david-perry
Latest
First Gaikai demo shows WoW and EVE played via browser
Gaikai is a new game streaming service that's currently in development, which was first announced at GDC 2009 (and later was apparently previewed by game publishers at E3 2009.) We've since mentioned Gaikai a few times at Massively, and how the service could bring MMOs (and other games) to devices like netbooks that don't have adequate graphics capabilities to run these titles. Gaikai will use "Streaming Worlds" technology to do all the graphics crunching on remote servers and then stream games to your computer via a web browser. In effect, you're playing the game as a video stream. No client install required, no patching needed. Given the reactions we've seen from gamers in our own comments and elsewhere on the web, skepticism abounds. Perhaps seeing is believing though, as Gaikai's David Perry has put out a video demo of the service today, explaining Gaikai to viewers as he plays several games, namely World of Warcraft and EVE Online. No doubt there will still be skepticism, but it's good to get a first look at the service. Perry makes a few details about the demo and the service itself clear on his blog: the data travel distance in the demo is 800 miles; this is a (non-fiber) home cable connection; it works over wi-fi and with netbooks lacking 3D graphics cards; any clicking sounds heard are only from Perry's wireless headset mic.We've got a video embed of the Gaikai technology demo for you below, where you can see World of Warcraft and EVE Online played via a browser:
Dave Perry gives first video tour of Gaikai
Between OnLive and Gaikai, we're not sure who to trust less. Both systems are clearly operating under some form of unknown dark magic, allowing the mysterious services to stream high-def gaming directly into your television and computer browser. Both services though -- luckily and necessarily -- have representatives willing to happily test our skepticism in OnLive's Steve Perlman and Gaikai's Dave Perry.The video (found after the break) has the latter demoing Gaikai, streaming games from Mario Kart 64 to Spore to EVE Online, all from his Vista-powered PC running Firefox on an 800-mile trip between the server and his home. He claims in the video to be streaming all of the games demoed from sub 1-megabit internet speeds and says that "even a NetBook" could run Gaikai with no problems. From what we can see, things are running smoothly, though unlike OnLive, we've yet to get our hands on the equipment. Perry says we'll see more at this month's Develop Conference, so for those of you itching for more Gaikai, you've got a two-week wait on your hands. Perhaps you should play some of those old, less magic-filled gaming consoles you have. [Via Edge Online]
Gaikai and OnLive both a no-show at E3 Expo 2009
We heard about two competing gaming services at GDC 2009 that could revolutionize the video game industry, if the technology announced can live up to its claims: OnLive and Gaikai. Both services aim to stream game content to users while the graphics crunching is handled on company servers, thereby eliminating the escalating hardware barriers to playing the latest and greatest titles -- a home user's low-end machine would be able to run high-end games. Gaikai head David Perry (of Acclaim) has said that the company's "Streaming Worlds" technology is suited to handle MMOs, and has specifically stated that World of Warcraft and EVE Online can already be streamed to browsers. When we heard about these companies at GDC we were hoping to hear more a bit later in the year, but it seems that neither OnLive nor Gaikai will be at the E3 Expo 2009. Gaikai cites patent filings as the reason they've had to pull out from E3 while OnLive states that their service doesn't fit in with the 'retail-orientation' of E3. We'll keep an eye on both companies as time goes on, though at this point only Gaikai has announced that they plan to stream MMOs.
Dave Perry's piracy solution: Be better than free
It's a well known fact that, though we stop at piracy, we love free stuff. But Acclaim's Dave Perry has opened our eyes today with a concept he thinks could be the one thing that could beat the pirates for good: "Better than free." Basically, he says that the industry needs to set a price bar so low and a convenience standard so high that stealing an inferior product just stops making sense.We don't want any of you to cop to piracy, but we're curious: What steps could publishers take to ensure that neither you nor anyone else you know would want to consider illegally downloading a game?[Via Edge]
PSP 2 is ready and UMD-less, claims Earthworm Jim developer
We've lost count on the number of times we've heard from a friend of a coworker of a cousin whose girlfriend's stepfather happens to work at Sony and they're all but ready to launch a UMD-less PSP in 17 different color options bundled with a portable version of Street Fighter IV. Typically, we remain skeptical, but when it's veteran developer David "I made MDK and Earthworm Jim" Perry, we'll give him the floor to speak. Earlier this week, his Twitter account updated to say he's heard the PSP 2 is done and minus that disc drive. He later reaffirmed that comment to GameDaily, saying he can't reveal his source (naturally), but he feels certain UMD is gone. Is his source bunk? He's certainly a guy who'd know a guy, but we've heard this story far too many times to take a leap of faith now.[Via Joystiq]Read - David Perry's TwitterRead - GameDaily
CCP Games highlights community efforts of EVE bloggers
It's been pretty eventful lately in terms of EVE Online news. As a recap: the Quantum Rise expansion was announced, new features are on the way, the backstory was advanced through a new video, controversy and even outright rage ensued over disabling ghost training, a Quarterly Economic Newsletter was released, and there have been concerns over the future of EVE given Iceland's economic woes. While some of these news items are mentioned in the latest EVE Online newsletter (aside from the ghost training fiasco), CCP Games has also given some attention to the EVE community itself, something Massively has been been taking note of as well. It seems our friend and EVE community puppetmaster David Perry (aka CrazyKinux) has just gotten the nod from CCP for his latest effort.
