Stoic (company)

History

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 game 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. The team partnered with Versus Evil, which served as the game's publisher, providing services such as quality assurance. The multiplayer portion of the game was soft launched by Stoic in February 2013 via Steam as a standalone game as The Banner Saga: Factions, while the full game was released in January 2014. The game was a critical and commercial success, thus the team was able to fund the development of The Banner Saga 2 by themselves.

With development lasting for two years, The Banner Saga 2, like its predecessor, also received generally positive reviews when it was released in April 2016. When Watson reflected on the game's development, he noted that the team starting crunching as the team slowly ran out of money. The game commercial performance disappointed Stoic, with the title selling just a third of its predecessors. Watson attributed the game's failure to the team neglecting the franchise's community, while Versus Evil's General Manager Steve Escalante believed that the game's underwhelming performance was mainly due to increased competition from other titles. The team returned to Kickstarter again for The Banner Saga 3. While Stoic funded most of the game's development, the funds raised via Kickstarter was spent hiring an animation studio, a sound studio and a recording studio in Iceland to assist the title's development. The $200,000 funding goal was reached within a week. The game, the third and last entry in the trilogy, was released on July 26, 2018. 505 Games released a retail bundle containing all three games on the same day.

The studio is currently working on Towerborne, a four-player side-scrolling beat'em up video game in partnership with Xbox Game Studios. Towerborne was envisioned as a live service game, with the studio planning to introduce new content to the game following its official launch.

Games

References

References

1. Curtis, Tom. (March 19, 2012). "When ex-BioWare devs make their own strategy RPG". [[Gamasutra]].
2. Hillier, Brenna. (March 21, 2012). "The Banner Saga fully funded in under 48 hours". [[VG 247]].
3. Sarker, Samit. (February 20, 2013). "The Banner Saga: Factions soft-launched by Stoic, launching publicly Feb. 25". [[Polygon (website).
4. Duncan, Alasdair. (November 8, 2013). "The Banner Saga will be out in January 2014". [[Destructoid]].
5. Batchelor, James. (March 14, 2016). "The Stoic Saga: How the team battled personal debt and 'perpetual crunch'". [[MCV (magazine).
6. Matulef, Jeffery. (May 12, 2016). "The Banner Saga 2 launch detailed". [[Eurogamer]].
7. Watson, John. (June 10, 2016). "Postmortem: Stoic Studio's The Banner Saga 2". [[Gamasutra]].
8. Donnelly, Joe. (January 10, 2017). "Banner Saga 2 technical director laments underwhelming launch: 'Why the hell didn't we get a Kickstarter?'". [[PC Gamer]].
9. Handrahan, Matthew. (January 9, 2017). ""We set out to make this trilogy. We can't leave the story unfinished"". Gameindustry.biz.
10. Handrahan, Matthew. (September 5, 2016). "Versus Evil: "We're establishing a new brand every time"". Gameindustry.biz.
11. Purchese, Robert. (January 31, 2016). "The Banner Saga 3 Kickstarter campaign begins". [[Eurogamer]].
12. Arif, Shabana. (April 13, 2018). "The Banner Saga 3 Release Date Announced". [[IGN]].
13. Hussain, Tamoor. (April 13, 2018). "Banner Saga 3 Release Date Confirmed For PS4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PC". [[GameSpot]].
14. Romano, Sal. (June 11, 2023). "Xbox Game Studios and Stoic announce action adventure game Towerborne for Xbox Series, Xbox One, and PC".
15. West, Josh. (August 30, 2023). "Towerborne is destined to be the Xbox Series X's answer to Castle Crashers".
16. updated, Jez Corden last. (2021-10-27). "Project Belfry: Xbox is working with 'The Banner Saga' dev Stoic Studio on an exclusive".