Blind Squirrel Games

Blind Squirrel Games is an American video game development studio originally based out of Santa Ana, California.[4] The studio was founded in 2010 by Brad Hendricks,[1] who serves as President and CEO of both the studio, as well as their parent company, Blind Squirrel Entertainment, Inc,[2] which Blind Squirrel Games was incorporated into as of company-wide a restructuring in March of 2016.[3] Since their founding, they have established their three major studio locations, one in Irvine, Orange County, California, one in Austin, Texas, and one in Auckland, New Zealand, with remote employees across a total of 18 states and 3 countries.[4]

The gaming studio specializes primarily in all forms of console gaming, including new IPs, as well as popular ports and remasters. Partnering with The Walt Disney Company, Lucasfilm, and Lenovo, Blind Squirrel Games were one of two major game developers, the other being Schell Games, who were tasked with designing the gameplay component of 2017's Star Wars: Jedi Challenges Virtual/Augmented Reality (VR/AR) experience. Working closely with Caleb Arseneaux, a Managing Producer at Disney at the time who served as managing producer for the Jedi Challenges project,[5] employees at Blind Squirrel Games would create various game assets,[6] level designs,[7] visual effects,[8] and gameplay modes,[5] while Lenovo developed the associated hardware.[9]

They would continue working on the game post-launch, helping to develop three major expansions: The "The Last Jedi Update,"[10] the "Holochess Update,"[11] and the "Dark Side Expansion."[12] Employees at Blind Squirrel Games were some of the first outside of Lucasfilm to learn of the existence of the All Terrain MegaCaliber Six, as they were assigned with developing the Crait strategic combat arena for the The Last Jedi tie-in expansion. In an interview with StarWars.com, Arseneaux explained, "I said, 'Listen, I can't tell you guys a lot. But here's where the AT-AT comes up to me,' and I pointed to my thigh. 'And here's where the AT-M6 needs to be on me,' and I pointed to my head. And they were like, 'Ohhh. Okay.'"[5]

At the 2018 Webby Awards, Star Wars: Jedi Challenges earned Blind Squirrel Games and their partners awards in four categories, including the "Official categories" of "Technical Achievement" and "Best Use of Augmented Reality," as well as the "People's Voice categories" of "Technical Achievement" and "Best Use of Augmented Reality."[13] The game was eventually retired on June 1, 2022, with no future content in the works, support ending completely only a month later on July 6.[14] Blind Squirrel Games also contributed to the creation of Disney Infinity 3.0 and the Star Wars characters and settings introduced within it.[2]

Productions

Sources

Notes and references

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 LinkedIn-Logo Blind Squirrel Games on LinkedIn (backup link)
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 LinkedIn-Logo Brad Hendricks on LinkedIn (backup link)
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Premium-Era-real BLIND SQUIRREL GAMES BECOMES SUBSIDIARY OF NEWLY FORMED BLIND SQUIRREL ENTERTAINMENT, INC. on blindsquirrelentertainment.com (backup link archived on September 25, 2017)
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Premium-Era-real About Blind Squirrel Games on blindsquirrelentertainment.com (backup link)
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 StarWars.com 5 Behind-The-Scenes Details of Jedi Challenges' The Last Jedi Update on StarWars.com (backup link)
  6. ↑ ArtStation-Logo Danny Mak (@tricyclecaptain) on ArtStation: STAR WARS: Jedi Challenges | Strategic Combat 2: "I had the pleasure of working on countless characters, environments/weapons and ships for Disney's Star Wars: Jedi Challanges | Strategic Combat. An AR game for mobile. Here are some assets I can show from the game. They're all hand painted textures. Characters/weapons were 512x512 while some of the ships/vehicles are 1k. Used 3DCoat to bake textures and paint. Learned a lot on this project. Specifically pushing the amount of detail that I could fit onto a 515x512. Special thanks to Adam Schuman for helping establish a style." (backup link)
  7. ↑ LinkedIn-Logo Kurt Caron on LinkedIn (backup link)
  8. ↑ ArtStation-Logo Eric McNine (@ericmcnine) on ArtStation: Star Wars: Jedi Challenges: "This was a mobile AR game I had the pleasure of working on. I created the effects for the strategic combat mode. Being a mobile game, we were limited on many factors like polycount and rendering features. In addition, it was augmented reality which presented its own unique challenges, such as making things clear and easy to see against a variety of backgrounds and in a number of lighting conditions." (backup link)
  9. ↑ Premium-Era-real Star Wars™: Jedi Challenges, A New Smartphone-Powered Augmented Reality Experience Launching this Holiday on news.lenovo.com (backup link archived on December 8, 2023)
  10. ↑ YouTube Star Wars: Jedi Challenges – The Making of The Last Jedi AR Content on the official Disney Games YouTube channel (backup link)
  11. ↑ Premium-Era-real Star Wars holochess comes to the iPhone with ARKit on www.theverge.com (backup link archived on May 28, 2023)
  12. ↑ StarWars.com Star Wars: Jedi Challenges Turns to the Dark Side on StarWars.com (backup link)
  13. ↑ Premium-Era-real Star Wars: Jedi Challenges on Webby Awards (backup link archived on February 5, 2023)
  14. ↑ StarWars.com Star Wars™: Jedi Challenges has been retired on StarWars.com (backup link)

External links