David Perry: Selling Earthworm Jim was the "dumbest move ever"
When you stop to think about iconic characters for each of the big three a few easy ones come to mind. Master Chief owning on Xbox, Super Mario fighting for Nintendo and Kratos breaking dudes on the PlayStation (or insert your own characters if these examples don't work for you). One character that had the potential to be a huge gaming icon after his introduction was Earthworm Jim.Jim had it all. Fun games, ridiculous cartoon and even action figures. Then one day the team that owned the rights to Earthworm Jim decided to call it a night and sell the character off for fear they wouldn't be able to bring him into the 3D world. David Perry, founder of Shiny Entertainment, has recently come clean on one of the biggest mistakes his company ever made; letting Jim get away."[Selling the rights of Earthworm Jim to Interplay] turned out to be the dumbest move ever," Perry said in an interview with Kikizo. "There's been other versions of Earthwork Jim done that were done without our permission really, licensing deals, and I was very unhappy about them." We'd be happy enough to see the original titles added to the Xbox Live Arcade or any news on the announced fourth title in the series.You know, it's funny to hear losing Earthworm Jim was the biggest mistake in Shiny's history. We could have sworn it was just being involved with Enter the Matrix. Just saying.
Acclaim to publish The Chronicles of Spellborn in North America
Action-oriented MMORPG The Chronicles of Spellborn has found a publisher in Acclaim Games, the MMO-focused reincarnation of now-defunct Acclaim Entertainment. The company was founded by former Activision CEO Howard Marks, who bought the brand name from the original Acclaim after it crashed and burned in 2004.David Perry -- Chief Creative Officer of Acclaim Games -- published a letter to the Spellborn community announcing the deal. In it, he talks up the game and the dev team behind it, saying that they immediately stood out to him and the other folks at Acclaim. We'll assume that Acclaim was the company that wrote the letter of intent way back in April, but who can say for sure?Spellborn had already landed a publishing deal for Europe and Asia with Frogster Interactive. Last we heard the game was due out by the end of 2008, but we're not super-confident about it. Spellborn is still in its closed beta testing phase at the moment.
Ten things every new player should know about EVE Online
There are some valuable lessons learned as you progress in EVE Online, lessons which get pounded into you when making mistakes. There are so many things you wish someone had told you before you went out and made a noobish ass of yourself. Even with the much-improved Aura tutorial that's been implemented in EVE, there are lots of things that still cause players to scream something to the effect of, "Why didn't anyone warn me?!" This is often accompanied by frantically warping away from one's obliterated ship in an escape pod with a liberal amount of cursing. Of course, it doesn't have to be this way.
How to beat game piracy according to David Perry
David Perry, best known as the founder of Shiny Entertainment and Earthworm Jim, believes the way to beat game piracy is by distributing games for free. "The next big thing will be free games," said Perry, speaking in Belfast after being awarded an honorary doctorate by Queen's University. Perry goes on to explain the situation game developers in Asia encounter and how most games there have no entry cost but are supported by a micro-transaction model. A business model Perry believes that will change the industry in the USA and Europe. Creative big-wig at Acclaim, Perry has numerous MMOG projects in development. One was supposed to be a beast-racing MMOG that had a unique development process. The project dubbed Top Secret was a collaborative program for a small community of developers to design the game on paper. Acclaim originally intended to hire a development team to produce the final design document but the mesh of ideas became so uniquely twisted they felt it wouldn't work. Instead, five independent development teams are vying for a one million dollar contract but if no demos are up to the quality or meet Acclaim's standards, they will hire a professional studio instead.
