 Entrepreneurs
These individuals making it into the Entrepreneurs list are
businessmen, sure, but you have to be a little more than a penny-pusher to be
on our listing.
To make it into this group, one must not simply make
money-one must do so in a way that reinvents the company, advances the
industry, or flies in the face of convention. From massive franchises through
small indies, all of the below honorees have done just that.
Ace of Hearts: John
Riccitiello, Electronic Arts
Riccitiello's return to EA has marked a turning point for
the company. It's rare to see a CEO make such smooth, relatively contiguous,
but still effective changes to a lineup. It's perhaps even rarer for a CEO that
originally came from outside the industry to know so much about the games its
company makes.
But the firm's maintenance of its top franchises and staff and
simultaneous nurturing of well-made potential new ones, from Mirror's Edge through Dead Space, has meant that the company
is becoming, surprisingly, less "The Man" and more "The Man You
Want To Work For."
King of Hearts: The
Housers, Rockstar
Sam and Dan Houser understand what very few others in the
game business have managed to perfect -- that a combination of controversy and
well-executed, stylish games add up to sales gold.
Sure, one might say that
Take-Two division Rockstar Games overeggs the "rebel" card, but Grand Theft Auto IV's massive initial
sales -- and a robust slate of other franchises, including Bully, Midnight Club, and Max
Payne -- mean that the brothers continue to power much of their parent
company's buzz and profits.
Queen of Hearts: Rod
Humble, The Sims Studio/EA
Recently appointed the head of the Sims Label at EA [which EA Casual has now been folded into], Humble
has notable street cred with developers, having created his own art-games such
as The Marriage in his spare time in
recent years.
But it's the diversification of The Sims line that he's now masterminding, and quite apart from the
surprisingly sophisticated The Sims 3,
extensions such as MySims (and the
return of SimCity to greater console
prominence) are showing why the original franchise of "play" is
coming full circle in these casual times.
Jack of Hearts: Randy
Pitchford, Gearbox
Make no bones about it, running a successful independent
developer is tremendously difficult in today's rapidly stratifying market-and
FPS veteran Gearbox, headed by Pitchford, is doing an amazing job of growing
and expanding its company.
Starting with conversions or new versions of other
companies' titles, Gearbox has created the developer-owned Brothers in Arms franchise, and is now diversifying further, thanks
to games such as Borderlands and even a cheeky Samba de Amigo Wii version. Well-respected by peers and creating
games that do well in stores, the company's entrepreneurial spirit seems to be
swelling over time.
Sony/Insomniac's Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest For Booty
10 of Hearts: Ted
Price, Insomniac
A key second-party Sony developer, what Price and his Southern
California staff continue to do, perhaps more so than any other
system-exclusive developer, is to iterate and create high-quality experiences
on a yearly timeline.
The original Resistance
was an impressive diversification, and with a much-awaited Resistance 2 out now, and the PSN-exclusive Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest For Booty being one of the first
intentionally bite-sized AAA downloadable titles, and a North Carolina studio
expansion planned for next year, the company seems in rude health.
9 of Hearts: Jonty
Barnes, Bungie
Splitting from the mothership is a gutsy move, but if you
have one of the biggest selling current console generation titles, as Bungie
does with Halo 3, then setting up
separately from Microsoft isn't such a stretch.
Helping them do so is Lionhead
veteran and production head Barnes, and with the newly announced Halo 3: ODST being practically a
mini-team side project for the now multi-project developer, we eagerly await
the firm's continued evocation of its independent spirit.
|
Printer-Friendly Version
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