David Darling (entrepreneur)

David Darling CBE (born 17 June 1966 in London) is a British video game developer and entrepreneur,^[1] best known for co-founding Codemasters, with his brother Richard, and for being involved in a long succession of top ten games over more than 30 years. He is now founder and CEO of smartphone app developer and publisher Kwalee.

Early life

David's father James (Jim) was a contact lens pioneer, married to an Australian, Marilyn (née Tregurtha), they had 7 children. In his early life David lived on three continents, in the UK, in Australia and in Canada, before finally settling in Crewkerne, Somerset.

Career

David starting writing video games on a Commodore Pet with his brother, Richard, in the bedroom of their home in Vancouver, Canada when David was just 11 vears old. This continued when the brothers moved to Crewkerne, Somerset to live with their grandparents. They then duplicated these games themselves and sold them via small advertisements in magazines such as Popular Computing Weekly. Soon they were earning more money than their father, who returned to England to manage the burgeoning business.

In 1982, when David was 16, they formed the company Galactic Software and supplied a succession of games to be published by Mastertronic, including The Last V8 (published under their MAD brand), one of several titles written by David.

Codemasters was formed in 1986 by David with his brother Richard and his father Jim in order to publish their games themselves. Initially it was housed in an industrial unit in Banbury, Oxfordshire, then moved to offices converted from the stables, barns and other outbuildings at Lower Farm House, outside Southam, Warwickshire.

Initially Codemasters concentrated on what were known as “budget” games at the £1.99 then £2.99 pricepoint for 8 bit home computers such as the Sinclair Spectrum and Commodore 64. With titles such as BMX Simulator, Rock Star Ate my Hamster and Pro Skateboard Simulator. Codemasters developed a reputation for innovation with features such as simultaneous four player gaming. They also had major success with the Dizzy series of games developed by the Oliver twins, who later went on to found Blitz Games Studios. Within the first year of trading Codemasters was the best selling game publisher in Britain with in excess of 27% of the total market according to the Gallup charts.

In 1990 David co-developed the Game Genie,^[2] a game modification device for the Nintendo NES and other game consoles, this went on to become the 5th best selling toy in the United States of America in Christmas 1991.

Codemasters evolved as a game developer to produce full price games across all current platforms, sold globally. Notable successes included the Colin McRae Rally series and Operation Flashpoint.

In 2000 David won the UK National Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

David sold out his interests in Codemasters in 2007.^[3]

In the Queen's birthday honours in 2008 David was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for “services to the computer games industry”.

In 2011 David founded Kwalee in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire to develop and publish smartphone applications.^[4]

References

1. ^ Web : http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,68889/
2. ^ "Out-of-Print Archive • Super Nintendo interview • CodeMasters - David Darling - The Game Genie". Outofprintarchive.com. http://www.outofprintarchive.com/articles/interviews/SNES/CodeMasters-SuperPlay4-1.html. Retrieved 2011-09-24. 
3. ^ Johnson, Bobbie. "Darlings sell their stake in Codemasters | Technology | guardian.co.uk". Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2007/jun/14/darlingssellt. Retrieved 2011-09-24. 
4. ^ "Kwalee's David Darling on the new challenge of making games and apps for iOS, interview, Kwalee news". Pocketgamer.biz. 2011-09-14. http://www.pocketgamer.biz/r/PG%2EBiz/Kwalee+news/news.asp?c=33343. Retrieved 2011-09-24. 

Persondata
Name	Darling, David
Alternative names
Short description	Businessperson
Date of birth	1966-06-17
Place of birth	London, England
Date of death
Place of death