2Moons players to see Bad Moons Rising
2Moons, the action MMO from Acclaim Games, has released their newest game update, called Bad Moons Rising, which features new content spread out across all activities and objects. These include new dungeons, quests, and 2 new maps, Space of Pilgrimage and Aquirai Ruins. A new pet system has been incorporated, allowing players the choice between 3 new pets, with more to come in future updates.Additionally, new players will find more engaging early-level content, while there are also all-new skills, weapons, and armor sets to utilize in the pursuit of combat excellence. David Perry, founder of Shiny Entertainment, promises new updates every 3 - 4 months, with the next 2 major updates 'already on the way'. Finally, there are a slew of great events centered on the update beginning on the 4th of April and continuing until the 11th. For more details, check out the site. Creedence Clearwater Revival notwithstanding, you will want to come 'round tonight!
More information from the Top Secret project
The last we'd heard of the Top Secret project, there wasn't too much information available on the specifics -- notably, it's not a game, but an experiment in game design where a bunch of people collaborate on an MMO concept, and then a dev team is picked to actually bring it to fruition. We now have a few more details to go on, as David Perry gave such in a GDC interview.Whoever wins the bid to develop this MMO will receive one million dollars in licensing fees from Acclaim -- to use in buying software, licensing a pre-existing engine, what have you -- but they will be doing the work on their own time and dime. Perry is optimistic about the nascent game, saying that even if none of the development teams deliver an Acclaim-worthy game, they will hire a professional studio to complete it. No word yet on whether the title will be free-to-play, but this is a unique concept in game development, and a chance for some rising stars to show their stuff.[Via WarCry]
Dekaron to enter open beta on April 2nd
A post at Gametribe's forums informs us that Dekaron is set to commence open beta on the 2nd of April. You may not have heard of Dekaron before, so here's a quick rundown from the official site. It is a free-to-play fantasy MMO set in the Middle Ages, and is already out in the Korean, Japanese, Chinese and Taiwanese markets. Gametribe is doing an English localization of the game for Europe, and Acclaim is doing the same for North America, changing the name of their version to 2Moons.While 2Moons is kind of a dumb name (though it does land the title at the top of many game lists, probably not by accident), it's certainly not unheard of for a game to be named differently in a separate region. It's more than just the name that is different in this case though, with Acclaim's adaptation of the Korean MMO having entered open beta in July last year. With David Perry at the helm of the North American version, we're interested to see what else will set it apart from Gametribe's offering.
Mark Skaggs joins Top Secret to help make a beast-racing MMO
The good people at Warcry are reporting that Mark Skaggs, who they call a "veteran developer," but who actually is an old RTS maker from the golden days of Command and Conquer at Westwood Studios and more recently the Battle for Middle-Earth from EA, has joined the Top Secret project from Acclaim. Top Secret isn't a game -- it's actually a program that's designed to enable a small community of developers to come up with their own game, which will then be funded and published by Acclaim. The idea they've come up with? "Beast" breeding and racing, with an anime flair.Warcry claims it's an MMO, but there's not much in the press release or on the site about that. It seems to be more like a MCC -- massively community created. But considering the final product will be free to play, we'll have to wait and see what Acclaim, David Perry, and now Mark Skaggs bring to the table.
David Perry posits 70 Million player massive game
David Perry, a gent who used to be synonymous with the quirky developer Shiny Entertainment, is now best known for his work in the Massive games industry. He recently did an interview with the website videogame247, where he essentially said that World of Warcraft is still too niche for the potential MMOs represent. In fact, he could see a game someday existing that nets '70 million players'. As he puts it, "we haven't got anyone that's thinking down the Will Wright path."Perry is looking to outfits like Club Penguin or MapleStory as harbingers of the future. He posits that if World of Warcraft were to go free-to-play, it would be looking at a 25 million-strong playerbase instead of 'only' 10 million. He himself is very familiar with the free-to-play model, as several of the Acclaim online titles he's imported to the country of late are based on that paradigm. How successful do you think a free-to-play WoW would be? Will we ever get to a 70 million player game, or is that 'the crazy talk'?[Via RPS]
David Perry on MUO cancellation: "huh?"
