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PlayStation (Games) Entertainment Games

50 Games Industry Figures To Watch? 37

Posted by simoniker from the they're-famous-but-not dept.
Thanks to 1UP for their feature discussing important videogame developers to watch out for, as they list "...fifty people in the game industry - some you've likely heard of, many you've not - who we think will help define gaming the most in the next twelve months." As well as the John Carmacks and Warren Spectors of this world, notably overlooked figures on the list include Julian Eggebrecht of Factor 5 ("Eggebrecht's team is one of the few out there that actually try to tax the GameCube to its limits") and Yasumi Matsuno of Square Enix ("..the director of Vagrant Story and Final Fantasy Tactics... [now] directing Final Fantasy XII.")
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50 Games Industry Figures To Watch? More

50 Games Industry Figures To Watch?

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  • Article is a troll (Score:4, Informative)

    by moronga ( 323123 ) on Monday October 13, 2003 @11:01PM (#7205104)
    Miyamoto isn't even on the list.

    We're supposed to believe that the guy behind the dead-on-arrival N-Gage is more important than Miyamoto? Please.

    • Re:Article is a troll (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Err, this is people to WATCH, not "old heroes". Is Miyamoto really about to bring us to the next level of gaming? To be honest i'd never even heard of the guy until Slashdot started linking to all these interviews. I've never been all that thrilled by Nintendo games and i don't think i'm the only one. I know he did Super Mario Bros. or something, but by the same token i could complain Raffaele Cecco isn't on the list - he did Cybernoid, Exolon, Stormlord etc... but has he done anything recently? Is he
      • > by the same token i could complain
        > Raffaele Cecco isn't on the list -
        > he did Cybernoid, Exolon, Stormlord etc...

        Stormlord? STORMLORD? Give me a fuckin' break! That has to be one of the most goddamn awful games ever. Even Donkey Kong on the 2600 was better than that.
      • Is Miyamoto really about to bring us to the next level of gaming?

        Possibly. The next Mario game, known as 100 Marios, is supposedly the next true Mario game. If that's the case, then you can expect a game that brings a lot of new ideas to the table.

        Was Storm Lord the game with the naked fairies? That was pretty cool when I was 9 years old.

      • Nothing important since Super Mario Bros., indeed.

        How about every Mario title since that? What about the groundbreaking Super Mario 64? The ingenious Super Mario Bros. 3? The amazing Super Mario World?

        Still not convinced? How about Zelda? Ocarina of Time? The Wind Waker?

        How about the signature elements (such as the switchable visors) in Metroid Prime? Donkey Kong? F-Zero? Pikmin?

        There are very few people in any industry that are greatly respected by everyone. Miyamoto is one of those few. He

        • F-Zero and Metroid Prime? The role he had on those was minimal AT BEST. I agree with you on the other games, but those two really aren't his works.
          • Agreed. The visors in Metroid Prime, among other things, were his ideas, however. Nintendo at one point stopped in at Retro Studios to review the game and they were reportedly unimpressed with the results. Miyamoto went over to make things right, and the game was released to rave reviews.

    • Re:Article is a troll (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      also missing Peter Molyneux - he might possibly f*ck up B&W2, but it's certainly someone where i'd watch what he's doing . And agreed - some names don't belong on that list.
  • The original Turrican was nothing special, but the later versions - Mega Turrican (Genesis) and the two Super Turrican games (SNES) - were some truly great-looking, action-packed platformers.

  • Odd choices (Score:4, Informative)

    by edwdig ( 47888 ) on Monday October 13, 2003 @11:33PM (#7205356)
    If this was written a few years ago, I could see including the Stamper Brothers of Rare. Bur first off, Rare's quality has greatly gone down hill over the past few years. More importantly, they want to get out of the business soon. That's why they sold all their stock of the company to Microsoft a year ago.

    And how can you include all the big people at Nintendo except for Miyamoto?

    Speaking of designers... anyone know what happened to Lori and Cori Cole from Sierra? They made some great games, but the Yosemite division got shut down a few years ago.
  • A list of the top engine developers for the games, rather than a list of directors with a mix of other important developers.

    Ken Silverman ought to be mentioned somewhere...

    -Adam

    • Re:I'd be interested in... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by edwdig ( 47888 ) on Tuesday October 14, 2003 @12:12AM (#7205628)
      Well, for the most part engines aren't very interesting.

      For the PC, most people just licence either the latest engine from Carmack (who was mentioned), or the latest from Epic. The HL2 engine will probably make it into that list too when it finally comes out.

