Superstars of the Gaming Industry

[Carnage17]

In case you missed my post on my blog, or also on nerdsontherocks.com, these are the people who I think define our industry today. Emphasis on TODAY, because I left a lot of former big names off the list because they've either been off the radar (Itagaki), have quit (Will Wright), lost their touch (Yuji Naka), etc, so don't blast me for those people.

So what do you guys think? who's missing? for your ease, I'll reproduce the list below (in no particular order):


Vince Zampella and Jason West
Cliff Bleszinski
Shigeru Miyamoto
Hideo Kojima
Warren Spector
Peter Molyneux
Marty O'Donnell
Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk
Shinji Mikami
Ken Levine
Todd Howard
Amy Hennig
David Cage


*Oh yeah, one final note, this list represent names involved strictly in the creative process of games. No studio execs who just manage and aren't really involved in the design, like Gabe Newell, or even genius programmers, like John Carmack.

[gekko]

Your idea of the creative process is a bit skewed. I only see one person from audio and no art.

[BreakABone]

Originally Posted by gekko

Your idea of the creative process is a bit skewed. I only see one person from audio and no art.

That's actually a fair assessment.

A lot of the focus is put on the development side, and oddly usually on one person in the development team.

There's a quote from a Warren Spector interview at IGN

IGN: Deus Ex games are always known as a "Warren Spector" game, and a lot of the credit gets taken away from the team. How do you feel about that?

WP: I hate it. I hate the fact that so much credit goes to individuals in this business. I'm human, and obviously I enjoy attention; "Hey, shine the spotlight on me, rah rah rah," but there's Orson Welles, a pretty talented filmmaker, and there's a quote that I absolutely love. He said, - I'm probably going to get this a little wrong - "A writer needs a pen, an artist needs a brush, and a filmmaker needs an army." And if anything, game development is even more of a team effort than making a movie, so for individuals to get credit for making a game is absolutely insane.