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A Swift Spotlight: Blackbird Interactive
Art-fueled and future-driven; Blackbird Interactive are an independent developer unwavering in their goal to provide stylised and engaging experiences to their player-base. With a signature and distinctive artistic flair, collaborations with the likes of NASA and Minecraft, as well as innovative and technically advanced IPs of their own released and in development, Blackbird Interactive are far from flying under-the-radar like their namesake spy plane counterpart.
AARDVARK SWIFT sat down with Blackbird Interactive’s HR Director Pam Lee, CTO Yggy King, and CCO Rory McGuire to take a deep dive into the studio’s industry-leading culture and initiatives, projects in the works, as well as a glimpse into the company’s trajectory and what’s to come.
Spearheaded by CEO Rob Cunningham, it’s no overstatement to say that the studio was founded with humble beginnings. Yggy King elaborates; “Initially, we set up in what we called Studio Zero, which was Rob’s garage. He’d spent the previous year or two drumming up interest, finding a team, and getting enough funding to get things off the ground - getting it together in late 2010”, says Yggy. “You might think the company was named after blackbirds flying around in Rob’s backyard, but we’re actually named after the SR 71 Blackbird spy plane, which was developed by Lockheed Martin’s Skunkworks program; it’s associated with advanced technology, high speed, and a little bit of mystery and secrecy.”
Since then, the studio has soared from strength to strength, refining and augmenting their technical and artistic style in titles such as Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak and Hardspace: Shipbreaker. Rory describes; “the style we’ve developed that you can see in Shipbreaker we describe as a painterly style. You can also see it even going all the way back to Homeworld. Our CEO Rob was the art director on the original Homeworld; he used a phrase called ‘seeing the hand of the creator’, being able to see the brushstrokes, being able to see the personality behind the art.” This creativity bleeds through to their technical outlook too, particularly in Shipbreaker, as Rory elaborates; “we wanted to create a physics system that had never been done before, where players can dismantle any part of the ship and turn it into two new dynamic objects – we created a piece of technology that saw us being extremely innovative in a technical sense.” Hardspace Shipbreaker is a by-product of Blackbird’s
industry-leading culture and active approach to staff development and wellbeing initiatives; in this case, their Skunk Works program. Pam expands; “We’ve got this incubation program called Skunk Works. It’s a formal
program we’ve run since 2019 in which we dedicate time and resources to encourage and support our staff to create and propose concepts for Blackbird to develop.” Rory continues, “In the first game jam, there was one team that produced a zero-G exploration game that was the kernel to what Shipbreaker would one day become. It really just captured our hearts and souls, and I think a week later we greenlit it to go into a prototype.” Aside from Skunkworks, the studio offers its employees a state-of-the-art studio, remote working options, and most recently, are beginning to offer a 4-day work week. Enthused by the initiative, Pam goes on to say; “We’re employee-driven and we listen to feedback; the idea came in by a member of the team and backed by a lot of our staff in a poll. We got together as an executive team, decided to trial it, and what we found was that it was overwhelmingly positive.” Also on the horizon for Blackbird are multiple disclosed projects, as Yggy alludes to; “We have six projects in active development, and the projects that aren’t announced are nothing like the things that we have announced. So, it’s going to be an exciting year.”
You can listen to Aardvark Swift’s full conversation with Blackbird’s Yggy King, Pam Lee, and Rory McGuire through the Aardvark Swift Podcast, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, third-party apps, and the
aswift.com website.
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HR Director Pam Lee, CTO Yggy King, and CCO Rory McGuire
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