Ruffian Games is based in Scotland’s glorious City of Dundee. We specialise in fast paced, thrills and skills action games and their technology. We're a studio of seasoned developers and we're sure you've enjoyed some of our previous work on titles like Crackdown, Crackdown2, Fable 2 and Grand Theft Auto to name a few.
LEARN MORERecent stories, news and chatter written by members of the Ruffian Games team.
Ruffian are looking for an art director to join our happy Ruffian band working on some new and exciting projects. Could it be you?
After a relatively quiet period Ruffian are once again on the search for the cream of the crop in coding talent. Do you have the right stuff to join our merry band of heros in our quest to make cracking games?
Ruffian Games' Billy Thomson looks at cloud gaming and the future
Ruffian Games’ Billy Thomson speaks about the city in flux
Crackdown and Crackdown 2 designer Billy Thomson says simple, playful ideas can attach players for years
"We've created gaming Marmite with Crackdown 2" says Ruffian's Creative Director but seeing your game hit number one is an incredibly powerful feeling
Ruffian Games' Billy Thomson explains the University of Abertay's competition to find the development talent of tomorrow...
Ruffian Creative Director Billy Thomson gives an overview of what he feels are the important and often overlooked factors for player control, one of the most important aspects of gameplay. Originally printed in issue 92 of Develop Magazine.
Ruffian Games’ creative director Billy Thomson bamboozled by publishers’ reluctance to back the quirky
Ruffian Games’ creative director Billy Thomson on being tough but fair
This month Thomson looks over the merits of simple game design. Simple doesn't mean facile.
Billy takes a a look at the games that accompany Hollywood’s cinematic releases and comes to the conclusion that they must evolve
Pitching, demos and presentations. always a joy and this month Billy puts the process under the microscope
Piracy is still a fairly big problem to the publishers and developers of the gaming world, but there now exists a potentially greater threat to the livelihood of the people responsible for actually making the games, and it comes in what would appear to be a completely benign form: the second-hand market.
Write it down or write it off. This month Billy talks about the need to get your ideas out of your head and onto paper
This month Billy tells us why he’s nuts. In a really good way. But still nuts. Originally published in issue 94 of Develop Magazine
Our first blog post and also a link to an interview with Billy from Edge Online
Teleporting from all corners of the world, we have a dedicated team working hard to create some of the best titles in game entertainment.
Mike joined Ruffian in February 2010. He's an assistant producer, but also rolls up his sleeves and gets involved in both design and audio work at Ruffian.
This is Martin's 6th year in the games industry but his first in console games having previously worked at I-play and Tag Games on a variety of mobile and iPhone projects.
Paul has been creating Artwork in various guises for over a 30 year career. Starting his career locally in comics he then became freelance for a number of years before entering the Games industry roughly 13 years ago.
Neil has been in the games industry for over 17 years, working as a Technical Director, Lead Programmer, Engine Architect & low level programmer. He has worked on several popular titles over the years, including G-Police, Grand Prix 4, Too Human, Fable 2 & Crackdown.
Since 2001 Karim has worked in various fields, from real-time 3D engine tech to working on MRI technology for the medical industry. He most recently worked on the environment tools for the upcoming MMO title APB. He wears a silly hat.
Joe graduated from Abertay's Computer Games Technology course in July 2009 with a first class honours degree and hasn’t left Dundee since!
Paul started in the games industry at VIS as an artist on "Brave" subsequently joining D.C.Thomson to work on the Beano and Dandy. In 2005 to join Realtime Worlds to work on Crackdown.
Steve has been working within the IT industry for over twelve years. In this time he has been involved in many of the various aspects of IT, from providing user support to installing, configuring and maintaining business critical IT infrastructure.
Duncan has been working in the games industry for just over 2 years. He has spent 1 ½ years at Realtime Worlds working on an unannounced title where he focussed on graphics programming and large scale data manipulation.
Craig graduated from Edinburgh University with a degree in AI and Computer Science. Since then he has worked on Medical Imaging software, as well as writing games in Australia and working for the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre at the University of Edinburgh.
Neil graduated from the Computer Arts course at Abertay University and then proceeded to compete in the University's "Dare to be Digital" game competition. Immediately after this he took on an internship at Rare Ltd. focusing on character art.
Ed has over twenty years games experience. Starting as artist in the 8-bit era he went on to design such 16-bit titles as Harlequin and Zool 2. He has since worked on many games including Formula Karts, Aironauts, Dexter's Lab, NARC, State of Emergency 2 and Crackdown.
