About

The Brief Version:

My name is Jason Surguine.

I love music. I love games. I love writing. I love designing. I love combining all of those things into one package called a video game. So I’ve happily produced content for over 50 software titles.

I love other languages and cultures. I’ve lived and worked in Hungary, I’ve visited many locales in Europe. I love Japanese language and culture. I’ve visited Japan countless times. I’m pretty proficient in Hungarian and Japanese.

I believe in logic, science, and technology. If I believed that political stances mattered, I would probably be a libertarian. I believe that understanding economics is more important.

But I’m just a game designer/writer/musician. I won’t apologize for being skilled in several fields instead of being skilled in only one thing. Most entertainers won’t. And there is nothing wrong with being an entertainer

My Story (The Not so Brief Version):

I played games a lot as a kid. I played music a lot as a kid. I still do both.

Mobile Games?

I was one of the early adopters of Windows Mobile stuff back in 2000 (dating back to the Casio E-100), which led me to write review articles for sites such as The Gadgeteer, Gear Diary, PocketGamer, PocketMatrix, and was pretty well-known on many mobile sites. From doing the reviews I met a lot of software developers and ended up doing contract work as a Music Composer and Audio Designer for companies such as E-Soft Interactive, Last Day of Work, PDAmill Game Studios.

The first major mobile game I worked on was a small title named Argentum.  At that time, a Real Time Strategy (RTS) game with visuals comparable to a platform game seemed really amazing. I offered to make the audio just as good as the visuals and they accepted. The game was so impressive that John Romero took notice and published it through his own company, making the game a pretty big success.

A small title named Snails from PDAmill was my second mobile game. That game was magic. It started as a simple clone of Worms (because there wasn’t anything like that on Windows Mobile at the time). But after hiring an amazing artist (Randall Schleufer), a fantastic UI designer (Ryan Anspach) and Audio/Story from yours truly, it turned into some weird masterpiece. I still can’t fully explain it. It sold many copies on Windows Mobile and Palm OS, and still sells an appreciable number on iPhone today. When Team17 finally did port Worms to Windows Mobile, it never overtook Snails’ place.

PDAmill kept upping the ante and asking me to do things like write stories for all of their games. The first major project with lots of text and scripting was probably Anthelion, a 3D space shooter. Eventually, they liked my writing and designs so much, that they decided we could make an RPG together. That led to Arvale. Arvale sold countless copies on Windows Mobile, Palm OS, was included on games bundles on millions of GPS units, and still sells a generous amount of copies on the iPhone today.

PDAmill asked me to cancel all my contract work and move to Hungary to work with them full time. So I did that.

After many more successful titles with PDAmill, they decided to hand the reins over to me and take over their games department while they concentrated on some new GPS project.

GPS?!

That GPS project turned into the international award-winning GPS software, iGO. PDAmill started up a separate company and called it Nav n’ Go. They’ve been quite successful I’m told. They also kindly asked if I could come up with American English voice directions for them.

I had already been told by many people I had a mellifluous voice (don’t feel bad, I had to look it up too), and I had plenty of experience recording voices for game characters (e.g. Snails, Gems, Flux, Virtual Villagers) and sound effects, so…

I spent about a week recording all sorts of different phrases, editing them and making them sound as natural as possible. From what I’ve been told, the ‘Jason’ voice is still the most concise, clear way to hear directions on GPS. Too bad the don’t give out awards for that Nowadays, most GPS units use TTS (Text-To-Speech), so naturally recorded voices aren’t needed anymore. Ah well.

Back to Games:

With no other directions from upper management other than, ‘Casual games seem really popular, do a bunch of those!’ We set out to make 12 awesome Casual Games in 12 months. It was pretty grueling, but we were able to accomplish it. Windows Mobile fans loved the games, and we did gain some attention in the meantime as I was interviewed on sites such as Mobile Tech Review, IGN, and more recently JAMM.

Unfortunately, some product called the iPhone came out and was killing Windows Mobile. I knew it was time to change platforms.

Getting an iPhone developer account for a Hungarian company, including all the paperwork (with the IRS and the bureaucracy of Hungary), took everything from 3 hour phone conversations to blackmailing secretaries and impersonating the CEO.

When we were finally approved and the porting of the engine was almost finished, everyone believed that ports of all the Casual Games would be easy, so they did those first.

But I noticed there were no decent RPGs out at the time and Arvale would not only fill that niche, but it’s a damn good game to boot! I decided that Arvale must come out before Christmas, and so I started porting all the music and writing a list of things to be done so it would be ready by the time the programmers were.

Unfortunately, everyone in Hungary takes vacation around Christmas time. Since I had no family in Budapest, I would still visit the office and try to coax any remaining colleagues into staying. Even the ones that were on vacation, I would call them up and ask for small favors for the Arvale port.

It was released right around December 23 (if I recall), sold a multitude of copies and Arvale shot up the RPG games chart to number 3 quite quickly and remained there for some time.

Now:

After over 3 years in Hungary, I decided it was time to leave the full-time gig with PDAmill. This may have been in part to turning 30, or getting engaged to a Japanese girl (whom I met while she was working at the Japanese Embassy in Hungary), or just that mobile gaming was getting a bit stagnant for me.

While designing games for mobile devices is still both fun and challenging, I’d like to reach out to a larger audience. I think I have something going with this Arvale thing, I’d like to see where else I can take it. Not only Arvale, but other game ideas as well. I prototype new game ideas in my free-time, which you can download and play for free on the Free Games page.

I also like the idea of giving away free content, such as the Free Music page. Either for fans of my music or for other developers who are simply looking looking for quality free music. As long as the music gets used and listened to, I’m happy

And of course, in my other free-time, I still write personal music which I keep on a separate site, Sir Guy Music because, like everything else when I was a kid, I still want to be a Rockstar

The Boring, Formal, Third-Person version:

Jason Surguine received his Bachelor of Arts in Music from Northern Arizona University, with concentration on Music Theory and Composition. Jason is an accomplished musician on the piano, saxophone, guitar, bass, percussion, and vocals; and has played in many various performing ensembles ranging from Classical, Chamber, and Theater, to Marching, Jazz, and Rock. Having studied and gained experience in composition for over 10 years, Jason is able to write in a multitude of styles. He also speaks conversational Hungarian and Japanese.

Jason Surguine is a member of the IGDA and a Silver Member of G.A.N.G.

Contact

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