Gaming Pioneers.

What Game Company/Person do you believe had a major influence on gaming and helped bring a certain standard to how games should be made?

I remeber Peter Molyneux of bullfrog and how I always liked playing Bullfrog Games like Magic Carpet on my 486 DX2.

So I will start it off with Peter Molyneux being a person who helped gaming in general.

Company: Nintendo

Person: Shigeru Miyamoto

I've never rated Molyneux, personally. Just don't find his games the type of thing I want to play.

I liked Peter molyneux back in the 90's, my favourite games was Dungeon Keeper 2 which was finaly completed after he left.

Since then there have been a lot of lacklustre games, the only one I really enjoyed was Fable, but that was a BlueBox game that in my mind, he took over and took credit for, and most of the things he embelished the hype for the game with never came to pass.

B&W was a good idea that wasn't really taken far enough to be more than a novelty, and B&W 2 just felt like a mess. Would have prefered something a little more hardcore and closer to the medieval series. Instead they went for a casual game interface that didn't really work and ruined the whole experience (at least for me) since it didn't work and the whole army thing was clumsy.

I hardly like any Nintendo games, actually I can't think of a single one off the top of my head. But I do respect Miyamoto's contribution to gaming. I often like the ideas behind his games, and even the look, just don't find them fun to play.

I'm just not into simple arcadey games so Donkey koong, Mario, zelda, pikmin, mario kart etc don't really appeal to me and I get bored within 20 minutes. But others like them, and they have lasted the test of time :)

I recall being inspired by the people at Core and the people at the Bitmap Brothers. Any of the companies who took the time to write articles and tutorials for the Amiga magazines of the day were always inspiring, back when the original inspiration for being some kind of super-rich super-cool game developer sprung up. Besides that I consider myself a pioneer but time will tell if this proves to be so.

I would have to say that there are to many for me to mention. But here's a few.

Matthew Smith (Manic Miner/Jet Set Willy)
Peter Harrap (Monty Mole series)
Tim and Chris Stamper (Jetpac and many other Ultimate Games)
David Braben and Ian Bell (Elite)
The Oliver Twins (Dizzy series)
John D. Carmack (Doom)

But I would like to thank all those people who wrote good quality games on machines with 8bit CPU's, small memory and very basic Graphic chips (if any)

Julian Gollop. ( XCom, Laser Squad, Rebelstar. )
David Jones. ( Spellbound, Knight Tyme, StormBringer. )
Tim Stamper and Chris Stamper ( Sabre Wulf, Knight Lore, Goldeneye. )
Dino Dini ( Kick Off. )

Blizzard - yet to make a bad game IMHO.

Raff Cecco (Cybernoid 1 & 2, Exelon)





And of course Ultimate "Play the Game" (Stamper Bros) who did Trans-Am, Cookie, Pssst, JetPac, Lunar JetMan, Knightlore, Underworld, Alien8... etc etc etc

yeah - the Stamper Bros (ACG) were gods when I had a Speccy.

The Wally games (MicroGen?) were class, too - dunno who wrote them, tho. :)

The Wally game's are more likely by Chris Hinsley,Dave Perry, Nick Jones

Ron Gilbert. Lori & Cori Cole.

Tim Schafer, brought adventure games alive through humour.

Manfred Trenz.

Sid Meier.

Paul Woakes

Crowther & Woods - Spelunker, The Original Adventure

Bill Budge, Nasir Gebelli - Masters of the 2D games in APPLE II era

All those unknown computer and math geeks who decided that computer has better things to do than eternal number crunching

Barney

Dungeon Keeper 2 is to this day my favourite oldschool game. The games industry lost it's soul after EA killed that franchise, so far as I'm concerned.

David Crane, the guy who made Pitfall and set the standards for platform games.

Shigeru Miyamoto for basically making the Mario series, which I wasted too much time on the NES with in my childhood years, and Tim Schafer back in the LucasArts Point-And-Click-Adventure days, so many hours wasted on the Monkey Island series..
(cause back then I couldn't just easily hop on the net and find a walkthrough when I got stuck <.<)

Peter Molyneux is so over-rated. He's basically re-making Populous over and over with better graphics and changing the name.

That would explain why I don't like his games. I never liked Populous and, consequently, don't like any of his games. :P

I disagree. Populous II was brilliant. Syndicate was brilliant. Every game he's made since then, not so much. So if he's remaking Populous he's making them progressively worse.

Of course no list would be complete without Steve Fawkner (Warlords), Tim Cain (Fallout) and Mark Cale (Last Ninja).

Most notable for me were (not in any particular order):

Richard Gariott (AKA Lord British) - the ultima saga
David Braben -elite, frontier
Mark Crowe and Scott Murphy - space quest saga etc
Roberta Williams - kings quest saga
Bitmap Bros - speedball, gods, Xennon 1+2 etc..
Stamper Bros, - Ultimate games
Psygnosis(notibly reflections & early DMA) - Not always the best gameplay, but great graphics :)
Carmack/ID - Wolfenstien, doom, quake etc.
Lucasgames - Loom, M.Island saga etc.

I didn't say he'd never made a good game. I agree those 2 are very good games - but he just seems to have run out of ideas and remakes Populous in all but name.

Some good choices here, Peter Molyneux is a good one.
Definitely have to give good credit to John D. Carmack.
How about Will Wright?

As for non western people, it's too stereotypical though to just mention Shigeru Miyamoto.
There's loads of other great Japanese developers that preceed most of the people mentioned here.
Which is a shame really, especially since Japanese developers during the 80s invented most of the game genre we know and love today, and most people would never know who they are. For example, anyone heard of Yoshihisa Kishimoto, Kazutomo Ishida, and what about the all time classic Fukio Mitsuji? If you have google for the answers then shame on you! :)

Andrew Braybrook. Uridium and Paradroid set the rest of the industry into a scrambling game of catch-up/copycat.

Didn't Braybrook do Fire & Ice?

Never heard of any of them, and I don't feel ashamed at all.

Likewise I didn't know who the Stamper Bros were until I googled them, however, I'd already said Ultimate Play the Game.

I like lots of bands but I'd have no idea who half the members are, frankly wouldn't even know the names of the lead singers. Does that make me appreciate the music any less... No.

I always did thought Solaris by Douglas Neubauer on the Atari 2600 was incredible breakthrough for its time....

Yep - Braybrook did Fire & Ice too.