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The 25 Games Industry Influentials of 2006

Posted by Zonk on from the yay-red-octane-and-bethesda dept.

Next Generation has up a list of the people it considers the game industry's top 25 people of 2006. Headlining the list are the veterans of this round of the console wars, with the rest of the folks notables from individual game companies. Plus two guys who make a comic. From the article: "6. Todd Howard, Bethesda - On Xbox 360, Oblivion has sold over 800,000 copies in the U.S., generating $50 million in revenues. Todd Howard, the game's executive producer, has spent four years on an RPG that captured many gamers who did not see themselves as the types to lope around grassy fields, collecting mushrooms and perhaps doing the odd bit of combat. The game's goal was to allow players to 'live another life' and it certainly succeeded. This is what makes Oblivion one of the most important games of the decade, as well as one of the best games."

5 of 38 comments (clear)

  1. Let us see... by SharpFang · · Score: 4, Interesting

    25 Rating board head - lawyer
    24 CEO
    23 Comic makers
    22 President
    21 gfx engine developer
    20 Shop network division president
    19 hardware manufacturer's PR guy
    18 CEO
    17 Marketing
    16 shop network COO
    15 CEO
    14 developer
    13 Sales&Marketing
    12 director
    11 distribution
    10 sales, marketing and management
    9 PR
    8 CEO and creative director
    7 marketing
    6 executive producer
    5 engineered the takeover of the Eidos
    4 sales and marketing
    3 attending interviews and doing the whole PR thing,
    2 boss of Nintendo
    1 business leader

    Rather few people who are involved in making actual games. Sales, management, shops, money making, corporate relationships and so on. Somehow actual games get lost in this all.

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    45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
    1. Re:Let us see... by cliffski · · Score: 3, Informative

      agreed 100%. This is the sad state of big retail game development. Great to see Chris Delay (introversion) there, but he is the exception.
      Too many people at the 'top' of the games biz talk about 'products' and 'skus'. Most of them don't even play games, or know how they work. The finance director at the last big company I worked for wouldnt recognise one of the companies games if it smacked him in the face.
      We have big budget games now, but sadly none of the enthusiasm or passion makes it through to the end product in lots of those games. Worse still, the developers are kept at arms length from the actual gamers, not even allowed to chat freely about the games with those who buy them.
      Sad times.

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      DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
    2. Re:Let us see... by 91degrees · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Well, this is something of a puff piece. When you get comments like, "Her efforts in 2006 have sought to leverage the synergy between the new generation of consoles", I think a lot of these people wrote their own blurb. The marketing people talk about these terms like synergy and partnership, the execs tak about upswings, figures, markets, and agressive targets (rather jargonny again, but I think these terms mean something to the suits).

      But I think you underestimate how much influence the execs can have. Maybe less so in the big PLCs, but a few of these developers are fairly small shops, where the CEO knows exactly what's going on and is directly involved in the individual projects.

  2. Influential? by RocketScientist · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Oh, console influential. I get it.

    Not industry influential. How can I tell? Well, if you ship a half million consoles, your company (SCEA) gets 2 spots in the top 25. If your company has an MMORPG on the PC with 7 MILLION paying subscribers, you get squat. Zero, zilch, not even an "honorable mention". So, you effect a a half million, 2 spots, you effect 14 times as many, you get 0 spots. Even the XBox 360, which Microsoft wants to ship, what, a couple million of? gets very high billing.

    The console industry is not the games industry. It is a part of the industry, but not the entire industry. I'd argue it may not even be the most popular or influential part of the industry.

    1. Re:Influential? by HappySqurriel · · Score: 3, Informative

      Well, if you ship a half million consoles, your company (SCEA) gets 2 spots in the top 25.

      Well, technically speaking SECA sold well over 15 Million pieces of hardware (PS2+PSP+PS3) and over 10 Million pieces of sofware this year; Nintendo has sold well over 20 Million pieces of hardware (DS, GBA, GC, Wii) and over 40 Million pieces of software this year. (Both approximate values because of no good european numbers) ...

      World of Warcraft is an important piece of software, but it hasn't sold that many units in 2006 (being that it was released in 2004) and Blizzard is not even in the same weight class as Nintendo or Sony. Yes WoW probably should have been added (probably in place of Best Buy) but saying that Nintendo or Sony should give up one of their spots for Blizzard is laughable.