Dave Perry talks canned game Plague

By Robert Purchese Published 5 August, 2009

"Am I done with big games? Hell no."

Acclaim creative bod and Gaikai co-founder Dave Perry has spoken to Eurogamer about his multi-million-dollar game Plague, which Atari canned amid financial woes roughly three years ago.

"It was going to be called Plague," Perry told Eurogamer. "It was a really big idea: lots of new hooks - kind of me. I wanted to get back to old Shiny where it was always a surprise and lots of new hooks and things you'd never seen before."

"The idea was you could fire nano-weapons into things that would actually generate objects and delete objects in real-time. It was pretty neat. I was working with a book author, and we were going to get a movie made. It was a big deal.

"But it was a little too big for Atari," he added. "They weren't ready for that."

Perry, who once made gems like Earthworm Jim and MDK, is currently working on Gaikai, a game-streaming service we talk in detail with him about in an article published today.

As for Plague, "that idea is nowhere near done yet", Perry teased, leaving the sentiment unfinished.

"Am I done with big games? Hell no. But I'm way too busy to do one right now," he said.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds. @Clert on Twitter.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (18) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • ave #1 3 years ago

    Sounds rather up his own arse.

    "We were going to get a movie made"
    "It was a big deal"
    "It was a little too big for Atari".

    More like they thought he was loopers.

  • ChaK #2 3 years ago

    wtf was that all about?

  • lavalant #3 3 years ago

    His initials are DP.

  • Pirotic #4 3 years ago

    What happened to his 'user made mmo' he was going on about a few years back?

  • GreyBeard #5 3 years ago

    The last "hit" Perry was involved with was Earthworm Jim in 1994.

    MDK flopped badly, Messiah did even worse, and then he got to oversee two matrix games that managed to bury what seemed like an unstoppable franchise even deeper than the Wachowski's did with the movies.

    And that's going some.

    The guy blamed his lack of success first on Interplay then Atari, which may be partly true but still doesn't excuse him from his share of the responsibility.

  • IronCladChicken #6 3 years ago

    "The idea was you could fire nano-weapons into things that would actually generate objects and delete objects in real-time"

    This seems pretty unspectacular/'meh' - what am I missing here?

  • IronCladChicken #7 3 years ago

    @notmyrealname
    Talk to Bioware :)

  • Pulsar_t #8 3 years ago

    want new EWJ game!

  • Quixz #9 3 years ago

    @notmyrealname

    +1 for you.

  • Rirekon #10 3 years ago

    "This seems pretty unspectacular/'meh' - what am I missing here?"

    Vision?
    Describe a game like Pac-Man or Tetris and it sounds pretty "meh" too

  • makeamazing #11 3 years ago

    Well yes maybe explaining a game like Pacman TODAY might sound alittle crap, but not when it was released, thats when gaming was a totally different experience, and expectations were totally different. I have to admit I didnt think the small amount of EG write up sounded that impressive... but who knows. When i heard of the Big Brother Episode of DR Who I was thinking it was going to be rubbish, but it ended up being really good.

  • drchocapic #12 3 years ago

    Somebody should tell David Perry that he is irrelevant

  • zisssou #13 3 years ago

    He'll always be remembered for being a moany bitch on gamesmaster when he lost that mario challenge.
    Edited by zisssou at 06/08/09 @ 10:44

  • Rubarack #14 3 years ago

    The last "hit" Perry was involved with was Earthworm Jim in 1994.

    I suppose you can blame him for not realising the general public are far too dense to like something as wonderful as Sacrifice, but it seems mean spirited to criticise him too heavily for it.

    That said with 8 years since he had opportunity to make anything interesting it's questionable whether he can still make anything worthwhile.

  • darkmorgado #15 3 years ago

    He'll always be remembered for being a moany bitch on gamesmaster when he lost that mario challenge.

    Different Dave Perry, that mistake is always made - there are two Dave Perry's. One is a game developer, the other was an annoying journalist with a fetish for bandannas

  • monkeywithnoeyes #16 3 years ago

    just bring the Earth worm jim's to live and shut up.

  • IronCladChicken #17 3 years ago

    "Am I done with big games? Hell no."

    Does anyone give a crap? Hell no.

  • m0thr4 #18 3 years ago

    darkmorgado: Different Dave Perry, that mistake is always made - there are two Dave Perry's. One is a game developer, the other was an annoying journalist with a fetish for bandannas

    Actually there's not - there's Dave Perry, the bandana-wearing presenter of co-presenter of Gamemaster and then there's David Perry (who specifically doesn't like being called Dave Perry), the creator of some classic Megadrive games, a couple of decent and original games for the PC, and then a load of "meh" ever since.

    Eurogamer seems to be one of the few places on the Internet that can't seem to get this into their thick heads and <a href="http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/news200206perryresigns/comments">insist on calling[/i] the founder of Shiny "Dave".
    Edited by m0thr4 at 08/08/09 @ 00:40