William Pugh | |
|---|---|
 Pugh presenting at the 2015 Game Developers Conference | |
| Born | 1994or1995(age 29–30) [1] |
| Occupation | Game designer |
| Known for | The Stanley Parable |
| Awards | Saxxy Award, IGF Audience Award [ citation needed ] |
William Pugh (born 1994/1995) is a British game designer best known for his work on The Stanley Parable , and for founding the game development studio Crows Crows Crows.
William Pugh's parents are art teachers. He developed an interest in video games after playing a Nintendo 64 during a hospital visit when he was six. He studied at the Leeds College of Art for two weeks, but dropped out to work on video games. Pugh taught himself video game environment design [2] through working on modifications, or mods, of video games by Valve. He made levels for Team Fortress 2 , campaigns for Left 4 Dead 2 , and puzzles in Portal . [3] His work earned him a Saxxy Award, a fan-voted award for Team Fortress 2-based creations. [4]
Pugh first heard of the Source engine mod of Half-Life 2 known as The Stanley Parable from Minecraft creator Markus Persson's Twitter feed. Pugh wanted to work on a larger project and so contacted the mod's creator, Davey Wreden. They decided to work on a remastered, standalone version of The Stanley Parable together. Development of the full game took two years, mainly through remote collaboration software Dropbox and Skype. Pugh started an unnamed development studio following the game's release to work on several projects, saying that "we've got the money and freedom to just go wild, so we've been doing exactly that". [3] Pugh presented on The Stanley Parable's development at the 2015 Game Developers Conference. [5] Reflecting on the game's release, he said he was less interested in the technical work of sound and texture editing, and would instead prefer to outsource those jobs to focus on writing. [6]
Pugh founded the independent video game studio Crows Crows Crows in October 2015. [7] [8] The studio's first game was Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist , a free title released in December 2015. The meta-fictional game, in which the player explores and interacts with the backstage elements of a video game demonstration while waiting to play it, includes voice work from Justin Roiland, of Rick and Morty , and Simon Amstell. [9]
Crows Crows Crows has released two other games using the itch.io platform. The Magpie Collection is a series of ten short games by various developers including Pugh, compiled by the studio, which were developed following an IndieGoGo to raise money to help replace equipment stolen from several developers at the 2015 A Maze event in Berlin. [10] The Temple of No, released in June 2016, is a text-based adventure game using the Twine platform. [11]
Roiland announced in September 2015 that he would be working on a virtual reality game for the HTC Vive with Pugh. [12] The collaboration, called Accounting , was released as a free download on Microsoft Windows in 2016. Pugh and Roiland's collaboration began after a chance Twitter conversation in September 2015. Roiland, who was in the proximity of the offices of Respawn Entertainment in California, called out on Twitter if anyone at Respawn was a fan of Rick and Morty and could give him a tour. Pugh reached out to reply, lying about working at Respawn as he was still in the United Kingdom, and offering him a tour. Pugh sent further messages to Roiland feigning that he just missed him, but eventually fessed up. Roiland recognized Pugh's name from The Stanley Parable and was impressed by the whole "weird switcheroonie". Pugh then flew out to Los Angeles where he and Justin spent a week performing a game jam to develop the basics of Accounting, which was then developed into a full game through remote collaboration. [13]
| Year | Title | Developer |
|---|---|---|
| 2013 | The Stanley Parable | Galactic Cafe |
| 2015 | Dr. Langeskov | Crows Crows Crows |
| The Magpie Collection | ||
| 2016 | The Temple of No | |
| Accounting | Crows Crows Crows/Squanch Games | |
| 2017 | Accounting+ | |
| 2017 | Eat [14] | |
| 2022 | The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe | Crows Crows Crows |
Daniel James Harmon is an American screenwriter and producer. He is best known as the creator and producer of the NBC and Yahoo! Screen sitcom Community (2009–2015), creator and host of the comedy podcast Harmontown (2012–2019), co-creator of the Adult Swim animated sitcom Rick and Morty (2013–present) and its subsequent franchise along with Justin Roiland, and co-founder of the alternative television network and website Channel 101 along with Rob Schrab.
Mark Justin Roiland is an American voice actor, animator, writer, producer, and director. He is best known as the co-creator of Adult Swim's animated sitcom Rick and Morty, for which he voiced the protagonists Rick Sanchez and Morty Smith from 2013–2022, and as the co-creator of Hulu's Solar Opposites, in which he formerly voiced the main character, Korvo, until both networks severed ties with him in 2023. He had also voiced Earl of Lemongrab in Adventure Time, Blendin Blandin in Gravity Falls, and Oscar in Fish Hooks. He founded the animation studio Justin Roiland's Solo Vanity Card Productions! and the video game studio Squanch Games, though he resigned from the latter in 2023.
The Stanley Parable is a story-based video game designed and written by developers Davey Wreden and William Pugh. The game carries themes such as choice in video games, the relationship between a game creator and player, and predestination/fate.
Rick and Morty is an American adult animated science fiction sitcom created by Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon for Cartoon Network's nighttime programming block Adult Swim. The series follows the misadventures of Rick Sanchez, a cynical mad scientist, and his good-hearted but fretful grandson Morty Smith, who split their time between domestic life and interdimensional adventures that take place across an infinite number of realities, often traveling to other planets and dimensions through portals and on Rick's flying saucer. The general concept of Rick and Morty relies on two conflicting scenarios: domestic family drama and a misanthropic grandfather dragging his grandson into hijinks.
Cara Ellison is a Scottish video game writer and critic.
