The 10 Most Interesting People in Gaming for 2005

jkdove writes "GamerGod rolls out their list of "The 10 Most Interesting People in Gaming for 2005". From the article: "Our list draws from a wide slice of the gaming community. A respected game designer is on the list, but so is a political figure, a game player, a man with an agenda, and even a modder. Each person was selected for their ability to grab and hold the headlines with their design, deeds, or words; and for their contribution to twelve months of gaming headlines, news, scandals, sensations, and entertainment.""

Predictions for 2006

[ami-in-hamburg]

Sadly, no matter how absolutely ridiculous, I have a feeling the US Congress will make the list for 2006.

First post

[darkhadden]

Bam. Why aren't more video game figures on more publicly visible lists? Mario makes everything Nintendo manufactures, but we can't have visionary entertainment creators here? Metal Gear is way more ground breaking than most stuff Bruckheimer ever did...

I Am Exploring The Outer Limits Of Slacking

[Anonymous Coward]

I am exploring the outer limits of slacking and procrastinating on my companies latest game engine...

and I want the 30 seconds I just wasted skimming through that list back.

Slashdot really needs to do a story on just how worthless game journalism is these days...

Re:I Am Exploring The Outer Limits Of Slacking

[Yvanhoe]

Here you go : The Pointlessness of Current Videogame Journalism [slashdot.org]

Here's the best on that list

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll save you the trouble.

http://www.spotanime.com/wp-content/images/jess_ps p.jpeg [spotanime.com]

Re:Here's the best on that list

[game kid]

Interestingly, some people hate her [dontlinkthis.com].

Re:Here's the best on that list

[drinkypoo]

Interestingly, some websites go down when you even think of linking to them from slashdot.

Hmmm

[Artie Dent]

By including Jack Thompsonas the number one most interesting person in gaming, it makes a dangerous assumption that to be associated with doesn't mean you are in it. No matter how important, ridiculous, or inflammatory his actions might be, I still find it hard to characaterize him as "in gaming".

Whoops

[Artie Dent]

"/b>" Ugh formatting

Re:Hmmm

[stunt_penguin]

Jack Thompson is 'in gaming' in the same way that an agressive army is 'in' a besieged castle. Watch out for giant wooden horses.

Re:Hmmm

[Lonath]

I still find it hard to characaterize him as "in gaming".

It might help if we look at "gaming" as a metaphorical person. If "gaming" is viewed in this way, then Jack Thompson would be trying to ram his flaccid cock into gaming's ass while screaming "WHOSYERDADDY!!!!" and "IMAGUNASUEYOU!!!!!" over and over. From that perspective, I think we could characterize him as "in gaming".

Uh oh

[kula.shinoda]

-1, Jail

Re:Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

How can you not say he is in gaming? Defamation of Character: A Jack Thompson Murder Simulator. How much more in gaming can you be?

A lot of odd names

[PIPBoy3000]

There were a tremendous number of people on the list that I'd never heard of, which suggests a fair amount of creativity when picking names. Where's John Carmack, who's building rockets [armadilloaerospace.com]? What about Bono, who's helping back elevation [msn.com]? Then there's Gabe Newell, who's work with Steam is slowly changing how game publishing is done.

Perhaps girls who lick PSPs are more interesting, but somehow less important than the above.

What is "interesting"?

[PIPBoy3000]

Ah, but you know their names. To me, that's part of the phrase "interesting". If you never heard of the girl licking the PSP photo, it's likely that's not really interesting. Gabe and Carmack, even if you disagree with their points of view, might be considered quite interesting. Gabe's certainly made a bunch of people upset when he lied about HL2's release, and made even more mad when he linked Steam to HL2, but it's hard to argue that his actions haven't affected a large number of gamers, publishers, and hardware makers over the last few years. Carmack's in a similar boat, upsetting some people and evoking worship from others. Plus he makes serious rockets in his spare time.

To me, those things are interesting.

Re:What is "interesting"?

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

Yes, we know Carmack from years ago when he actually was interesting. However, like his games, he has become trite and boring, unworthy of further discussion.

Perhaps when he makes an interesting game again he can be put on a list, but not one moment before.

Re:What is "interesting"?

[rblancarte]

I have to agree. At first, when I saw this list, I was thinking we were going to see programmer and publisher names. IMHO, this list is very interesting and making a very good point about where the public attention really is focused.

As far as why they don't have Carmack or Newell. Because they just are no longer news worthy. Half-Life 2 came out in 2004. So far Valve really hasn't done much since then. Sure they have used Steam to release some new very small titles, but to say that this has shifted th

Not quite so clear

[chris411]

The Hot Coffee mod, licking the PSP, and Jack Thompson's hard-on for GTA had nothing to do with console/portable gaming?

Headline grabbing == interesting?

