Sidney K. Meier is a Canadian-born Swiss-American programmer, designer, and producer of several strategy video games and simulation video games, including the Civilization series. Meier co-founded MicroProse in 1982 with Bill Stealey and is the Director of Creative Development of Firaxis Games, which he co-founded with Jeff Briggs and Brian Reynolds in 1996. For his contributions to the video game industry, Meier was inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame.
Cliff Bleszinski, popularly known as CliffyB, is an American video game designer, known for his work in the development of the Unreal and Gears of War series. After working at Epic Games from 1992 to 2012, he co-founded Boss Key Productions in 2014.
Greg Costikyan, sometimes known under the pseudonym "Designer X", is an American game designer and science fiction writer. Costikyan's career spans nearly all extant genres of gaming, including: hex-based wargames, role-playing games, boardgames, card games, computer games, online games, and mobile games. Several of his games have won Origins Awards. He co-founded Manifesto Games, now out of business, with Johnny Wilson in 2005.
David Patrick Crane is an American video game designer and programmer.
Graeme Devine is a computer game designer and programmer who co-founded Trilobyte, created bestselling games The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour, and helped design id Software's Quake III Arena. He was Chairman of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) from 2002–2003. One of Graeme's trademarks is his Scooby-Doo wardrobe. He has said of his work that "I've not stuck to any one genre, platform or IP throughout my career, and I hope people eventually work out that's just fine."
Todd Andrew Howard is an American video game designer, director, and producer. He serves as director and executive producer at Bethesda Game Studios, where he has led the development of the Fallout and The Elder Scrolls series.
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.
David Scott Jones is a Scottish video game programmer and entrepreneur who co-founded video game developers DMA Design in 1987, Realtime Worlds in 2002, and Cloudgine in 2012. Jones created Lemmings and Grand Theft Auto, which both spawned many successful sequels. He also created the Crackdown franchise for the Xbox 360 and Xbox One consoles, and the open-ended massively multiplayer online game, APB: All Points Bulletin.
Game Design Workshop is a book on game design by Tracy Fullerton, originally published by CMP Books in 2004. It has been updated and released in three subsequent editions, the latest by A K Peters/CRC Press in 2018.
A sandbox game is a video game with a gameplay element that provides players a great degree of creativity to interact with, usually without any predetermined goal, or alternatively with a goal that the players set for themselves. Such games may lack any objective, and are sometimes referred to as non-games or software toys. More often, sandbox games result from these creative elements being incorporated into other genres and allowing for emergent gameplay. Sandbox games are often associated with an open world concept which gives the players freedom of movement and progression in the game's world. The term "sandbox" derives from the nature of a sandbox that lets children create nearly anything they want within it.
Steve Peters is an American independent game designer and experience designer specializing in alternate reality games and transmedia storytelling. Steve was Chief Creative Officer at No Mimes Media, an Alternate Reality Game company which he co-founded with Maureen McHugh and Behnam Karbassi in March 2009. From 2011 to 2012, he was VP of Experience Design at Fourth Wall Studios, where he was Lead Experience Designer for their Emmy® Award-Winning series Dirty Work, among others. From 2012 through 2017, he hosted the StoryForward Podcast, a show that explored the future of storytelling and entertainment.
In video games, an open world is a virtual world in which the player can approach objectives freely, as opposed to a world with more linear and structured gameplay. Notable games in this category include The Legend of Zelda (1986), Grand Theft Auto III (2001) and Minecraft (2011).
David Sirlin is an American game designer and fighting game player.
GameSoundCon is a conference and seminar on videogame music and video game sound design. GameSoundCon began as a multi-city conference providing seminars occurring 2-4 times per year in various cities in the US on creating music and sound effects for videogames. Speakers and panelists from throughout the industry cover topics ranging from composing game music to game sound design and the business of game sound.
Anna Anthropy is an American video game designer, role-playing game designer, and interactive fiction author whose works include Mighty Jill Off and Dys4ia. She is the game designer in residence at the DePaul University College of Computing and Digital Media.
Dishonored is a 2012 action-adventure game developed by Arkane Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks. Set in the fictional, plague-ridden industrial city of Dunwall, Dishonored follows the story of Corvo Attano, bodyguard to the Empress of the Isles. He is framed for her murder and forced to become an assassin, seeking revenge on those who conspired against him. Corvo is aided in his quest by the Loyalists—a resistance group fighting to reclaim Dunwall, and the Outsider—a powerful being who imbues Corvo with magical abilities. Several noted actors, including Susan Sarandon, Brad Dourif, Carrie Fisher, Michael Madsen, John Slattery, Lena Headey and Chloë Grace Moretz, provided voice work for the game.
Bernard Louis De Koven or DeKoven was an American game designer, author, lecturer and fun theorist. He is most notable for his book The Well Played Game, for his contributions to the New Games Foundation, his pioneering work in computer game design, and for his long-running web site, deepFUN.com.
Game-Maker is an MS-DOS-based suite of game design tools, accompanied by demonstration games, produced between 1991 and 1995 by the Amherst, New Hampshire based Recreational Software Designs and sold through direct mail in the US by KD Software. Game-Maker also was sold under various names by licensed distributors in the UK, Korea, and other territories including Captain GameMaker and Create Your Own Games With GameMaker!. Game-Maker is notable as one of the first complete game design packages for DOS-based PCs, for its fully mouse-driven graphical interface, and for its early support for VGA graphics, Sound Blaster sound, and full-screen four-way scrolling.
Chris Remo is an American video game designer, composer, writer, podcaster, and former journalist.
Andrew Augustin is an American video game designer, 2d artist, and founder of Notion Games, LLC. He currently resides in Austin, Texas, and is best known for Super Ubie Island REMIX, Up Up Ubie REMIX, Sheep Herder Nay and Team Notion.
