Insomniac Games

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Insomniac Games began with a nine-year-old and an Atari 2600. When that console appeared in 1977, young Ted Price decided he wanted to work in video games. Today the studio he founded is based in Burbank, California, and belongs to PlayStation Studios. Its catalogue runs from a gliding dragon, to a lombax with a robot sidekick, to Marvel's Spider-Man. The road to that catalogue was uneven, full of strong starts and costly stumbles. How did a studio with a shaky debut become a mascot maker? Why did its team keep chasing new genres and new partners? And what happened when one owner finally came calling?

  1354

• 2. Rough Beginnings

  ›

  On the 28th of February 1994, Ted Price incorporated his new company under the name Xtreme Software. Alex Hastings, a fellow graduate and an expert programmer, joined in June of that year. His brother Brian arrived shortly afterwards. In 1995 another company with the same name forced a change. The founders considered The Resistance Incorporated, Ragnarok, Black Sun Software, Ice Nine and Moon Turtle. They chose Insomniac Games, which was not their first pick. Price explained that the name worked because "it suddenly makes sense."

  Doom was the spark for the first project. The young team wanted to ride the excitement around first-person shooters, and it even considered making a plain Doom clone. It targeted the Panasonic 3DO because that console's developer kit was cheap and the team had high hopes for the platform. Within one month, the team built a working gameplay demo.

  Mark Cerny, an executive producer at Universal Interactive Studios, saw the demo after it was pitched around to publishers, and he was impressed. Universal agreed to publish the game and helped with funding, marketing and cutscenes. It even hired actors to film real-time sequences. Catherine Hardwicke led the production design, and Warhawk supplied some of the inspiration. Cerny also gave feedback on the level design.

  The 3DO did not sell as the team had expected. Universal suggested moving the game to Sony Computer Entertainment's PlayStation to lift sales. The game ran on a custom engine written by Alex Hastings, and the team upgraded and converted it for the new console within a month. The finished game, called Disruptor, shipped worldwide in November 1996.

  Critics responded warmly, and various gaming publications named Disruptor "Dark Horse of the Year." John Romero, founder of Doom developer id Software, praised it as well. Yet marketing was thin and sales were poor. The shortfall almost bankrupted the studio. Price later called it "the best game that nobody ever heard of." Morale was low, and the team decided to make something new instead of a sequel. Despite the weak sales, Universal agreed to back whatever came next.

  23465

• 3. The Dragon Years

  ›

  By the late 1990s, more children and teenagers were picking up PlayStation controllers. The team decided against another violent shooter and aimed for a game that suited every member of a family. Nintendo ruled that market with games such as Super Mario 64, and the PlayStation had no similar exclusive. Cerny pushed Insomniac to build a game around a mascot with mass appeal.

  Craig Stitt, an environment artist on Disruptor, proposed building the theme and story around an anthropomorphic dragon. At the same time, Alex Hastings developed an engine built for panoramic views, which suited open worlds. It also allowed the dragon to glide through the air. Spyro the Dragon was released in late 1998.

  The reviews were glowing and awards followed. Sales started slowly, then climbed after Christmas, and eventually passed two million copies. The team grew to 13 people. Because of that success, the studio was asked for a sequel almost immediately.

  Work on Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage! began shortly after the first game launched. The team had little time to find fresh ideas, so it expanded a mini-game from the original into the new adventure. It also wrote a more mature story and added advanced cinematics. The game hit its target window and arrived in late 1999. Hastings worried because the schedule had been rushed and truncated.

  Universal asked for a third game as soon as Ripto's Rage! was out. To add variety, the team gave Spyro more special moves and added more playable characters. Spyro's personality was also made more approachable. The team now numbered about 20 to 25 people, and Brian Allgeier, who later became games director, joined during this period. Spyro: Year of the Dragon was released worldwide in late 2000.

  Three games in three years left the team hungry for original characters. Year of the Dragon was the last Spyro game Insomniac developed, and Universal kept the intellectual property rights. Universal Interactive later outsourced the series, producing two subseries, The Legend of Spyro and Skylanders. Microsoft Gaming now owns the franchise, and the original trilogy has sold 8,000,000 copies in total. From here on, Insomniac would work directly with the PlayStation consoles.

  2734

• 4. Lombax And Robot

  ›

  Monster Knight, sketched out in 1999, never got beyond the planning stage, and the public learned of it only 13 years later. The next idea for the PlayStation 2 went further. Girl with a Stick drew on The Legend of Zelda and Tomb Raider, and it was meant to prove that Insomniac could make more than platformers. The team spent six months on prototypes and a functional demo. Most staff, apart from Price, found it one-dimensional. Sony doubted it would find a market and urged the studio to play to its strengths, so the game was scrapped. Price called it a lesson and the studio's first failure.