Paul started making Half-Life mods in 2000 while until his final year at uni in 2006 when he decided to try his hand at 3D. After graduating in 2007 Paul worked on Don King Presents Prizefighter and Don Kings Boxing as a character artist before a short stint at Cohort Studios.
Neil has been working in the games industry now for just over 10 years. At Vis Entertainment he worked on a number of titles including Tom and Jerry, State of Emergency and Evil Dead before moving to Realtime Worlds as Senior Animator on Crackdown and APB.
Ross started his career at VIS Entertainment, before moving to Realtime Worlds in 2005, where he was a member of the BAFTA award winning audio team on Crackdown and APB. He left Realtime in 2009 to join Ruffian Games as Audio Design Lead.
Richard has over 15 years experience in the games industry, having joined DMA Design in January 1996. Over that period he has designed, produced and brought to market over 120 individual titles on console, handheld and interactive TV devices.
Originally hailing from commercial software development, Gareth worked as an engineer, project manager and consultant on numerous bespoke software and online applications before joining the games industry in 2003.
Dave graduated from the University of Abertay’s Computer Games Technology course then joining Xen group to work on the award winning Crackdown. Dave subsequently worked in a senior role on MMO APB.
Gaz has been working in video games for over a quarter of a century. Starting as a journalist on the seminal Commodore 64 magazine Zzap!64 he soon moved into games development as founder and Tech Director of 8 Bit software publisher Thalamus.
Peter has been in the software industry since 2000, starting with LightWave and Maya plug-ins, then working at VIS on Brave, I-Race and State of Emergency 2. More recently he was at Black Company Studios, concentrating on PC, PSP, Nintendo DS and Wii projects.
Rob has been a games programmer for over 5 years. He has worked at EA/Criterio on titles including Burnout 3, Black and Burnout Paradise. After a brief spell working on TimeSplitters 4 at Free Radical Design, Rob joined Ruffian as senior engineer on the AI/Gameplay team.
Steve has worked for Vis, Red Lemon Studios, Realtime Worlds and Midway in many creative roles. His roles have included Environment Art, Level Design, Content Design and World Design on games like; Earthworm Jim 3D, Roswell, Dexter’s Lab, NARC, Crackdown & Wheelman.
Ryan is an MA graduate of the University of Teesside, working as an Environment Artist. He has over two years experience at Virtual Playground where he collaborated on PC titles such as the Prison Tycoon series, Mission Runway and Eco Tycoon: Project Green.
Leigh began in games in 1997, starting at Climax, and in 2007 moving onto working with Xen. He has worked on projects ranging from Stinky (a "smell" device) and Diablo PSX, To Sudeki and more recently to high profile hits such as Fable 2, covering a variety of platforms and roles.
Jim's background is in commercial software engineering working as engineer and project manager to produce bespoke software systems for companies such as Sony, and Orange. He moved to videogames in 2005 when he joined the Crackdown team.
Stuart joined the games industry in 2003. Since then he has been Senior Environment Artist on Crackdown, Lead Technical Environment Artist on APB and Art Lead on Crackdown 2 with Ruffian.
After studying two and a half years of a BSc Psychology degree at Dundee University and deciding it wasn’t for her, Ann found her first job in the games industry with local games company, Visual Science.
John has been working in games since 2004. After graduating from Abertay's Computer Games Technology course in Dundee John joined Zoë Mode. He worked on titles in the EyeToy franchise and PlayStation Home for Sony. John joined Ruffian in 2009.
Billy has 13 years experience designing video games. He has been involved in a wide range of areas of design as well as gaining invaluable production and team management experience before founding Ruffian as its Creative Director.
Terry Is a graduate of the University of Central Lancashire's Games development course, working as a junior AI / Gameplay Engineer. He has one years experience at Gusto Games, working on multiple un-announced titles, including one cross platform MMO.
Sean started out contributing to mods for Duke Nukem 3D, Half-Life and Unreal Tournament. After a brief stint in insurance he found his first professional position in the games industry with Midway as a Mission Designer on Wheelman. He is never referred to by his first name. Ever.
Kevin is a graduate of Abertay's Computer Arts course. He took part in Dare to be digital 2008. His team Blue Skies went on to win the contest and as a result was nominated with 2 other teams for the Bafta "Ones to watch" award.
Sean has worked in the games industry for over 5 years. Starting at Realtime Worlds in 2006 he worked on the award winning Crackdown & technology team before joining Proper Games in 2008 as Lead QA to work on Scottish Bafta winner FLOCK!.
Barry worked as a senior gameplay programmer on Crackdown before leaving to join Xen to work with Lionhead on Fable 2. He now works as Technical Director at Ruffian Games.