Greg Kasavin

Bio

Greg Kasavin attended the University of California, Berkeley, graduating with a B.A. in English, and also holds an M.B.A. from the University of Phoenix. After his freshman year at Berkeley, he took an internship at GameSpot and enjoyed writing about games so much that he decided to stay with the site, instead of becoming an English professor. Along with Giant Bomb founder Jeff Gerstmann, Kasavin was instrumental in the success of GameSpot. From 1996 through 2007, Kasavin gained fame and critical praise while working for GameSpot, then resigned from his position as Editor-in-Chief to take a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity" to work for Electronic Arts Los Angeles a developer "of one of [his] favorite game series": Command and Conquer.

He joined EA Los Angeles towards the end of the development cycle of Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, and contributed to the completion of the game's single-player campaign. One of his goals when leaving GameSpot was to "earn one of those Editor's Choice awards" (awards that are granted to games that receive a score above 9.0), and Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars received a qualifying score, and thus, his development team was given the award. After finishing up the game, Kasavin supervised a number of balance patches and content updates, then went on to work as a producer on Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3. On Red Alert 3, Kasavin wrote much of the in-game text and unit dialogue, contributed to the structure and tuning of the campaign, and designed the console control scheme among other features. After Red Alert 3, Kasavin worked on the Uprising expansion pack. After finishing work on the Expansion Pack, Kasavin took a new position at 2K Games, working as a Publishing Producer on Spec Ops: The Line.

After the birth of his son, Greg resigned from 2K Games and promised a forthcoming announcement about his new venture in the independent games industry, stating, "..this is something I have to do and this may be the only chance I'll ever get to do it." Greg later announced via his Twitter account that he had joined Supergiant Games as Creative Director. At Supergiant Games he has worked on the video games Bastion and Transistor.

Fun Facts

• His favorite game of all time is a tie between Ultima V and Street Fighter II.
• Fallout 1 is also on his list of favorite RPGs of all time.
• Greg is of Russian descent.
• When GameSpot gives out editors choice awards (games with 9.0 or above), the trophy they hand out is a plastic model of Greg Kasavin holding up the game's box art. At the end of Greg's final On The Spot, he was given 2 of these that, instead of holding the box art, he was holding mini pictures of himself.
• Greg maintains a blog called Truth, Love, and Courage: Games as Stories in which he writes about stories in video games.
• He is a big fan of the band The National.
• He has a five year old daughter.
• While he was at Gamespot, Greg played The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion live for a 12 hour marathon. The marathon ended when the fire alarm in the office went off, forcing him to leave. He also underwent another 12 hour marathon right here on Giant Bomb when he played The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
• He has been friends with Felicia Day since he was twelve.
• His dad is a Russian engineer