Toby Gard

Toby Gard (born 8 June 1972) is an English video game designer and consultant. He is the co-creator of Lara Croft, the protagonist of the video game franchise Tomb Raider (1996–present). Lara Croft was awarded a Guinness World Record recognizing her as the "most successful human video game heroine".

Biography

1990s: From Tomb Raider to Confounding Factor Toby Gard was born on 8 June 1972 in Chelmsford, Essex, England. He began his career in videogames in 1994 when he was hired by Core Design to work on the game BC Racers. From late 1994 he was part of the team who designed and developed the original Tomb Raider video game along with the character Lara Croft. His work on the game included building and animating most of the game's characters (including Lara), animating the in-game cutscenes, storyboarding the FMVs, and managing the level designers. Core gave Gard creative control over the game, although it was clear they wanted to market Lara's sex appeal, even asking Gard to implement a nude code into the game, which he refused to do. His vision for Lara was "a female character who was a heroine, you know, cool, collected, in control, that sort of thing" and that "it was never the intention to create some kind of 'Page 3' girl to star in Tomb Raider".

Gard left Core Design in 1997. With Tomb Raider already an established hit, Core was no longer giving Gard the creative freedom he originally had. In the end, he was given the choice of making a Tomb Raider port for the Nintendo 64, or working on Core's vision for Tomb Raider II. Neither option appealed to him, so he left the company. ) but did not take up their offers of employment.

In 1997, he formed the company Confounding Factor along with co-developer Paul Douglas, who had worked with Gard on Tomb Raider. Galleon was announced soon after. The game had a protracted development period and was released in 2004 on Microsoft's Xbox.

For Tomb Raider: Underworld, Gard's work included co-writing the story, directing the cinematics, voice direction, motion capture direction (along with camera setup and managing the animators and lighters), and directing the European TV advert for the game.

2010s: Otherworld, Ninja Gaiden Z, and a new studio From 2010 to 2012, he worked on a webcomic called Otherworld. From 2012 to 2014 Gard was the game director for Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z at Spark Unlimited. where he would work as director on PlayStation VR title Here They Lie.

He has been the owner of Cathuria Games since 2019, where he worked on indie game Dream Cycle.

Inspiration Gard listed Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, EverQuest, Super Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Full Throttle, Star Wars: X-Wing, Power Stone, Stunt Island, Spindizzy, and Super Bomberman as his favourite games in 2000.