James Vaughan

James Vaughan is a British game developer and the creator of Plague Inc., the strategy game in which players evolve a disease to wipe out humanity. He studied economics and worked as a strategy consultant, with no games industry experience beyond making hobby maps for Age of Wonders, when he started building Plague Inc. in his evenings in 2011.

He founded Ndemic Creations in Bristol in January 2012 and released Plague Inc. on iOS that May as the studio's sole developer. It stayed near the top of the mobile charts for years, earned Vaughan an invitation to speak at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2013, and passed 160 million downloads by May 2021. During the COVID-19 outbreak in early 2020 it surged to the top of app charts in China and the US, was removed from China's App Store, and gained a free The Cure mode developed with input from the World Health Organization.

Ndemic has since grown into a small independent studio. It followed up with Plague Inc: Evolved for PC and consoles, the counter-insurgency strategy game Rebel Inc. (2018), a Plague Inc. board game and After Inc. (2024), a more optimistic game about rebuilding civilisation after a zombie apocalypse, which reached full release on Steam in August 2026.