Portal:Video games

The Video Games Portal

A video game, also known as a computer game or just a game, is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual feedback from a display device, most commonly shown in a video format on a television set, computer monitor, flat-panel display or touchscreen on handheld devices, or a virtual reality headset. Most modern video games are audiovisual, with audio complement delivered through speakers or headphones, and sometimes also with other types of sensory feedback (e.g., haptic technology that provides tactile sensations). Some video games also allow microphone and webcam inputs for in-game chatting and livestreaming.

Video games are typically categorized according to their hardware platform, which traditionally includes arcade video games, console games, and computer (PC) games; the latter also encompasses LAN games, online games, and browser games. More recently, the video game industry has expanded onto mobile gaming through mobile devices (such as smartphones and tablet computers), virtual and augmented reality systems, and remote cloud gaming. Video games are also classified into a wide range of genres based on their style of gameplay and target audience. (Full article...)

Featured articles –

  Featured articles are displayed here, which represent some of the best content on English Wikipedia.

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  Sacrifice is a real-time strategy video game published by Interplay Entertainment in 2000 for Microsoft Windows platform. Developed by Shiny Entertainment, the game features elements of action and other genres. Players control wizards who fight each other with spells and summoned creatures. The game was ported to Mac OS 9.2 in 2001.
  
  Unlike many of its contemporary real-time strategy games, Sacrifice places little emphasis on resource gathering and management. There is no system of workers; the players' wizards collect souls to summon creatures, and their mana—energy for casting spells—constantly regenerates. Players customize their attacks by choosing from spells and creatures aligned to five gods. To defeat an opponent, the player's wizard sacrifices a friendly unit at the opposing wizard's altar, thereby desecrating it and banishing the enemy wizard. Aside from a single-player campaign, Sacrifice offers a multiplayer mode, in which up to four players can play against each other over computer networks.
  
  Sacrifice was created by a small team of developers; most of the work was done by four key personnel. The graphic engine of the game uses tesselation: thousands of polygons are used to display an object and as lesser details are needed, the number of polygons is reduced. By adjusting the required level of detail, Sacrifice can be run on various machines with the highest possible quality of graphics. Complementing the graphics of the game were the voice work of professional actors, such as Tim Curry, and the musical compositions of Kevin Manthei. Sacrifice was praised by reviewers for the novel designs of its creatures and for its humorous content. The high level of attention needed to manage its frenetic combat was mentioned as a flaw. Despite winning several awards, Sacrifice was not a commercial success. (Full article...)
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  Super Mario 64 is a 1996 platform game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64. It was released in Japan and North America in 1996 and PAL regions in 1997. It is the first Super Mario game to feature 3D gameplay, combining traditional Super Mario gameplay, visual style, and characters in a large open world. In the game, Bowser, the primary antagonist of the Super Mario franchise, invades Princess Peach's castle and hides the castle's sources of protection, the Power Stars, in many different worlds inside magical paintings. As Mario, the player collects Power Stars to unlock enough of Princess Peach's castle to get to Bowser and rescue Princess Peach.
  
  Director Shigeru Miyamoto conceived a 3D Super Mario game during the production of Star Fox (1993). Development lasted nearly three years: about one year on design and twenty months on production, starting with designing the virtual camera system. The team continued with illustrating the 3D character models—at the time a relatively unattempted task—and refining sprite movements. The sound effects were recorded by Yoji Inagaki and the score was composed by Koji Kondo.
  
  Super Mario 64 was highly anticipated by video game journalists and audiences, boosted by advertising campaigns and showings at the 1996 E3 trade show. It received critical acclaim, with reviewers praising its ambition, visuals, level design, and gameplay, though some criticized its virtual camera system. It is the best-selling Nintendo 64 game, with nearly twelve million copies sold by 2015. (Full article...)
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  Cloud is a 2005 puzzle video game developed by a team of students in the University of Southern California's (USC) Interactive Media Program. The team began development of the game for Microsoft Windows in January 2005 with a US$20,000 grant from the USC Game Innovation Lab; the game was released as a free download that October. By July 2006, the hosting website had received 6 million visits, and the game had been downloaded 600,000 times.
  
  The game centers on a boy who dreams of flying while asleep in a hospital bed. The concept was partially based on lead designer Jenova Chen's childhood; he was often hospitalized for asthma and would daydream while alone in his room. Assuming the role of the boy, the player flies through a dream world and manipulates clouds to solve puzzles. The game was intended to spark emotions in the player that the video game industry usually ignored.
  
