Epic saw the ever-increasing power of mobile devices and wanted to scale UE, the software that powered untold numbers of console and PC games from Unreal Tournament to BioShock, to power games that could fit in pants pockets. On the other side of the country in North Carolina, Chair's parent company, Epic Games, was taking note of powerful mobile devices and secretly working to port Unreal Engine to iOS, Apple's operating system for iPhones and iPads. A mobile game seemed like a fleeting thought, something he filed away for later.Īt about the same time that Mustard was quietly musing about Fieldrunners on his couch in Utah, Apple was in California secretly working on the iPhone 4, which would be a powerful leap forward for the smartphone maker.
At Chair, an ambitious and deliberate game maker by design, developers really only made one game at a time. They were proud of their work and ready to do more. Shadow Complex was released exclusively on Xbox 360 a few months earlier, in August 2009. Chair was already in pre-production for another Shadow Complex game, a sequel to the well-received 2.5D side-scrolling shooter with levels reminiscent of Castlevania and Metroid. Maybe it was time to think about going mobile.īut that was for another time.
He ran a company dedicated to making games, after all. Choosing a smartphone over a console felt weird, and it planted a seed in his mind. But his desire on that Sunday proved just how good smartphone games had gotten, in a way he hadn't quite realized before. He knew that smartphones were getting faster, that their games were getting better. "I can't believe I just chose to play a game on my phone instead of playing a console game," Mustard remembers nearly six years later. It had just been released that month, but instead of heading upstairs to his Xbox 360, he unlocked his iPhone and launched Fieldrunners, Subatomic Studios' tower defense game. In 2015, Mustard describes it to Polygon as one of his favorite games of all time. The co-founder and creative director at Shadow Complex developer Chair Entertainment was watching football in his living room when he realized that he had time to play Mass Effect 2, BioWare's critically acclaimed role-playing game. Abrams, on the set of the new Star Wars movie. And sometimes, being nimble can can fly you across an ocean to meet your friend and partner, J.J. To do that, though, sometimes it means putting a game it really wants to create on ice. Sometimes, they've allowed Chair to capitalize on the unexpected and achieve great success. Those ideas have paid dividends in the last few years. He has plans, but he's also willing to change them as new opportunities arise. As its co-founder sees it, Chair is a company that always wants to try something new. We spoke to Mustard recently about the last five wildly successful years and about what's to come. It would remain there indefinitely while Chair pursued other opportunities, but it would never die. The next Monday, it was working on Infinity Blade. One Friday in the middle of 2010, Chair was working on a sequel to Shadow Complex. Instead, he just kept it in mind and looked for new opportunities as he and his company worked on creating a sequel to their just released game.Ī few months later, that opportunity arose. He didn't rise to his feet, assume the Superman pose and get to changing, though. It was born of observation, of the realization that gaming was shifting and that the company he co-founded, Chair Entertainment, could shift with it.
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