A video game developer is a software developer specializing in video game development – the process and related disciplines of creating video games. A game developer can range from one person who undertakes all tasks to a large business with employee responsibilities split between individual disciplines, such as programmers, designers, artists, etc. Most game development companies have video game publisher financial and usually marketing support. Self-funded developers are known as independent or indie developers and usually make indie games.
The Game Developers Choice Awards are awards annually presented at the Game Developers Conference for outstanding game developers and games. Introduced in 2001, the Game Developers Choice Awards were preceded by the Spotlight Awards, which were presented from 1997 to 1999. Since then, the ceremony for the Independent Games Festival is held just prior to the Choice Awards ceremony.
Christopher Crawford is an American video game designer and writer. Hired by Alan Kay to work at Atari, Inc., he wrote the computer wargame Eastern Front (1941) for Atari 8-bit computers which was sold through the Atari Program Exchange and later Atari's official product line. After leaving Atari, he wrote a string of games beginning with Balance of Power for Macintosh. Writing about the process of developing games, he became known among other creators in the nascent home computer game industry for his passionate advocacy of game design as an art form. He self-published The Journal of Computer Game Design and founded the Computer Game Developers Conference.
The Game Developers Conference (GDC) is an annual conference for video game developers. The event includes an expo, networking events, and awards shows like the Game Developers Choice Awards and Independent Games Festival, and a variety of tutorials, lectures, and roundtables by industry professionals on game-related topics covering programming, design, audio, production, business and management, and visual arts.
Mark Evan Cerny is an American video game designer, programmer, producer and media proprietor.
The Indie Game Jam (IGJ) was an effort to rapidly prototype video game designs and inject new ideas into the game industry. Started in 2002 by a group of game designer-programmers, the event featured a shared game engine technology and worked on by other designer-programmers for a single long weekend. The games resulting from that weekend were then published, open-source, on the IGJ web page.
Robert Bates is an American computer game designer. One of the early designers of interactive fiction games, he was co-founder of Challenge, Inc., which created games in the 1980s for the pioneering company Infocom. After Infocom's dissolution in 1989, Bates co-founded Legend Entertainment to continue publishing games in the Infocom tradition, but with added graphics. Notable games that he has designed, written, or produced include Unreal II (2003), Spider-Man 3 (2007), and Eric the Unready (1993), listed as Adventure Game of the Year by Computer Gaming World magazine and also included on the 1996 list of "150 best games of all time". In 1998 he wrote the award-winning game Quandaries for the U.S. Department of Justice. He has twice been the chairperson of the International Game Developers Association, which honored him with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010. Bates has written extensively about game design and development in works such as the 2001 book Game Design: The Art and Business of Creating Games, which is commonly used as a game design textbook in college courses. From 2011–2014, Bates was Chief Creative Officer for External Studios at Zynga. He continues to work as an independent consultant with various publishers in the games industry.
(Conrad) Gordon Walton, Jr. is an American video game developer and executive producer who has worked with many North American online game companies, from Maxis to Electronic Arts to Sony Online to BioWare. Since 1977 he has personally developed over thirty games, and overseen development of hundreds more, working as a producer, vice-president or executive producer. He is currently Executive Producer of the Kickstarter-backed MMORPG Crowfall.
Daniel James, is a British-Canadian video game developer based in San Francisco. He is a co-founder and CEO of Three Rings Design, the company behind the MMOGs Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates, Bang! Howdy, Whirled and Spiral Knights.
The International Academic Conference on the Future of Game Design and Technology, also known as FuturePlay, is an international academic conference that focuses on the future of video game design and technology. The most recent conference under that title was held in 2010.
Sheri Graner Ray is an American computer game designer. Active since 1990, she has worked for such companies as Electronic Arts, Origin Systems, Sony Online Entertainment, and Cartoon Network, and has worked on such licenses as Star Wars Galaxies, Ultima, and Nancy Drew. She is author of the book Gender Inclusive Game Design-Expanding the Market and is the computer game industry's leading expert on the subject of gender and computer games.
Brenda Louise Romero, previously known as Brenda Brathwaite, is an American game designer and developer in the video game industry. She was born in Ogdensburg, New York and is a graduate of Clarkson University. Romero is best known for her work on the Wizardry series of role-playing video games and, more recently, the non-digital series The Mechanic is the Message. She has worked in game development since 1981 and has credits on 49 game titles.
Michael V. Capps or Mike Capps is an American video game designer who was the president of Epic Games, based in Cary, North Carolina from 2002 to 2012. In 2018, he co-founded a new artificial intelligence company called Howso. He has been described as "a legendary figure in the video game industry."
Jason Della Rocca is the former executive director of the Montreal chapter of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA): Della Rocca supervised the daily operations, outreach initiatives, and membership programs of the organization from September 2000 to March 2009. After leaving the IGDA following his 9-year involvement with the company, Della Rocca founded Perimeter Partners, a consultancy that provides strategic level guidance and expertise to companies and organizations in, and around, the game industry globally. More recently, Della Rocca cofounded a hybrid incubator/accelerator for independent mobile game startups called Execution Labs. In the summer of 2013 he was appointed to the advisory board for the ICT practice of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development, Canada's foreign and trade ministry.
Within the video game industry there are several awards that are given to individual video games, development studios, and other individuals to recognize their merit. Most video game awards are given out on an annual basis, celebrating the best games of the previous year. Most of these awards come from organizations directly within the industry, but there also exist several that come from broader media groups. In addition, many video game publications supply their own end of the year awards.
Kate Edwards is a geographer, writer, and content culturalization strategist, most active in information-based cartography and video game content. She was the executive director of the International Game Developers Association from December 2012 to June 2017. Edwards spent over a decade working in various roles at Microsoft, creating the Geopolitical Strategy team and working to evaluate and manage geopolitical and cultural content in software products. After leaving Microsoft she founded Englobe as a consulting firm engaged in content culturalization and strategy, primarily for the video game industry.
Heather Kelley is a media artist, writer and video game designer. She is a co-founder of the Kokoromi experimental game collective, with whom she produces and curates the annual Gamma game event promoting experimental games as creative expression in a social context. She regularly appears as a jury member for several computer gaming festivals. She is also a frequent public speaker at technology events.
Robin Hunicke is an American video game designer and producer. She is a professor of game design at UC Santa Cruz and the co-founder of Funomena.
Michael Todd is a Canadian independent video game programmer and designer. He is an active member of the Toronto video game developer community, and an advocate for mental health awareness within the profession.
Bob De Schutter is a Belgian video game designer and researcher, who is the C. Michael Armstrong professor of Applied Game Design at Miami University. He is best known for his work on the design of video games for players in middle through late adulthood. He has advocated the importance of play in later life and has spoken out against the stereotyping of older video game players in marketing and game design. He has also published on the design of experimental classrooms for gameful instruction.
