- Sid Meier
Sidney K. Meier (born 1954 in Detroit, Michigan) is an American programmer and designer of some of the most commercially and critically successful computer strategy games of all time. Meier has won several accolades for both his contributions to the computer games industry and for the titles that have gained huge commercial successes. Meier is considered by many as one of the most important figures in the computer games industry. - Scott Adams
Scott Adams (born July 10, 1952) is the co-founder, with wife Alexis, of Adventure International, an early publisher of games for home computers. Born in Miami, Florida, Adams was the first person known to create an adventure-style game for personal computers, in 1978 (on a 16KB Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I, written in the BASIC programming language). These early text adventure games use a minimal parser, recognizing 2-word commands of the form VERB NOUN. - Cliff Bleszinski
Clifford Bleszinski (born February 12, 1975), also known as CliffyB, is the design director for the game development company Epic Games in Cary, North Carolina. He is most famous for his continuing hand in the development of the Unreal franchise and the Gears of War franchise. He cites Shigeru Miyamoto as his biggest influence. In 2008, Bleszinski finished the production on Gears of War 2. - Raph Koster
Raphael "Raph" Koster (7 September 1971-) is an American entrepreneur, game designer, and author of "A Theory of Fun for Game Design". Koster is widely recognized for his work as the lead designer of "Ultima Online" and the creative director behind "Star Wars Galaxies". Since July 2006, he has been working as the founder and president of Areae on an unannounced product. - Steve Jackson
Steve Jackson (born 1951 in Manchester, England) is a games reviewer and writer. He is one of the best known authors in the gaming industry. In 1975, he founded the company Games Workshop with Ian Livingstone, and the two created the line of the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks published by Penguin Books. Jackson now works at Lionhead Studios, which he founded with Peter Molyneux. He is also an honorary lecturer at Brunel University in London, … - Will Wright
Will Wright (born January 20, 1960) is an American computer game designer and co-founder of the game development company Maxis. He is best known as the original designer of computer games such as "SimCity", "The Sims" and "Spore" - David Mullich
David: I was just about to accept a job offer from a large game publisher when I noticed a game producer want ad in the Los Angeles Times, from a small company called ISG. I decided to check them out, and learned that they wanted to develop games for CD-I. I was somewhat familiar with the platform, having been invited to demonstrations at PIMA when I worked at Disney, but wasn't very impressed with it as a game machine. - Ron Gilbert
Ron Gilbert is an American computer game designer, programmer, and producer, best known for his work on several classic LucasArts adventure games, including "Maniac Mansion" and the first two "Monkey Island" games. Gilbert was also co-founder of Humongous Entertainment and its sister company Cavedog Entertainment. His games are generally focused on interactive storytelling. - Roberta Williams
Roberta Heuer Williams (born February 16, 1953) is a computer game designer. She is perhaps most famous for her pioneering work in graphical adventure games, particularly the popular "King's Quest" series. In the eighties and nineties, Roberta and her husband, Ken Williams, were leading figures in the development of graphical adventure games. They founded the company On-Line Systems, which later became Sierra On-Line. - Jon van Caneghem
Jon Van Caneghem is a computer game designer and producer. He is most recognized for creating the "Might and Magic" role-playing game series and its strategy spin-off "Heroes of Might and Magic". Van Caneghem founded New World Computing in 1983. The company was acquired by The 3DO Company in 1996. When 3DO went bankrupt in 2003, New World Computing also disappeared. In 2004, Van Caneghem joined NCSoft. - Stieg Hedlund
Stieg Hedlund (born 1965 in Portland, Oregon) is a computer and video game designer, artist, writer, game producer and level designer. Although he is probably best known for his work in action RPGs, he also has contributed iconic games to each of the real-time strategy, tactical shooter, beat-'em-up and action-adventure genres. As design director at Perpetual Entertainment, he now works on the MMORPG "Gods & Heroes" slated to release in the summer of 2007. - Chris Hecker
Christopher Bryan Hecker is a programmer and commentator associated with independent video games. Hecker was a student at Parsons in New York City, studying the fine arts towards work as an illustrator. An article in Byte Magazine sold him on programming and he dropped out of school to begin work on graphics and games. Hecker worked at Microsoft for three years, developing 3D graphics drivers for the Windows operating system. - Peter Molyneux
Peter Molyneux OBE (born 5 May 1959 in Guildford, Surrey, UK) is a computer game designer and game programmer, responsible for well known "God games" "Populous" and "Black & White", among others, as well as "Business Strategy" games such as "Theme Park" and most recently, "The Movies". In August 1997 Peter left Bullfrog Productions to establish a new development team, Lionhead Studios. - Noah Falstein
