Sparth (Nicolas Bouvier) has been an active artistic director and concept designer in the gaming industry since 1996. Born in France, he now lives in Seattle, Washington, working for Microsoft. Having had the privilege of traveling extensively at an early age to such places as far a field as the USA, Singapore, China, France and Europe, he was influenced greatly by the various cultures, and he enjoyed observing people and making notes of all these tiny details of life that he was witnessing. The varied influences are largely responsible for his multiple creative passions, which range from space, to buildings, to robotics and beyond. There are no limits to his creativity when it comes to translating forms and concepts. One of his greatest passions remains contemporary architecture, of which he applies principles in his own art, with an experimental and original approach. He also harbors a fascination for modern skyscrapers, although he admits that he wouldn't be able to live too high above the ground himself. Sparth has contributed to the development of several released games since 1997. Alone in the dark 4 (2001), Cold Fear (2005), Prince of Persia - Warrior Within (2004), and Rage, a project still in development at IDsoftware, and has participated with Darkworks-Studio, to a lot of game projects in collaboration with large companies like Capcom and Namco. In 2003, he decided to leave Paris for Montreal in order to join Ubisoft on their ongoing projects, Prince of Persia Warrior Within, as well as Assassin's Creed. He left Montreal for Texas in October 2005, where he spent more than three years working for IDsoftware in Dallas. Finally, in January 2009, he joined Microsoft to participate to the future HALO adventures.