David Braben made games like Elite and hardware like the Raspberry Pi.
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How computing legend David Braben schemed to create Elite: Dangerous and Raspberry Pi

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 10 min

David Braben became a gaming legend in the 1980s with the creation of Elite, a 3D space exploration game in the 1980s. He went on to found Frontier Developments, one of the longest-surviving U.K. game studios with titles such as RollerCoaster Tycoon 3, Thrillville, Kinectimals, Kinect Disneyland Aventures, and Elite: Dangerous.

If that weren’t enough of a career, Braben is also one of six original trustees for the Raspberry Pi Foundation, which launched a low-cost computer for education in 2012 and helped fuel the enthusiasm for the Maker movement. The Raspberry Pi, now on its third version, started out as a $25 computer that was aimed at getting kids excited about learning computers. It has succeeded in pumping up computer class enrollment in the United Kingdom.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.