Gavin Pugh

I’m one of a pretty common breed of game developer; a Brit living in California. I’m originally from a town in England called Harlow. I moved to where I live now, Los Angeles, near the end of 2005.

I technically started programming I think somewhere between five and seven years old. I used to help my parents enter Type-ins from magazines into the computer we had at the time, an Amstrad CPC 464. Was a nice start in retrospect, playing around with code other people had written. Eventually I moved on to writing my own stuff, and I’ve had a keen interest in programming ever since.

My first industry job came a few months after I left University. I was fortunate enough to land a job atClimax Brighton. The studio had just barely finished their first game, the popular MotoGP when I started work. In my close to four years there, I worked on three ATV racing games. Climax was an excellent place to work. I had loads of fun in my time there, both in and out of work.

I moved on to work at Neversoft Entertainment in the United States. At the time they were knee deep in Tony Hawk titles, and their new project: Gun. My first two games here were Tony Hawk titles. These days though, I’m working on the Guitar Hero franchise. Has been fantastic working here so far, and it’s great to be working on a game that I enjoy playing so much too.

Aside from my first game in the industry, all my career I’ve been what’s known as a ‘Generalist’ programmer. I’ve got my hands dirty with pretty much every aspect of game development at some point. After many years doing this work, I still love it and couldn’t imagine doing anything else for a living.