[LarsWestergren]

Since when does headline grabbing equal interesting? Why do we need a list giving attention grabbing whores MORE attention?

How about some people who have moved the media forward? Will Wright, Old Grandma Hardcore and Brenda Braithwaite from that list look like they qualify. Who else? If you answer Carmack I may harm you.

Re:Headline grabbing == interesting?

[cortana]

Carmack: the last OpenGL programmer (in gaming).

Re:Headline grabbing == interesting?

[drinkypoo]

OpenGL ain't dead, it's just whimpering in the corner. This is where it will remain until someone starts driving new features with OpenGL instead of Direct3D or whatever it's going to be called now.

Also, people are STILL using OpenGL for cross-platform games. Granted, not many...

Re:Headline grabbing == interesting?

[kamapuaa]

Since when does headline grabbing equal interesting? Why do we need a list giving attention grabbing whores MORE attention?

Well...you posted to Slashdot about him, right? Penny Arcade and Games.slashdot.com (among others) brought his name up over and over again. So obviously he's interesting on some level.

Re:Headline grabbing == interesting?

[F_Scentura]

Interesting like Fred Phelps is "interesting". They're all psychotic attention whores that feed and profit directly off of media attention.

Re:Headline grabbing == interesting?

[PixelScuba]

You're probably right, Carmack only helped by releasing Quake3 under the GPL license... but I suppose that's not very noteworthy.

Re:Headline grabbing == interesting?

[npsimons]

If you answer Carmack I may harm you.

Why not Carmack? He's done more to advance the state of the art in gaming than most people.

Leroy Jenkins

[cgenman]

The reviewer does an inadequate job of describing the Leroy video. They're heading into basically a pit of death to get an item that Leroy needs, while Leroy himself is Away From Keyboard. So the crew spends a lot of time planning strategy, discussing timing, pulling out calculators to determine survival rates, and generally creating a rock solid, well-discussed, intricate plan of attack... That Leroy promptly ignores and charges in.

And they all get slaughtered. Not just killed, slaughtered. They get mauled like puppies in a lion's den. The plan falls apart completely, and so do they. Not only are there no survivors, they didn't take any of the millions of attackers out with them. It is a complete blow out.

To top it all off, over voice chat comes this little wimpering voice saying "It's... It's not my fault."

Perfect.

Re:Leroy Jenkins

[sgant]

But you must know that was all staged right? Even the banter in the beginning was just plain fake. "let me do some calculations...I give us a blah blah percent chance". I mean, what calculations are you frickin making there?

And besides, this is WoW...in which death means nothing except running back to your corpse.

Also, have you been where they were? did you see them all just like run around stepping on all the eggs and not even doing anything except letting themselves be killed?

Let's face it, if Leeroy had run in there by himself, my guild would have just stood there and let him die, then we'd rez him...that's it.

I mean, it's a VERY funny video, but it's fake.

Re:Leroy Jenkins

[fraudrogic]

Also, someone happened to be capturing the session onto video? I don't think it was leeroy's screen that was being captured because when he ran in, the viewpoint didn't follow him (unless that's a camera feature in WoW). However, you see the mouse click on a bunch of the creatures inside before he ran in. I believe it was staged too. But that doesn't take away how funny it is.

Re:Leroy Jenkins

[demachina]

Dude Leroy Jenkins is satire, humour and creative art. Lighten up :) I think you've been raiding a little to much and take WOW a little to serious at the same time you are here ranting about how not serious it is.

They kind of had to stage the wipe to make it in to a spectacle since they aren't able to rewrite Blizzard's instances for best theatrical effect.

Most Hollywood blockbusters are equally "fake", "staged", etc.

Re:Leroy Jenkins

[Joel from Sydney]

Not to mention that their plan is designed to get them all killed, and fast. Divine Intervention straight away? AoE fear? Not to mention Leroy wants the Devout shoulders - why would you want cloth armour as a paladin? As you said, if someone draws additional aggro, you let them die. Anybody who didn't learn that in the Deadmines shouldn't really be playing WoW ;)

Re:Leroy Jenkins

[heavy snowfall]

Leeroy! [warcraftmovies.com]

Re:Leroy Jenkins

[HansF]

Those links are 'registration only' or dead, another (compressed version) is here [putfile.com].

Re:Leroy Jenkins

[heavy snowfall]

Sorry about that. I have the vid on disk, I just googled for a hosted one.

Re:Leroy Jenkins

[drinkypoo]

And for those too lazy to view the page source, the embedded video is http://x200.putfile.com/videos/c8-13521531863.wmv [putfile.com].

Re:Leroy Jenkins

[Thuktun]

Or you could just use Google Video [google.com] and search for "leroy". [google.com] Sadly, the people who posted it there apparently can't spell "Jenkins" properly...

