As the head of sound and music at Lionhead Studios, Shaw not only composes music but also creates sound effects and integrates audio into games. Even though he now works as the head of a small team, Shaw nevertheless continues to wear many hats in the company.

This sort of work is nothing new for him, as Shaw has a long history in the audio field. He began as a studio recording engineer, working first in TV for people such as the famed producer Gerry Anderson before moving into the music industry. Shaw left all this behind in 1992, when he joined influential game designer Peter Molyneux at Bullfrog Productions. At Bullfrog, projects such as Syndicate kept Shaw in the limelight, and when Molyneux left the company to form Lionhead Studios in 1997, the composer followed suit. More high-profile projects like Black & White and Fable soon followed.

Versatility has been Shaw's watchword from the beginning; a fan of ambient techno, those influences were felt in Black & White. When Fable demanded a more traditional score, he worked alongside a Hollywood orchestrator and tried his hand at choral writing. Shaw always strives for the same thing despite genre, though: the creation of "soundmarks," musical signposts that instantly evoke a time or place.

"I would not want to go back to the early days of game audio design. We can all remember the time when audio was very much the afterthought. Nowadays, I need to be in on the early conceptual stages of game design if the game is going to sound any good. The audio designer can bring as much to the early game design as anyone else can."