Important Figures in the Gaming Industry

The Producers Guild of America gave Will Wright the 2007 Vangaurd Award

The Guild is about achievements in new media and technology, which got me thinking, who else deserves to be inducted? So vote for who you think should and shouldnt be inducted, and give a reason why. And if I forgot someone let me know and I' ll go back and add them.

Important People(note: this is technology wise, so dont start screaming Miyamoto, if this were creativity he would be at the very top of the list)

EPIC- C' mon, the company that created of the Unreal Engine has to be a shoe-in for achievement in Technology.
my vote: yes

John Carmack- Id. Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein. If one of those 4 words didnt make you smile, youre not a gamer. The Quake engine was extremely popular back in the day, and they even have a new technology (implemented in Quake Wars) that will allow large textures with high details to be used without using a lot of memory.
my vote: yes

Warren Spector- One of the people in the industry not trying to make your games " prettier" , but " smarter" . He is very outspoken on AI, and in particular AI that can change from friendly to non-friendly based on player actions. Notable games include: Deus Ex(1 and 2) and Theif.
my vote: no

Gabe Newell- Of Valve. Half Life 2 and its expansions boast some of the best visuals and physics, and with the upcoming release of Portal, it looks like Valve will be leading the way in the physics department of first person games for a while longer. Also Steam is leading the way with digital distribution.
my vote: yes

Peter Molyneux- many credit him for creating the " god game" . While his recent Fable was not great, it was still a solid game, which may or may not have been limited by hardware, not the creator. But lets look back, shall we, to 2 games you can' t argue with: ' Black and White' and ' Populous' . Like Warren, he also advocates dynamic AI and environment interactivity.
my vote: maybe

I dont want to celebrate, I want to sell you hate.

I pretty much agree with what you put

These are just a few people that have the carisma to go on camera. I' m sure the real geniuses are people we have never even heard of.

These are just a few people that have the carisma to go on camera. I' m sure the real geniuses are people we have never even heard of.

I dont think so. These are the people behind lead technologies in the industry, but like I said if you think I forgot someone I' ll add them.

I dont want to celebrate, I want to sell you hate.

Cliffy B pwns but he isn' t the head of epic. I don' t remember the name of the guy there but he really pwns at game engine stuff.

I disagree with Half-Life 2 because they just use the Havok physics engine, they liscense that from Havok, they don' t make it themselves. So perhaps Havok instead of valve.

"If you knew how good I am you would think I'm modest."

Cliffy B pwns but he isn' t the head of epic. I don' t remember the name of the guy there but he really pwns at game engine stuff.

Mark Rein I think.

Mark Rein I think.

My bad, I thought Mark Rein was involved more in marketing/distributions. I' ll change it to say Epic in general instead of just Cliffy.

I dont want to celebrate, I want to sell you hate.

ORIGINAL: immortaldanmx

Mark Rein I think.

My bad, I thought Mark Rein was involved more in marketing/distributions. I' ll change it to say Epic in general instead of just Cliffy.

Wasn' t it Tim Sweeny?

And I also think Bethesda should get an honorable mention too. Each Elder Scrolls chapter they' ve made breaks new boundaries both technologically and gameplay wise.

Each Elder Scrolls chapter they' ve made breaks new boundaries both technologically and gameplay wise.

Can you elaborate on that?

I dont want to celebrate, I want to sell you hate.

Well, from the games I' ve played:

Elder Scrolls: Arena
Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall
Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

I can say that no games can come close to the size and complexity of TES.

Arena and Daggerfall were unique and groundbreaking for their times because of their massive scale. Arena had some great randomized dungeons far before the likes of Diablo and is much bigger than Morrowind and Oblivion. Quite a feat back in 1994.

Daggerfall was truly epic in every sense. I' ll quote what wikipedia says about the size:

Daggerfall is the largest Elder Scrolls game to date, featuring a game world estimated as being 161,600 square miles — roughly twice the size of Great Britain — with over 15,000 towns, cities, villages, and dungeons for the player' s character to explore. According to Todd Howard, Elder Scrolls programmer, the game' s sequel, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind is 0.01 percent the size of Daggerfall. Vvardenfell, the explorable part of the province of Morrowind in the third game has 6 square miles. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has approximately 16 square miles to explore. In Daggerfall, there are 750,000+ non-player characters (NPCs) for the player to interact with, compared to the count of around 1000 NPCs found in Morrowind and Oblivion.

