Moonshot Games: Mission Control

Moonshot developers remove a faulty power coupling from a recent build.

At 0700 hours on 07 October 2009, Moonshot Games achieved orbital insertion, en route to translunar passage. Reports from the craft and the ground crew indicate that all parameters are in the green.

Led by a small team of experienced industry veterans, Moonshot is pledged to the exploration and development of high-quality downloadable games. Their maiden flight is set to establish a permanent presence on this exciting new world in the gaming universe.

The details of Moonshot's first mission will remain top secret until the craft makes moonfall. However, all the necessary research, planning, and prototyping are already well underway. Stand by for mission updates.

12.18.09 — Happy Holidays! View our 2009 holiday greeting.

Michel Bastien — Co-Founder & Managing Director
Damian Isla — Co-Founder & Director of Technology
Mike McCain — Artist
Rob Stokes — Co-Founder & Creative Director

Michel Bastien

Co-Founder & Managing Director

Michel Bastien As Managing Director, Michel is responsible for Moonshot's business development, project management, and the day-to-day operations of the studio. He is one of those rare breeds whose passion comes from enabling brilliance in others. He's doing his job when everyone else is prepared, unhindered, and excited to do theirs.

In early 2007, Michel, with Pete Parsons, Jordan Weisman and Michael Evans, founded Fyreball, a content-sharing and word-of-mouth tracking web service company. As VP of Product Development, Michel managed the company's projects and its line of services. Fyreball, now known as Meteor Solutions, went on to raise over $2M from private investors and continues to thrive today.

Before Fyreball, Michel worked as a Producer at Bungie Studios. In his four years there, he acted as Producer on Halo PC, Producer on Halo 2, and Lead Producer on Halo 3.

Michel holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Sherbrooke. He enjoys skiing, golf, U2, and the myriad preparations for the upcoming arrival of his son.

Damián Isla

Co-Founder & Director of Technology

Damian Isla Damián has been working on and writing about game technology for almost a decade, from his days as a lowly graduate student at M.I.T., to the founding of Moonshot with Rob and Michel. To the company he brings a passion for combining cutting-edge technology with great art, design and storytelling.

Before Moonshot, Damián was AI and Gameplay Engineering Lead at Bungie Studios, where he was responsible for the AI for the mega-hit first-person shooters Halo 2 and Halo 3. In his 7 years at Bungie, he worked on many aspects of the vaunted "Halo sandbox", making key contributions to Halo's animation and character-physics tech. He was also a contributor to Halo's story development process.

A leading expert in the field of Artificial Intelligence for Games, Damián has spoken on games, AI and character technology at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), at the Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference (AIIDE), and at Siggraph, among many other academic and industry venues, and is a frequent speaker at the Game Developers Conference (GDC).

Before joining the industry, Damián earned a Masters Degree at the M.I.T. Media Lab, where he did research on learning and behavior for synthetic characters. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science, also from M.I.T. It was there that, many years ago, he met a kindred spirit in a young Rob Stokes.

Damián is a history buff and an amateur playwright, and is a great lover of plays in which people are mean to one another.

Mike McCain

Artist

Mike McCain is an up-and-coming Seattle artist with a passion for games and visual storytelling. At Moonshot, he's hard at work building a strong company identity and painting pretty pictures for the studio's top secret project.

In 2007, Mike graduated with a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Washington and landed a job working with Michel at Fyreball (now Meteor Solutions). As the company's sole designer, Mike quickly became a key member of the team, donning multiple hats as a designer, developer, and sales engineer. He rode the startup roller coaster for two years and emerged better, stronger, faster.

In his spare time, Mike likes to make short animated films with a group of fellow CG-industry artists. Their latest work is a stop-motion short about a foolhardy spy, titled The Bronson Maneuver. The film has been very well received and may yet win them some cool awards.

He also enjoys camping, painting and watching Star Wars. To see more of Mike's work, visit www.mikebot.net.

Rob Stokes

Co-Founder & Creative Director

Rob Stokes is an accomplished game designer and writer with ten years experience in the games industry.

Rob spent five years at Bungie Studios, working as a designer and writer on Halo 2 and Halo 3. On Halo 3, he was a design lead, responsible for the campaign/story design process and the management of the level designers who brought the game's vision to life. He also personally laid the groundwork for nearly all of the writing in the Halo 3 campaign.

Prior to joining the games industry, Rob attended the American Film Institute, where he received an MFA in writing. Before that, he attended M.I.T., where he earned a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering. It was there that Rob crossed paths with Damián Isla. Years later, they would reunite, first at Bungie, and now as co-founders of Moonshot Games.

Rob spends his spare time on a variety of writing projects, including children's books, comics, screenplays, and novels.

October 7th, 2009 —

Guidance is internal. Ignition sequence starts. All engines running. Liftoff. We have liftoff of Moonshot Games.

Formed by Bungie alumni Michel Bastien, Damián Isla, and Rob Stokes, Moonshot is dedicated to exploring the uncharted spaces of high-quality downloadable games, bringing to those worlds our years of experience with AAA productions. With launch and support facilities in both Seattle, WA and Boston, MA, the Moonshot program poises itself to pull top talent from either coast.

From mission control in Seattle, Managing Director Michel Bastien oversees the trajectory of this brave new endeavor. As production lead of Halo 2 and Halo 3, Bastien developed the long view and grasp of complexity necessary to see our birds safely from launch pad to lunar soil, time and again.

Director of Technology Damián Isla heads up Moonshot's research and fabrication labs in Boston. At Bungie, Isla served as AI and gameplay engineering lead, and he is a foremost expert in the field of Artificial Intelligence for Games. But he promises there are no Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computers aboard Moonshot's maiden flight.

Finally, guiding Moonshot's forays into the unknown is Creative Director Rob Stokes. Another seasoned veteran of Bungie, Stokes logged hundreds of hours as a writer, mission designer, and design lead on the Halo franchise. From the command module, Stokes indicates that altitude and velocity are on the line. "Roll is complete. We are pitching."

The Moonshot team firmly believes that the stars need not be limited to multimillion-dollar projects supported by armies of ground crew. There is a place in history for that small, nimble craft, built smartly on a modest budget, and piloted by expert hands.

We are now passing into the lunar shadow. Stay tuned for transmission when we emerge from the other side.

Moonshot Games would like to offer best wishes to all our groundside friends and family this holiday season. From up here, the coming year looks to be an exciting one, even if Jupiter fails to bloom into a second sun. We hope 2010 finds you all healthy and happy.