Gabe Newell
Gabe Newell, a Harvard dropout and former employee of Microsoft, is seen by many as the father of modern day PC gaming.
After dropping out of Harvard to work at Microsoft in 1989, Gabe's first venture into PC gaming was to port ID software’s Doom (1991) to windows, which helped prove in developers that the PC was a viable platform for gaming. In 1996, Newell and his friend and coworker Mike Harrington quit their jobs at microsoft and founded Valve.In 1998 Valve’s first game, Half-Life, was released to overwhelming success.
Newell released his game engine, Goldsource, and other development kits out to the public, giving full mod support to his games. Many of Valve’s biggest games started out as mods to others, such as Team Fortress 2 (a mod for Quake by ID) DOTA 2 (a mod for Warcraft 3 by Blizzard) among others.
Gabe desired to create a new platform that would allow users to get updates for games all at once via the internet, as well as be able to purchase games online from big companies and small independent developers alike without the middleman of companies such as Gamestop being a hinderance. On September 12, 2003 Valve released Steam to the public. Steam has become the largest PC gaming platform in the world with thousands of games in its library and millions of users.
Newell used Steam’s success to experiment with games, even supporting the rise of Esports by hosting the DOTA 2 International Tournament, one of the largest Esports tournaments in the world, so large it was even featured on ESPN. He’s now spending much of his time working on virtual reality with Valve’s headset, the HTC Vive.
After dropping out of Harvard to work at Microsoft in 1989, Gabe's first venture into PC gaming was to port ID software’s Doom (1991) to windows, which helped prove in developers that the PC was a viable platform for gaming. In 1996, Newell and his friend and coworker Mike Harrington quit their jobs at microsoft and founded Valve.In 1998 Valve’s first game, Half-Life, was released to overwhelming success.
Newell released his game engine, Goldsource, and other development kits out to the public, giving full mod support to his games. Many of Valve’s biggest games started out as mods to others, such as Team Fortress 2 (a mod for Quake by ID) DOTA 2 (a mod for Warcraft 3 by Blizzard) among others.
Gabe desired to create a new platform that would allow users to get updates for games all at once via the internet, as well as be able to purchase games online from big companies and small independent developers alike without the middleman of companies such as Gamestop being a hinderance. On September 12, 2003 Valve released Steam to the public. Steam has become the largest PC gaming platform in the world with thousands of games in its library and millions of users.
Newell used Steam’s success to experiment with games, even supporting the rise of Esports by hosting the DOTA 2 International Tournament, one of the largest Esports tournaments in the world, so large it was even featured on ESPN. He’s now spending much of his time working on virtual reality with Valve’s headset, the HTC Vive.
Born: November 3, 1962
Company: Valve
Notable Creations:
Team Fortress 2, Half-Life, STEAM
Company: Valve
Notable Creations:
Team Fortress 2, Half-Life, STEAM
Hideo Kojima
Hiedo Kojima is considered to be one of the more interesting game developers in terms of style, which took a more innovative approach to how he created his games’ stories and gameplay.
Kojima didn’t always wish to be a game developer, he desired other creative fields such as filmmaking and illustration. However the culture of safe jobs and hard work surrounding Japan at the time and financial struggles due to his father’s death hampered his dreams. He only decided to go into games after playing them while studying economics at univrsity.
He initially struggled to make a name for himself in the industry, he was hired at Konami in 1986 but had multiple failures due to inexperience and many of his ideas were brushed off.
His first leadership role was when he was asked to take over production of Metal Gear, one of the first stealth games ever made. This game’s success set the precedent for future stealth games.
Most of Kojima’s future games, including the wildly successful Metal Gear series, were praised for their innovation on storytelling in games especially their often more mature subject matter.
Kojima eventually wished to work on Konami’s Silent Hill series, a playable teaser called PT was released to the public with overwhelming success. This game was meant to announce Silent Hills, a project direct by Kojima and film director Guillermo del Toro and starring Norman Reedus. However in the mid 2010’s Kojima left Konami due to issues at the company and the game was cancelled.
His company, Kojima productions, broke off from Konami and became an independent developer late in 2015. His next game, Death Stranding, is highly anticipated and also stars Norman Reedus.
Kojima didn’t always wish to be a game developer, he desired other creative fields such as filmmaking and illustration. However the culture of safe jobs and hard work surrounding Japan at the time and financial struggles due to his father’s death hampered his dreams. He only decided to go into games after playing them while studying economics at univrsity.
He initially struggled to make a name for himself in the industry, he was hired at Konami in 1986 but had multiple failures due to inexperience and many of his ideas were brushed off.
