ABOUT US
Stoic was founded by Arnie Jorgensen, John Watson, and Alex Thomas in early 2012. They left BioWare in 2012 after finishing the production of Star Wars: The Old Republic and wanted to make their “dream game,” which would then become The Banner Saga. Using crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, Stoic successfully funded the team within 2 days though the team initially wanted to fund the game using their own personal savings. The funds raised far exceeded their expectations, thus the team expanded the game’s scope to include more features.
STOIC TEAM
Arnie Jorgensen
Creative Director and Founder
Arnie started off working on comics such as Justice League America for DC. Eventually he got into games, putting his abilities to work on Star Wars: Galaxies as Head Production Designer and The Old Republic as the Lead Concept Artist. He’s now the Co-Owner and Creative Director at Stoic with 27 years of experience as a professional. Read More >
John Watson
Technical Director and Founder
John has been programming since he was 6. After doing some work on the Hubble at NASA he decided to apply his abilities in the games industry, eventually bringing his experience as Lead Combat Programmer on Star Wars: The Old Republic to Stoic, where he is Co-Owner and Technical Director with 21 years of experience as a professional. Read More >
Matt Rhoades
Lead Designer
Matt began his career 21 years ago, writing and designing for Spider-Man: The Movie game. He was one of the principal designers on Spider-Man 2. After several more comic book games, he concluded his superhero run with designing content and boss fights for DC Universe Online. He was also the Lead Quest Designer on Disney’s Epic Mickey 2. At Stoic, he served as the designer on Banner Saga 2 and Lead Designer on Banner Saga 3. Read More >
Zeb West
Producer/Designer
Zeb met Arnie and John while working as a producer at BioWare on Star Wars: The Old Republic. As producer of both Triple-A and Indie games, he strives to foster creativity, humanity and humor among artists, programmers and designers. He also creates silly works of puppetry about cosmic angst and performs them at burlesque shows. Read More >
Lance Myers
Lead Animator
Lance has been a professional animator for over 20 years. His work can be seen in the feature films Space Jam, Anastasia, Quest for Camelot, Prince of Egypt, and Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly; as well as over twenty-five successful video game titles. He met the core Stoic gang at Bioware and is thrilled to rejoin them as the studio’s Lead Animator. Read More >
Pedro Toledo
Lead Artist
After a few years working with print media in his hometown of Rio de Janeiro, Pedro decided to try something new and determined the gaming industry had the right mix of challenges and opportunities. He worked remotely on a few IPs, including Guitar Hero, RockBand and Fable, before being recruited by BioWare to join their team in Austin in 2007. There he worked on SWTOR, Shadow Realms and Dragon Age. More recently Pedro was the Art Director of Breach, QC Games’ debut title.
David Grayson
Engine Programmer
David has had a passion for video games since he was 4! In high school he began pursuing this passion after graduating from Digipen Institute of Technology, he began teaching others as well as working in areas such as UI, Gameplay, Backend, Console Support, Audio, Build Tools, Content Pipeline and Core Engine Tech. David’s journey led him to Stoic where he worked on Banner Saga 3 and is now helping the team take future games to new heights! Read More >
Casey Griggs
Tools Programmer
Casey has always had a love for programming and video games. He worked as a web developer and generalist for several years before he got his start in the games industry working at Motiga. He’s excited to continue working on incredible games by helping the team as a tools programmer. Read More >
Drew Clowery
Gameplay Programmer
Drew’s love of games shows in his career path, where he’s done everything from customer service and design to engineering and programming. Drew joined Stoic as a programmer for Banner Saga 3 where his extensive background in MMORPG and mobile game development was extremely handy. Read More >
Adrienne Mata
Associate Producer
Adrienne is a life-long gamer, once upon a time competitive Super Smash Bros. player, and now throws down as a game dev. After attending Digipen, she produced art and directed indie titles – one being Temporal Odyssey, joined Z2/King and honed her QA expertise at Big Fish Games. Excited to be at Stoic, she hopes to bring you quality games as a Producer. Read More >
Alex Thomas
Principal Creative Designer
Alex has worked in games for such companies as Wolf Pack Studios and Kings Isle, but it was at Bioware, working on Star Wars: The Old Republic that he met Arnie and John. He formed Stoic Studio with them as Creative Director and Writer for Banner Saga 1. He parted ways to build his own game, Killers&Thieves, but returned to the team as Lead Writer for Banner Saga 3 and helped finish what he began. Read More >
Danny Moll
Senior Artist
Danny started his career in games working at Disney Interactive Studios as a concept artist on Epic Mickey 2 after graduating from the Gemini School of Visual Arts in Austin, TX. He has since worked as an artist on several games and animated series, including as a background painter and concept designer on Netflix’s Castlevania series. He has now made the switch from vampires to vikings and joined Stoic as a Senior Artist on Banner Saga 3. Read More >
Katie Postma
Community Manager
Katie has more than 17 years of experience as a Community and Social Media Manager in the entertainment industry. She began her career at Ubisoft on the Myst series of games, and has worked for many different studios including Cartoon Network, Gazillion, and Disruptor Beam. She has contributed to five books about gaming and community, edited a third, and has been a guest lecturer at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburg and Fanshawe College in London, Canada. Read More >
Iuliana Urechi
User Experience Designer
Iuliana is a passionate User Experience designer with over 10 years in the field. She’s a research-driven professional with a wide range of skill, including User Experience, Psychology, Concept Design, Illustration and Gamification. As a fan, she organized several successful promotional events for Banner Saga, before being hired by Stoic. She enjoys helping her team create impactful games and creative and engaging social media content. Read More >
Chad Nicholas
Designer
Chad has had a love of video games since the age of 2. In his 14 years of professional experience, he’s worked on space combat games, RPGs, open world games, a life simulator and stealth action game. He worked on the turn-based tactical combat of Banner Saga and is excited to create more amazing games in the future.