Re:Leroy Jenkins

[n00tz]

"At least I have Chicken" best part.

Re:Leroy Jenkins

[rblancarte]

Name a reason why that whole description has to be in this article? Most of the people reading the article have seen the movie already. I know what it is about. You can easily find it. If you ask me, what he said was pretty much dead on. Sure you don't get any of the humor of it, but who cares, he was just talking why he was on the list.

RonB

Hahaha...

[Anonymous Coward]

Jack Thompson is not just entertaining.

He represents pretty much everything I don't like about US infotainment.

Re:Hahaha...

[rblancarte]

And this list points out a good reason why he is on the list. Not because he is good, but because he is bad. He represents a ton of bad things out there that are anti-games (as if they are worse than other forms of media, movies, books, TV, music). He is on the list because we have to be ever vigillent against guys like this to make sure they don't win and restrict our freedoms.

And I agree, his rants are damn funny.

RonB

What? No FPS Doug?!?!?

[Jakhel]

BOOM Headshot!!!

Or was that 2004..

Top Ten Reasons Top Ten List Suck

[Doomedsnowball]

10. They always leave something essential out
  9. They do it on purpose to generate "buzz"
  8. Even David Letterman doesn't hit the mark everytime
  7. Should be titled "9 things that didn't win and the one that did"
  6. They include URL's like this: http://www.joystiq.com/2005/12/12/psp-licker-vows- to-rub-games-on-her-butt/ [joystiq.com] (from TFA)
  5. 9 times out of 10 you don't agree with their number one pick
  4. 47.6% of all statistics are made up on the spot
  3. Jack Thompson will argue that top ten list are terrorist training for suicide bombers (counting backwards like a bomb timer)
  2. The woman sitting next to me on the bus read "suicide bomber" on my laptop and is notifying the police
  1. People love arbitrary catagorizing. We're all winners! Uh, no the police have surrounded the bus...

Re:Top Ten Reasons Top Ten List Suck

[systmoadownfreak]

Very true, very true, particularly the one about the statistics being made up on the spot. I mean I understand that it's not a research paper and giving a background report on where you got the numbers isn't necessary, but at least give a link to check out your source on the statistic. It's a must when it comes to reliable posting on the internet.

Re:Top Ten Reasons Top Ten List Suck

[myspys]

6. They include URL's like this: http://www.joystiq.com/2005/12/12/psp-licker-vows- [joystiq.com] to-rub-games-on-her-butt/ (from TFA)

dude, she's cute (http://media.babes.entertainment.ign.com/articles /622/622426/img_2838400.html [ign.com]) and by definition that makes everything alright [nods]

Re:Top Ten Reasons Top Ten List Suck

[Doomedsnowball]

Here, here. Good show. Nice link.

Re:Top Ten Reasons Top Ten List Suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Shit.. at least post the good picture from that gallery:
      http://media.babes.entertainment.ign.com/articles/ 622/622426/img_2838386.html [ign.com]

Darn, site /.ed already

[elrous0]

Anyone happen to have the text?

-Eric

Re:Darn, site /.ed already

[shadowcode]

Mirrordot does:
http://www.mirrordot.com/stories/1670335f166dd15f0 3bdb23b35ee9949/index.html [mirrordot.com]

Re:Darn, site /.ed already

[Flaming Babies]

Sorry if the formatting is off...I tried to get it spaced out somewhat for easy reading.

To begin GamerGod's look back at 2005, we stop and look at the people who made the headlines in gaming. We looked for the people and names around gaming that caught major attention and were a source of interesting news, or high entertainment in the process of making these selections. Like them or not, most gamers will recognize these names and know a bit of the story behind them.

Our list draws from a wide slice of th

Hmm

[cortana]

I would be much more interested to read about ten people who had created and actually released genuinely good games.

Re:Hmm

[CoderBob]

Honestly, where are you going to find ten names for that?

Leeeroy

[simrook]

To me, the Leeroy Jenkins video is something like a George Bush clip show on Letterman. Everytime I play with some idiot in a pick up group, I now laugh a little bit thinking that this idiot might be the next Leeroy Jenkins; just like everytime George gets on his soap box, I think how entertaining this will be on Letterman or Jon Stewart tonight.

Let's do this! Geeeeeeoooooooooooooorrrrrge Bush!

They forgot someone

[El_Muerte_TDS]

wtf am I in that list.

Or maybe I wasn't interesting enough in 2005, ah well, maybe this year.

What a crappy list!

[Vincman]

First of all that list is way too short. If you want to credit people that have benefited the industry in 2005, AND include people from all related areas, it should be a top-100. Second, the most innovative game I played in 2005 was Fahrenheit, aka Indigo Prophecy [gamespot.com], and David Cage should be on that list for making it. How many new games that were completely different from what came before did you see in 2005?

