I'd have put John Carmack up there somewhere, perhaps not top 5, but maybe given i'd say he's had a fairly large impact on all modern pc games (atleast, not 2d).
Also, why the hell is the iPhone even there? This is like a crazy list, for crazy people. I've probably done more for gaming than the iPhone, that's how little it has done for "real" gaming.
"Real" gaming? Is that like "no true Scotsman"? Gaming is gaming, and to deny the massive influence the iPhone has had is to be blindly foolish. But putting Steve Jobs at #1 is a bit much. I'd accept top 10 somewhere at most.
But i'm not sat here holding my breath in anticipation of the next release of "angry birds".
Skyrim next week... a "Real" game. Yes there is a difference, one pushes things along, one is just to make money in the short term.
Jobs? Zuckerberg? Tim Berners Lee?
This list suffers from the classic 'what's important right now' syndrome. Sure right now the most important growth platforms for gaming are iOS web and facebook, but those stand at the end of a long road and you can't ignore the people who built it.
To name but two of the striking omissions from that list. Just goes to show that execs never actually understand the industry they're working in.
Molyneux was struck off because of the Fable series - oh and Black and White.
And everything else he has done since Populous really.
Powermonger was not that bad!
And I won't even start on Dungeon Keeper.
But indeed, nothing really interesting since he left Bullfrog... I even wonder if he *really* was the real designers of the former games.
Did they somehow forget the influence of all the great stuff from the 80s?
Might I humbly suggest the Atari VCS2600 as having had some small influence?
He should be up there too.
Are those "1000 executives", by any chance, 16 years old?
Much younger. Either that...or their collective IQ is 16.
yep, and they had a free ipod nano as well.
Jobs will posthumously also win the Pulitzer price, the Nobel for physics, chemistry and peace, the Turing award, the Hugo and the Nebula, and make Number 1 in the Grand National and at Crufts.
I just wish I hadn't read that article.
Wednesday 2nd November 2011 19:04 GMT Chad H.
Look I wouldn't list jobs on a list of influential persons in gaming; but he has more of a right to be there than Berners -Lee.
After all, Tim Berners-Lee only inadvertently created the infrastructure used by modern gaming, whereas Saint Steve made the far more significant contribution of doing absolutely nothing in connection with games design at any point in his career.
The closest you could say Jobs ever got to being involved with games development was marketing several different platforms that could be used for games - the Apple II and the iPhone (let's forget about the Pippin, shall we?) - all of which merely followed in someone else's footsteps rather than innovate and none of which were as popular as their predecessors.
Thursday 3rd November 2011 17:50 GMT Chad H.
Tim Berners Lee created the Web; one particular facet of said infrastructure used by modern gaming (the internt). In fact, I'd go as far as to say if the web disipeared tomorrow, there'd be little to no immediate effect on gaming. Multiplayer? Fine - still got Internet even with no web.
The Web has little if anything to do with gaming - as great as it is.
Don't know what medication Jeff Minter was on when he wrote his games, but I felt like I was on medication when I played them.
Even now just look at all the post-Geometry Wars stuff; if that isn't a riff on the Tempest 2000 aesthetic then I don't know what is.
Steve Job, gaming? give me a break, also how many Wii's are now sat gathering dust?
What about the people making sure every day that we can still play the old games? I'd like to give special mentions to Nicola Salmoria, David Haywood, Aaron Giles and the others who work tirelessly on projects like MAME. By allowing us to access a huge back catalog of games they've had a far bigger influence on the development of current ones than anybody in those lists, look at how many current games pay homage to older ones which could otherwise have been lost to time.
Peter Veenstra and the DOSBox Crew should be held in the same regard again for putting games which were highly influential on PC platforms into the hands of current developers many of whom are too young to have experienced them first hand. What about ScummVM, who hasn't used that? Props must go to Eugene Sandulenko there.
History is important, lest we forget it, those who help preserve it long after it's commercial value are more valuable and influential to the industry than the current fads. The most influential people are not the most visible ones.