  Cloud won the Best Student Philosophy award at the 2006 Slamdance Guerrilla Games Competition, and a Student Showcase award at the 2006 Independent Games Festival. The game was received well by critics, who cited its visuals, music, and relaxing atmosphere as high points. Chen and producer Kellee Santiago went on to co-found the studio Thatgamecompany, which has considered remaking Cloud as a commercial video game. (Full article...)
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  Box art

  
  Freedom Planet is a 2014 platform game developed and published by American video game designer Sabrina DiDuro, for her studio GalaxyTrail. The player controls one of three anthropomorphic animal protagonists: the dragon girl Lilac, the wildcat Carol, or the basset hound Milla. Aided by a duck-like alien named Torque, the girls attempt to defeat the evil Lord Brevon, who plans to steal the Kingdom Stone and conquer the galaxy. While the game focuses on fast-paced platforming, its levels are interspersed with slower action scenes.
  
  DiDuro first began developing Freedom Planet as a Sonic the Hedgehog fangame using characters created by DeviantArt user Ziyo Ling for its main cast. Early into development, she lost interest in creating a derivative work and reconceived the project as her own intellectual property. Sash Lilac, originally a hedgehog, became a dragon; antagonist Doctor Eggman was replaced by Lord Brevon with his eyebrows resembling Doctor Eggman's mustache; and the Sonic series' ring-based health system was abandoned. Further changes were suggested by fans and incorporated throughout development. Freedom Planet was developed in Denmark and the United States, with its art direction carrying East Asian influences, such as medieval Chinese art inspiring its background visuals.
  
  With development focused on the Windows platform, the game started out as a demo first released in August 2012 and was, after a successful Kickstarter campaign, released in its entirety via Steam in July 2014. Freedom Planet was later released for the Wii U in October 2015, for the PlayStation 4 in 2017, and for the Nintendo Switch in August 2018. The game received largely positive reviews; critics praised its gameplay, visuals, music, aesthetics, sense of humor and balance of Sonic elements with original content, but were mixed on its pacing, voice acting, story and the abundance of long cutscenes. (Full article...)
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  Gravity Bone is a 2008 freeware adventure game developed and published by Blendo Games. The game employs a modified version of id Software's Quake II engine and incorporates music from films by director Wong Kar-wai, which were originally performed by Xavier Cugat. Four incarnations of the game were produced during its one-year development; the first featured more common first-person shooter elements than the released version. Subsequent versions shifted in a new direction, with the inclusion of more spy-oriented gameplay. The game was released for Microsoft Windows in August 2008.
  
  Gravity Bone received critical acclaim from video game journalists. It was called "a pleasure to experience" by Charles Onyett from IGN, and received comparisons to games such as Team Fortress 2 and Portal. The game was praised for its cohesive story, atmosphere and its ability to catch the player's interest over a very short time span without feeling rushed or incomplete. It received the "Best Arthouse Game" award in Game Tunnel's Special Awards of 2008. A sequel, Thirty Flights of Loving, was released in 2012. (Full article...)
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  Oxenfree is a graphic adventure game developed and published by Night School Studio. It was released for OS X, Windows, and Xbox One in January 2016. PlayStation 4 and Linux versions were released later in 2016, followed by iOS, Android, and Nintendo Switch versions in 2017. In Oxenfree, players assume the role of the teenage girl Alex on a weekend trip to a local island. After seemingly supernatural events occur, Alex and her friends must unravel the secrets of the island.
  
  The game is Night School Studio's debut. Influenced by classic teen films and coming-of-age shows, the developers wanted to create a story-driven game without cutscenes, allowing players to roam the environment freely. Oxenfree's visual presentation marries dark, organic, and analog elements with bright, geometric, and digital ones. Musician scntfc composed the game's soundtrack, which features digital music production techniques alongside the use of vintage analog tape recorders and receivers.
  
