Dave Jones

Overview

Dave Jones is a Scottish game developer and entrepreneur. He is currently the president of Cloudgine, a subsidiary of Epic Games.

Biography

David Scott Jones was born in Dundee, Scotland in 1965. Prior to any involvement in the games industry, Jones was an apprentice for Timex before he decided to pursue a career in software engineering.

DMA Design (1987 - 1999)

Jones founded DMA Design in 1987, developing games such as Menace and Blood Money. DMA Design's third game, titled Lemmings, was both a commercial and critical success - making Jones wealthy and famous in the games industry.

As DMA Design released more games, Jones conceptualized an idea for a fighting simulator set in a city. The studio later revised this concept and they decided to cross-blend it with a driving game, resulting in the release of Grand Theft Auto - which spawned the hugely successful Grand Theft Auto series. DMA Design would be purchased by several companies, leading to the studio's rebranding into Rockstar North. Jones remained with the company until the release of Grand Theft Auto 2 in 1999.

Realtime Worlds (2002 - 2010)

Dave Jones founded Realtime Worlds in early 2002. Their first game release was Crackdown, which was a commercial success that performed well critically.

Sometime later, Realtime Worlds released APB: All Points Bulletin - a multiplayer-focused open world game released exclusively for PC. The game's failure to meet expectations led to Realtime Worlds filing for administration in 2010.

Cloudgine (2012 - present)

Jones formed Cloudgine in 2012, the studio's main focus is on cloud technology. After a hiatus from the series, Dave Jones announced that he was developing Crackdown 3 with a focus on cloud computing. He would later resign from the project in 2017, stating that Sumo Digital were always the principal developer for the game.

Currently, Jones remains the president of Cloudgine while also working alongside Epic Games.

Trivia

• After the release of Uniracers, Jones was sued by Pixar for the game sharing many similarities with the short film Red's Dream. The game was subsequently pulled from store shelves by Nintendo.