Million-dollar prize for Perry’s Top Secret

David Perry’s upcoming ‘Top Secret’ MMO, which is inviting the public to help participate in its design, has revealed its prize – a publishing deal and payment for tools.

Top Secret was announced earlier this year and invites teams of indie, mod, professional, amateur and/or student game developers to develop an MMO.

Directed by Shiny founder David Perry, the high-level design has already been done – the game is a ‘beast racing game’ – with teams set the challenge of produce the game themselves, from which a winner will be chosen.

Publisher Acclaim has teamed up with IGN’s recently launched ModCenter to facilitate this, with free tools available. Acclaim has also promised to pay the licensing fees for any commercially available video game engine used by the winners.

Combined with the publishing deal – and royalties up for grabs – the organisers are valuing the prize fund at over $1million dollars.

“The ‘Top Secret’ team is where the concept of Web 2.0 meets the video game industry. We’ve had close to 50,000 people sign up to help design this game. The best participant will win a future Acclaim title to direct,” says David Perry, game’s director.

“With so many people involved, this is already the biggest team in history. I am directing the project, but this game is going to be designed by the community, produced by the community and developed by the community.”