Rusty Cleaver's Goals
Rusty Cleaver is a company owned and operated by one person. My goal is to make games that are engaging and leave the player with a sense of intrigue. I want to explore the human condition in a way that only games can. I view games as art.
About Our Company
Our Mission Statement
Rusty Cleaver is for all intents and purposes an art company. The medium is video games, but it remains as art. We will never be big. We won't be publicly traded, and it won't be my main source of income. In this way Rusty Cleaver can remain as an art venture, and never get pulled into the Micro-Transaction lootbox hell that sucks the soul out of the gaming industry today.
The Man Behind The Name
Rusty Cleaver
Zachary
Berlstein
About Me
I started making games back in 5th grade on my terrible laptop that could barely run google chrome. I remember being fascinated with getting some text and numbers to make something that someone could play.
At the same time I've always been interested in horror. I remember back in elementary school I liked to draw demons and my mom told me to be careful drawing them at school. She was worried a teacher might think I'm crazy.
I like to tell stories. My favorite kinds of stories are those that relate to the human experience, and specifically how we handle and interpret the world. I think that pain is a necessary part of living, and I think that it's worth exploring on a deeper level. Games can do that in a way that books, movies, TV shows, and every other art form cannot do. Because games give you choice. YOU choose. YOU have direct input on what happens, how it happens, and how YOU CHOOSE to deal with what comes next. Games reach out and touch the player. Reading a book or watching a movie is passive. Games grab you and hold you and make you a part of it, which is something I adore.
It's for similar reasons that I abhor AI art. I think it takes the art our of itself. There is no art made by AI, just pixels on a screen. You could argue it's art, but to do so would to be denying what art is, an expression of humanity. I will never use AI to create my games.