We Are Secret Powers
Wednesday, July 13th, 2011 at 10:43 pm
In 2003, my friend Ryan and I had an idea for a creative collective. It would be called “Slackcircus,” an outlet to actually create some of the ridiculous video experiments we always said we’d get around to. It took a few years — you know, day jobs and all — but we finally got around to making some stuff.
Eventually, one of our first ridiculous video experiments collided, in the most wonderful way, with our lifelong love of video games. Opportunities in games started to pop up, allowing us to combine our career skills in post production with our personal interests. Awkward nerd high fives were exchanged.
From 2005 to 2009, Slackcircus evolved from a creative collective into a full-fledged post production studio — Slackcircus Studios, LLC, to be precise. Although we produced creative video work for clients across various industries, our game-industry projects, like trailers and in-game content, always felt most like home.
Earlier this year, right in the middle of a full visual rebrand of Slackcircus Studios, a nagging truth began to gnaw its way into the rebranding process. As we worked feverishly to inject new life into the name “Slackcircus” by changing its look, something just didn’t feel right. The nagging truth soon turned from a whisper to one very clear statement: you’re trying to change the wrong thing.
We all seemed to be hearing the same declaration in our heads. What was the wrong thing? We now know it wasn’t the name “Slackcircus” itself. It was how we were using the name. Slackcircus began as an outlet to do a Little Bit of Everything, but almost immediately, organically became a company that chose to specialize in a Very Particular Something. It seems rather obvious now, but when it comes to what we want to do for a living, our heart has been with video games from the beginning.
Slackcircus.com is not going away, it’s just returning to its roots. It will become a home for specialty animation projects, video experiments and commentary on stuff we love. After all, those are the types of things that inspired the name in the first place.
As for “Secret Powers,” we think of it as a code name for an organization that’s been underground but actively fighting crime for years. It’s a question-marked box containing the power-up you need to get past That One Part. It’s the shadowy division of Slackcircus that no one knew about until a certain upstart reporter started asking the right questions.
We’re happy the lights are on. We’re ready to save the city. We are Secret Powers.
