Perry's first game was an
Astrosmash clone, which he wrote in
BASIC on a
Timex Sinclair 1000 at the age of 13. He lived at
Pensacola Naval Air Station, as his stepfather was an officer in the
U.S. Navy. Perry was a
C64 enthusiast in high school, using it to teach himself how to program games and
BBS applications. His stepfather later took a job as medical professor at the
University of South Alabama, which school Perry attended as well, studying music. However, he dropped out before graduating, to explore a musical career and move to California. For the next two years he worked part-time at the videogame booth in a
Toys R Us store, and played rhythm guitar for a local heavy metal band. He then decided to seek an actual career in the game industry, cold-calling various companies in the
Bay Area, and finally obtaining a job as a "Game Counselor" (telephone support) at
Hudson Soft. Over the next two years his duties expanded within the company, including work on such games as
Bomberman 2 and
Super Adventure Island. In 1992, Perry was hired by
Jeff Braun of
Maxis to work as a project manager, doing what was called "Maintenance Producing," supporting updates on existing products such as
SimEarth and
SimCity. Perry was then given a new project,
SimFarm, which he produced and co-designed with engineer
Eric Albers. The game won the
Codie award in 1993 from the
Software Publishers Association as "Best Secondary Education Program." The following year, Perry produced
Yoot Saito's
SimTower, which won the CODiE for Best Simulation Program. He was one of the employees who stayed with the company when it was acquired by
Electronic Arts in 1997. He has given talks at the
Game Developers Conference, and in 2003, published a series of "Designer Diaries", documenting the development of the console version of
The Sims. In 2011, Perry left Maxis/EA, and as of July 2011 is working at
Zynga, where he is executive producer of
FarmVille. ==Works==