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Comment by santaclaus | Hacker News Reader

Whatever happened to the 'celebrity' game developer? In the 90s it seemed like the lead developers were lionized (or vilified). John Carmack, Richard Garriot, John Romero, Roberta Williams, Derek Smart. The personalities of the leads really shown through back then. I can't even tell you who the lead dev on Destiny or Dark Souls 3 or whatever are.

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> I can't even tell you who the lead dev on Destiny or Dark Souls 3 or whatever are.

I don't intend this as a slight, but you must not follow %Souls games very closely at all. The community practically worships Miyazaki. You can't go one page on any of the given subreddits before stumbling across a mention of him.

Granted, he's a director and maybe not specifically the lead dev - but that's a reflection of the size of modern games. Aside from indie titles (where authors, like Notch or John Blow, are in fact very well known) - AAA games employ such a staggering number of developers that singling any one of them out is almost impossible. Hence, whoever guides the creative vision (in this case, Miyazaki) is the one whose name becomes synonymous with the title.

Great points. I'm certainly not tracking any given franchise to the degree that I'm active in the title's subreddit. My gaming habits are currently more breadth than depth, there far too many great games coming out across genres, platforms, and funding models right now.

The big lead developers of the 90s (I'd add Sid Meier and Peter Molyneux to your list as a start) defined game genres, mechanics and in some cases just purely the concept of 3d game engines. Nowadays most big titles use similar 3d engines, use well-developed game mechanics, often follow (though sometimes with a little variaion) well developed genres, etc. Plus its big business so decision making is much more corporate rather than visionary. Thats why personalities don't stand out on the big titles, although there are a healthy number of indie game programmers who are doing the individual vision thing (Jonathan Blow et al).

Maybe the industrialization of video game making has obscured individual personalities -- it's impossible to imagine there just being one driving persona behind the GTA or console AAA games, as huge as they are. But that's been made up for by the access to social media and the rise of indie game making.

- Cliff Bleszinski (Unreal, Gears of War)

- Jonathan Blow (Braid, The Witness)

- Toby Fox (Undertale)

- Chris Roberts (Wing Commander, Star Citizen)

- Hideo Kojima

Don't forget

Notch, Markus Persson (Minecraft)

Toady One, Tarn Adams (Dwarf Fortress)

David Braben (Elite) Peter Molyneux (Fable) Sid Meier (Civilisation)

> But that's been made up for by the access to social media and the rise of indie game making.

That's a great point. I was definitely referring to AAA games, above. We are certainly in the midst of an indie renaissance (goes back to playing Hyper Light Drifter).

That game is SO GOOD. Fair warning, unless they fixed it the patch that gave IFrames to dash also broke the final boss where it soft locks.

Rockstar game developers exist today as they did then.

Hidetaka Miyazaki, director of Dark Souls and now president of From Software, is quickly becoming one.

You were probably more interested in games in 90s than you are now because, if anything, the gaming "rockstars" are a celebrity to more people than the ones in 90s due to more accessible events. You could not watch a press conference in 90s on your TV, now you can watch every event live if you wish so.

This list of names made me think of Ken Silverman. Apparently he's now doing http://www.voxiebox.com/

The latest "game developer celebrity" on my list is Kenta Cho, I guess.

You can add Kojima and Chris Roberts to that list.

Kojima?

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