United by our mission – divided by geography. We're a small remote-first studio in Aotearoa, New Zealand, backed by great advisors and tech.
Eight-year-old Joe remembers fighting over who got to be the Helicopter in Silkworm on Amiga with his best friend. And then losing in a glorious cacophony of co-op play.
Eight-year-old Joe remembers fighting over who got to be the Helicopter in Silkworm on Amiga with his best friend. And then losing in a glorious cacophony of co-op play.
Joe ran the 3-million DAU hit Restaurant City at Playfish. He was a founding employee at Space Ape Games. He led the teams behind Samurai Siege and Rival Kingdoms. He designed the co-op events that made those games into monsters. Joe was on the leadership team that grew Space Ape to over 100 staff, and the successful partnership with Supercell.
Joe brings this experience of growing studios and games to to 2UP. He can't wait to get the magic of co-op into the hands of as many humans as possible.
When Joe and his wife clocked the infamous Spaghetti Monster on “Overcooked”, he popped it into his diary under the title of: “best day of our marriage”. To be clear, he started counting after their wedding day.
1988: Nine-year-old Tim sketches the design for a multiplayer, networked point-and-click adventure at his family's kitchen table.
1988: Nine-year-old Tim sketches the design for a multiplayer, networked point-and-click adventure at his family's kitchen table.
Tim never did get that phone call from LucasArts. But he has gone on to ship over a dozen games, including, yes, two point-and-click adventures. He co-founded acclaimed mobile studio Launching Pad Games, and created the killer app for Magic Leap, in collaboration with Weta Workshop.
Tim and his wife practise "Minecraft-based parenting", where their four children learn potty training, talking, and Minecraft in a flexible order.
Ben's dad brings home a work computer and boots up OG Microsoft Flight Simulator 1.0. As the plane soars jerkily over a landscape of white triangular mountains, Ben is transfixed, and vows that one day he will work on his own triangular mountain game.
Ben's dad brings home a work computer and boots up OG Microsoft Flight Simulator 1.0. As the plane soars jerkily over a landscape of white triangular mountains, Ben is transfixed. He vows that one day he will work on his own triangular mountain game.
Ben has worked at several studios in Australia and New Zealand, starting out on console games such as 'de Blob' for the Nintendo Wii, and then moving to mobile shortly after the iPhone launched in 2007. Since then, he has shipped over 20 mobile games. Ben has dipped his toes into several areas of game art and design, but became more and more focused on game UI as it evolved.
Ben works from Melbourne, Australia. His hobbies include complaining about public transport and attending chicken parma addiction meetings.
Steffi's game development career started at ten, with a text adventure centred on avoiding the teachers in the school building while skipping lessons.
Steffi's game development career started around age ten, when her dad taught her how to make simple BASIC programs on the C64. Her first (never finished, of course) text adventure centred on avoiding the teachers in the school building while skipping lessons.
After several years of free-to-play development experience at Gameforge and Flaregames in Germany, then freelancer and cloud architect for several gaming companies, karma made her move across the world to Wellington, NZ to be a backend developer at Magic Leap.
Now, between being a mobile indie on her own, she supports 2UP (which includes the only person she knows that has more played hours on Plants vs Zombies) with backend dev and Dev-Ops.
Pedro was a dramatist and a developer before he found his calling as a designer. We think he likes the letter "D".
Pedro has been in the gaming industry since 2005, back when he was cutting his teeth on Flash games – remember them?! His career has taken him from developer, to game designer, to creative director and now he’s a gun for hire.
Pedro is 2UP’s firm-but-gentle guiding hand through these volatile early days and brings not just a wealth of strategic experience, but a pinch of Brazillian zest to 2UP’s mission.
If 2UP was a game of “Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime”, Pedro would be in charge of the shields while the rest of us fire away with the cannons. It’s something he’s had plenty of practice at with his own son too.
The best in this industry are spread around the globe. We make sure that geography isn’t a barrier to building an amazing core team. Remote working at 2UP means you will have the latest equipment, at home. It means we will talk online every day, and meet up every few weeks.
We are open to applicants whose time zones overlap with New Zealand. (E.g. Australia and California works. Europe doesn't.)
We’re all about you being you, so you’ll have full autonomy over how you work and some flexibility in when you work. We’re well funded which means you can get good kit and know that you’re financially secure. We also offer stock options to all employees.
