Crash Bandicoot’s producer and designer, David Siller has alleged that Jason Rubin, Andy Gavin, and Mark Cerny have stolen the credit for making Crash Bandicoot, without acknowledging his, and many other developers’ and staffers’ roles, in the game’s production. He goes so far as to call their relationship 'treacherous.'
Siller is progressively sharing 200 pages of concept art, as well as brief snippets on a Facebook group. Notably, these posts were originally made on a Facebook page that was reported and removed. The story is a little disorganized for the moment, but Siller does share a few personal stories working on the game, which includes many cases where he was shut down by Rubin, Gavin, and/or Cerny.
Siller characterizes Rubin as grossly unprofessional, and he and Gavin were obsessed with keeping control over the entire production. As he puts it, Cerny was a talented programmer, who wanted to be known as a designer, and was not afraid to play politics to get there.
What may stand out among these excerpts is this story of Siller trying to hire Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo fame as the game’s composer:
When naughty dog was clamoring for the music to be resolved, they went on a weekend vacation snow boarding and they took the whole ND staff. I was left to hire on a composer. Rob Biniaz suggested that I talk to ex-Devo Mark Mothersbaugh through some contacts he had at Universal. I invited Mothersbaugh to our offices and we hit it off! I hired him and gave him complete directions that we wanted for the music. He delivered big time! I thought that their work was genius and would be considered the new "Pop Culture" sound.
I was instructed by both Biniaz and Cerny in a meeting to instruct Mutato Muzika that I would be the "point" person, as there was a concern that ND would overwhelm them with too many chiefs!
When Rubin heard about this from Dan Kollmorgan, the sound driver programmer, who was told this by Jason Mancell, Rubin called me into his office and after yelling at me threaten my life!
I told NO one as it did not intimidate me whatsoever! Rubin was just being a bully and he tried to bully everyone that wasn't a naughty dog!
Cerny did NOT back me up, instead he saw this as an opportunity to distance me from the project.
Composer duties eventually went to Josh Mancell. Siller also shared a copy of the internal memo Rubin sent out, which you can see below (click to see full size).
Siller is best known for developing Aero the Acro-bat, but has been in the games industry since 1983. As his LinkedIn notes, he has worn many hats in the industry, including sales and advertising, creative director, game designer, game producer, even vice president of product development at Sunsoft. These allegations are not easy to dismiss, given he may be as venerable in the industry as the men he accuses, if not more so.
As of this writing Jason Rubin, Andy Gavin, and Mark Cerny have not responded to these allegations. Naughty Dog have gone on to make their name with the Uncharted franchise and The Last of Us, while Mark Cerny recently helped in the design of the PlayStation 4. Crash Bandicoot himself has reverted back to Activision, who hasn't seen it fit to use him in recent years.
