Making games may be largely a team effort these days, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't acknowledge the individuals who make outstanding contributions to the industry as well.
Gamasutra and its sister site Game Developer magazine have put together a "Power 50" list of people in the game industry who have stood out for doing work in the last year that is new, different, or better.
Here, we've highlighted seven talented developers who've created exemplary work with their games, engines, and frameworks, championing the programmers who inspire us to do better. We are also recognizing talented individuals in the fields of Art, Audio, Business, Design, and Evangelism in separate posts.
The following names are not ranked -- they are listed alphabetically by last name.
Joachim Ante Unity Technologies
As we're wrapping up 2012, we've seen one very clear game-dev trend: Everybody loves Unity.
Whether you're an experienced dev in a major studio tasked with throwing together a quick-and-dirty prototype, a small-time indie studio looking for an off-the-shelf 3D engine to build a game for multiple platforms, or just a hobbyist dev throwing together a fun project for a game jam, you'll probably be using Unity.
Unity Technologies CTO, cofounder, core development team lead Joachim Ante has been central to that success; under Ante's leadership, Unity has blossomed into a tool that is powerful, polished, and relatively easy to use.
Joachim Ante
Boyd Multerer Microsoft
Microsoft's XNA framework (and associated dev tool XNA Game Studio) has been something of an unsung hero for indie devs over the last console generation, and since its future is in question (XNA applications won't be included in Windows 8's Metro UI or app store), we thought it only fair to give XNA—and Xbox director of development Boyd Multerer—proper acknowledgement.
XNA has made it easier for small-time indies and hobby game devs to make games and put them on Xbox 360s, Windows phones, and PCs around the world. We're fans of tech that democratizes game development, and XNA was unprecedented in terms of how available and accessible it made the Xbox 360 and Windows Phone 7 platforms.
We're hoping that XNA sticks around in some form—there are a few projects out there working to adapt XNA to other platforms, which could eventually enable XNA devs to build games for Metro, Android, iOS, Mac OS, and PlayStation Mobile—but even if the worst happens and XNA falls by the wayside, we want to salute Multerer for his excellent work.
Simeon Nasilowski Two Lives Left
There is something to be said for programmers who work on making programming more accessible to a wider range of people. Two Lives Left's Simeon Nasilowski did just that with Codea, a newbie-friendly iPad app that lets you quickly build game prototypes with Lua (see the June/July 2012 issue of Game Developer for the review). With Codea, anyone with an iPad and $10 can start dipping their toes in the game-dev pool, and we think that's pretty cool.
Niklas Smedberg
Jarod Pranno Phosphor Games
Unreal Engine is a great piece of tech, but we can't forget to show some love to the devs out there who make it sing—and Jarod Pranno, studio art director on Phosphor Games's mobile title Horn (pictured above) did just that.
With Horn, Pranno demonstrated that Epic Games/Infinity Blade dev Chair Entertainment aren't the only ones who can make a great-looking mobile game, and we're eagerly paying attention to see what Pranno and Phosphor will be doing next.
Niklas Smedberg Epic Games
By now, it's no secret that the Unreal Engine can make mobile games look amazing—and some of that credit goes to Epic Games's senior engine programmer Niklas Smedberg.
Between Smedberg's under-the-hood look at mobile GPUs at GDC 2012, his work on the post-process graphics effects on the Infinity Blade series, and his current work on Unreal Engine 4, it's pretty clear that if you want your mobile game to look like it came straight from a console, he's the go-to guy.
Patrick Wyatt N/A
Patrick Wyatt is practically the definition of "industry veteran"; between his stint at Blizzard leading the original Battle.net, cofounding Guild Wars dev ArenaNet, and more recently working as En Masse Entertainment's COO (TERA), it's hard to find an MMO that doesn't have his fingerprints on its network code.
When looking at a new MMO, it's easy to overlook the underlying nuts and bolts that keep customers happy. Wyatt's work on the platform underlying TERA's account management, billing, and other functions he described to Game Developer as "all the other unsexy parts of games" has shored up many player-experience design flaws others simply consider a fact of MMO life—such as beefing up account security, filtering spam from chat, building in better analytics to improve player retention rate, and so on.
Derek Yu
More recently, Wyatt has been making efforts to share his knowledge on game server code by writing articles on his blog at codeofhonor.com and giving in-depth talks at the Game Developers Conference.
Derek Yu Mossmouth
Some games so tightly bind their programming and design together that it's hard to truly determine who deserves the credit. One such is Mossmouth's brilliant Spelunky, which released this year for Xbox Live Arcade.
Spelunky's randomly generated levels are the cornerstone of the game's addictiveness—and a marvel of designer Derek Yu's algorithmic design. They're always navigable, always fun, and ever changing. You'll never complain that they weren't created—or at least not directly—by human hands.
Update: An earlier version of this article was erroneously published with only three of the seven programmers spotlighted here. The article has been updated with the additional four programmers.
As a developer who picked up Unity in my free time, only to be hired because of my unity experience a little over a yer later I have first-hand experience in using it for commercial and personal game projects and like the article guys say I love it. Especially once you look and see all the various extensions once can use within your project besides developing your own tool framework there is just an enormous amount of flexibility in working with an engine like unity and I know for me it has become my favorite engine to develop with!
I am greatly surprised that Derek Yu was brought up on the list. In interviews, I heard him say that his programming is mediocre. Congratulations to Derek and the rest of the people as well.
Is Jarod Pranno on the wrong list? 'Studio Art Director' doesn't really sound like much of a programming position, and all his past credits seem to be in artistic roles...
We figured that Pranno's work on Horn was just as much about tech-wrangling (getting it to look so good on iOS) as it was about artistic talent and achievement, so we put it in the Programming category since it's more of a technical achievement.
That's a really poor justification, and it shows that the criteria used to make this list are flawed. I don't doubt that the specific people mentioned are very talented, but it's mind-boggling to construct a list of "Power 50" programmers that's not based on programming at all.
I understand that it's hard to make this kind of list. The work of programmers is often not easily visible in the finished product like art or sound or game design could be. Additionally technology is not often shared outside of individual studios and amateurs have a very hard time understanding or appreciating it.
It doesn't mean that making a list is impossible. I know there are tons of genius programmers out there. I work with several of them. They've never made a GDC presentation, they aren't active on Twitter.... aside from the credits in their games people will never have heard of them. The talent is out there, it just requires a bit of research on the part of outsiders.
In lieu of that research if there's specific tech you find worth mentioning like the visuals of Horn or Unity you could just make a list honoring that tech. It seems that's the intention here, rather than to honor programmers.
But well, Spelunky is interesting, but I think if he should win for it, it should be by design, not code.
Kinda strange to see 2 artists in a list about 7 programmers...
I understand that it's hard to make this kind of list. The work of programmers is often not easily visible in the finished product like art or sound or game design could be. Additionally technology is not often shared outside of individual studios and amateurs have a very hard time understanding or appreciating it.
It doesn't mean that making a list is impossible. I know there are tons of genius programmers out there. I work with several of them. They've never made a GDC presentation, they aren't active on Twitter.... aside from the credits in their games people will never have heard of them. The talent is out there, it just requires a bit of research on the part of outsiders.
In lieu of that research if there's specific tech you find worth mentioning like the visuals of Horn or Unity you could just make a list honoring that tech. It seems that's the intention here, rather than to honor programmers.
It is using a tool in a excellent manner, but not programming.