Background
Sawyer grew up in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, and is the son of Linda Sawyer and sculptor Gerald P. Sawyer.
Sawyer grew up in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, and is the son of Linda Sawyer and sculptor Gerald P. Sawyer.
Lawrence University.
He is of German ancestry. He earned a Bachelor degree from Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. In addition to being a history major, Sawyer participated in the theatre (including mounting a production of Assassins).
After Lawrence, Sawyer moved to California.
While at Black Isle he was known for coming up with the "Ex-Presidents" project naming system. When Interplay closed down Black Isle Studios many team members ended up at Obsidian Entertainment, which would eventually come to include Sawyer.
In November 2003 it was reported by Tor Thorsen of GameSpot that he had abruptly quit his role as lead designer of Fallout 3 to pursue other projects. He was preceded in that move by memorable game designer John Romero, who left work on the Gauntlet remake in June 2005.
He was the project director and lead designer on the canceled Aliens RPG. He was the project director and lead designer of Fallout: New Vegas.
lieutenant was the longest shipped project he has been involved in from start to finish (about 18 months). In December 2011 Sawyer publicly released a New Vegas mod designed for his own personal use adding a large variety of small tweaks to the game ranging from rebalancing the karma of certain characters to slowing down the level up speed. As of November 2012 this mod is up to version 5.1 which was released in September 2012.
He served as project director and design lead on Pillars of Eternity, a role-playing video game that was crowd funded through Kickstarter.