Ted Pricethe founder and CEO of Insomniac Games, announced that he will retire after more than 30 years with the company in March 2025.

Owned by Sony, Insomniac Games is known for creating iconic game franchises such as Spyro the Dragon, Ratchet & Clank, and Marvel’s Spider-Man series.

The departure of Price is a rare happy event in the game industry where it is still not often that we see a person who spends three decades in the game industry and retires of their own will. And during that time, Price’s company excelled in titles that, in my opinion, got better and better with titles like the Spider-Man series.

Back in 2019, I interviewed Price about his 25 years in the industry.

He said he started Insomniac Games (formerly known as Extreme Software) in 1994. Along with Al Hastings and his brother, Brian, Price worked on Disruptora science fiction shooter game that was repeatedly rejected by publishers. The price dropped to its last $1,000. They started developing Disruptor for the 3DO, but the early game console started tanking. So Mark Cerny, a producer at Universal/Cerny Games, suggested that they move the game to the PlayStation, Sony’s new game console.

Published by Universal Disruptor. It wasn’t great, but it led to many projects. The next game is Spyro the Dragon, which is a family-friendly platformer with a larger target audience than Disruptor. Spyro became a hit, and it’s still around today. Since then, Insomniac has gone on to bigger games, and today it crosses its 25th anniversary as a company. Its games include Ratchet & Clank, Resistance, Fuse, Sunset Overdrive, The Unspoken, Song of the Deep, and most recently, Marvel’s Spider-Man series.

Asked how the company overcame 25 years in the difficult games industry, Price said in our interview in 2019, “What has helped us deal with the developments in the industry is a commitment to collaboration with whole studio. Transparency, where everyone knows what’s going on. The commitment to the philosophy that good ideas come from everywhere, from the beginning, we always rely on a method where wanted. WE that everyone owns the creative process and can contribute to it and solve problems as a group.”

He added, “This is not a company where there’s a lead designer or a creative director telling everyone what to do. We’ve never operated that way, and I don’t believe it works well for in a culture like ours, where many different disciplines work together to create magic. I feel like we’re very consistent, culture-wise, in an industry that tends to be uneven.

That culture produces leaders beyond Price. To fill the role, Insomniac moved to a new leadership model with three co-studio heads: Chad Dezern, Ryan Schneider, and Jen Huang.

Price has a lot of heart that also makes him a beloved person in the game industry, as he was and still is a key contributor to the industry’s DICE Summit, which is held every year by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences in industry. And he has courage too. The price stood against President Donald Trump’s travel ban from seven Muslim countries.

While other game developers issued tweets or sent emails to employees about Trump, Price took the extra step of creating a video on YouTube, in which he stood in front of a camera with all Insomniac employees behind him. He asked not only Trump but the players to stand against the policy. And Price, whose company makes many popular games like Ratchet & Clank or Resistance, used the medium that gamers use almost every day, YouTube.

During Trump’s first days in office in 2017, game developers came from all over the world issued statements and tweets criticized Trump’s order ban on refugees and ban on citizens from Iraq, Iran, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen from entering the United States within 90 days. Trump also banned foreigners with US permanent resident green cards from entering the country without vetting, and he permanently banned refugees from Syria.

“We at Insomniac Games are united in strong opposition to President Trump’s immigration ban,” Price said in the video. “There is no question that these orders hurt us as a company and many of our team members. So we ask. Is this the American way? Is discrimination based on religious beliefs or American national origin? Absolutely not. This is a deplorable, discriminatory act that we and many others across the country believe are clearly unconstitutional. We are, and always will be, a nation of immigrants, please do something about it. … Join us in being a force for good and making your voice heard.”

That leadership is why we are awarding the Price in our second annual Vision Award in 2019.

Insomniac Games also thanks everyone who checked with Insomniac about the condition of its employees and the Burbank studio during the terrible fires in the Los Angeles-area.

“The fires have devastated the communities around us. We continue to focus on supporting each other and communicating daily with Sony Interactive Entertainment to provide the most up-to-date information and resources to all those affected,” said of the company.

The three leaders who succeeded Price said in a post, “Sharing the news that Ted has retired from Insomniac Games is as emotional to type as it is to imagine. The three of us – Chad, Jen and Ryan – have been working hard -been with Ted for many years. He was not only our leader. He was a good one for many reasons.”

The added, “One of the great things about Ted is his ability to inspire everyone around him to grow. Ted also sets the ultimate example of how to not only say the right thing, but also do it. Both in our games and how we behave as leaders and as a studio.

They say watching how Price has operated for decades has prepared them for the challenge of stepping into Ted’s very, very large shoes.

“None of us can or should try to ‘be like Ted’ though – we need to stay true to ourselves and our own leadership styles. However, we can’t say that we often think to ourselves, ‘What would Ted do?’ as part of our individual and collective decision-making process,” Schneider said, in the post.

“I started my career at Insomniac during the PlayStation 2 era in studio marketing and communications, quickly transitioning into my role to become Insomniac’s first community director and helping to establish the role within the PlayStation ecosystem, ” said Schneider. “I joined the senior leadership team at Insomniac several years ago and have held several roles at the studio including Head of Franchise Strategy & Studio Relations. In that role I partnered with teams both internally and externally at Sony Interactive how and when we talk about our games, including in-game creative integrations. Recently, I served as Head of Brand & Leadership Strategy, which means I ensure through communication, coaching and development of culture that the Insomniac tells the world about itself and our games align with what we believe and how we operate within Insomniac.”