  A few weeks after that cancellation, Brian Hastings proposed a science fiction space adventure. The hero began as a reptilian alien with weapons, then became a caveman, and finally turned into a made-up creature called a Lombax. The team named him Ratchet and gave him a robot companion called Clank. Manga, Conker's Bad Fur Day and Spyro the Dragon all fed into the design. To set it apart from earlier work, the team added shooting and role-playing elements.

  The team lacked a suitable engine, so it could not build a demo. Instead it made a Metropolis diorama called "Art Nuevo de Flash Gordon" for Sony, which then helped fund and publish the game. Jason Rubin, speaking for Naughty Dog, lent Insomniac the engine behind Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy. The game had been meant as a PlayStation 2 launch title but slipped by two years. Ratchet & Clank was released in November 2002 to critical success.

  Sony approved a sequel five months before the first game launched. Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando followed about a year later to critical acclaim. By then the prototype of Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal was finished. It added a multiplayer mode and expanded the arenas, and Alex Hastings kept tuning the engine for more processing power. It sold considerably better than its predecessors and became the highest-rated game in the franchise.

  By 2005 the team wanted a change of direction, and Hastings hoped for a darker tone. Ratchet: Deadlocked took cues from The Running Man and Battle Royale. It dropped the platform elements, shifted the story onto Ratchet, and shrank Clank's role so much that his name left the title.

  On the PlayStation 3, the team rewrote the characters and launched the Future series. It included Tools of Destruction in 2007, Quest for Booty in 2008 and A Crack in Time in 2009. In 2008 the company opened a North Carolina studio of 25 to 30 developers, led by Chad Dezern and Shaun McCabe. That team made All 4 One, which drew mixed reviews. Its next game, Full Frontal Assault, borrowed a structure similar to tower defense.

  89101113

• 5. Resistance On PlayStation 3

  ›

  Starship Troopers was the inspiration for Resistance: Fall of Man. Insomniac wanted a project for the PlayStation 3, believing its owners would be more mature than earlier PlayStation audiences. The studio also wanted to avoid specializing in one genre and to run several projects in parallel. Development began after Deadlocked was finished, and it was the studio's first first-person shooter since Disruptor.

  The early ideas were rough. The team tried a squad-based design and giant lizard enemies. Sony recommended replacing the lizards because they were not fun to play against, and they were scrapped. The setting caused debate too. Cerny, who had proposed a "space opera" game, wanted World War I. The developers preferred World War II for its extreme weaponry. Then they moved the story to the 1950s, because World War II shooters had flooded the market.

  Resistance: Fall of Man was a launch title for the PlayStation 3, and the team had to work quickly to hit that window. It was a financial and critical success, though it stirred controversy over its use of Manchester Cathedral. The series is set around 1950 in an alternate history where an alien race called the Chimera has conquered Earth. Players follow Nathan Hale in the first two games.

  For Resistance 2, released in 2008, the team wanted a drastic change, and staff argued over how far to go. Resistance 3 turned back toward the first game. The team read player feedback on Resistance 2, brought back some mechanics from Fall of Man, and put narrative first. The hero this time was Joseph Capelli. The team considered it the best game in the series, yet it sold poorly and lost money. Price said the staff were disappointed but proud.

  In early 2012, Price announced that Insomniac would take no part in future Resistance projects, and Sony retained the rights. Two handheld spin-offs came from other studios. Bend Studio made Resistance: Retribution for the PlayStation Portable, and Nihilistic Software made Resistance: Burning Skies for the PlayStation Vita. Insomniac, meanwhile, was ready to work with partners beyond Sony.

  1517202168

• 6. Branching Out

  ›

  In 2010 Insomniac announced a partnership with Electronic Arts, through EA Partners, to make a game for both the PlayStation 3 and Microsoft's Xbox 360. The studio hoped for a wider audience while keeping its intellectual property and full control of its franchises. It also formed a subsidiary called Insomniac Click, which focused on casual and Facebook games. Click worked with Playfish, the casual game developer owned by Electronic Arts. Their game Outernauts reached browsers and mobile platforms in July 2012. Click was later folded back into Insomniac, and the browser version was canceled.

  The EA Partners project was revealed at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in 2011 under the name Overstrike. Brian Allgeier, the Ratchet & Clank director, had pitched it, and it resembled that series. The team expected it to appeal to teenagers. After several play-testing sessions, it learned the game was too simple for them. The studio had made many weapons, none tied to the story, so it retooled the game for older players and made weapons central. A co-operative campaign anchored the design. Renamed Fuse, it came out in May 2013 among the lowest-rated games Insomniac ever made. It debuted in 37th place in the UK in its first week. The studio concluded that its strength lay in colorful, playful games with unusual and sometimes silly weapons.