  Oxenfree's release was accompanied by development documentaries, an alternate reality game, and a collector's edition, and was met with generally positive reviews, with critics praising the presentation and characters, although some of them were left wanting more. The game was nominated for multiple awards including "Best Narrative" at The Game Awards 2016 and "Outstanding Achievement in Story" at the 20th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards. A sequel, Oxenfree II: Lost Signals, was released on July 12, 2023. A television series adaptation is also in development. (Full article...)
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  Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines is a 2004 action role-playing video game developed by Troika Games and published by Activision for Microsoft Windows. Set in White Wolf Publishing's World of Darkness, the game is based on White Wolf's role-playing game Vampire: The Masquerade and follows a human who is killed and revived as a fledgling vampire. The game depicts the fledgling's journey through early 21st-century Los Angeles to uncover the truth behind a recently discovered relic that heralds the end of all vampires.
  
  Bloodlines is presented from first-person and third-person perspectives. The player assigns their character to one of several vampire clans—each with unique powers— customizes their combat and dialog abilities, and progresses through Bloodlines using violent and nonviolent methods. The selection of clan affects how the player is perceived in the game world and which powers and abilities they possess; this opens up different avenues of exploration and methods of interacting with or manipulating other characters. The player can complete side missions away from the primary storyline by moving freely between the available hubs: Santa Monica, Hollywood, downtown Los Angeles, and Chinatown.
  
  Troika's 32-member team began developing Bloodlines in November 2001 as an indirect sequel to the previous year's Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption. Troika used Valve's Source game engine, then in development, which was used for Valve's own Half-Life 2. The game's production was turbulent, as the design's scope exceeded the available resources, and the team was left without a producer for nearly a year until Activision appointed David Mullich to the role, where he found designs and levels unfinished or abandoned. After three years in development with no end in sight and running over budget, Activision set a strict deadline for completion, and Bloodlines was released incomplete in November 2004. (Full article...)
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  Single-player cabinet

  
  Computer Space is a space combat arcade video game released in 1971. Created by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney in partnership as Syzygy Engineering, it was the first arcade video game as well as the first commercially available video game. Computer Space is a derivative of the 1962 computer game Spacewar!, which is possibly the first video game to spread to multiple computer installations. It features a rocket controlled by the player engaged in a missile battle with a pair of hardware-controlled flying saucers set against a starfield background. The goal is to score more hits than the enemy spaceships within a set time period, which awards a free round of gameplay. The game is enclosed in a custom fiberglass cabinet, which Bushnell designed to look futuristic.
  
  Bushnell and Dabney designed the game in 1970–71 to be a coin-operated version of Spacewar!. After the pair were unable to find a way to economically run the game on a minicomputer such as the Data General Nova, they hit upon the idea of instead replacing the central computer with custom-designed hardware created to run just that game. While they were working on an early proof of concept, Bushnell found a manufacturer for the game in Nutting Associates. Working in partnership with Nutting, the pair completed the game and ran their first location test in August 1971, a few months prior to the display of a similar prototype called Galaxy Game, also based on Spacewar!. It was first shown to industry press and distributors at the annual Music Operators of America (MOA) Expo in October. With encouraging initial interest, though mixed responses from distributors, Nutting ordered an initial production run of 1,500 units, anticipating a hit game.
  
  While the game was successful and validated Syzygy's belief in the future of arcade video games, selling over 1,000 cabinets by mid-1972 and ultimately 1,300–1,500 units, it was not the runaway success that Nutting had hoped for. The game spawned one clone game, Star Trek (1972), and Nutting produced a two-player version of Computer Space in 1973 without involvement from Bushnell and Dabney. The pair left Nutting in June 1972 and incorporated Syzygy as Atari, launching the successful Pong (1972) as their next arcade game. Computer Space's release marked the ending of the early history of video games and the start of the commercial video game industry. (Full article...)
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  Shadow the Hedgehog is a 2005 platform game developed by Sega Studios USA and published by Sega. It is a spin-off from the Sonic the Hedgehog series starring the character Shadow. It follows the amnesiac Shadow's attempts to learn about his past during an alien invasion. Gameplay is similar to previous Sonic games, featuring fast-paced platforming and ring collecting, but introduces third-person shooter and nonlinear elements. Shadow uses a variety of weapons to defeat enemies and complete missions that determine the plot and playable levels.
  
  Sega Studios USA chose to make a game featuring Shadow to capitalize on his popularity and resolve plot mysteries that began with his introduction in Sonic Adventure 2 (2001). Shadow the Hedgehog was written and directed by Takashi Iizuka and produced by Yuji Naka, with music by Jun Senoue. Iizuka strove to attract an older audience; Shadow's character allowed the team to use a darker tone and elements otherwise considered inappropriate for the series.
  
