The company has enlisted high-caliber, established comedic talent from the NYC stand-up comedy circuit and from popular shows including Saturday Night Live, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, Flight of the Concords and more. Comedian Victor Varnado leads the group as head writer and voice director at Super-Ego Games.
A respected comedian on the stand-up scene, Victor Varnado has also performed on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Kimmel Live, Comedy Central and HBO. Most recently, he had a guest role in the season opener of My Name is Earl playing an imprisoned gang leader. In addition, he is also hosting/producing the popular New York City First Sunday’s Comedy Film Festival, producing/writing a new HBO sketch comedy show for Russell Simmons’ company and working alongside comic book legend Stan Lee on a new superhero movie. He also has a starring role as gender-ambiguous Internet villain Kazaa in Fat Guy Stuck in Internet, which will air during Cartoon Network’s popular Adult Swim programming block.
“I've been hooked on gaming since I was a kid, so working with Super-Ego is one of the best gigs I have ever had,” said Varando. “Super-Ego has come up with an amazing concept, and my contribution is to help make sure this game is incredibly satisfying to play thanks to its humor, cool characters, and clever story telling.”
In addition to Varnado, Super Ego’s in-house writing team includes Roger Hailes (MTV, Comedy Central and VH1) and Karen Sneider (Nickelodeon, Disney). The in-house team works with a broad array of distinguished writers and voiceover actors, including Chris Deluca (CBS Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn, Best Week Ever and 2005 & 2006 Video Game Awards), Amanda Melson (Comedy Central, Saturday Night Live), Leo Allen (Saturday Night Live, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, Last Call with Carson Daly, Comedy Central, Ed, Sex & the City), Kristen Schaal (Flight of the Conchords, Ugly Betty, Comedy Central, Law & Order) and Andres du Bouchet (Talkshow with Spike Ferestein, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, Comedy Central, The Onion).
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“Having access to such amazing comedic talent will help us deliver a unique gaming experience,” said Greg Easley, Co-Founder and President of Super Ego Games. “We’re fortunate that Victor has joined the team and that we’ve managed to tap into New York’s professional comedy scene, which is obviously cutting edge and vibrant.”
Super-Ego Games was founded on the principle of creating games with character. The company’s first original property, Rat Race, drops players in the shoes of Tina Brooks, an ambitious brand manager at BiggCo, an ethically-challenged consumer products company. Tina quickly discovers that “business as usual” means an unending series of wacky, over-the-top, and wildly inappropriate situations. It’s up to the player to outsmart, outwit, and sometime outrun co-workers and upper-management in a set of hilarious scenarios.
Rat Race drops players in the shoes of Tina Brooks, an ambitious brand manager at BiggCo, the massive consumer products company whose slogan, “Making the world a better place,” couldn’t be any more cynical. Tina quickly discovers that “business as usual” means an unending series of wacky, over-the-top, and wildly inappropriate situations.
Your job is simply to make it through the day as bombs go off all around you. As the clock ticks toward quitting time, you’ll encounter a rogues gallery including: Joy Chung, an impossible, and impossibly hot, PR exec; Chip Bratsby III, a pompous jerk whose career focus is getting you fired; and Dr. Ron Durfman, a research scientist who may or may not be intimate with his lab monkey. It’s up to the player to outsmart, outwit, and sometime outrun co-workers and upper-management in a set of hilarious scenarios created by some of New York City’s best comedy writers.
Super-Ego Games' goal is to give you the feeling of “playing” inside an episode of your favorite TV show. Sometimes Rat Race is described as an interactive sitcom, but that doesn’t do it justice. There’s more to the experience than funny dialogue. Along the way you’ll sneak, sprint, solve puzzles, eavesdrop, steal, and even “neutralize” that lab monkey.
Super-Ego Games has developed a series of innovative proprietary technologies to bring the Rat Race world to life. From dynamic conversations to non-linear scripting to advanced character AI systems, Rat Race represents a rethinking of how videos games are developed; with its distinct sense of story and character development, the title will help establish episodic games as a new form of interactive entertainment.
Rat Race is currently in development by Super-Ego Games. The first episode is scheduled for release this Winter.