Colin Anderson was a music producer, writer and performer at DMA Design and briefly audio director at Rockstar Games.
He is the author of several original songs that were made specifically for their games.
Songs[]
Grand Theft Auto[]
- Ghetto Fingers - "On The Move"
- Ashtar - "Aori"
- Stylus Exodus - "Pootang Shebang"
- Stikki Fingers - "4 Letter Love"
- Bleeding Stump - "Just Do It"
- Sideways Hank O'Mally (and The Alabama Bottle Boys) - "The Ballad of Chapped-Lips Calhoun"
Grand Theft Auto 2[]
- Stikki Fingerz - "Holdin' It Out For You"
- Stylus Exodus - "Toucan Pie"
- Cow Tastes Good - "Surf City"
Career[]
Anderson was an audio designer at DMA Design from 1993 until 1995, when he was promoted to audio manager until he left in 1997. He had a brief stint at Gremlin Interactive before joining Rockstar Games as an audio director for 6 months between 1999 and 2000.
He, alongside Craig Conner, crafted a number of original songs for the in-game radio stations for the original Grand Theft Auto and Grand Theft Auto 2.
In 2019, Anderson wrote an article for gamesindustry.biz in which he went in detail on a number of topics relating to how gaming genres are created. In this interview, he detailed how the team at DMA Design viewed the open world "genre" at the time of development of the first 3 games in the series - "GTA III was created by fusing GTA 1's well-proven game template with the most important lessons each of these other teams had discovered during their own development adventures: the technical 3D and production expertise of the Silicon Valley team, the open-world level design lessons from Body Harvest's encounters with Nintendo, and the real-world physics and AI behaviours from Wild Metal Country."[1]
After leaving Rockstar Games, he was commercial director at Epic Games UK for 10 years while also working as a managing director at Denki, a company he co-founded. He most recently still worked at Denki, where he has since become the business development director.
On November 28th, 2022, during Grand Theft Auto's 25th Anniversary, Colin Anderson uploaded definitive mixes of the tracks he wrote and recorded for the original game on his official YouTube channel, including "The Ballad Of Chapped Lips Calhoun", "Just Do It", "On The Move", "Aori", "Pootang Shebang" and "4 Letter Love".
Employment History[]
| From | To | Company | Role |
|---|---|---|---|
| June 1993 | September 1997 | DMA Design | Audio Designer/Manager |
| September 1997 | October 1999 | Gremlin Interactive | Audio Development Manager |
| October 1999 | March 2000 | Rockstar Games | Audio Director |
| January 2001 | February 2011 | Epic Games UK | Commercial Director |
| September 2004 | August 2017 | Waterfront Entertainment Ltd | Chairman |
| March 2000 | October 2017 | Denki | Managing Director |
| January 2009 | May 2018 | TIGA | Director |
| April 2018 | Present | Earthbound Games | Chief Commercial Officer |
| July 2019 | Present | Denki | Business Development Director |
Video Game Credits[]
Music Written, Produced and Performed by[]
- Grand Theft Auto (1997)
Sound Effects[]
- Grand Theft Auto (1997)
- Grand Theft Auto 2 (1999)
Audio Manager[]
- Grand Theft Auto 2 (1999)
Music[]
- Grand Theft Auto 2 (1999)
External Links[]
- Colin Anderson's Twitter Profile
- Colin Anderson's LinkedIn Profile
- SoundCloud - features all songs produced by Colin for both the original Grand Theft Auto and Grand Theft Auto 2.