After taking a year "off," veteran game developer David Perry appeared at Montreal Games Summit 2007 to talk about his supposed vacation. It turns out that he's going back to the scene with three MMORPGs being developed under his belt, and he talked about the free-to-play model which will make his projects work.

More on David Perry's keynote speech at the full article!

Dave Perry should be very proud of his on-going project aptly dubbed for now as "Top Secret." After explaining the mechanics of the competition behind the making of the said MMO video game, the community's response to it has been nothing but overwhelming. To date, there's more or less 23,000 different individuals who want to become a part of this community project.

Talking to gaming site Games Industry recently, the founder of Shiny Entertainment finally revealed some important details on "Top Secret." According to Dave Perry, it's going to be a racing game and Acclaim is more than happy to support this proposition. Perry shared,

For our first project we'll make a racing game, simply because as a genre it really needs fresh new ideas. We're betting that with 23,000-plus developers we'll be so buried in new ideas, it's going to be tough to choose between them all - a nice problem to have.

For those who missed it, this "Top Secret" project has been making a lot of buzz across the gaming industry for the past few months now. David Perry made an open call to interested individuals, preferably students, to help out in making the game. Whoever person "shines" the most during the development will become the director of a future MMO, and it's guaranteed to be published by Acclaim.

Acclaim recently surpassed the 1 million mark in terms of registered users. We can only imagine that this "Top Secret" will continue to add to the momentum the publisher is currently enjoying. Some of the titles under its belt include BOTS!!, 9Dragons, 2Moons, and DANCE! Online.

 

After having recently announced his community-driven MMO, Dave Perry, the former Shiny Entertainment boss, has announced that he has another project for the developer community. Develop Magazine reports that over at the Game Developers Conference 2007 Dave Perry has invited everyone in the games industry to submit markers to the Google Maps powered Gameindustrymap.com.

Just so you aren't left clueless, Game Industry Map is a wiki-style Map of  of the videogame industry. The map is set to include studios, colleges, outsourcing companies, freelancers, publishers, and even the gaming press. Perry calls this self-funded project a "gift to the industry." Perry had this to say about the community-powered endeavor:

This site picks up on two fast-growing trends – community and user generated content – the videogame industry is still relatively young and we already have a great community spirit which we hope to nurture for the benefit of industry as a whole. Plus we get to show the rest of the world just how widespread we are, employing creative talent all over the planet.

The result is that it immediately becomes the most accurate information available in the world, it will grow daily, and it’s shared to all. We expect to see everyone using it, job hunters, press, gamers, college students, investors, even agencies that would like to see just how prolific this industry is.

...As the Internet has proved, businesses grow when you connect people, and my goal is to simply help drive that growth. I’m not looking for any donations, not looking for any sponsorship, I am looking for teams (especially new ones) to just put themselves on the map.

The project currently has a team that has put up the first 1,000 markers. It is expected that the community itself will eventually fill in the blanks.

Ah, if only the user-generated, homebrew-ed world of those entrenched in web 2.0 could spread to the rest of the world. If only.

Anyhow, feel free to fill Perry's map in yourself if you wish. Our read-link below should lead to the the map. It's important to note that the thing is free and it's still in beta.

 

It was back in September of last year that we announced the troika of Curt Schilling, Todd McFarlane, and R.A. Salvatore - the group who created Green Monster Games (GMG). This company looks dead serious in creating a kickass and innovative MMORPG, but aside from the job opening, we haven't heard anything about that kickass MMO from GMG. This next tidbit may give you a slight idea of what they're planning to cook up.

Recently, Schilling announced the appointment of Brett Close as GMG's president. Apparently, this guy is great when it comes to marketing games and among the games that he has delivered are Medal of Honor: Rising Sung, Medal of Honor: Frontline, and Nightcaster: Defeat the Darkness. And for his first announcement, the newly positioned GMG prez has appointed Mary Kirchoff as Senior VP of Marketing and Brand Development.

Kirchoff was responsible for the branding, business development, and all that jazz for Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast's popular titles (like Dungeons & Dragons, Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance brands). President Close also welcomed Chaz Sutherland as Art Director. Sutherland comes from the company firm Shiny Entertainment and recently dabbled as a Visual Effects artist and visual effects animator on games like Matrix: Path of Neo, Medal of Honor : Rising Sun , and Allied Assault: Spearhead , Golden Eye 2.

With the core group already being completed, all we need now is some updates on that MMO they are working on.