      For the PS2, most companies just make an engine and stick with it as much as possible. Look at Capcom's games - most of them are based off the Resident Evil core.

      On the Xbox and GC, who knows? No one ever really talks about it.

      Really, people only really care about the engine if it's more important than the game itself. Quake 3 was on ok game, but it's engine was the important thing. It made a lot of money for id, and was used for a lot of good games. Doom 3 probably won't be a bad game, but it'll probably be remembered far more for its graphics than its gameplay. Think about it... we don't really know much about the game other than that it looks really good.
    • >> Ken Silverman ought to be mentioned somewhere...

      Or not, he's not doing anything interesting.

  • And number 51.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by mrpuffypants ( 444598 ) * <mrpuffypants@gm a i l . c om> on Tuesday October 14, 2003 @12:06AM (#7205595)
    51: Valve's IT Security Guy

    Watch him get booted out of every job in the future!
    Watch him use MS Outlook without patching!
    Watch him lose his company millions for leaving ports open!
    Watch him get grilled into little chunks by the HL2 community!

  • Err... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by 0x0d0a ( 568518 ) on Tuesday October 14, 2003 @12:30AM (#7205723) Journal
    Eggebrecht's team is one of the few out there that actually try to tax the GameCube to its limits

    Clearly the article submitter is not a game developer. Aside from possibly porters, there isn't a developer out that that doesn't "tax a console to its limits".

    You write the game. It runs too slow. You optimize it until it runs quickly enough. It needs just about all the juice.

    • Really? (Score:3, Flamebait)

      by Inoshiro ( 71693 )
      Perhaps you haven't looked at games recently. Let's do a comparison.

      What looks better, a game that uses bump mapping, or a game that doesn't? A game that does, of course, because proper use of bump mapping gives the illusion that a model (such as terrain or a character) has many more thousands of polygons of detail with a simple extra bitmap.

      Now, what games for the GameCube use bump mapping? Nyo-ho! Now we see that most of the games for the GameCube do not use this feature, thus not taking it to the l
      • Now, what games for the GameCube use bump mapping? Nyo-ho!

        The GameCube doesn't have support for hardware bumpmapping. There isn't any hardware that isn't being used -- it's just CPU cycles that are going to other things.

        The surround sound...all right, I suppose that you could argue that it's not being "pushed to the limit".

        I don't believe the GC *has* a higher resolution mode, though I can't swear to it.

        • "The GameCube doesn't have support for hardware bumpmapping."

          Wrong. [google.com] Wrong. [216.239.39.104] WRONG! [ign.com]

          You're thinking of the PS2. It doesn't have hardware bump-mapping. Fortunately the processor in it is slick enough to pull it off anyway.

          They may not use it in every game, but the machine can certainly do it. It also does hair and shadow rendering.
        • Not to the limit? Come ON, fhqwghads [homestarrunner.com].

          Besides, who writes a phrase like, "tax the GameCube to the limit"? What are the developers, the Government?
  • Romero... Romero... Nope. No Romero!

    And I'm appalled. APPALLED, I say. We're all his bitches, you know.

    Or maybe this is just like in Soviet Russia...
  • What about Rand and Robyn Miller? Creators of Myst and it's various sequels. They're set to release an MMOG that doesn't involve killing stuff over and over again. I think that's something to watch out for. Besides Myst set various records and helped put cdrom pc games on the map (although, it was inevitable).

  • UGH. (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Ken Levine?

    He doesn't belong on that list.

    The guy was some kind of scriptwriter before getting into the game industry, and somehow I think he got a job at Looking Glass and then quit to form his own company and got a lucky break when Looing Glass took pity on the three guys who started the company and gave them a contract to do System Shock 2. The other two company owners were programmers and had a lot of talent, and the reason the game turned out as well as it did is thanks mostly to the artists and lev
  • Where are Brian Fargo of inXile and Tim Cain from Troika? These guys have and will produce the greatest role-playing games of all time. Fallout? Arcanum? WASTELAND? The Bard's Tale remake? Wtf? Get off your couch and play a real game, young man.

  • One would think the developer of the Rollercoaster Tycoon franchise (not to mention the beloved Transport Tycoon Deluxe game)should be somewhere in that list.

    Has anyone other than Will Wright made more money than he has with a single franchise?
  • When Feargus Urquhart and the Black Isle founders aren't even on the list. What about Romero?? Highly questionable...

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