City of Heroes – Ken Morse

PC + Mac

Role: Studio Art Director (Paragon Studios / NCsoft)

City of Heroes Going Rogue was the first full expansion boxed product for the City of Heroes franchise since City of Villains. It was also the first major retail release from Paragon Studios.

While dated by today’s standards, City of Heroes set the bar for the Superhero MMO genre with unmatched character and power customization, deep storytelling, and incredible combat and open-world mobility.

Going Rogue gave myself and the team a chance to move the themes, characters, powers and visual designs of the City of Heroes franchise toward a more modern, less comic book superhero aesthetic that gained popularity at the time through the popularity of films like The Dark Knight, Iron Man and Spiderman.

Fun fact: The Going Rogue trailer was one of my first collaborations with Plastic Wax, who at the time was just beginning to make a name for themselves as a relatively new player in animation and VFX. We collaborated again on the Magic Legends Open Beta Trailer several years later, and I think it’s safe to say we all grew quite a bit over that time!

PC + Mac

Role: Studio Art Director (Paragon Studios / NCsoft)
Lead Environment Artist (Cryptic Studios)

City of Heroes was groundbreaking for it’s time, and is still beloved by players to this day.

This cinematic is neither, but it captures a nostalgic moment of transformation when the game went from an indie upstart effort to a fully funded and published MMO with innovative combat, movement, gameplay and character customization features other MMOs would later emulate.

I worked on this title initially as lead environment artist from the end of the City of Villains initial development cycle at Cryptic Studios and eventually took on art direction for the franchise and founding studio art director at NCsoft’s Paragon Studios.

I’ll always be fond of this game, the stories it told, what it taught me about creative leadership, management and the importance of every aspect of live game health and community.