Vicarious Visions: In the Making ...

1991 Vicarious Visions started as a “hobby” by Guha & Karthik Bala in their parents' basement.  In high school at the time, the brothers’ source of funding came from checking coats at a local art gallery in Rochester, New York.

1994 Vicarious Visions incorporated and lands its first publishing deal for “Synnergist” PC CD-ROM. Corporate headquarters now moved to Karthik’s dorm room in college. The brothers insist that the misspelling of the name “Synnergist” is deliberate, to make searching for reviews easier.  Guha takes on other summer jobs that pay even better than checking coats.

1996 Synnergist is released in Europe to some critical acclaim and other critical critics.  The game wasn’t the runaway hit the brothers were hoping for. To the 10 people who bought the game, we’re sorry. Ha, just kidding!  We’re not sure how many copies were sold.

Terminus space ship cafeteria

1997 VV’s second PC title, Dark Angael ships.  Turns attention to Terminus, an epic space combat RPG. Newtonian physics, practically sentient AI, persistent world and our first cross platform game (PC, Mac, Linux). VV learns to develop cross platform development expertise. Invention of the Advanced Neural Analysis Layer.

1998 Terminus first shown at E3 in May ’98.  The dev team rewrote the graphics engine a three week period before E3. Coming right down to the wire, the gang piled into a rental car, packed the trunk with computers and the E3 demo of Terminus and drove 17 hours straight to Atlanta for the show. Sleep deprivation leads to more innovations on the project.

1999 Terminus wins Best Programming and Audio at the GDC 1st Independent Games Festival.  VV begins first Game Boy Color projects as a way to pay for Terminus. Invention of the 32-bit Monkey Buffer.

2000 Terminus launches as the company’s first multi-user persistent world game for PC, Mac & Linux. Our first console title, Polaris SnoCross is released for PSX & N64, which features the latest in sno-lobster technology. Spider-Man for Game Boy Color is released. Application of the Newtonian physics model from Terminus to the longest running GBC project ever: Jimmy White’s Cue Ball. First demonstration of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2’s 3D engine on Game Boy Advance shown to Nintendo – it blows them away.            Polaris Snocross

Launch party for Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 with autographed skateboards

2001 Tony Hawk’s Pro-Skater 2 ships as a launch title for the Game Boy Advance. Game goes on to win numerous awards including Best Handheld Game and Technological Excellence at E3 2001 and Best Mobile Game of the Year from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.  Spider-Man 2 Enter: Electro wins Best in show for PSOne at E3 from EGM and Disney/Pixar’s Monsters, Inc. ships for GBC. Highest number of redirects to the VV website are from close competitor, wisions.com.

2002 VV continues to develop great games for key brands of major publishers including: Crash Bandicoot, SpongeBob Squarepants, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater (3 & 4), Powerpuff Girls. Our first next-gen console titles debut: Star Wars: Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast (Xbox, Gamecube) and Whiteout! (PS2, Xbox, PC), which features the reappearance of a new and improved sno-lobster. More people keep coming to Wisions.com instead of Vvisions.com.     GameSpot awards Tony Hawk's Pro-Skater 3 Best Sports Game on Game Boy Advance.

SpongeBob launch party complete with piñata

2003 VV releases a number of games, including Tony Hawk’s Underground, Finding Nemo, The Lion King 1-1/2, and Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy. Hm, make that a large number of games.   Tony Hawk’s Underground nabs a bunch of awards. Gamespy.com names it the Best Action Sports Game of the year, Maxim Online awards it the Best of 2003, Spike TV’s Video Game Awards names it the Best Sports Game of 2003, USA Today awards it the Best of 2003, and IGN.com calls it the Best Extreme Sports Game of 2003. Whew, our half-pipe runneth over! In a shocking policy change, VV managers finally decide that it’s no longer required to hold a rubber chicken in order to speak at a meeting.                     2004 VV continues to ship games such as Tony Hawk’s Underground 2, Shrek 2, Shark Tale and Spyro Orange: The Cortex Conspiracy. The Business Review Achievement Awards of  Albany, NY names Vicarious Visions Small Company of the Year. This prestigious award is -- hey, wait a minute... who are they calling “small”?   2005 VV’s 2005 lineup includes Tony Hawk’s American Sk8land, Madagascar, Ultimate Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, Batman Begins and Doom 3. Tony Hawk’s American Sk8land receives numerous awards, most notably IGN’s Best Action Game of 2005. Ultimate Spider-Man wins IGN’s Best Artistic Design of 2005. VV takes home IGN’s Best Developer Award (DS) 2005. VV collectively blushes. Activision, unable to resist VV’s oh-so-rosy complexion, acquires the company.          2006   Over the Hedge, Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance are a few of the many games VV puts out in 2006. Tony Hawk’s  Downhill Jam is given IGN’s Best DS Racing Game of 2006, while Over the Hedge receives IGN’s Best DS Game No One Played award, despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of gamers did actually play it. Develop magazine UK ranks VV # 23 of Top 100 Developers in the world. VV moves from Troy, NY to a larger office in Albany, NY custom-designed for doing what we do best: creating great video games and consuming mass quantities of pizza.     2007 Some of the first VV games out of the gate in 2007 are Spider-Man 3, Shrek the Third, Transformers: Autobots and Transformers: Decepticons. CEO Karthik Bala earns spot #35 in Next Generation’s Hot 100 Game Developers of 2007, which is only 34 places shy of #1!