Randy Pitchford
| Randy Pitchford | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Randall S. Pitchford II April 21, 1971 |
| Occupation | President, CEO, and co-founder of Gearbox Software |
Randall S. "Randy" Pitchford II (born April 21, 1971) is one of the founders of video game developer Gearbox Software and currently the CEO and president of the company.
He wrote his first game (a 16-room text adventure) when he was about 11 or 12 on a CPM machine that his father built. Pitchford stated that he played Colossal Cave Adventure and was enamored by the game that he used a hex editor to examine the code and partially figured out some of the programming concepts behind it. When a BASIC version of the game was released, he was able to review the source code directly, allowing him to determine how to construct his own text adventures, leading him into game development.
In his early days, Pitchford was a professional magician in Hollywood occasionally performing at the famous Magic Castle between classes at UCLA.
Pitchford had a long professional background in the production and design of 3D games including work on Apogee Software/3D Realms Entertainment's "Atomic" edition for Duke Nukem 3D, and Shadow Warrior. He left the company in May 1997 to work on Prax War at Rebel Boat Rocker. The game was never released and he helped found Gearbox Software LLC in Texas in January 1999.
Pitchford accepted the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences award for best PC Action Game in 2000 for his production and direction of Gearbox's debut title, Half-Life: Opposing Force. Since then, Pitchford's company has been involved in the development and production of Half-Life for Dreamcast (cancelled), Half-Life: Blue Shift, Half-Life for PlayStation 2, Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, James Bond 007: Nightfire for Microsoft Windows, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 for Windows, Halo: Combat Evolved for PC.
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