Ideas for inspirational people/developers/studios in videogames

[Steven W]

For an upcoming feature we'd like to hear your thoughts and suggestions for which people in the videogames industry deserve to be recognised for their achievements. They could have been behind a game that re-defined a whole genre, they could have set a benchmark for certain videogames, created a new game engine or displayed a creativity that many developers just don't have. They could even be a videogames composer.

This doesn't just have to be individuals, it can also be studios.

[tigerboyce]

My vote has got to go to Hideo Kojima from Konami studios, for creating the best series of games ever. Metal Gear.

I think that every game from the series totally redifined games of thier own eras with amazingly detailed graphics, great storylines and some deep themes. They all had amazing gameplay and alot of the games would be in my favourite games of all time.
The games are all brilliantly creative and were some of the most anticipated titles to be released ever. It really brought the style of movies into a game by the great storylines, immersing FMV's and a great soundtrack.



also like to see:
Will Wright - sims, spore
Sid Meiers - Pirates!
Shigeru Miyamoto - super mario

[clearlyolly]

Shingo 'Seabass' Takatsuka - Creator of the Pro Evolution Soccer series.

Paul and Oliver Collyer - Creators of Sports Interactive and co-writers of the original Championship Manager series.

[kalniel]

Richard Garriott - founder of Origin and creator of some of the first RPGs for the computer. Helped kickstart PC gaming.

Chris Roberts - one of the first to see games as 'interactive movies' and to tie together gameplay elements with a narrative. (Plus he made Stryker's Run )

Geoff Crammond - took the area of 'simulators' to home computers, from Spitfire to Revs and the Grand Prix series.

John Carmack - 3d game engines and popularisation of FPS.

Studios: Origin - obviously!, Westwood for inventing RTS with dune 2, SSI - for realising (A)D&D could be made into a computer game

[Raz316]

From a very personal point of view, I would say Derek Yu ( http://derekyu.com/ ).

I have been properly interested in game design for about 10 years now and started with the humble tool of Klik and Play, a tool designed to make game development possible with a point and click interface instead of having to write lines of code yourself.

Anyway, while I was never that good, a few people of the 'klik' community stood out, most notably Blackeye Software (A.K.A Derek Yu and Jon Perry) with their Trigger Happy game. The klik scene always followed their progress, especially with the Trigger Happy 2 game (which was sadly never finished); but it was when they released Eternal Daughter (a fantastic platform RPG game developed in Multimedia Fusion, a 'sequel' to Klik and Play) everyone began to take notice and Derek Yu got the recognition he deserved.

Anyhooooo, skip forward 5 years and he is about to release Aquaria as a commercial game. This in itself is quite inspirational but the fact that the game won the Seumas McNally Grand Prize at the Independant Games Festival (an award previously won by Darwinia) is amazing.

I had always assumed anyone in game development got there in ways I would never think possible of myself. Derek Yu (while obviously much, much better than me) started where I did, using the same tools as me and is now doing very well.

Game design is something I had always considered a hobby, but having just finished uni, designing a game myself in the process, I am now hopeful to start a career in game development. If I hadn't seen how well Derek Yu had done, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be bothering.

[sp3n]

I would have to say Warren Spector from Ion Storm for 'Deus Ex'.
This game had a fantastic story that reacted really well to player decisions/actions. The way it blends action from a first person shooter with the character customization of a role playing game is truly awesome and on the same level as the genre bending system shock 2.

its a shame that the sequal was so poor

[Steven W]

My vote has got to go to Hideo Kojima from Konami studios, for creating the best series of games ever. Metal Gear.

I think that every game from the series totally redifined games of thier own eras with amazingly detailed graphics, great storylines and some deep themes. They all had amazing gameplay and alot of the games would be in my favourite games of all time.
The games are all brilliantly creative and were some of the most anticipated titles to be released ever. It really brought the style of movies into a game by the great storylines, immersing FMV's and a great soundtrack.



also like to see:
Will Wright - sims, spore
Sid Meiers - Pirates!
Shigeru Miyamoto - super mario

Hideo was certainly one of the guys I thought of, nice list guys.