Type Subsidiary Website www.vvisions.com | Key people Jennifer O’Neal Founders Guha Bala, Karthik Bala | |
Industry Computer and video games Number of employees 200+ developers, additional QA and temporary Founded 1990, Menands, New York, United States Headquarters Menands, New York, United States Parent organizations Activision, Activision Blizzard, VG Treasury SAS, Activision Asia Pacific Holding Pte. Ltd. Video games Skylanders: Swap Force, Skylanders: SuperChargers, Skylanders: Trap Team, Crash Bandicoot 2: N‑Tran, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance Profiles | ||
Vicarious Visions, Inc. is an American video game developer. Vicarious Visions' games accounted for over $2.5 billion in retail sales and over 40 million units of its software have been sold worldwide. The headquarters of Vicarious Visions is located in Menands, New York. It was announced in December 2016 by Activision that Vicarious Visions will be working on Destiny.
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Studio history
The studio was founded by brothers Karthik and Guha Bala in 1990 while both were in high school.
In the late 1990s, Vicarious Visions appointed Michael Marvin, an Albany-based investor and entrepreneur, and founder and former CEO of MapInfo Corporation; and Charles S. Jones, investor, who sat on the boards of various software and industrial companies including Geac and PSDI, to its board of directors. Under their leadership, a sale of the company was negotiated to Activision, earning the original investors over 20x their initial investment.
In January 2005, Vicarious Visions was acquired by publisher Activision. On April 5, 2016, the Bala brothers announced that they had left the company.
Game history
Terminus, an online multiplayer space trading and combat simulation game, won two Independent Games Festival Awards in 1999. They became known as a leading developer of handheld games breaking ground by the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series, developing every Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS title in the franchise's main series as well as one spin off. They developed the first three Crash Bandicoot GBA games. They are also well known for many games including Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, Ultimate Spider-Man, Crash Nitro Kart, Jedi Knight II, Jedi Academy, and Doom 3 for the Xbox. Vicarious Visions developed for the Guitar Hero series on the Nintendo DS and Wii platforms. For Guitar Hero: On Tour, Vicarious Visions created the "Guitar Grip" peripheral for the Nintendo DS, which emulates the guitar controller for the portable system.
It was revealed on June 10, 2011, that Vicarious Visions was working on the 3DS version of Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure.
On December 8, 2016, Vicarious Visions announced that they are partnering with Bungie to work on the Destiny franchise.