David Perry, best known as the founder of Shiny Entertainment and Earthworm Jim, believes the way to beat game piracy is by distributing games for free. "The next big thing will be free games," said Perry, speaking in Belfast after being awarded an honorary doctorate by Queen's University. Perry goes on to explain the situation game developers in Asia encounter and how most games there have no entry cost but are supported by a micro-transaction model. A business model Perry believes that will change the industry in the USA and Europe. Creative big-wig at Acclaim, Perry has numerous MMOG projects in development. One was supposed to be a beast-racing MMOG that had a unique development process. The project dubbed Top Secret was a collaborative program for a small community of developers to design the game on paper. Acclaim originally intended to hire a development team to produce the final design document but the mesh of ideas became so uniquely twisted they felt it wouldn't work. Instead, five independent development teams are vying for a one million dollar contract but if no demos are up to the quality or meet Acclaim's standards, they will hire a professional studio instead.
