000002Archived May 10, 2015, at the Wayback Machine .
↑ In Re: THQ, Inc., et al., Case No. 12-13398-MFW (Bankr. Ct., D. Del.), Disclosure Statement for the First Amended Chapter 11 Plan of Liquidation of THQ, Inc., and Its Affiliated Debtors, May 28, 2013, p. 154 (Dkt. No. 0710)
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