Andy Gavin

Andrew Scott Gavin (born June 11, 1970) is an American video game programmer, entrepreneur, and novelist. Gavin co-founded the video game company Naughty Dog with childhood friend Jason Rubin in 1986, which released games including Crash Bandicoot and Jak and Daxter. Prior to founding Naughty Dog, Gavin worked in LISP at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Education Gavin earned a Bachelor of Science in Neurobiological Science from Haverford College. He studied for a Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, conducting research for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on the Mars Rover Vision Project, under advisor Rod Brooks. As a student, Gavin learned the LISP computer programming language, and developed a number of custom programming languages that were later used for the graphics, controls, sounds, and artificial intelligence in Naughty Dog video games. Career Gavin and Rubin sold their first video game, Math Jam, in 1985. In 1989, they sold Keef the Thief to Electronic Arts. In the early 1990s, their fighting game, Way of the Warrior, led to a multi-title deal with Universal Interactive Studios. Under the auspices of this Universal deal they produced the Crash Bandicoot series from 1994 until 1999, and later the Jak and Daxter series. At the end of 2000, Rubin and Gavin sold Naughty Dog to Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA), having released 14 Naughty Dog games, which together sold over 35 million units and generated over $1 billion in revenue.