BETA | DEVELOPMENT LEGEND // DAVID PERRY
Always in the back row, David Perry with industry legends including Will Wright, Tim Schafer and Brenda Garno
SEEING THE FUTURE
Perry shares his tips on predicting the games industry’s future
wonders every morning: ‘how do I get more people to play my game?’” At this point Perry had been consulting
with Acclaim, which he says had its heart set on finding out how to run games engines in the cloud. Perry, ever an independent thinker, was convinced running whole games in the cloud was the future. “I remember the exact moment I realised
FROM WORKING ON early 3D titles like MDK and serving as a pioneer of free-to-play research, to building a crowdfunding platform and taking cloud gaming to Sony with Gaikai, David Perry has proved himself at having a talent for predicting the future of the games industry. Even in his early career
Perry demonstrated a knack for plucking licensed IP for future titles just before that property exploded; his work on The Matrix (above) and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game being a case in point. But, he insists, it’s no secret trick or special ability. He has become hugely successful as a seer of all things games development related, and by his logic, any savvy developer can do the same. “It might be about a bit of
luck,” says Perry. “But then predicting these things is something you can do very
42 | AUGUST 2012
easily, especially with hardware. All you have to do is look at what’s annoying you or other people, and what can be done to fix that. When that fixing happens; that’s what the future is. It has to happen at some point. Those things automatically become the future, and they are pretty easy to spot.” Perry is suddenly more
animated, and offers the analogy of a man lugging around a desktop computer using a homemade handle. The inevitable future emerging from that situation, says Perry, was the laptop. “We can all do it,” he insists.
“Next time you watch people just trying to get around problems, you can see the future there. Where the innovation needs to happen is the future.” And there it is. David Perry’s
secret to success, for all of us to share.
how important the cloud was,” continues Perry. “It was 2008, and I was asked to speak at DICE 2009. I’d done a talk earlier at GDC about stuff that seemed obvious to me about games development. Things like how mice would go away, and how people should start
In a weird way getting this
Development Legend award inspires me. It makes me think about the fact I’m not done.
David Perry, Gaikai
designing for track pads, and that talk went down really well, because at the time it was reasonably edgy stuff. That motivated me to think harder about talking about the future, and what else would start to really matter. And that’s where I started to realise the importance of the cloud for gaming.” In the audience of Perry’s DICE talk sat two cloud engineers, who approached Perry after his speech, and, ultimately, Gaikai was born. And now, as we all know, Sony is the proud new owner of Gaikai. The Japanese giant’s
plans for the platform remain a mystery, and Perry is not yet ready to divulge what role the cloud will play in the future of PlayStation – if indeed the two will work together. In fact, due to competition and speculation
before the Sony deal, Perry had to remain fairly quiet about the details of his ambitions with the cloud. Gaikai – along with similar systems – certainly attracted doubters, but Perry’s confidence in what he believed was the future of gaming saw him through. “We always knew what we were doing,”
says Perry with a smile. And there you have it, the story of a
Development Legend, and a template for how any aspiring developer could fill a lifetime with achievement. What is striking about Perry is not just his enthusiasm for his chosen industry, but his optimism for what others can do. He is a man who appears to believe anybody can take the chances the dev sector throws at them and turn themself into an influential figure. And he is not done yet. “In a weird way getting this Development
Legend award inspires me,” concludes Perry. “It makes me think about the fact that I’m not done, and yet I’ve received this. It seriously means a lot to me that the award has been voted for by my friends and peers, but what’s fun about getting it is that it shows people care about the work I’ve put in, and that makes me feel really good about how much left I’ve got to do.” What Perry does after Sony and Gaikai’s
wok together is anyone’s guess, but one thing is for sure. By now he has a bank account. Should any
more cheques come Perry’s way, he will be in a position to cash them.
DEVELOP-ONLINE.NET
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