Noah Falstein is a freelance game designer and producer who has been in the video game industry since 1980. He was one of the first 10 employees at Lucasfilm Games (which became LucasArts Entertainment), DreamWorks Interactive (which became EALA), and The 3DO Company (which became defunct). Currently he runs The Inspiracy and writes the "Better by Design" column for "Game Developer" magazine. - John Romero
John Romero is EVP of Game Development at Slipgate Ironworks, a new Bay Area MMO company he co-founded in September 2005. He was a co-Founder of Inside Out Software, Ideas From The Deep, id Software, Ion Storm, and Monkeystone Games. From his early Apple IIe games to the legendary Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Doom II, Heretic, Hexen, and Quake, Romero has made an indelible mark on the computer gaming industry. - John Carmack
John D. Carmack II (born August 20 1970) is a widely recognized figure in the video game industry. A prolific American programmer, Carmack co-founded id Software, a computer game development company, in 1991. Carmack was the lead programmer of the highly successful id computer games "Commander Keen", "Wolfenstein 3D", "Doom", "Quake", and subsequent sequels to "Doom" and "Quake". - Randy Farmer
F. Randall "Randy" Farmer has organized online communities. He is probably most famous for his role creating one of the first graphical online MMOG, Lucasfilm's "Habitat", with Chip Morningstar. - Don Daglow
Don Daglow (born circa 1953) is an American computer game and video game designer, programmer and producer. He is best known for designing a series of pioneering simulation games and role-playing games, as well as the first computer baseball game and the first graphical MMORPG, all between 1971 and 1995. He founded long-standing game developer Stormfront Studios in 1988; as of 2006 more than 10,000,000 Stormfront games had been sold. - Chris Crawford
Chris Crawford is a noted computer game designer and writer, responsible for a number of important games in the 1980s, for founding "The Journal of Computer Game Design" and for organizing the Computer Game Developers' Conference. After receiving a B.S. in physics from UC Davis in 1972 and an M.S. in the same from University of Missouri - Columbia in 1975, Crawford taught at a community college and the University of California, … - Brian Green
Brian "Psychochild" Green is a game developer currently working on the online 3D graphical RPG, Meridian 59. He had worked on the game for 3DO, but co-founded Near Death Studios in 2001. He also is a frequent gaming conference speaker and writes for a number of game design websites, including GamersInfo.net. Meridian 59 was originally released in 1996 by the 3DO company and was one of the first commercial online games available for sale in retail stores in the US. - Bob Bates
Bob Bates began his game writing career at Infocom in 1986. Since then he has written, designed, produced, or contributed to more than 30 games that have won both critical acclaim (over 55 industry awards), as well as financial success (over 5 million copies sold, including a #1 PC game, Unreal 2 , and a #1 console game, Spider-Man3 for PS2 and Wii). In 1989 he co-founded Legend Entertainment, where he was a designer and studio head until its closure in early 2004. - Alan Miller
Alan Miller is a pioneering and influential figure in the video game industry. He was an early game designer and programmer for Atari 2600 games who went on to found two large video game developers and publishers. Miller joined Atari in February 1977 and was one of the first four Atari 2600 game designers. His 2600 titles include "Surround", "Hunt & Score", "Hangman" and "Basketball". - David Fox
David Fox is a multimedia producer, best known for his early work on LucasArts games, most notably "Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders". He and his wife, Annie Fox (author), now work on educational software, Web design, Emotional Intelligence content, online community, emerging technologies, and writing books for children and teens. - David Fox
David Fox is a San Francisco, California based writer and game designer/developer, best known for multiplayer games and books about online technology. He was one of the founders of iWin.com. - Mark Cerny
Mark Cerny (born 1964) is a video game industry figure having worked as a game designer, programmer, producer and business executive. As president of Cerny Games, which he founded in 1998, he now acts as a consultant in the video game industry. Cerny, a fan of computer programming and arcade games, started in the game industry at the age of 17 when he joined Atari in 1982. In those earlier days of professional game development, … - Doug Church
Doug Church is an American computer game designer and producer. He attended MIT in the early 1990s, but left and went to work with Looking Glass Studios, when they were making primarily MS-DOS-based first-person adventure/shooter/roleplaying games, including "Ultima Underworld", "Ultima Underworld II", "System Shock" and "Thief". Later, Church joined Eidos Interactive as technical director, … - Sheri Graner Ray
Sheri Graner Ray has been making computer games since 1990. She has worked for such companies as Electronic Arts, Origin Systems, Sony Online Entertainment, and Cartoon Network, and has worked on such licenses as Star Wars Galaxies, Ultima, and Nancy Drew. She is author of the book, "Gender Inclusive Game Design-Expanding the Market" and is the computer game industry’s leading expert on the subject of gender and computer games. - Ken Lobb