His first leadership role was when he was asked to take over production of Metal Gear, one of the first stealth games ever made. This game’s success set the precedent for future stealth games.
Most of Kojima’s future games, including the wildly successful Metal Gear series, were praised for their innovation on storytelling in games especially their often more mature subject matter.
Kojima eventually wished to work on Konami’s Silent Hill series, a playable teaser called PT was released to the public with overwhelming success. This game was meant to announce Silent Hills, a project direct by Kojima and film director Guillermo del Toro and starring Norman Reedus. However in the mid 2010’s Kojima left Konami due to issues at the company and the game was cancelled.
His company, Kojima productions, broke off from Konami and became an independent developer late in 2015. His next game, Death Stranding, is highly anticipated and also stars Norman Reedus.
Born: August 24, 1963
Company: Koonmai (Formerly), Kojima Productions
Notable Creations:
Meatl Gear, Silent Hills PT
Company: Koonmai (Formerly), Kojima Productions
Notable Creations:
Meatl Gear, Silent Hills PT
Markus "Notch" Persson
One of the most widely recognized independent game developers in the world, and is a figurehead for today’s indie game industry.
Markus created games very early on in his life, at the age of eight he even produced a text based adventure game, after learning to program on his father’s computer. He has also worked for for companies such as King.com, Jalbum, and a few others.
Markus as worked on few games such as Scrolls, a game with elements from tabletop board and card games. However the game he is most recognized for is the iconic Minecraft, released in 2009, which was produced by his company Mojang.
Minecraft became an outstanding success, becoming as popular as titles produced by major companies. This game helped Markus win several awards and solidified himself as a major player in the gaming industry.
However in November of 2014, Markus sold Mojang to Microsoft and left the company. Since then he has become active on social media often talking about various topics including gaming.
Markus was no stranger to controversy, as he repeatedly criticized companies such as EA for lucrative business practices involving indie games. He’s even sparked controversy due to political comments he’s made.
Markus’s creations may be few, but they were substantial enough to earn him the respect of the gaming industry and community. Minecraft’s success helped the rise of independent games and developers by showcasing the level of quality such games can have.
Markus created games very early on in his life, at the age of eight he even produced a text based adventure game, after learning to program on his father’s computer. He has also worked for for companies such as King.com, Jalbum, and a few others.
Markus as worked on few games such as Scrolls, a game with elements from tabletop board and card games. However the game he is most recognized for is the iconic Minecraft, released in 2009, which was produced by his company Mojang.
Minecraft became an outstanding success, becoming as popular as titles produced by major companies. This game helped Markus win several awards and solidified himself as a major player in the gaming industry.
However in November of 2014, Markus sold Mojang to Microsoft and left the company. Since then he has become active on social media often talking about various topics including gaming.
Markus was no stranger to controversy, as he repeatedly criticized companies such as EA for lucrative business practices involving indie games. He’s even sparked controversy due to political comments he’s made.
Markus’s creations may be few, but they were substantial enough to earn him the respect of the gaming industry and community. Minecraft’s success helped the rise of independent games and developers by showcasing the level of quality such games can have.
Born: June 1, 1979
Company: Mojang (Formerly)
Notable Creations:
Minecraft
Company: Mojang (Formerly)
Notable Creations:
Minecraft
Satoru Iwata
Iwata, the son of a politician, grew up loving technology. He would later become one the most iconic and beloved faces in the history of video games.
He began studying engineering and computer sciences at the Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1978. He spent his time going to department stores that had the latest technology and interacting with his circle of friends in his club. This club soon grew into a small company, HAL Laboratories, which Iwata was among the first employees of, much to his parents dismay.
HAL met with Nintendo in 1983 to discuss a partnership after the release of the Famicom. The first game released by this partnership was Pinball in 1984. HAL's first original game became known as Kirby’s Dreamland upon release in 1992, to critical success.
Despite this success, HAL was on the brink of bankruptcy before Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi saved them in exchange for two things: That HAL becomes a third party developer of Nintendo exclusively, and Iwata succeeds Yamauchi as president. HAL accepted this offer.
Iwata was known to step in personally to save failing games, such as Earthbound (AKA Mother 2) which he helped complete in 6 months. He also helped port the mechanics from Pokemon Red and Blue on the Gameboy Color into Pokemon Stadium for the Nintendo 64 on his own in just one week.
In 2000 Yamauchi offered Iwata a seat at the board of directors and as Head of Corporate Planning Division for Nintendo due to his excellent leadership abilities. And in 2002, Yamauchi retired as president and Iwata succeeded him.