  Shadow the Hedgehog was revealed at the March 2005 Walk of Game event. It was released for the GameCube, PlayStation 2, and Xbox in North America and Europe in November 2005 and in Japan in December. It received generally unfavorable reviews from critics, who criticized its controls, mature themes, level design, and addition of guns and other weapons to traditional Sonic gameplay. However, some praised its replay value, and the game was commercially successful, selling 2.06 million copies by March 2007. Over time, the game has developed a cult following. (Full article...)
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  Logo (reused by Bandai Namco Amusements for its arcade chain of the same name)

  
  Namco Limited was a Japanese multinational video game and entertainment company founded in 1955 which operated video arcades and amusement parks globally, produced video games, films, toys, and arcade cabinets. They were one of the most influential figures in the worldwide coin-op and arcade game industry; Namco produced several multi-million-selling game franchises, such as Pac-Man, Galaxian, Tekken, Tales, Ridge Racer, and Ace Combat. In 2006, Namco merged with Bandai to form what is now named Bandai Namco Holdings; the standalone Namco brand continues to be used for video arcade and other entertainment products by the group's Bandai Namco Amusements division.
  
  The Namco name comes from Nakamura Manufacturing Company, derived from its founder Masaya Nakamura. In the 1960s, it manufactured electro-mechanical arcade games such as the 1965 hit Periscope. It entered the video game industry after acquiring the struggling Japanese division of Atari in 1974, distributing games such as Breakout in Japan. The company renamed itself Namco in 1977 and published Gee Bee, its first original video game, a year later. Among Namco's first major hits was the fixed shooter Galaxian in 1979. It was followed by Pac-Man in 1980. Namco prospered during the golden age of arcade video games in the early 1980s, releasing popular titles such as Galaga, Xevious, and Pole Position.
  
  Namco entered the home market in 1984 with conversions of its arcade games for the MSX and the Nintendo Family Computer, later expanding to competing platforms, such as the Sega Genesis, TurboGrafx-16, and PlayStation. Namco continued to produce hit games in the 1990s, including Ridge Racer, Tekken, and Taiko no Tatsujin, but later endured financial difficulties due to the struggling Japanese economy and diminishing arcade market. This led to the 2005 announcement of a merge with toy maker Bandai, which was completed in 2006 as Namco Bandai Holdings; Namco's former video games division was merged into a subsidiary of the holdings company, Namco Bandai Games, now called Bandai Namco Entertainment. Namco is remembered in retrospect for its unique corporate model, its importance to the industry, and its advancements in technology. (Full article...)

Did you know... -

• ... that Elena from the video game series Street Fighter uses a capoeira fighting style, for which the development team used travel videos as reference material as they had no experience with the style?
• ... that fighting video game Panza Kick Boxing was endorsed by a French kickboxing champion who also supplied technical advice?
• ... that the 1979 video game Superman was one of the first console games with a pause feature?
• ... that deceased YouTuber Technoblade beat the video game Minecraft in hardcore mode using a racing-wheel controller?
• ... that the video game Fursan al-Aqsa received an update that allows players to reenact the October 7 attacks on Israel?
• ... that the video game Serious Sam: Tormental was originally inspired by Geometry Wars?
• ... that after becoming paralyzed from the neck down, Rocky "RockyNoHands" Stoutenburgh broke two Guinness World Records in the video game Fortnite?
• ... that a reviewer thought that the video game Robbery Bob contained cringeworthy dialogue?
• ... that a pink skin for Mercy in the video game Overwatch helped raise more than $12 million for breast cancer research?
• ... that the Chicago Sun-Times credits JumpStart Toddlers as the first video game targeted towards babies?
• ... that Splatoon 3 became the fastest-selling video game of all time in Japan three days after launch?
• ... that the video game JFK Reloaded recreates the assassination of John F. Kennedy from the perspective of the killer?

