Scott Cawthon

Scott Cawthon was born on July 26, 1971, in the US. He is a graduate from ‘The Art Institute of Houston’. Presently he resides with his wife and three children in Salado, Texas, US.

Although the exact time as to when Scott Cawthon embarked on a career as animator and game designer is not clearly known, the period is presumed to be sometime in the 1990s.

Some of his early games include ‘Bogart’ (2003), ‘Lost Island’ (2003), ‘Legacy of Flan’ (2003), ‘Legend of White Whale’ (2005) and ‘Weird Colony’ (2006) among others which however couldn’t garner much success.

Cawthon, a Christian by faith remained associated with ‘Hope Animation’, an organisation that develops computer games and animations spreading the teachings of Jesus Christ. One of his first notable video games, ‘The Pilgrim's Progress’ based on the Christian novel bearing same name by John Bunyan was released by ‘Hope Animation’. A game play footage of this game was uploaded by him on his YouTube channel on March 19, 2007.

With time he came up with several other games, some notable ones being ‘The Desolate Hope’ (2012), ‘Chipper and Sons Lumber Co.’ (2013), ‘Sit 'N Survive’ (2014), and ‘There Is No Pause Button!’ (2014). However, he met with severe criticism from notable reviewers for including characters in his games that communicate and move like animatronic machines, particularly in games like Chipper and Sons Lumber Co.’ Initially, Cawthon was dampened by such criticism so much so that he even contemplated giving up game development, but he later made up his mind to use such characters in his next creations that formed seed to the development of his most successful series ‘Five Nights at Freddy's’.

His success story as a game developer started in 2014 with the development of the point-and-click survival mystery horror video game titled ‘‘Five Nights at Freddy's’ which included haunted animatronic characters. The game garnered popularity after Cawthon submitted it to ‘IndieDB’ on July 24, 2014. It was then released on ‘Desura’ on August 8, 2014 and became the top-selling game for the week ending August 18, 2014 on the digital distribution platform. Thereafter, it was released through ‘Steam’ on August 20, 2014. Its eventual success saw it becoming subject of several popular ‘Let’s Play’ videos on YouTube while mobile ports for Android and iOS were also released on August 27 and September 11 that year respectively.