John De Margheriti

CEO, BigWorld Pty Ltd

John is a true entrepreneur, visionary and one of the most motivated and passionate people in the Australian Game Development Industry. In 1985 John co-founded Micro Forté, an Australian Game Development Studio that has just recently celebrated its 20th birthday. Towards the end of 1999 he saw an opportunity within the online game market for a definitive MMOG middleware solution which was successfully developed and spun out as BigWorld. This well-known company now has a world wide game developer base and a global focus with offices in Shanghai, Beijing, USA, Sydney and Canberra. The BigWorld Technology solution will be seen in such titles as Netease’s ‘Tian Xia 2’, with many more titles in development in the US, Europe and Asia.

John is also the founder and Chairman of the Academy of Interactive Entertainment Ltd (AIE), Canberra Technology Park (CTP), Canberra Business Parks (CBP) and the Australian Game Developers Conference (AGDC). The AIE has gained much recognition for being Australia’s premier Registered Training Organisation for the Computer Game Development and 3D Digital industries.

In December 2005, John announced the closing of Australia’s most successful and well known Game Developers Conference to provide the Game Developers Association of Australia (GDAA) an opportunity to run an industry conference. John founded the GDAA in 1999 at the inaugural AGDC and acted as one of its main financial backers and treasurer until late 2005 when he resigned from the board to focus his energies on expanding BigWorld Pty Ltd.