David John Braben was born on 2 January 1964 and is a British video game developer and designer, founder and CEO of Frontier Developments, co-creator of the Elite series of space trading video games, first published in 1984.
16 Facts About David Braben
2.
David Braben is a co-founder of and works as a trustee for the Raspberry Pi Foundation which in 2012 launched a low-cost computer for education.
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David Braben studied Natural Sciences at Jesus College, Cambridge, specialising in Electrical Science in his final year.
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In 2008, David Braben was an investor and non-executive director of Phonetic Arts, a speech generation company led by Paul Taylor.
5.
In May 2011, David Braben announced a new prototype computer intended to stimulate the teaching of basic computer science in schools.
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David Braben has been called "one of the most influential computer game programmers of all time", based on his early game development with the Elite series in the 1980s and 1990s.
7.
In 1987, David Braben published Zarch for the Acorn Archimedes, ported in 1988 as Virus for the Atari ST, Commodore Amiga and PC.
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In 2006, David Braben was working on an ambitious next-generation game called The Outsider, being developed by Frontier Developments.
9.
David Braben said explicitly that this title was of a special value to him.
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In 2012, David Braben explained in an interview with developer website Gamasutra his opinion that the sale of secondhand games negatively affects development of new titles, holding the price of games in general much higher than they would otherwise be.
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On 5 September 2005, David Braben received the Development Legend Award at the Develop Industry Excellence Awards in Cambridge.
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In 2012, David Braben was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.
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In 2013, David Braben was co-award winner of Tech Personality of the Year at the UK Tech Awards 2013.
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David Braben was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2014 Birthday Honours for services to the UK computer and video games industry.
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On 12 March 2015, David Braben was awarded the BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award in video gaming at the 11th British Academy Games Awards.
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David Braben is the recipient of three honorary doctorates from Abertay University, the Open University and the University of York.