Eurogamer caught up with David Perry, former Shiny Entertainment big-wig and now localizer of many free MMOs for Acclaim to ask him, among other things, for his reaction to the recent news that Marvel Universe Online has been officially canned. Perry reacted with some surprise, pointing out Marvel is one of the biggest and most prolific mainstream intellectual properties on the market today, with all the money swirling around the box-office success of Spiderman, X-men, The Hulk, etc. He reasoned that if you take a team just as good as Blizzard and set them to work on a Marvel MMO, it'd be even bigger than WoW.We take Perry's point, but there are a number of factors to consider with this story. First of all, there's a certain danger in developing an MMO for a console environment, especially at this stage in the system's life. The Xbox 360 launched in Fall of 2005, meaning it's probably closing in on the midway point in its life-cycle. In a genre where games like Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot are still making money, being halfway through a five year life cycle doesn't bode well for long-term profitability. And second, whose to say Shane Kim even related the full story? This whole affair could be far messier than we can tell at this juncture -- we may only find out what really happened with time.
David Perry talks free MMOs in Gama interview
Over the holidays the indomitable Gamasutra caught up with David Perry, the man behind such great games as Earthworm Jim and such utter flops as Enter the Matrix, to talk with him about his current projects, of which he has nearly too many to list. The ones that were of interest to us were his work in bringing over such... unorthodox titles as Dance! Online based on the game's popularity in Korea. He also hinted that he was working with Acclaim on some new free MMOs, one of which was a "music" game and the other a "sports" game, as well as localizing 2moons.After reading the interview, I'm not sure exactly what wavelength Perry is operating on, because his priorities seem a little out of whack to me. Not only does he express a good deal of confidence that games based on item sales instead of subscription fees are the wave of the future in the U.S., but he also expresses a certain admiration for business models (such as the ones used by EA and in certain Korean studios) that treat developers like expendable wage slaves. Some might wonder whether it's even worth listening to Perry's views except as an homage to his past success. It's a good point, but we're still curious about Acclaim's new-found interest in MMOs, so we'll continue to keep tabs on him.
UMD claimed a waste of money, time and investment
David Perry thinks so, at least. The founder of Shiny and operator of GameConsultants.com came out and told the world what he would do if he were in charge of the PSP. To start, he said, "they really need to bring out the PSP 3.0 and start again and try to get a lot of units out by reducing the manufacturing costs, by taking out all the motors and drives and stuff they have in there." This would make the system slimmer still and drive developers to make games for it, he believes.Perry thinks if the PSP turned into a download-only handheld, current PSP owners would only have to register their game with a iTunes-like service, to prove they own it, and bam! instant success. We think a download-only handheld would be pretty sweet, but Perry thinks that retailers hinder this progressive thinking. "The truth is, the stores will not carry PSPs unless they feel they are going to get a piece of the action on the back end. And Sony has not come up with an innovative business model that can support that concept." Who knows, maybe we can get some kind of "download station" at retailers in the next decade or so and just bring our systems in for purchases. It's a neat way of thinking, but really, you could say the same thing for the DS. What do you guys think? Would the PSP 3.0 be well-received if it were a download-only handheld?[via DCemu]
Acclaim Games commands you to DANCE! Online
From the unflinchingly direct marketing department that brought you the likes of Shoot Monsters in the Face!, Leap Over Bottomless Pits! and Level Grind For Eighteen Hours!, comes a new title from Acclaim Games -- the aptly named DANCE! Online. Combining rhythmic extermination of arrows with unnecessary public gyration, DANCE! Online cashes in on what George White of Warner Music Group calls "a growing phenomenon." The game is offered to you for the not entirely unreasonable price of zero dollars, though additional "song packs" (uh oh) and snazzy outfits for your avatar will require some monetary expense on your part.Also notable is the fact that the game features master recordings from the aforementioned Warner Music Group, giving DANCE! Online the distinction of being the first free massively multiplayer dancing game to provide licensed tracks. The undoubtedly crowded race to that particular finish line was aided by game director, Earthworm Jim wrangler and industry superstar designer (it says here), David Perry. "DANCE! Online has started the music based game revolution which has captured the minds of hundreds of millions of players in Asia," he says. Alright then.The beta is open now, if you're so inclined.[Via press release]
New Acclaim forges on with MMO betas
The "new" Acclaim continues with its roll-out of free MMOs, opening closed betas for 2Moons and Dance! Online. Entry into the betas is by invitation only, but registrants of the game's official websites (2Moons here, Dance there) can expect to receive a request on a first-come, first-served basis. Both titles are being directed by David Perry (Earthworm Jim, Enter the Matrix); neither has received an ESRB rating, but Acclaim warns that 2Moons was designed for the 17+ crowd. As for Dance, well, just look at that picture... The backstory: Acclaim reopens, focuses on MMOGs