While not as detailed as Morrowind/Oblivion, if that' s not a technological feat, I don' t know what is.

Morrowind was great simply because of it' s unprecedented detail. It had some amazing graphics and was still massive compared to every other game out there. Every part of the game was handcrafted and specifically placed. Considering the amount of places you could go, this really does amount to something impressive.

Oblivion pushed the Morrowind concept even further with completely amazing visuals, sprawling forests, massive render distances, highly advanced AI.

Radiant AI was their AI system that you' ve probably heard of. Every NPC has needs and have to fulfill those needs based on their individual stats. Sounds simple but is very complex and adds a lot of realism to NPC actions. This was developed fully in house by Bethesda and one of the most ambitious AI projects to date. While not as successful as they wanted (in order to fix problems, Bethesda had to cut down the AI system to a more basic version) I still think it deserves praise.

The other parts of Oblivion weren' t developed in house by Bethesda but were modified to suit Oblivion' s needs. SpeedTree, Havok, FaceGen, Gamebryo were all incorporated into Oblivion to create a super immersive world. But you must note that most of these same technologies are being used in UE3, and a number of other modern game engines. Once again, all aspects of Oblivion were hand crafted and specifically placed, right down to the last book.

While my explanation was long and inadequate, you really need to play the games for yourself to get a feel for how much of a technological feat these games were for their time. Just trying to imagine the complexity that Bethesda faced during development makes my mind start to hurt.

Oblivion uses Unreal Engine 3, made by Epic Games.
Epic > *

It doesn' t use Havok physics it uses UE3 phsyics.

"If you knew how good I am you would think I'm modest."

ORIGINAL: locopuyo

Oblivion uses Unreal Engine 3, made by Epic Games.
Epic > *

It doesn' t use Havok physics it uses UE3 phsyics.

Erm no. Oblivion uses a heavily modified version of the Gamebryo Engine. And it uses Havok Physics 3.0.

Feargus Urquhart, former member of Black Isle, has made some really really great roleplaying games that rank among the best of all time in my oponion.

Greg Zeschuk the founder of bioware, the only studio that stills exists after working with Interplay ^^

Michael Morhaime & Bill Roper for their work at Blizzard, which never to this date have delivered a game that wasnt 100% ready for release, and cancelling those that didnt reach the mark.

Feargus Urquhart, former member of Black Isle, has made some really really great roleplaying games that rank among the best of all time in my oponion.

Greg Zeschuk the founder of bioware, the only studio that stills exists after working with Interplay ^^

Michael Morhaime & Bill Roper for their work at Blizzard, which never to this date have delivered a game that wasnt 100% ready for release, and cancelling those that didnt reach the mark.

Sorry Vx, but none of those are technical achievments. While Bioware definately deserves to be recognized for storytelling and gameplay, and Blizzard for high quality, none of those are technical advancements that changed the industry technology.

I dont want to celebrate, I want to sell you hate.

ORIGINAL: UnluckyOne

ORIGINAL: locopuyo

Oblivion uses Unreal Engine 3, made by Epic Games.
Epic > *

It doesn' t use Havok physics it uses UE3 phsyics.

Erm no. Oblivion uses a heavily modified version of the Gamebryo Engine. And it uses Havok Physics 3.0.

Sorry, guess you' re right. Must have got that in my head somehow when I was reading about SpeedTree a long time ago.

"If you knew how good I am you would think I'm modest."

John Carmack- Id. Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein. If one of those 4 words didnt make you smile, youre not a gamer.

I' m a gamer but they almost make me puke instead. Mainly since I' m one of those 10-15% with a bit of motion sickness when it comes to FPS, hehe ;) But I don' t really like the genre anyway on the other hand.

