Dating & Relationship status

On 5 September 2019, Thorson announced that they were effectively shutting down Matt Makes Games, while re-establishing the same team under the new name “Extremely OK Games” (abbreviated EXOK). The purpose of the change was twofold. First, the new name recognized that Thorson was not the sole creative force behind the games and ensured that the whole team was fully recognized and shared in the collective output from the company. Second, the change coincided with a move to a new set of offices in Vancouver to house the entire team, which had been previously spread across the world, including some in São Paulo. EXOK was technically founded in March 2019, but the first six months had been spend working to move these international developers into Canada and dealing with immigration requirements. The EXOK name itself came from a humorous tweet that operations manager Heidy Motta had seen that wished its readers an “extremely OK afternoon”.

Thorson announced in 2019 that they were non-binary.

In August 2015, Thorson and Noel Berry, another member of Matt Makes Games, had a four-day game jam to create a PICO-8 game about climbing a mountain with difficult jumping steps. When they completed this, they recognized the opportunity to flesh out the game into a full release, forming the basis of Celeste. Full work on the game started around January 2016. The game was released across multiple platforms in January 2018. By the end of 2018, it had sold more than 500,000 copies, and received numerous industry awards.

Thorson was named by Forbes as one of their “30 Under 30” for gaming in 2014, recognizing them for the development of TowerFall.

Recognizing the potential success of the title, Johnson suggested that they get a house in Vancouver to bring in others to help, which they acquired around October 2012, calling it the “Indie House” and inviting other collaborators to join them. Thorson incorporated Matt Makes Games as Matt Makes Games Inc. shortly afterwards in November 2012. Later, Holowka recognized Thorson as TowerFall’s main creator and relinquished his stake as a co-creator. Holowka remained on the game’s development team as its composer. TowerFall was ultimately developed as an exclusive for the Ouya console. Following its initial release in 2013, the team reissued the game in 2014 as TowerFall: Ascension for most other gaming platforms with additional features. TowerFall: Ascension was critically praised, and within a month had brought in over US$500,000 .

Around fourteen, Thorson’s mother helped them acquire a copy of Game Maker, a software tool to help develop video games. Through working in Game Maker, they were connected to others in online forums who were also interested in making games, including Chevy Ray Johnston. They developed a number of small pay-what-you-want games through Game Maker in high school and through college, including Jumper and several sequels, FLaiL, and An Untitled Story. Several of their games were described as “masocore”, masochistic games that were extremely difficult for the player to complete; Thorson felt their goal was not to make their games near-impossible but instead to make games that helped direct the player to improve themselves so that the player could beat the challenges they made for them. Early games were published under the name “Helix Games”, but in April 2008, they rebranded it as “Matt Makes Games”, considering the name a more important brand for their work.

Matt Thorson (born 18 March 1988) is a Canadian video game developer, known as one of the lead creators for the video games TowerFall and Celeste, developed under their studio Matt Makes Games. Since September 2019, Thorson has effectively shut down Matt Makes Games to relaunch their team under Extremely OK Games.

Matt Thorson grew up on 18 March 1988. Thorson went to college at Grande Prairie Regional College in Alberta, Canada, studying computer science, during which one summer they worked at HermitWorks Entertainment, a local video game development studio.