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
Arnie Jorgensen 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 and The Old Republic as the Lead Concept Artist. He’s now the Co-Owner and Art Director at Stoic and enjoys bringing you the Banner Saga series.
John Watson
John Watson has been programming since he was 6. After doing some work on the Hubble at NASA he decided to apply his vast abilities in the games industry, eventually bringing his experience as lead combat programmer on The Old Republic to Stoic, where he is Co-Owner and Technical Director.
Alex Thomas
Alex started his work in game art and design at Bioware, working on Star Wars: The Old Republic. He formed Stoic Studio with Arnie and John and was Lead Designer, Writer and Animator for the first Banner Saga. After consulting on Banner Saga 2, Alex has returned to the team as Lead Writer for Banner Saga 3 to help finish what he began.
Matt Rhoades
Matt Rhoades began his game design career writing and designing for Spider-Man: The Movie game. After working on a number of other comics-themed game projects, Matt decided that Vikings would be a good palette cleanser. The feature he’s most excited about adding to Banner Saga 3 is -REDACTED- because of the cool -REDACTED-. Look forward to it!
Igor Artyomenko
Igor Artyomenko is a young artist from Kazakhstan who has painted for magazines and fantasy card games, but most of all he loves to work on games. How was he found? Stoic held a world wide contest… he won. Igor was invited to the Stoic team for both his skills as Illustrator and his love of the Banner Saga.
Zeb West
Zeb West met Arnie, John and Drew 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.
Katie Postma
Katie has been working in community management for more than 15 years, starting her career with Ubisoft on the Myst series of games. She loves bringing players together to share their experiences, and at Stoic she welcomes all Banner Saga fans to chat with the team on Discord and social media channels to learn all about the latest Banner Saga trilogy news!
Drew Clowery
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 joins Stoic as the programmer for Banner Saga 3 where his extensive background in MMORPG and mobile game development will come in extremely handy.
Danny Moll
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 joins Stoic as a Senior Artist on Banner Saga 3.
Andy Johnson
Andy started his career at Sega back in 1991, shortly after the release on Sonic 1, and has been in video games and web development ever since. He’s setup QA departments for Disney and Sega, run localization at THQ and King, and cat wrangled projects in a Production role on many (many) games. He’s the token Brit on the team who in his spare time coaches kids soccer (real football) when he can get away from his latest video game addiction.
David Grayson
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 will help the team take Banner Saga 3 and future games to new heights!
Casey Griggs
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 on Banner Saga 3 and beyond.
Chad Nicholas
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, a stealth action game and is currently thrilled to be working on the turn-based tactical combat of Banner Saga!
Adrienne Mata
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 where she met Andy, and honed her QA expertise at Big Fish Games. Excited to be at Stoic, she hopes to bring you quality games at the helm of QA, starting with Banner Saga 3.
Lance Myers
Lance Myers has been a professional animator for over twenty 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.
Isaak Ramos
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 is more than delighted to join the team at Stoic as character designer.