David Perry is a 25-year video game industry veteran. Perry launched his professional career at just 15 years of age by writing video game programming books in his native Northern Ireland. Since then, Perry or his studio Shiny Entertainment has developed numerous games (including The Terminator, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Mc Donald's Global Gladiators, 7-Up's Cool Spot, Disney's Aladdin, Earthworm Jim, MDK, Sacrifice etc.) His last console titles were based on the Matrix franchise from Warner Brothers. His games have sold an estimated one BILLION dollars at retail. After selling Shiny to Atari, Perry is now the Chief Creative Officer of Acclaim Games and is also the founder of a new company called GameInvestors.com (to help developers find funding for their games.) Perry sits on the Advisory Boards of the Game Developers Conference, the Hollywood and Games Conference, the Gamers Expo & Westwood College. He's a regular speaker at key industry events and has even spoken at prestigious events like at the TED.COM conference, and at universities like MIT, USC, UCLA etc. In July 2008 he's being awarded a Doctorate by Queen's University at the same time as the Prime Minister of England (Tony Blair.) Here's a Google link for him that brings up 230,000 web pages: http://tinyurl.com/ywb4bg Perry's name is practically a household name among game players and professionals in the game industry, and this is his first book. Perry has always promoted talent and encouraged aspiring designers, and this book is his way of offering something "real," practical and useful to designers everywhere. His biggest frustration with game development books that tell you to make innovative games, but don't tell you how. We plan to change that.
Rusel DeMaria has been a writer in the game industry since 1981, and has written more than 60 game-related books. The founding editor and creative director of Prima Publishing's acclaimed strategy guide division for 6 years and former senior editor of three national video game magazines, DeMaria is one of the most experienced writers/journalists in the video game industry. He has been a columnist in magazines and newspapers nationally and internationally, has consulted and written privately for several top game companies and continues to write high-profile books, working with some of the biggest companies in the business. DeMaria is now the assistant director and a design consultant/producer for Acclaim Games. He is the author of "Reset: Changing the Way We Look at Video Games" from Berrett-Kohler Publishers and a co-author of the upcoming David Perry on Game Design: A Brainstorming Toolbox (1584506687).