Re:What a crappy list!

[Violet Null]

I'd agree with you on Indigo Prophecy, except for the last quarter of the game. I'm not really sure who should be held responsible for that, since the game was incredibly awesome up until that point, but after that, it sucked big ol' juicy chunks.

Little Brother?

[Madpony]

It seems to me like the XBox has some years on 360. I think the XBox 360 is the true little brother ;)

I'm waiting for another list

[FidelCatsro]

Slashdot's top 50 top 10 lists of 2006 .. Which should be ready next week

Re:I'm waiting for another list

[zalas]

Of which half of the list will be duplicates...

Blind Gamer

[rk2z]

I don't know about you guys, but I think that this is definitely one of the most "interesting" gamers of 2005. Today's local Lincoln, NE newspaper had a front-page story about Brice Mellen, blind from birth, but will kick your ass at Mortal Kombat.

blind Gamer [journalstar.com]

He was also profiled over the summer in the national media

google cache of CNN story [64.233.167.104]

Re:Blind Gamer

[D'Arque Bishop]

At the risk of karma whoring or site advertising...

I was at Midway Gamers Day in Chicago back in August, and while we were putting MK: Shaolin Monks through its paces, they actually brought Brice in to play several rounds against Ed Boon (co-creator of MK and MK development head). Fortunately I had my camcorder with me, so we managed to get nearly nine minutes' worth of footage of them having it out; Brice won every single match.

Here [mortalkombatonline.com] is the link where you can get the videos if you're interested... just scr

Re:Blind Gamer

[JPyun]

I knew it! Finally, proof that Mortal Kombat is a pure button masher.

Re:Blind Gamer

[Staplerh]

Today's local Lincoln, NE newspaper had a front-page story about Brice Mellen, blind from birth, but will kick your ass at Mortal Kombat.

Things movin' a mile a minute in Lincoln, NE eh?

(I jest of course, being stuck in my own small town right now)

Re:Blind Gamer

[slothman32]

The story made me think the MK isn't about what the screen looks like but the order of the buttons pressed.
I've played many a game where you can only get through in a with certain order of buttons.
Fortunately muscle memory makes it easy.

I wonder if unorthodox methods could beat him.
Like a flying creature going in the opposite direction and messing up the muscle memory method(MMM donuts).

Coral Cache

[Frankie70]

Here [nyud.net].

'Hot Coffee' the interesting of the 10?

[Hard-Format]

I find it funny that without the least interesting (number 10) of the list three other more interesting (numbers 8, 7, and 1) would either not have happened, or would be significantly less interesting. While the 'Hot Coffee' mod might not have been terribly interesting on its own, the fact that it spawned this much attention surely must warrant a higher spot than number 10.

Re:'Hot Coffee' the LEAST interesting of the 10?

[Hard-Format]

Left a word out of the subject, perhaps the addition of the word "least" makes a little more sense.

This has to be said...

[iconeternal]

I HATE JACK THOMPSON

Leeeeeeeeeeroy!!

[WickedClean]

My favorite pick of the bunch. That is why I don't play MMORPGs. I would be just like the Leroy guy.

Maybe #11 should be the guys behind The Pirate Bay.

fatal1ty, John Wendel?

[Heembo]

What about Fatal1ty (John Wendel) truly the first big-time pro gamer to make serious (100k+) dough on the circuit for the past few years and also this years national champion? Dude - he is like the Michael Jordan of gaming!

Re:fatal1ty, John Wendel?

[metaphorever]

Maybe they left him out because someone called Nordic beat him at the CES Try to beat Fatal1ty [kotaku.com] contest.

Re:fatal1ty, John Wendel?

[dafragsta]

An acquaintance's seven year old daughter got a substancial number of kills in on him at QuakeCon.

That list is a fucking joke...

[Red Samurai]

Grandma gamer? PSP licker? Dumbass politician?

Fucking bullshit.

Wow, this list is awful.

[Pluvius]

It encapsulates exactly what people have been complaining about in regards to gaming journalism lately.

#9 is typical pandering to adolescent fanboys. I have to admit that the PSP licking picture is kind of hot, but that doesn't make the girl an interesting person in the least.

#6 and #5 are masturbation over things that haven't happened yet. Chances are both Spore and whatever MMORPG SOE is thinking of doing will be ridiculously overhyped and then mostly ignored when they come out, just like nearly every o

10 most what?

[deesto]

"GamerGod rolls out their list of "The 10 Most Interesting People in Gaming for 2005". Is this really a list? Have we deteriorated as a society to the point where someone actually has interest in gaming beyond playing the games themselves, and that there are people of interest in this realm? If this title headed up an empty list, or even fictional gaming characters that have affected the industry, I would have found it amusing. But it doesn't. Instead, why not go for it all: "Mathis's Top 10 Most Right