Naughty Dog, Inc.

Overview

Naughty Dog was founded in 1986 by Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin. We were only 16 at the time, but we're getting really sick of that story so we won't belabor the point. The whole "young entrepreneur" bit plays really well to parent types, but frankly, we needed money to buy video games and stuff, so we worked hard, and that's the whole story.

The company started as JAM software, which is a really silly name, but it was the mid-eighties and Vans, OP pants, and that kind of stuff was in, so it seemed appropriate. The first game Jam Software sold was Ski Crazed, an Apple II video game that almost, but not quite, completely failed to evoke the thrill of downhill skiing. Jam Software also created Dream Zone a graphic adventure that was almost, but not quite, the first game to support the PC's VGA graphics standard. Both of these early games were published by Baudville, which was almost, but not quite, a publisher.

Things really got going when Jam Software signed on with Electronic Arts -- definitely a publisher -- and began producing Keef the Theif for the Apple IIGS, Amiga, Atari ST, and PC. Contemporaneously (cool word, huh?), the team changed its name to Naughty Dog. Although it might be appropriate to launch into an entertaining yarn on the origins of the name right about now, we'd just be making it all up -- nobody remembers exactly why we chose the name. Suffice it to say that with the 1989 release of Keef the Thief, the newly named Naughty Dog left its mark on video game history. It took more than a few years for this to become clear, however.

In 1992 Naughty Dog published Rings of Power one of EA's first three Genesis projects. Andy went on to Boston's MIT to pursue a degree in Artificial Intelligence, and Rubin went to Newport Beach, California, to learn surfing and 3D computer graphics. Rubin wishes now that he had done more surfing -- within a year Naughty Dog reformed in Boston and created Way of the Warrior for the 3DO. The project was "self-financed", which is another way of saying it was done cheap. In searching for a publisher, Naughty Dog met Universal Interactive Studios, who had not only an outragously long name, but a hideously large bank account. UIS published Way in 1994, during the three month period when the 3DO was actually considered cool. Naughty Dog signed a three project deal with UIS, moved to LA, and began work on a new project...and our tans.

The nice thing about a three project deal is that your projects are "funded for real", which is another way of saying that Naughty Dog finally had the cash to get a serious team together. We began with Dave Baggett, one of Andy’s fellow AI students from MIT, and didn't stop until we had The Pack. We also ended up with more Silicon Graphics workstations than people. It was then that the long hours began and the showering stopped... Crash Bandicoot had begun.

It took two years, 16-18 hours a day, to create the first Crash Bandicoot. Due to a “quirk” in the PlayStation developers contract, Naughty Dog managed to keep Crash secret until just before E3, 1996. At that point, Sony insisted that they see the game.

The public first saw Crash Bandicoot at E3 in May of 1996. Our world would never be the same. All of a sudden a product of ours was being compared with a Miyamoto-san Mario title, and in the opinion of more than one person, we had the edge.


Contributed by Roger Wilco (1064) on Oct 23, 2002.