Message from Jeremy: To all Tech IT Easy readers, who could obviously not necessarily remember the initial announcement, I have invited Vincent to write about innovative start ups based in the Netherlands, Apple, the media industry, incubators, business books and many other things that happen to interest him at the moment. Vince, they’re all yours!

Jeremy hasn’t done this type of post in a while, but I liked them and thought I’d give it a try. For the purposes of not making it too easy, I’m not mentioning the particular segment of software the person is active in, nor his or her gender, or names of places and companies. This particular part of the industry is however a pretty interesting one and I’m sure many people will have at least have an opinion on it. With this post, I hope to start writing more about it and maybe encourage others on this blog to do the same. I also hope it doesn’t take too long to solve, but if it does, I’ll release some more information every day. After the game has been solved, I’ll rewrite the post with accurate names, etc. Update, the game has been solved!

Have fun playing “Guess Who?” !!!

“I was born in 1967, in Northern Ireland and started my career at the tender age of 15 developing software from books in my bedroom. My talent shone through at that stage already, but when I received my first check I did not even have a bank-account yet! After two years, I moved to London, UK and started developing software for some of the big players at that time, including Elite Systems and Mirrorsoft. Then, after creating several industry-hits, I moved to the US and worked with Virgin Games in 1991 to create some more hit-pieces of software. A common theme, perhaps inherent to the industry, was that much the software I worked on included big players from other industries, like McDonalds and 7-Up, in the development of them.

In 1993, I started my own company, Shiny Entertainment, named after a song from the band R.E.M., in sunny California. The company’s first product, Earthworm Jim, was a big hit, selling millions of copies, and also managed to spawn off some merchandising. In 2002, the company was acquired for a sum 47 million US$, with me staying on as president. Also at that time, I collaborated with the Wachowski Brothers to develop games based on the Matrix-movies, which received a lukewarm welcome from the market.

More recently, I have been active in several ventures. One, GameConsulting.com, is to advise other players in the industry, another is developing a MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Roleplaying Game) for Acclaim called 2Moons, another is an investment-fund for developers in my industry called GameInvestors.com, and I’m currently very active in building up a model for creating software through user-generated work, even starting a competition to create 1 piece of software which attracted several ten-thousands developers. The outcome of this last venture is still top-secret, and is also called Top Secret, but promises to be very innovative, and the winner of the competition will get his or her own development-team.

I am considered an innovator and a visionary in my field of of the industry, have received several awards, and sit on various panels, as well as being a much sought out speaker at conferences such as E3, CES, and the Game Developers Conference. I also have a great website, www.dperry.com, with a lot of resources for developers in my field.”

Congratulations to Steve Danino, who solved the riddle in 3 hours! The person we were looking for was David Perry, game developer.

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