David Banner

David ‘Dai’ Banner, born in the Rhondda Valley, is a multi-award winning games director and managing director of Wales Interactive, a very successful video games company based in Pencoed.

Dai has 21 years of experience in the games industry, which has seen him develop over 35 titles encompassing a wide variety of gaming platforms including Playstation, Nintendo and Xbox, with sales in excess of 10 million copies worldwide.

As a technology entrepreneur, during the last 6 years Dai has been instrumental in the growth of the games industry in Wales. He is a key figure in creating new highly skilled jobs in this sector which have not previously existed, as well as helping establish Wales as a recognised digital creative UK hub.

In 2010 he was responsible for the creation of the GamesLab project, a digital development initiative for the University of South Wales, which helped nurture hundreds of undergraduates and graduates and provided a global platform for Welsh companies and their creative digital products.

Dai founded the annual Wales Games Show in 2012, putting Wales’ emerging gaming industry in the spotlight, attracting inward investment and creating new job opportunities across Wales. He also helped to create the Games degree art course at the University of South Wales, where he was a visiting lecturer for 5 years.

His company, Wales Interactive, has won 46 awards to date. It designs, develops and publishes video games and has seen its business flourish, attracting a global audience of 200 million users. The company recently launched the 1st ever PlayStation4 and Xbox One video game to be made in entirely in Wales.