Susan Cummings co-founded the 2K Games label at Take-Two, where in a two-year window she signed BioShock, Borderlands, XCOM, and The Darkness, and pulled Civilization out of Atari one week after her first call with Firaxis. She is a Rockstar alum, co-founder of Tiny Rebel Games and Fictioneers, and today the co-founder and CEO of 10six Games, building the AI-forward roguelite YOU vs Zombies. In this re:Play, Greg Off traces thirty years of deal-making, platform pivots, and what "finding your rock band" really means.

In this episode:

• Intellivision, Utopia, and Don Daglow as the first game and a lifelong friend
• A Boston recruiting job, a "book of multimedia companies" in 1995, and a first cold call to Al Lowe at Sierra
• Ed Fries and a Microsoft lunch before Xbox existed — "Microsoft still has more money than you do"
• The Sam Houser meeting at her San Francisco apartment in 1997 that led to Rockstar Games
• Moving to New York a few months after GTA3 shipped — and what the "best and worst" years at Rockstar actually cost
• The eye of Sauron turning to GTA, and why every competitor's attempt to clone it failed
• The birth of the 2K Games label — the pressure to be something that wasn't only Rockstar
• Borderlands verbally pitched at E3 as "Pandora's box" and "Halo meets Diablo"
• BioShock signed on a GameSpot article and a long friendship with Ken Levine
• The 50/50 IP co-ownership structure — and why Susan and Ryan Brant were the first to write it into the contract
• The Civilization acquisition — first Friday call to Jeff Briggs, $20 million check to Atari the following week
• XCOM as a freebie thrown in at the last second — the story Atari now hates telling
• The Oblivion distribution deal — a $60 million guarantee they earned back in the first week
• The "third-game rule" — why the magic tends to arrive on the third title in a series, and why publishers keep trying to skip it
• Leaving Take-Two — the reset with her husband and creative partner Lee, and starting Tiny Rebel Games
• 10six Games — a seven-person team in Wales building YOU vs Zombies
• The design of YOU vs Zombies — human-authored art, story, systems, and level design, with generative AI as the customization layer
• The honest read on AI in games — roughly 90% of developers using it, most afraid to say so, and Steam's disclosure requirement as an unintended scarlet letter
• The renaissance argument — why the next few years at the small-team end may look more like a renaissance than a reduction

Links & References

Susan Cummings on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/susanicummings/

10six Games — https://www.10sixgames.com/

YOU vs Zombies on Steam — https://store.steampowered.com/app/4224660/YOU_vs_Zombies/

Tiny Rebel Games — https://www.tinyrebelgames.com/

Rockstar Games — https://www.rockstargames.com/

2K — https://www.2k.com/