Ken Lobb is a video game designer. He worked for Nintendo in the early 1990s on such video games as "Donkey Kong Country" and "Great Greed", but his "masterpiece" was "GoldenEye 007" for the Nintendo 64, hailed as one of the best shooters of all time. The game included a gun (based on the Vz 61) named after him, the Klobb, short for Kenneth Lobb. This is widely considered the very worst gun in the game. He also worked on "Perfect Dark". - Richard Bartle
Richard Allan Bartle (born January 10, 1960, in England) is a British writer and game researcher, best known for being the co-author of MUD, the first multi-user dungeon. He is one of the pioneers of the massively multiplayer online game industry. Bartle received a PhD in artificial intelligence from the University of Essex, which is where he created MUD along with Roy Trubshaw, in 1978. - Eugene Jarvis
Eugene Peyton Jarvis (born 1955) is a game designer and programmer, producing pinball machines for Atari and video games for Williams Electronics. Most notable amongst his works are the seminal arcade video games "Defender" and "Robotron: 2084" in the early 1980s, and the "Cruis'n" series of driving games for Midway Games in the 1990s. He co-founded Vid Kidz in the early 1980s and currently leads his own development studio, Raw Thrills Inc. - Steve Cartwright
Steve Cartwright is an American computer and video game designer. He is best known as one of the original Activision game designers credited with suchs hits as "Barnstorming", "Megamania", "Seaquest" and "Hacker". After an 8-year run at Electronic Arts (EA) where Cartwright designed and produced the Tiger Woods products as well as EA's first on-line sports site, he later designed, produced, … - John Smedley
John Smedley is a computer game programmer who is the President of Sony Online Entertainment as of 2007. In 2007, he announced a change in direction for Sony Online Entertainment, including a broadening of business models beyond the subscription model and pursuing female consumers to balance their audience, which was 85% male at the time. - Paul Reiche III
Paul Reiche III (born February 17 1961) is a computer game designer. Reiche is best known for being the co-creator, together with Fred Ford, of the "Star Control" universe. While Reiche did the game design and fiction, Ford was responsible for the programming. Reiche is listed in the credits for Toe Jam and Earl under "Invaluable Help". A childhood friend of early "Dungeons & Dragons" (D&D) artist Erol Otus, Reiche became interested in gaming as a teen. - Jordan Mechner
Jordan Mechner is a game programmer, game designer, and movie director. Mechner was born in New York City and graduated from Yale University in 1985. Mechner's first hit game was "Karateka" (1984), written while he was still an undergraduate. "Prince of Persia," released in 1989, was noted for its fluid animation of human figures. Both titles were published by Brøderbund. For the animations used in "Prince of Persia", … - Ken Williams
Ken Williams (born October 1954) is an American game programmer and co-founder with his wife Roberta Williams of On-Line Systems, which later became Sierra On-Line. Roberta and Ken married at the age of 19 and have two children. The couple have been leading figures in the development of graphical adventure games. Their contribution to gaming was partially chronicled in the book "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution". - Brian Sharp
Brian Sharp is a computer game programmer. He attended Dartmouth College and came close to graduating before taking a job at Ion Storm Austin to work on the Deus Ex and Thief computer games there. A published writer for Game Developer Magazine, Sharp has contributed articles on higher-order surface representations, including Bézier patches, Subdivision Surfaces, and Implicit Surfaces. In addition, he is a regular presenter at the Game Developers Conference, … - Greg Costikyan
Greg Costikyan, also known as Designer X, is an American game designer and science fiction writer. Costikyan's career spans nearly all extant genres of gaming, including hex-based wargames, role-playing games, boardgames, card games, computer games, online games and mobile games. Several of his games have won Origins Awards. - Simon Carless
Simon Carless is a video game industry journalist, editor and game designer. He was born in London, England, but has since moved to San Jose, California. Simon commutes to San Francisco where he works for CMP Technology as the Editorial Director in the CMP Game Group including editing both "Game Developer Magazine" and the Webby Award winning Gamasutra. - Sandy Petersen
Carl Sanford Joslyn Petersen (born September 16, 1955) is a game designer. Petersen was born in St. Louis, Missouri and attended University of California, Berkeley, majoring in zoology. He is a well-known fan of H.P. Lovecraft, whose work he first encountered in a World War II Armed Services edition of "The Dunwich Horror and other Weird Tales" found in his father's library. In 1974, "Dungeons & Dragons" brought his interest to role-playing games. - Chris Sawyer
"Chris Sawyer" is a Scottish computer game developer who is best-known for designing and programming "RollerCoaster Tycoon", "RollerCoaster Tycoon 2", and "Transport Tycoon". He entered the games industry in 1983, writing games in Z80 machine code on the Memotech MTX home computer, and then the Amstrad CPC series home computer. Some of these were published by Ariolasoft, "Sepulcri Scelerati" and "Ziggurat".
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