David Braben

David John Braben (born 1964, Basford, Nottingham) is a British computer programmer, best known for co-writing Elite, a hugely popular and influential space trading computer game, in the early 1980s. He attended Buckhurst Hill County High School in Chigwell in Essex. He studied Natural Sciences at Jesus College, Cambridge. Elite was written in conjunction with Ian Bell while both were undergraduate students at Cambridge University. Another semina... more

David John Braben (born 1964, Basford, Nottingham) is a British computer programmer, best known for co-writing Elite, a hugely popular and influential space trading computer game, in the early 1980s. He attended Buckhurst Hill County High School in Chigwell in Essex. He studied Natural Sciences at Jesus College, Cambridge. Elite was written in conjunction with Ian Bell while both were undergraduate students at Cambridge University. Another seminal game written by Braben was Zarch for the Acorn Archimedes (later released on some other platforms as Virus), which was one of the first true "solid" 3D games. After Zarch, Braben went on to found Frontier Developments, a games development company whose first project was a sequel to Elite named Frontier. Braben is still the Chairman and part owner of the company, whose recent projects have included RollerCoaster Tycoon 3, games based on the Wallace & Gromit franchise and the platformer LostWinds, which was a launch title on Nintendo's WiiWare... less