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8 of Clubs: Alex
Rigopulos, Harmonix
It's probably the cultural and stylistic forces at work at Rock Band (and original Guitar Hero) co-creator Harmonix that
enchant us the most, and lead to Rigopulos' appearance in the Deck for
Ambassadors. By which, we mean -- Konami has been making music games for years
that have cultural resonance in its homeland, but Harmonix has always
understood how to infuse the passion of music into games.
The downloadable
content around Rock Band and Rock Band 2 is some of the most careful
broadening of the market in some time -- sure, we get Metallica, but The
Grateful Dead? Jimmy Buffett? Delightful.
7 of Clubs: Lane
Merrifield, Club Penguin
Subscription-based MMOs are often described as the exclusive
realm of the hardcore, but Lane Merrifield's bright, surprisingly soulful Club
Penguin proves otherwise. In his keynote speech at Austin GDC this year,
Merrifield explained why this company runs the virtual world, with its
grin-inducing stories and charming demeanor.
Basically, it's not because they
were waiting for Disney to buy them -- rather, that they love the kids who play
the game, and want to serve them above all. That's pretty ambassadorial,
selfless, and above all, genuine, which is why this grassroots creator has gone
on to so much success.
6 of Clubs: Pauline
Jacquey, Ubisoft
No third party has understood Nintendo's hardware and target
demographic as well as the Paris-headquartered Ubisoft, a key to its recent
success. From the more whimsical Rabbids
through the tremendously popular Imagine
and Petz series, the latter franchises have sold multiple millions of copies.
Ubisoft's casual titles -- while perhaps not of
interest to many of the core readers of Game Developer -- have distinguished
themselves by being well-made non-shovelware, and productions that don't try to
take advantage of the innocence of the target market. Jacquey, who heads up the
casual division at the firm, should take pride in the sales, the marketing
broadening, and most of all, the way the company has gone about it.
5 of Clubs: Jim Greer,
Kongregate
Ex-Pogo staffer Greer formed Kongregate with a simple
idea-to take the Pogo "stickiness" and bring it to bear on free,
ad-supported Flash-based web games. For many in the regular game industry, it
might be a little scary how competent many of these titles are, and the layers
of Web 2.0 chat, rating, and achievements make the site even more intriguing.
Of
course, the monetization is relatively unproven for end users, at least in
terms of making a living easily, but Kongregate is a key site in the
democratization of gaming, and that's a wonderful thing.
4 of Clubs: Rusty
Buchert, Sony Santa
Monica
Some of the most interesting creative endeavors out of Sony
recently have been birthed from Sony's Santa Monica
studio, and veteran Buchert has helped facilitate a lot of these more esoteric
first-party wonders.
From indie console breakthrough Everyday Shooter through ThatGameCompany's upcoming Flower to the unique interactive
demo-scene project Linger in Shadows,
Buchert is facilitating some of the titles that are truly giving the
PlayStation Network its personality-and showcasing how a first-party should
juice up its lineup with truly different productions.
 3 of Clubs: Cliff
Bleszinski, Epic
Most critics and developers agree that the game industry
needs "faces" in order to be accepted by the mainstream in the way
movies are. Gears of War's Cliff
Bleszinski is such a face.
He's personable, perceptive, and with a successful
enough game series to wind up on television, but also with the intelligence and
care for the industry to actually say something interesting once he gets there.
Bleszinski may be a little smoother than the average INTJ game developer, but
for the future profile of the game industry, isn't that a good thing?
2 of Clubs: Tetsuya
Mizuguchi, Q Entertainment
Very few Japanese creators have a distinctive style and a
cross-media bent -- perhaps only Masaya Matsuura has a similar profile -- and
Q's Mizuguchi is notable for his ability and his firm's ability to take
abstract puzzle and action concepts (see: Lumines,
Rez) and make them resonate worldwide.
His devotion to synaesthesia has, in
some ways, prefigured the music game boom, and most of all, his ability to skip
from games to elsewhere -- whether it be the holographic Al Gore he created for
Live Earth or his virtual Genki Rockets pop stars -- makes him a cultural
figure beyond the obvious game creator-geek.
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but that's year away! but one day!
@Tom: You just said it though, "no third party has understood Nintendo's [...] target demographic". Nintendo's target demographic is casual gamers, not core gamers.
Ubisoft makes ridiculously good games for the Wii, but nothing can please everyone (and in this case, a fairly large chunk of the "core" Nintendo gamer).
Shigeru Miyamoto - Please, he is the lead designer on Nintendo. If it wasn't for him we wouldn't have so fun memories running trough world splattering turtles and looking for princesess on wrong castles!!!!
Hironobu Sakagushi - He is the sole savior of SquareEnix. He is the creator of Final Fantasy. Most recent Las Oddysey
Jhon Romero - Ever heard of Doom. He is the mind behind the game. Shame that he only shinned once, but still, shinned pretty hard!!!!
I *did* find it a little surprising that the Trailblazers portion of the deck didn't include Cryptic Studios in some fashion-- when you look back over the last year(plus a little) for them, it's been a fascinating jump into new ground. Announcing Marvel, then selling their single(and very successful) title, then losing Marvel, announcing Champions, attempting to self-publish, announcing STO... it's a lot of unknown to forge that most companies would avoid. The largest impact to be had has, I think, gotten the least notice in the general shuffle, though it's what makes me most surprised to not see them-- the engine and development tools pipeline and their goal to bring the development time on a AAA MMO down from the notorious and costly timeframe we've come to expect down to a mere 1.5-2 years. I realize the jury's still out on whether it's something they'll be able to do, since the upcoming titles are just that-- upcoming, but even the *suggestion* that an MMO could be built on that kind of timeframe is a lot of food for thought.
@Carlos:
True, but I would argue that all of those people lacked anything really worthy of the list in 2008-- most of what you're citing is based on past conquest more than what they've spent their time doing in the last year. As I understand it, this list is intended to be a snapshot of the last year's events.
One omission that's perhaps understandable this year, but which I expect will be rectified in a year or two (assuming this list becomes an annual feature as I hope it will), is that of David Whatley at Simutronics for the HeroEngine. With licensees from BioWare to Bethesda sister-company Zenimax Online, and all of them saying very positive things about it, the HeroEngine could potentially do for MMORPGs what the Unreal Engine did for shooters. Once games start shipping, I won't be surprised to see Whatley's name somewhere on a future edition of this list.
On a mostly (though not entirely) unrelated note, I'm still waiting for someone to submit to Gamasutra a feature article -- or better yet, an entire book -- on the astonishing story of Looking Glass and what its "graduates," from Warren Spector and Harvey Smith (Deus Ex) to Ken Levine (BioShock) to Greg LoPiccolo, Dan Schmidt and Eric Brosius (Guitar Hero) to Emil Pagliarulo (Fallout 3), have accomplished and continue to achieve in the computer game industry. (And that doesn't even include folks like Allen Varney, Marc LeBlanc and others whose impact on game design is still strong.)
I'm obviously a bit of a fan where the Looking Glass style of game is concerned. But I think there's an objectively interesting industry story deserving to be told here, and Gamasutra would be a great place to start doing so.
but hopefully these key people don't become superstars......the game industry doesn't need to become a "Hollywood"
Every single person on this list has achieved great work and are all skilled at what they do. Passing this knowledge or skills through the industry is what now needs to be looked at.
Agreed....thanks