David Perry

History outline

• Born April 1967 in Lisburn, growing up in Templepatrick and Donegore, attending Methodist College Belfast.
• Began coding from a young age, at 15 he was already writing game programming books (1982), coding his own ZX Spectrum games. His very first game, a driving game featuring indistinct black blobs avoiding one another, was sent to a home computer magazine which proceeded to actually publish it. After sending them a few more games, the magazine sent him a check for £450, but as a teenager had no bank account with which to initially cash it.
• Continued as a bedroom programmer until he was offered a £3,500/year position as an apprentice to a vet programmer who taught him more advanced coding (Andy Lawrie I believe, but verify this)
• When he first started working in games, was working under a man named Andy Lawrie, described by Perry as "someone you couldn't bullshit to", very technical and aware, and he was one of the biggest influences in solidifying Perry's passion into a shape he could work with - basically taught him to be quality, punctual, and to think things through. Also taught Perry to be involved in multiple things at once.
• At 17, travelled from Ireland to live in London making games for Mikro-Gen and later notably Probe Software.
• In 1991, moved to the US to develop for Virgin Games USA.
• Rough list of games worked on by/based on work by David Perry, and released after he left: Terminator MCD, RoboCop v Terminator MD, Jungle Book MD.
• Founded Shiny in 93 to work as an independent developer.
• Once attended payroll classes at an unknown American school, not because of any schooling, but just because he wanted to learn about payroll as a developer. Later used the experience to set up and manage his company's payroll systems entirely by himself. Used that lesson when getting into venture capital investing.
• Also took photography classes for similar reasons (to understand marketing?)
• Also was apparently notably skilled in public relations.
• Got MDK packed in with every purchase of first-generations iMacs.
• In 2002, sold Shiny to Atari for $47million. Perry remained as President.
• Worked with Wachowskis on Matrix games. Their first, Enter The Matrix, sold well despite poor critical reception, notably featuring movie side-characters.
• The second Matrix game, featuring main characters from the movies, was personally described by Perry as "an apology for the first one."
• He left the game industry (stopped directly developing/etc) in 2006 to act solely as a consultant and investor.
• Stands 6 foot 7.
• Lifetime achievement award awarded August 1st, 2012.
• Started Gaikai, later sold to Sony (to become PS Now?). Built Gaikai's first server entirely by himself in his living room, using 100% parts he ordered, and also done personally so he could better understand exactly how it works.
• "I hate mystery." - has a significant and personal drive to learn and discover, part of what makes him and his work so notable.
• Took Gaikai to Sony (digital and in-person), Google (digital and in-person), Facebook, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Samsung smart TVs.
• Compared Gaikai to Verizon/telephone company: They don't care about data harvesting or revenue sharing or moving customers from one platform to another, but instead just charging for time played. Like Verizon "just supplies the dial tone", Gaikai "just provides the streaming."
• Gaikai pulled $30mil in funding, then approached by multiple unnamed large corporations for acquisition, eventually sold to Sony for $380mil. Part of the reason he/Gaikai chose Sony was because he believes in the solidity of the PlayStation brand and his new corporate parent. Also because Sony invested enough money in the acquisition to show Perry that they were serious and wanted to actually further develop and move this technology forward.