David Perry (game developer)

David Perry ( born April 4, 1967 in Lisburn, Northern Ireland) is an Irish game developer and entrepreneur. He is the founder of the former development studio Shiny Entertainment, for which he worked from 1993 to 2006. But in his career he also worked for companies such as Disney, 7 Up, McDonald's, Orion Pictures and Warner Bros. His most famous game developments include the title Earthworm Jim, MDK, Messiah, Wild 9 and Enter the Matrix. He is also co-founder of cloud-based game service Gaikai.

Biography

Perry was born April 4, 1967 in Lisburn, Northern Ireland, and grew up in Templepatrick and Done Gore in County Antrim, where he attended only the Templepatrick Primary School and then the Methodist College Belfast. In 1981 he began developing its first programs for the Sinclair ZX81. In an interview with the BBC, Perry described his first game as a racing game ( " a black blob, the other black blobs trying to dodge " ), which he finally sent to a magazine, which it actually printed it. After some further submissions he received a check for 450 British pounds, which encouraged him to continue. At the age of 17 he moved to London, although the job offered to him was paid only slightly with 3500 pounds per year, but because he saw no future prospects in his home in the area of ​​computer games. In London he developed at trial software games for publishers such as Elite Systems, Mirror Soft and Virgin Games. He worked on titles such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for various home computers and The Terminator for the Mega Drive.

In 1991 he moved to the U.S. to work for the U.S. division of Virgin Games. He took over the development of McDonald's commissioned work for Gladiator Global Mega Drive, the content of the expectations of the client could not satisfy, but was nevertheless awarded by Sega Game of the Year. This was followed by Cool Spot for 7Up and Disney's Aladdin, both games also for the Mega Drive and the latter with a development period of just four months. His work for Virgin Games USA served as the basis for the development of other games like The Terminator for the Sega Mega - CD, RoboCop Versus The Terminator and Walt Disney's The Jungle Book for the Mega Drive, but all were developed after Perry's departure.

On October 1, 1993 Perry founded in Laguna Beach ( California ) his own company, Shiny Entertainment, which he claimed the song Shiny Happy People by REM named. Earthworm Jim, the first game of the company, became a success and sold millions of copies on multiple platforms, including the Mega Drive, Super Nintendo and the PC. The eponymous character, an "average worm" who stumbles on a spacesuit and thus mutates into a superhero, was extremely popular and called a range of merchandising products produced: action figures, comic books and an associated animation series for Warner Kids Network, in of the title character of Dan Castellaneta ( Homer Simpson) was synchronized. In 1995 he sold for 3.6 million U.S. dollars a corporate share of 91 % in the U.S. publisher Interplay Entertainment, who hoped thereby to strengthen its portfolio console. 2001 acquired Interplay for another 600,000 U.S. dollars and the remaining 9 % of the company. 2012 marked Perry this sale as his biggest mistake since he had overestimated the capabilities of Interplay.

In April 2002, Shiny Entertainment was acquired by Infogrames for 47 million U.S. dollars, after increasing financial problems had been felt at Interplay. Concurrent with the acquisition Perry signed a long term contract as president of the studio. Also in 2002, Perry worked with the Wachowski brothers on a coordinated implementation Games for Matrix trilogy. As well as the new parent company Infogrames floundered, Perry left Shiny Entertainment in February 2006 in order to facilitate the sale of Shiny according to own data. The studio was finally adopted in October 2006 by Foundation 9.

Perry founded a consulting company for high-level managers in the game industry, followed by a company to support game developers to finance their projects. In February 2008, a new edition of his Perry Game Industry Map, a large free industry database of the thousands of games and development firms visualized on a world map, which allowed students and industry members to detect the locations of developers and production sites. In July 2008 he received an honorary doctorate from Queen's University Belfast for his services in the field of computer games.

In April 2009, Perry participated in, founded by Andrew Gault and Rui Pereira in November 2008 Company Gaikai and became its CEO. Already at the Game Developers Conference in February 2009 he streaming technology company for computer games ( Cloud Gaming ) first presented publicly. In July 2012, Gaikai was acquired by Sony Computer Entertainment for 380 million U.S. dollars. The Japanese electronics company presented on February 20, 2013 in New York his game console PlayStation 4 to the public. Here, Perry and Others announced that the console will have no backward compatibility to previous models, but that all the games of previous generations with the help of Gaikai technology are to be made in the future in the form of the PlayStation cloud stream accessible. In addition, should Gaikai's technology for streaming demo versions and the Remote Play function for PS4 games on the handheld console, PlayStation Vita can be used.

Perry is a member of the Advisory Board for the Game Developers Conference and was a guest speaker at industry events such as E3, SIGGRAPH or CES and has been a guest lecturer at universities such as USC and MIT. 2006 he hosted together with Tommy Tallarico, the Game Developers Choice Awards.

Selected Works

Games

  • Tim Hartnell, David Perry: 49 Explosive Games for the ZX Spectrum. Interface Publications, London 1983, ISBN 9,780,907,563,532th
  • David Perry: Astounding Arcade Games for Your Spectrum & Spectrum. Interface Publications, London 1985.
  • David Perry, Rusel DeMaria: David Perry on game design: a brainstorming toolbox. Charles River Media, Boston 2009, ISBN 9,781,584,506,683th

Swell

  • David Perry: The Emerald Isle 's ' Shiny ' Happy Game Developer. In: Inner Visions, February 2006, pp. 131-132.
  • Gamedev.net Interview ( version of 14 March 2005 on the Internet Archive )
  • Eurogamer.net interview
  • Disposable Media: Interview with David Perry, Part 1 and Part 2
  • How I Got My Start in the Game Industry: David Perry
Earthworm Jim (series) British Academy of Film and Television Arts Rod Humble Louis Castle Brenda Brathwaite John Romero Will Wright (game designer) Tim Schafer Laguna Beach, California R.E.M. Chief Executive Officer Consumer Electronics Show Paperboy (video game) Smash TV Sacrifice (video game) MobyGames GameSpot CBS Corporation Gamasutra UBM plc Edge (magazine)
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