So it's a Bean Counters list, not a gamers list. When I look at it that way the choices are easier to understand.
you mean nothing to do with that he coraked a couple of weeks ago.
Fine by me, Apple invented mp3 players, mobile phones, touchscreens, home computing, laptops, video games and electricity. Why wouldnt' they be No. 1, All hail Apple!
Space Invaders was huge, made video games something everyone knew about.
Also Gunpei Yokoi for Game & Watch and the idea of making games mobile (what does the iPhone add to this idea? At best some aspects of the Wii's control and Steam's delivery - nothing truly innovative).
WTF, Steve Jobs as a game guy... are you all completely and hopelessly clueless?
Or was it one of those conferences where following the plenary session all these ugly guys go back to their hotel rooms, get high and, getting bored while waiting for the hookers, fills out a survey like this?
When is the Pope going to make Steve a bona fida saint?
Why would he downgrade him?
How big was the list, and did it have names down? Did they have to pick from 10-20 names or write their own choices down? How many of these 1,000 people actually are developing games for the iDevices?
Gaming, god, go back to the 80's/90's and people whacking away at code on their ZX, C64, A500 etc. bringing out shareware releases or what-not They had an influence and some probably went on to work for big companies.
EA, love it or loath it, the guy behind EA has brought out some of the most successful games in history, BF3, The Sims.
Influencial people, Chris Sawyer (Transport Tycoon, Rollercoaster Tycoon), Peter Molyneux (Black and White, Fable), John Carmak (Doom, Wolfenstien).
Systems? Why isn't the PC on that list? No PC = no Steam/Facebook, the PC has always been an important machine when it comes to games, one could also suggest that games have been a major influence on PC's too.
I dunno what the world is coming to, people choosing an Apple platform over a PC platform when it comes to gaming, let's all sell our PC's, PS3's, XBoxes, Wii's, PSP's, DS's etc. and buy an iPhone, we'll get such quality gaming that no other system can compare with.
What about JRPG's too? Megadrive/Snes, no Snes, no super mario, no Sega, no Sonic, the list is endless, no Nintendo, no Pokemon.... I'm going to stop before I pop a vein.
peanut butter, polio vacine, initial modern speech, as well as the concept of fonts, all should be credited to the grubby lil collegiate. Getting very tiring hearing about the nasty lil prick.
Is that because some games use the web? Sheesh! Tossers!
What about Maxwell or Faraday, since none of these games would work without leccy?
What about Newton, since Maxwell used calculus?
What about Fibbonacci, or any number of nameless Arabs or Indians.
What about the first Neanderthal who found it mildly amusing to clobber things with a big stick.
To answer my own question, the only reasonable place to stop is when you encounter people who haven't actually done a video game, merely promoted some facilitating technology. So Tim's out, and frankly so is St Steve of Jobs and his phone.
No Geoff Crammond? This list is chuffing nonsense. Fact.
David Braben & Ian Bell.
Over at the Frontier Developments website, there's a whole forum of people waiting (probably in vain) for Elite 4. And 30-odd years on, Oolite's still goes strong.
(Yeah, I'm a sad F--ker).
And Blue Danube in entrenched in my head for another afternoon.
in 4 years. That is more than all the playstation 2 & 3 added together. Add in the fact that iOS has brought thousands and thousands of new developers in to the market, and you can see where the thinking of the judges came from.
Any list of the five most influential people in videogames that doesn't list John Carmack is pretty dumb. I mean, 3D first-person shooters are KIND OF POPULAR NOW.
Echoes of Princess Diana here.
Are we now going to have a certain newspaper splashing him across every front page for the next 10 years, and the parents of his lover telling whoever will listen that he was murdered and it was all a conspiracy?
...somewhat useless, but being good at being in the papers.
He was probably murdered by an iOS 5.0 beta tester.
Excessive fame in quick death"
I'd echo the sentiments of John Carmack who did a lot to shape PC games in the 90s.
Steve jobs didn't even like games.
Ever since the mac. It was someone else who suggested gaming for the ipod touch.