Isaak Ramos
Character Artist
Isaak started his work in animation production serving as a concept designer and storyboarder. His work includes several upcoming Netflix titles, including the currently running Castlevania series headed at Powerhouse Animation Studios. He attended Gemini School of Visual Arts, and has been a fan of video games since childhood. A passionate artist, he was more than delighted to join the team at Stoic as character designer.
Nathan Beckwith
Character Artist
Nate, like all great artists, started off as a game tester, after years of QA torture he ascended into the art department of Acclaim working on their best game – Red Star! Since then he has been the senior character artist at several game companies. Nate loves games and art in equal measure and has always admired Stoic for their combination of great art and technically challenging games and is stoked beyond reason to be a part of their team. Read More >
David Wright
Principal Tech Artist
David is coming up on 25 years developing games professionally. He has had the privilege of working with amazing teams at many different studios including Access Software, Incognito/SCEA, Bioware, Armature, Ubisoft, and most recently at QC Games as their Technical Art Director. He possesses the rare ability to speak both Art and Engineering and will put this to good use as Principal Technical Artist for Stoic. Read More >
Brendan Beard
Quality Assurance Engineer
Before Brendan came to Stoic, he worked in the Auto industry for 8 years. He used this job to support a side-job/hobby of organizing, hosting, broadcasting, and competing in Super Smash Brothers tournaments. Fighting games are Brendan’s favorite, followed by adventure RPGs. Brendan is Stoic’s Quality Assurance Engineer working closely with everyone to catch problems and help push the polish of our product as high as possible, and he looks forward to seeing where this career takes him.
Matt O’Neill
Principal VFX Artist
Matt has been doing Visual Effects for more than 15 years with professional experience in film, broadcast, and gaming. He has had the great pleasure to work on amazing productions with companies like EA, Nether Realm Studios, Wargaming, Activision, and many others. He is bringing his experience creating everything from photorealistic pyrotechnics found to stylized magic. With more than a dozen titles under his belt, Matt is a seasoned vet happy to find his home with the team at Stoic.
Matt Barney
Talent Acquisition and HR Manager
From a young age, forging a career within games was a goal for Matt. Having started in Agency Staffing, Matt was able to transition into the industry as the Regional Manager at Six Foot Staffing (a division of Six Foot Games), then made a corporate turn by joining Amazon Game Studios. Joining Stoic as the Talent Acquisition and Human Resources Manager was a no-brainer. What began as a passion for games has become a desire to elevate Stoic by finding the best candidates who have the best technical and cultural fit.
Denise De Paula
Business Administrator
Denise has worked in the US and Brazil with large corporations like Microsoft, Cargill, Clorox, and Dun & Bradstreet, as well as within the higher education and health care sectors. She studied Business Administration and Psychology at Universidade Paulista in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Her interest in music, arts, travel, architecture, and social and behavioral sciences fuel her positive energy and balance her strong work ethic. Denise is always ready with a joke, a smile, or an act of kindness where it’s most needed.
Josh Looman
Senior Systems Designer
Josh started in the game industry 21 years ago at Acclaim Entertainment and spent a large portion of his career as the Senior Designer and Narrative Director for the Madden Football franchise at EA Sports. He’s a member of the Writer’s Guild of America, was the Creative Director on the cult classic NFL Head Coach 09. After shipping 17 games in his career, Josh is very excited to join the passionate and talented team of veteran designers at Stoic on their next project.