David Jones (video game developer)

Jones in 2003

David Scott Jones was born in Dundee[4] in October 1965.[5] His career started with the indie game Menace, which he developed himself under the company name DMA Design and released in 1988. The game sold 15,000 copies and earned him £20,000, which he used to buy a car.[6] DMA Design expanded and went on to make a second game, Blood Money, which Jones saw as a "further development" of the concept used in Menace.[7] DMA created a third game in 1991, Lemmings, which was commercially and critically successful, resulting in awards including winning European Game of the Year twice. Over the next two years Lemmings sold over 2 million copies, making Jones, 25 years old at release and married with a child, wealthy and famous.[6]

DMA Design created several more games over the next few years, but Jones spent time on developing an idea for a fighting simulator set in a city; after the release of Syndicate Wars (1996), the company revised the concept to set it in a "living city" and cross it with a driving game, resulting in the successful and controversial Grand Theft Auto, which in turn sparked an entire franchise.[6] In 2012 Jones revealed that much of the controversy surrounding Grand Theft Auto was engineered by their publicist.[8] DMA Design was soon after acquired by Gremlin Interactive, starting a chain of purchases that resulted in the studio becoming Rockstar North. Jones stayed with the company through 1999 and Grand Theft Auto 2 before leaving.[9]

In 2000 Jones founded and led the Dundee studio of Rage Software, Rage Games (Scotland) Limited, where he developed the PC title Mobile Forces. Jones also co-founded Denki who developed Go Go Beckham for Rage. Rage ceased trading after bankruptcy.

In 2002 Jones founded Realtime Worlds, who developed Crackdown (2007) and APB: All Points Bulletin (2010).[10] Despite receiving funding of $100m Realtime Worlds entered liquidation in 2010 after the disappointing critical and commercial reception to APB.[11]

Jones was the keynote speaker for the World Cyber Games in 2004 where he said that he considered mainstream multiplatform gaming to be the next big thing,[12] and for the 2009 Develop Conference in Brighton.[13]

In 2012 David Jones started work on ChronoBlade, a Facebook action-RPG game, with Stieg Hedlund as part of San Francisco-based development team nWay.[14]

In 2012 he co-founded Cloudgine, a games development company focusing on cloud computing.[15]

In the same year Jones founded Reagent Games, serving as Creative Director, to lead the development of Microsoft Xbox One title Crackdown 3.[16]

In December 2017,[17] Cloudgine was acquired by Epic Games; with this, Jones became Director, Cloud Strategy for Epic Games, and resigned from Reagent Games.[18]

• Menace (1988)
• Blood Money (1989)
• Lemmings (1991)
• Oh No! More Lemmings (1991)
• Lemmings 2: The Tribes (1993)
• Holiday Lemmings (1993)
• Hired Guns (1993)
• The Lemmings Chronicles (1994)
• Grand Theft Auto (1997)
• Body Harvest (1998)
• Space Station Silicon Valley (1998)
• Tanktics (1999)
• Grand Theft Auto 2 (1999)
• Mobile Forces (2002)
• Crackdown (2007)
• APB: All Points Bulletin (2010)
• Crackdown 3 (2019)

Media related to David Jones at Wikimedia Commons