Erik Purins

Purins spent time observing China's premier game studio Nihuo in 1997, and returned in 1998 to the US to pursue a career in PC, Mac, and console gaming.

Erik moved with his family to Redwood City, CA, where he enrolled at Cogswell College in Sunnyvale, CA. A summer temp job testing System Shock 2 at EA gained him industry experience in 1999.

After working late nights on Thrasher: Skate and Destroy for Z-Axis, Purins was hired on full time at Z-Axis as an artist. His first task as an artist was to upres mesh and textures on the PlayStation-to-Dreamcast port of Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX. Purins followed up as a level mesh artist on Mirra sequels DMFSBMX Maximum Remix and DMFSBMX2.

In 2001, Erik transitioned to a role as a technical artist assigned to the tools team under Nick Torkos, with whom he would work for the next 4 years. After assuming responsibility for nightly art tools builds and maintaining various build and pipeline scripts, in 2006 Purins was eventually shifted to X-Men:TOG as a build engineer when a critical build engineer hire was let go.

Laid off from Z-Axis after X-Men, he moved to Chicago to take a job with Day 1 Studios and live close to his family in Wisconsin. At Day 1, he continued working on pipeline issues as a Content Manager on the Xbox360 and PS3 ports of F.E.A.R. and F.E.A.R. expansion packs (F.E.A.R. Files). During the long running project F.E.A.R 3 (F.3.A.R), he transitioned back to build engineer.

In December of 2011, Day 1 Studios laid off an entire game team for undisclosed reasons. Purins was one of those affected by the cutbacks.