Are These People Reshaping the Gaming Industry?

Mark Graham writes "An EU game development site has put up a list of the 25 people they think are 'reshaping the games business'. Although they admit the list is highly subjective, it's a debate-provoking piece, and some of the entries (Portal designer Kim Swift and Kongregate.com's founder) are spot on, going for the people that have introduced innovations rather than those that dominate column inches. Miyamoto is absent from the list, for example — although his boss Satoru Iwata is in there. Including Japansese designers like Hironobo Sakaguchi (ranked for his successful prolific outsourced development process) instead of Hideo Kojima is sure to anger a few fanboys. Or at least raise a few eyebrows." Anyone they left off that should obviously be on there?

Comments

Re:Kim Swift is Cute!

[tedgyz]

Well, most /.ers would "finish" if they actually cuddled a cute woman.

You see a cute woman and all you want to do is cuddle?

Yeah they left out some folks

[Sciros]

To put Sakaguchi in there and not Miyamoto is pretty insane, especially given their "being the creator of FF is enough" quote. Miyamoto isn't out of the picture just yet, especially with Mario Galaxy just having been released. He is also one of the driving forces behind the innovation that Nintendo is working to saturate the market with.

Hopefully the Bioshock guy, Ken Levine is on there. I just read the article but forgot right away. Also they need a guy from Harmonix (Guitar Hero developer) if there isn't one.

Kojima, yeah he's not really big-time on the radar right now. MGS4 is highly anticipated but it's not a reason to slide into the top 25. If you take Kojima then you need to take Itagaki and probably a host of other "fan-fave" developers that push the boundaries in certain genres.

Re:Yeah they left out some folks

[twistedsymphony]

...Itagaki...

Don't get me wrong, I love the games that this guy produces but I'd hardly classify re-releasing the same exact game for over a decade with little more than slightly more refined mechanics and graphics every single time as "industry reshaping". By that same token I don't think Kojima belong anywhere near that list either.

In my opinion an industry shaping player is someone who makes a game, good or bad, popular or not, profitable or not, new ideas or not, and makes other developers in the industry start thinking about their own game design as a result. I can think of several instances this generation where games have come out and their design elements have started trickling into other games in the industry. They might not have been the first to do something, but they were the first to start certain trends in the industry.

I think Portal did that with the portal system and associated gameplay, I think Gears of War did that with it's gameplay style, I think a lot of Nintendo's games have done that with the way their games use the Wii Remote, Test Drive unlimited did it with their online gameplay system, and fight night 3 did it with their analog control mechanism. Older examples are the Guitar Hero series making music a major gameplay element and Fable with it's ideals of a good vs evil evolution.

as I said these aren't the first games to use these concepts but they are the games that sparked trends that have started flowing through the industry whole industry.

Stardock

[Marc_Hawke]

They just released IronClad's Sins of a Solar Empire. www.sinsofasolarempire.com If you don't know what this game is, I can't tell you without referencing 3 or 4 other games. It's more than a cross-over, and it's very well done. (As worthy to be on the list as Portal.)

However, if you look at Stardock as a publisher they deserve the spot even more. If you remember the big stink between StarForce and Stardock back when Galactic Civilizations was released. They continue their style of "don't screw the people who actually pay you."

Also, while there are only a few triple-A titles on Stardock Central, their scheme of 'digital download' + 'mail you a box for shipping costs' is much more palatable to me than Valve's Steam service where you are forced to make your own hardcopies from their backup files. It also get nicely out of the way once you've installed the game vs Valve's ubiquitous TSR style.

http://www.stardock.com/

(they mainly do desktop customization and other utilities, but they have an extensive selection of budget games and a few large titles.)

The Gaming Industry is Shaping Me

[sjaguar]

Unfortunately, it isn't for the better. Maybe if I stop playing games, get out of the house, exercise, eat properly.... Just one more quest. I swear, this one's the last one.

CCP?

[beheaderaswp]

I know this isn't really the aim of the article.... but...

From a purely tech standpoint, the guys over at CCP (Eve Online) should be noted for the massive achievement of their database cluster. 45000 people playing in the same game universe, backed by Microsoft SQL Server (?!?!?), massive RAMSAN capacity, and all that custom Python code seems a very notable achievement. Yes I said Python! Stackless to be precise.

From where I stand, it's that kind of cluster which will run the MMO's of tomorrow.

Not everything is graphics and market share.

Re:CCP?

[minginqunt]

Utter drivel.

In almost every way, it's one of the most sophisticated MMOs available, and its technical achievements both front and back end are to be applauded.

Now, if you didn't like it, that's fine. But I don't see why you need to badmouth it though, especially with claims that are demonstrably untrue.

Re:Can we fix the icon

[howdoesth]

Umm, the Atari predates 3-D. It wouldn't be possible to view the joystick from that angle.