Andy Gavin

Andrew Scott Gavin aka Andy Gavin (born 1970) is an American video game programmer, designer, entrepreneur, and novelist. In the video game industry he is notable for co-founding the video game company Naughty Dog with childhood friend Jason Rubin in 1986. Naughty Dog's games (most famously, Crash Bandicoot and Jak & Daxter) are known for their combination of exceptional technology, sharp graphics, and polished gameplay. The sophistication of Naughty Dog technology is often credited to Gavin's background in LISP at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

Education

Gavin earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Neurobiological Science from Haverford College. Gavin studied for his Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he carried out research for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on the Mars Rover Vision Project, under his advisor Rod Brooks. While still a student, Gavin learned the computer programming language LISP. Influences from M.I.T. and his own work lead him to develop a number of custom programming languages that improved the quality of graphics, controls, sounds and artificial intelligence in Naughty Dog video games.

Crash Bandicoot

Crash Bandicoot is a video game franchise of platform video games. The series, originally exclusive to the Sony PlayStation, was created by Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin during their tenure at Naughty Dog for Sony Computer Entertainment. Since its conception at Naughty Dog, the series has appeared on multiple platforms and gone through various developers and spans numerous genres. The series has a total of eighteen games and shipped over 50 million copies worldwide.

The games are mostly set on the fictitious Wumpa Islands, an archipelago situated to the south of Australia, although other locations are common. The main games in the series are largely platformers, but several are spin-offs in different genres. The protagonist of the series is an anthropomorphic Bandicoot named Crash, whose quiet life on the Wumpa Islands is often interrupted by the games' main antagonist, Doctor Neo Cortex, who created Crash and now wants nothing less than his demise. In most games, Crash must defeat Cortex and foil any world domination plans he might have.

Naughty Dog

Naughty Dog, Inc. (known as Jam Software before renaming in 1989) is an American video game developer based in Santa Monica, California. Founded by Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin in 1984 as an independent developer, the studio was acquired by Sony Computer Entertainment in 2001. Gavin and Rubin produced a sequence of progressively more successful games, including Rings of Power for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive and Way of the Warrior for the 3DO. The latter — a very low-budget but still plausible offering — prompted Universal Interactive Studios to sign the duo to a three-title deal and fund the expansion of the company.

Mark Cerny, who had been deeply involved with Sonic the Hedgehog 2 for Sega, convinced Naughty Dog to focus its new resources on creating a character-based platform game that would fully exploit the 3D capabilities of the new systems. Ultimately, this led to the release of Crash Bandicoot for the PlayStation on August 31, 1996. Naughty Dog developed three Crash Bandicoot sequels over the next several years. In January 2001, it was announced Sony would acquire Naughty Dog. After developing Crash Team Racing, the company began working on Jak and Daxter for the PlayStation 2.

Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back

Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back is a platform video game developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation. Originally released in 1997, it was re-released for the Sony Greatest Hits and Best for Family line-ups in 1998, for the Platinum Range in 1999 and for the PSone Books line-up in 2001. The game was later made available to download from the PlayStation Network.

Taking place on a fictional group of islands near Australia, Crash Bandicoot 2 follows the adventures of the anthropomorphic bandicoot Crash. Crash is abducted by series villain Doctor Neo Cortex, who has seemingly turned over a new leaf and now wants to save the world. Crash is then thrust into several parts of N. Sanity Island in order to gather Crystals and allow Cortex to contain the power of the upcoming planetary alignment and keep the planet from being destroyed. Crash is joined by his sister Coco, who is suspicious of Cortex's true intentions, and partially by Doctor Nitrus Brio, who tries to persuade Crash to gather Gems instead of Crystals.

Jason Rubin

Jason Rubin (born 1970) is an American video game director, comic book creator, and Internet company founder. He is best known for the Crash Bandicoot series of games which were produced by Naughty Dog, the game development studio he co-founded with partner and childhood friend Andy Gavin in 1986. He was the president of THQ before its closure due to bankruptcy on January 23, 2013.

Career

Rubin and Andy Gavin formed Naughty Dog in 1986. Later that year, they published their first game together — a budgetware title called Ski Crazed. In 1989, Rubin and Gavin sold their first game to Electronic Arts: a role-playing game called Keef the Thief.

While Gavin was an undergraduate in Haverford College and Rubin was attending the University of Michigan, they collaborated with each other on their next title: a role-playing game called Rings of Power. The game began as a PC title, but during meetings at Electronic Arts Gavin spotted a reverse engineered Sega Genesis, pitched a slightly modified version of the title to Trip Hawkins, and the title became the duo's first console game. Rings of Power still has a cult following today.