People

John De Margheriti is a seasoned, highly successful businessman who holds an Global Executive MBA from Sydney University and co-manages a family-run conglomerate comprised of video games development, schools for video games, visual effects, filmmaking and virtual production, film and game coworking spaces, film financing and production, commercial and residential real estate investments, a technology park and soon a film studio. He was appointed an Honorary Ambassador for Canberra in 2000 for his contribution to the video games industry, awarded the 2014 CSIRO Benson Entrepreneur of the Year, the 2019 recipient of the John Scott Memorial Award for contribution to training and development of the interactive entertainment sector, and later the 2022 Pearcey Medal for distinguished lifetime of achievement and contribution to the development and growth of the Australian Information and Communication Technology industry.

De Margheriti co-founded Micro Forté in 1985, one of the oldest independent video games development studios in the world, and produced a number of globally successful games. In 1995 John co-patented a system and method for creating highly scalable client-server technology and in 1999 he co-invented the massively multiplayer middleware online category through his BigWorld Technology company which was widely used in China, later exiting to Wargaming.net, the makers of “World of Tanks”, one of his most successful licensees, and later sold to Riot Games.

Additionally, De Margheriti founded the Academy of Interactive Entertainment Ltd (AIE) in 1996, the world’s original non-profit game school with campuses in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Adelaide, Online, Seattle, and Lafayette. He founded the Game Developers’ Association of Australia (GDAA) in 1999 and later co-founded non-profit Game Plus, a coworking space for over 50 game development companies. Deciding that he had achieved all he wanted from the video games industry, he turned to innovating the independent Australian film industry. He co-founded DEMS Entertainment, which helps to develop, finance and produce smaller independent genre feature films and non-profit Film Plus, a collaborative production studios for independent film production and related companies

John has invested in numerous film projects and recently produced Sissy at Film Plus in 2022 alongside Arcadia’s Lisa Shaunessy , Bec Janek and Jason Taylor of Freedom Films. The knowledge gained by his Canberra team is serving AIE well, as he and the team are busy finalising the design of AIE Film Studios featuring a soundstage, LED Virtual production volume, workshop and other significant film production facilities, and looks forward to produce with his team and other producers, a slate of genre feature films with significant budgets, largely financed by AIE and his family, with graduates of AIE attached in various paid roles.