The Beginner's Guide is an interactive storytelling video game created by Davey Wreden under the studio name Everything Unlimited Ltd. The game was released for Linux, OS X, and Windows on October 1, 2015. The game is Wreden's follow-up to the critically praised The Stanley Parable, his previous interactive storytelling title that was initially released in 2013.
Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist is an adventure video game developed by Crows Crows Crows, a studio created by William Pugh, best known for his work on another video game, The Stanley Parable. The game was released for Microsoft Windows and OS X on December 4, 2015 as a free offering. The game sets up expectations of participating in a narrative-driven story about a heist, but players instead find themselves helping out an unseen narrator before they can participate in the story.
The third season of Rick and Morty, an American animated television series created by Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland, originally aired on Cartoon Network's late night programming block, Adult Swim. It premiered with "The Rickshank Rickdemption", which aired unannounced on April 1, 2017, as part of Adult Swim's annual April Fools' prank. As a result of production delays, the remaining episodes began airing weekly nearly four months later, on July 30, 2017. The season comprised ten episodes but it originally was supposed to be fourteen episodes, and its initial airing concluded on October 1, 2017.
"A Rickle in Time" is the first episode in the second season of the American animated television sitcom Rick and Morty, and the twelfth overall episode of the series. Written by Matt Roller and directed by Wes Archer, the episode first aired on Adult Swim in the United States on July 26, 2015. The title of the episode is a pun to the novel, A Wrinkle in Time.
Pocket Mortys, also known as Rick and Morty: Pocket Mortys, is a free-to-play role-playing video game developed by Big Pixel Studios, Tag Games and Pocket Sized Hands and published by Adult Swim Games. The game was released worldwide on January 13, 2016 for iOS and Android devices. The game is based on the television series Rick and Morty and the mechanics serve as a parody/remake of the Pokémon franchise. Two comic series adaptations, Pocket Mortys (2016) and Pocket Like You Stole It (2017), written by Tini Howard, have been published by Oni Press.
The Temple of No is a 2016 text adventure game by Studio Crows Crows Crows. It was written and voice acted by William Pugh, creator of The Stanley Parable and Accounting+. Developed in Twine, it was published for free on Itch.io.
Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality is a virtual reality game compatible with HTC Vive, PlayStation VR and Oculus Rift developed by Owlchemy Labs and published by Adult Swim Games for Microsoft Windows on April 20, 2017. It is based on the American animated series Rick and Morty, whose series co-creator Justin Roiland aided in the development. A port for the PlayStation 4 was released on April 10, 2018.
Richard Daniel "Rick" Sanchez is one of the two eponymous characters from the Adult Swim animated television series Rick and Morty and resulting franchise. The character was created by Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon, and voiced by the former during the first six seasons of the series, then by Ian Cardoni beginning with the seventh season. Yōhei Tadano provides his voice for Rick and Morty: The Anime, after voicing the character in the Japanese dub of the series and various promotional short films. Rick is a misanthropic, alcoholic scientist inspired by Christopher Lloyd's Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown from Back to the Future and Reed Richards / Mr. Fantastic from Marvel Comics. In September 2021, Lloyd portrayed Rick himself in a series of promotional interstitials for the series.
Squanch Games is an American video game development studio based in Burbank, California. The company was founded by Justin Roiland in August 2016. The studio is most known for developing Accounting (2016), Trover Saves the Universe (2019) and High on Life (2022). The company has offices in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Burbank, California.
The fourth season of the animated television series Rick and Morty was confirmed by Adult Swim in May 2018. The season consists of 10 episodes. The first five episodes of the season aired from November 10, 2019 to December 15, 2019, while the remaining five aired from May 3, 2020 to May 31, 2020.
Trover Saves the Universe is a 2019 action platform game developed and published by Squanch Games for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and Oculus Quest. Envisioned as a comedy game, the title features an optional virtual reality component. Justin Roiland, who was the founder of Squanch Games and the co-creator of Rick and Morty, provided voice work for many characters in this game. It received generally positive reviews upon release.
Mr. Meeseeks is a recurring fictional species in the American animated television series Rick and Morty. Created by Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon and based on the title character from Scud: The Disposable Assassin by Rob Schrab, Meeseeks are a powder-blue-skinned species of humanoids who are created to serve a single purpose which they will go to any length to fulfill. Each brought to life by a "Meeseeks Box", they typically live for no more than a few hours in a constant state of pain, vanishing upon completing their assigned task for existence to alleviate their own suffering; as such, the longer an individual Meeseeks remains alive, the more insane and unhinged they become.
Rick and Morty is an American animated science-fiction comedy franchise, whose eponymous duo consists of Rick Sanchez and Morty Smith. Rick and Morty were created by cartoonist Justin Roiland for a 2006 parody film of Back to the Future for Channel 101, a short film festival co-founded by Dan Harmon. After six years, the sketch was developed into Rick and Morty, a half-hour prime time show that was a hit for Adult Swim, receiving universal acclaim across all seasons. Alongside the original television series, the characters of the show have been featured in a variety of media, including spin-offs, comic books, musical releases and video games. The show has earned hundreds of millions of dollars in income across their merchandising and media franchise.
Douglas Scott Wreden, better known by his online pseudonym DougDoug, is an American YouTuber, Twitch streamer, and former Hearthstone caster and producer. He makes gaming videos that revolve around him doing various gaming challenges, often involving the use of artificial intelligence, modifications to games, or giving his Twitch chat heavy control of the game or stream. In 2023, he won the "League of Their Own" award at The Streamer Awards.
Davey Wreden is a game designer and developer, best known for his work on The Stanley Parable and The Beginner's Guide.
Media related to William Pugh (game designer) at Wikimedia Commons