Radiant AI was their AI system that you' ve probably heard of. Every NPC has needs and have to fulfill those needs based on their individual stats. Sounds simple but is very complex and adds a lot of realism to NPC actions. This was developed fully in house by Bethesda and one of the most ambitious AI projects to date. While not as successful as they wanted (in order to fix problems, Bethesda had to cut down the AI system to a more basic version) I still think it deserves praise.

I thought it was a bit overhyped though. Shenmue for example already had people going on with their lives. Oblivion might' ve tried more but I actually saw many more of them doing stupid things. I saw a few walking into walls and continue going in that direction, run in circles, have extremely nonsensical conversations, have about 10 people suddenly standing in a pub staring at me and following me all the time lol I also stole an axe from a guy while sleeping. But he still went on his mission to kill someone later on. Then the story told me he had killed somebody with an axe. I really thought this wouldn' t have happened with me having his only weapon. I thought the AI was a nice try, brought a bit of extra realism to the game but not more than the much older Shenmue for example. So I didn' t think it was that impressive in the end.

Besides that I had some hilarious scenes of horses running in the air but not advancing. It was after they had run into some store sign or if I blocked their path, hehe.

Edit : sorry for the double post :P

Oh yes I agree that to an extent Radiant AI was overhyped. Probably because the full Radiant AI technology never made it into the final game due to deadlines. In the earlier demonstrations of Oblivion (I think one is still on elderscrolls.com) you can see a more robust version of it in play and it certainly is impressive. But the complete Radiant AI version simply needed more work for it to be integrated into the game properly. I remember reading some funny instances that happened while Radiant AI was still being tested.

According to interviews given by the developers, the following are examples of unexpected behavior discovered during early testing:

1. One character was given a rake and the goal " rake leaves" ; another was given a broom and the goal " sweep paths," and this worked smoothly. Then they swapped the items, so that the raker was given a broom and the sweeper was given the rake. In the end, one of them killed the other so he could get the proper item.
2. In another test, a minotaur was given a task of protecting a unicorn. However, the Minotaur repeatedly tried to kill the unicorn because he was set to be an aggressive creature.
3. In one Dark Brotherhood quest, the player can meet up with a shady merchant who sells skooma, an in-game drug. During testing, the NPC would be dead when the player got to him. The reason was that NPCs from the local skooma den were trying to get their fix, did not have any money, and so were killing the merchant to get it.
4. While testing to confirm that the physics models for a magical item known as the " Skull of Corruption," which creates an evil copy of the character/monster it is used on, were working properly, a tester dropped the item on the ground. An NPC immediately picked it up and used it on the player character, creating a copy of him that proceeded to kill every NPC in sight.
5. In one test, after a guard became hungry and left his post in search of food, the other guards followed to arrest him. The town people looted the town shops, due to lack of guards.

Despite being bloopers, it certainly gives a feeling of a living world. Hopefully Bethesda still have the full Radiant AI on a PC somewhere and will continue to work on it for the inevitable Elder Scrolls V. It' s one of the more impressive AI technologies I' ve seen in a long time.

I wish they didn' t dumb it down, the game would have felt much more alive with it/ Oblivion needed another year of development anyway, for bugs/optimization and everything else.

Change is inevitable. Except from a vending machine.

Viva La Revolution! erm, I mean Viva La Wii!

Hehe, those bloopers are actually impressive! But would' ve disrupted the game of course.
But it' s indeed too bad that the AI was dumbed down. I would' ve even preferred if they had put more effort into that part and the way the character moves instead of the graphics. Despite the " real look" the game felt a little stale to me. Cities and people never really came to life. Or maybe it' s just me ;)

Fumito Ueda definitely deserves to be on there. ICO and SOtC are more emotionally gripping than any other game since FF7.

Sorry Vx, but none of those are technical achievments. While Bioware definately deserves to be recognized for storytelling and gameplay, and Blizzard for high quality, none of those are technical advancements that changed the industry technology.

There are more to acheivements than just great graphics, besides no where did it say it hard to be technical acheivements, gameplay mechanics are much more important.

Fumito Ueda definitely deserves to be on there. ICO and SOtC are more emotionally gripping than any other game since FF7.

Even more so than FF7.

There are two rules to success:

1. Never tell all you know.