Pintopolis asks something rather more up my alley:
Who do you think are the best and most innovative Game Designers working today. I was always a fan of Chris Crawford.
Chris Crawford is very well-regarded and will always have a place in my heart for starting the Computer Game Developers Conference, even if you won’t find me at the conventional convention that it’s grown into. I was actually thinking about this the other day, as I had the chance to chat with one of my old heroes, Richard Garriott, recently, and another old acquaintance who is also at NCSoft asked me who I’d most like to work with.
I think Lord British is still tops, as he’s doing some interesting work with tactical AI that borders on StratAI in Tabula Rasa. He’s been a pioneer several times over and continues to lead the way. Also, he’s got a savvy business sense that makes him that much more valuable as a designer.
I think very highly of Chris Taylor, who’s now at Gas-Powered Games. I’m still in touch with him; unlike most “strategy” game designers, he fully understands the difference between tactics and strategy, a difference that he exploited brilliantly in Supreme Commander.
I still harbor great appreciation for John Romero, who is a much more sophisticated thinker than most people realize. Yes, he had the benefit of being paired with the ultimate game technologist, John Carmack, and perhaps his ego may have gotten a little out of hand during his Ion Storm days, but even his post-id failures are failures of execution, not design. He’s pushing in the right directions, in my opinion, whether he can actually pull it off or not is unknown. People forget nowadays that he designed some very good Apple II games as well as the Commander Keen series. In case you’re interested in a little game trivia. he had some influence in my decision to return to the industry last year.
Marc Miller, who designed the Traveller RPG, is underappreciated and underutilized these days. He actually foresaw the connection between computers and role-playing; if you look at the Traveller system you can see how it could almost be plugged as is into a modern MMO and it would work. Julian LeFay is another great RPG designer; I’d very much like to know what he’s up to now.
Obviously, there’s Miyamoto and the guy who did Tetris, but those sort of games neither interest me nor have any influence on the kind of games that do. I’m more impressed with Charles Moylan and Steve Grammont, who came up with a unique and elegant way to solve the 3D combat/tactical problem (one that worked much better than my decision to use emergent AI) and showed that it’s still possible to exist as an independent development/publishing house. I’m frankly surprised that the Combat Mission approach hasn’t been used by anyone else yet, even if the forthcoming version has received underwhelming reviews.
I think Chris Roberts might be my biggest disappointment. He did such great work with Times of Lore and the first Wing Commander, but then the movie bug bit him; I wish he’d return to doing games. Actually, I’m more disappointed in my own track record, but I am in the process of rectifying that situation.