Iwata wanted to try innovate on ways to play games rather than try to create the most cutting edge technology. This led to the development to the Nintendo DS, the second best selling gaming device of ALL TIME (beaten out only by the Playstation 2).
He died from complications due to cancer in his bile duct on July 11, 2015. His funeral five days later was attended by thousands. It was said that that day “even the sky in Kyoto was crying.
He began studying engineering and computer sciences at the Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1978. He spent his time going to department stores that had the latest technology and interacting with his circle of friends in his club. This club soon grew into a small company, HAL Laboratories, which Iwata was among the first employees of, much to his parents dismay.
HAL met with Nintendo in 1983 to discuss a partnership after the release of the Famicom. The first game released by this partnership was Pinball in 1984. HAL's first original game became known as Kirby’s Dreamland upon release in 1992, to critical success.
Despite this success, HAL was on the brink of bankruptcy before Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi saved them in exchange for two things: That HAL becomes a third party developer of Nintendo exclusively, and Iwata succeeds Yamauchi as president. HAL accepted this offer.
Iwata was known to step in personally to save failing games, such as Earthbound (AKA Mother 2) which he helped complete in 6 months. He also helped port the mechanics from Pokemon Red and Blue on the Gameboy Color into Pokemon Stadium for the Nintendo 64 on his own in just one week.
In 2000 Yamauchi offered Iwata a seat at the board of directors and as Head of Corporate Planning Division for Nintendo due to his excellent leadership abilities. And in 2002, Yamauchi retired as president and Iwata succeeded him.
Iwata wanted to try innovate on ways to play games rather than try to create the most cutting edge technology. This led to the development to the Nintendo DS, the second best selling gaming device of ALL TIME (beaten out only by the Playstation 2).
He died from complications due to cancer in his bile duct on July 11, 2015. His funeral five days later was attended by thousands. It was said that that day “even the sky in Kyoto was crying.
Born: December 6, 1959
Died: July 11, 2015
Company: Nintendo
Notable Creations:
Nintendo DS, Kirby's Adventure
Died: July 11, 2015
Company: Nintendo
Notable Creations:
Nintendo DS, Kirby's Adventure
Todd Howard
Todd Howard, who started off as a young developer, led a company to become of one the largest developers of role-playing games and a juggernaut in the gaming industry.
Howard attended the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. While he wanted to focus on game development, he majored in Finance.
He applied to Bethesda but was denied multiple times until finally being hired in 1994. Some of his first work was converting The Elder Scrolls: Arena from MS DOS to CD, various Terminator first person shooter games, and eventually The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall.His first leadership role was for the game Redguard.
Eventually he led Bethesda to develop a massive game, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, which released in 2002 to massive success. The development kit created became public and spawned an incredibly active modding community.
Todd was promoted to executive producer, and had many of the team's programmers begin work on a game to surpass Morrowind’s scale and quality, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. This game featured entirely new development software and a new engine. This game was overwhelmingly successful.
Bethesda struck a deal in 2004 with the struggling Interplay studios to develop games for their series Fallout. (Which they obtained full license for in 2007). In 2008 Fallout 3 was released to even bigger success than Oblivion.
Howard then went on to lead the team to develop Bethesda’s biggest games such as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and Fallout 4.
Howard’s leadership has led to him, Bethesda, and their games winning many awards and becoming one of the biggest players in the industry of gaming.
Howard attended the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. While he wanted to focus on game development, he majored in Finance.
He applied to Bethesda but was denied multiple times until finally being hired in 1994. Some of his first work was converting The Elder Scrolls: Arena from MS DOS to CD, various Terminator first person shooter games, and eventually The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall.His first leadership role was for the game Redguard.
Eventually he led Bethesda to develop a massive game, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, which released in 2002 to massive success. The development kit created became public and spawned an incredibly active modding community.
Todd was promoted to executive producer, and had many of the team's programmers begin work on a game to surpass Morrowind’s scale and quality, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. This game featured entirely new development software and a new engine. This game was overwhelmingly successful.
Bethesda struck a deal in 2004 with the struggling Interplay studios to develop games for their series Fallout. (Which they obtained full license for in 2007). In 2008 Fallout 3 was released to even bigger success than Oblivion.
Howard then went on to lead the team to develop Bethesda’s biggest games such as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and Fallout 4.
Howard’s leadership has led to him, Bethesda, and their games winning many awards and becoming one of the biggest players in the industry of gaming.
Born: 1971
Company: Bethesda
Notable Creations:
The Elder Scrolls, Fallout 3, Doom
Company: Bethesda
Notable Creations:
The Elder Scrolls, Fallout 3, Doom