50 Games Industry Figures To Watch? 37
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.")
And number 51.... (Score:5, Funny)
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!
UGH. (Score:1, Funny)
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 level designers who worked on it.
Here's a couple Ken quotes for ya:
"I want you to go home tonight and take a look at Banjo Kazooie to get some ideas for the look of Shock 2." (Yeah that'll make Shock 2 really creepy.)
"Everything on the ship should be clean and brightly lit. This ship's just come off the assembly line." (Note how in the final game everyhting is messy and broken, as it should have been from the start.)
Yes, indeed. System Shock 2 was as creepy as it was all thanks to Ken.
And here's one last Ken quote. This is a classic:
"The more public a person you become, the more a sheen of phoniness goes around you."