  Sunset Overdrive started soon after Resistance 3 was finished. Its sources of inspiration included Hyena Men of Kenya, Tank Girl, I Am Legend, The Young Ones, Halloween masks from the 1960s and Lego. Marcus Smith and Drew Murray created it, and their first pitch to the studio's head was rejected as too confusing. They got one week to try again and persuaded the studio heads to proceed. Publishers then turned the game down because Insomniac insisted on keeping the intellectual property. Microsoft Studios was eager to work with the studio and let it own the rights. Sunset Overdrive launched for the Xbox One in 2014, on the studio's 20th anniversary.

  The studio also tried smaller and stranger things. Slow Down, Bull, part commercial and part charity, was its first game for Windows. Song of the Deep, announced in January 2016 and published by GameStop, was an underwater game inspired by Metroid and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Virtual reality became a focus too. Edge of Nowhere, for the Oculus Rift, was announced at E3 2015 and released on the 6th of June 2016. In April 2016 came Feral Rites and The Unspoken. Price said the team loved the technology and wanted to build expertise. An exclusive deal with Oculus VR let Insomniac keep its intellectual property, and Price said the studio would not abandon big console games.

  In September 2017, the studio unveiled a new logo that replaced the moon standing in for the letter O. Chief brand officer Ryan Schneider said the moon suited the cartoon-like Spyro and Ratchet & Clank games but did not fit the studio's wider range. He said the rebrand "blew up the moon."

  2225293336

• 7. Spider-Man And Sony

  ›

  At E3 2016, Insomniac announced Marvel's Spider-Man for the PlayStation 4, made with Marvel Entertainment. Bryan Intihar, producer of Sunset Overdrive, served as creative director. It was Insomniac's first licensed title. Released on the 7th of September 2018, it earned widespread acclaim. It sold over 9 million copies by November 2018 and 13.2 million by August 2019, which made it one of the best-selling PlayStation 4 games.

  That success caught Sony's eye. In August 2019, Sony announced an agreement to buy Insomniac as the 14th internal studio in its Worldwide Studios division. Shawn Layden said Sony had been weighing the idea for some time and that Spider-Man had shown Insomniac to be an "impact maker" and a "style-setter." He expected the studio to keep its own creative control while gaining closer access to technology across the division. Before the deal, Insomniac had worked as an independent for Sony and for partners such as Microsoft, EA and Oculus. The acquisition was completed on the 15th of November 2019.

  Recognition had already arrived. In 2015, IGN named Insomniac the 20th best video game developer of all time. The Society for Human Resource Management called it one of the best places to work in America, and in 2016 Fortune ranked it 69th among the best workplaces for Millennials. The studio also has a web of relationships. It shares technology with Naughty Dog, and former staff founded High Impact Games, which later worked on Ratchet & Clank projects and Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier. Nathan Fouts, another former employee, made Weapon of Choice, and Ryan Koons designed HuniePop. From 2022 to 2025, sister studio Nixxes Software ported several Insomniac games to Windows PCs.

  At the PlayStation 5 reveal on the 11th of June 2020, Insomniac announced Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. Miles Morales launched with the console in November 2020, alongside a remaster of the original Spider-Man. Rift Apart arrived exactly a year after its reveal, on the 11th of June 2021, exclusively on the PlayStation 5. On the 9th of September 2021, the studio announced Marvel's Spider-Man 2 and a standalone game, Marvel's Wolverine. Spider-Man 2 was released on the 20th of October 2023, and Wolverine remains in development for the PlayStation 5.

  4445495173

• 8. Breach And Handover

  ›

  In December 2023, the ransomware group Rhysida attacked Insomniac and threatened to release stolen information unless it received 2 million dollars in bitcoin. The studio refused to pay. More than 1.67 terabytes of data were leaked, including an early build of Marvel's Wolverine. The files also held employees' personal information, past sales figures, and Insomniac and Sony plans reaching through 2032. Those plans named further Marvel projects, including a Venom-based game, and possible X-Men titles that would stay exclusive to PlayStation through 2035.

  Players, developers and publishers voiced sympathy. Insomniac said on social media: "We're both saddened and angered about the recent criminal cyberattack on our studio and the emotional toll it's taken on our dev team. We have focused inwardly for the last several days to support each other." The studio said work on Wolverine would continue, stressing that the leaked build came from early in development. Rhysida claimed that 98 percent of its stolen data was leaked and the other 2 percent sold, and it said its only motive was money.

  In July 2024, voice actors, motion capture performers and other Insomniac employees who belonged to SAG-AFTRA began a labor strike. Their concern was the use of artificial intelligence.

  In January 2025, Price announced his retirement as chief executive, to leave by the end of March 2025. Ryan Schneider, Jen Huang and Chad Dezern now share the job as co-studio heads. Dezern had led the North Carolina studio at its founding. In April 2026, Insomniac renewed and expanded its office.

  5758596061