Education
Gavin earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Neurobiological Science from Haverford College. Gavin studied for his Doctor of Philosophy 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 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 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.
Career
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 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Gavin and Rubin sold their first video game, Mathematics Jam, in 1985.
In 1989, they sold Keef the Thief to Electronic Arts.
In the early "90s, their fighting game, Way of the Warrior, led to a multi-title deal with Universal Interactive Studios. lieutenant was under the auspices of this Universal deal that they produced the multi-million selling Crash Bandicoot series from 1994 until 1999, and later segued into the critically acclaimed Jak and Daxter series of games.
At the end of 2000, Rubin and Gavin sold Naughty Dog to Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA). All in all, they created 14 Naughty Dog games including Mathematics Jam (1985), Ski Crazed (1986), Dream Zone (1987), Keef the Thief (1989), Rings of Power (1991), Way of the Warrior (1994), Crash Bandicoot (1996), Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back (1997), Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped (1998), Crash Team Racing (1999), Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy (2001), Jak II (2003), Jak 3 (2004), and Jak X: Combat Racing (2005).
Together these games have sold over 35 million units and generated over $1 billion in revenue.
While at Naughty Dog, Gavin developed two LISP dialects for use in game development, GOOL (Game Object Oriented Lisp) and its successor GOAL (Game Oriented Assembly Lisp). These represented a departure from the mainstream in terms of language choice, and featured some innovations in design. Gavin left Fox Interactive Media in 2008.
They have formed a new social game startup called Monkey Gods that is working on a new version of Snood along with a casual word game called MonkWerks.
In recent years Gavin has turned to novel writing. His first novel, the dark historical fantasy, The Darkening Dream, was published in December 2011.
His second novel Untimed, which involves time travel, was released on December 19, 2012.