Selected biography –

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  Schafer in 2016

  
  Timothy John Schafer (born July 26, 1967) is an American video game designer. He founded Double Fine Productions in July 2000, after having spent over a decade at LucasArts. Schafer is best known as the designer of critically acclaimed games Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, Psychonauts, Brütal Legend and Broken Age, co-designer of Day of the Tentacle, and assistant designer on The Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge. He is well known in the video game industry for his storytelling and comedic writing style, and has been given both a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Game Developers Choice Awards, and a BAFTA Fellowship for his contributions to the industry. (Full article...)
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  Koster in 2017

  
  Raphael "Raph" Koster (born September 7, 1971) is an American entrepreneur, game designer, and author of A Theory of Fun for Game Design. Koster is widely recognized for his work as the lead designer of Ultima Online and the creative director behind Star Wars Galaxies. From 2006 until 2013 he worked as the founder and president of Metaplace (previously operating as Areae and acquired by social gaming company Playdom in 2010, which was in turn acquired by Disney) producing a Facebook game platform. (Full article...)
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  Morhaime at BlizzCon 2009

  
  Michael Morhaime (born November 3, 1967) is an American video game developer and entrepreneur. He is the chief executive officer (CEO) and founder of Dreamhaven, located in Irvine, California. Morhaime is best known as the co-founder and the former president of Blizzard Entertainment, a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, Inc., that was founded in 1991 as Silicon & Synapse. He served on the Vivendi Games executive committee from January 1999, when Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. became a subsidiary of Vivendi Games, until July 2008. (Full article...)
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  Persson at the 2016 Game Developers Conference

  
  Markus Alexej Persson (/ˈpɪərsən/ PEER-sən, Swedish: [ˈmǎrːkɵs ˈpæ̌ːʂɔn] ; born 1 June 1979), also known as Notch, is a Swedish video game programmer and designer. He is the creator of Minecraft, which is the best-selling video game in history. He founded the video game development company Mojang Studios in 2009.
  
  Persson began developing video games at an early age. His commercial success began after he published an early version of Minecraft in 2009. Prior to the game's official retail release in 2011, it had sold over ten million copies. After this point Persson stood down as the lead designer and transferred his creative authority to Jens Bergensten. In September 2014 Persson announced on his personal website that he had concluded he "[didn't have the connection to his fans he thought he had]", that he had "become a symbol", and that he did not wish to be responsible for Mojang's increasingly large operation. He left Mojang in November of that year, selling his company to Microsoft reportedly for US$2.5 billion. The acquisition made Persson a billionaire. (Full article...)
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  Pajitnov in 2024

  
  Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov (born April 16, 1955) is a Russian and American computer engineer and video game designer. He is best known for creating, designing, and developing Tetris in 1985 while working at the Dorodnitsyn Computing Centre under the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union (now the Russian Academy of Sciences). After Tetris was released internationally in 1987, he released a sequel in 1989, entitled Welltris.
  
  In 1991, he moved to the United States and later became a U.S. citizen. In 1996, Pajitnov founded The Tetris Company alongside Dutch video game designer Henk Rogers. Despite the game's high popularity, Pajitnov did not receive royalties from Tetris prior to this time, with the Soviet government being the only Russians who had made money from it. (Full article...)
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  Iwata at Game Developers Conference in 2011

  Satoru Iwata (Japanese: 岩田 聡, Hepburn: Iwata Satoru, December 6, 1959 – July 11, 2015) was a Japanese businessman, video game programmer, video game designer, and producer. He was the fourth president and chief executive officer (CEO) of Nintendo from 2002 until his death in 2015. He was a major contributor in broadening the appeal of video games by focusing on novel and entertaining games rather than top-of-the-line hardware.
  
  Born in Sapporo, Iwata expressed interest in video games from an early age and created his first simple game while in high school. He majored in computer science at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. In 1980, he joined the game developer HAL Laboratory while attending the university. At HAL, he worked as a programmer and closely collaborated with Nintendo, producing his first commercial game in 1983. Games to which he contributed include EarthBound and many games in the Kirby series. Following a downturn and near-bankruptcy, Iwata became the president of HAL in 1993 at the insistence of Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi and brought financial stability. In the following years, he worked in the development of the Pokémon and Super Smash Bros. series. Iwata joined Nintendo as the head of its corporate planning division in 2000. (Full article...)
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  Inafune at Japan Expo 2012

  Keiji Inafune (稲船 敬二, Inafune Keiji, born 8 May 1965) is a Japanese video game producer, character designer, game designer, and businessman. In 2009, he was chosen by IGN as one of the top 100 game creators of all time.
  
  Starting his career at Capcom in the late 1980s, his job was as an artist and illustrator. The first two games he worked on were the original Street Fighter and Mega Man in 1987. He was then a character designer and planner of the Mega Man series during the NES and Super NES era. For Mega Man X, he created and designed the character Zero. (Full article...)
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  Mikami in 2013

  Shinji Mikami (三上 真司, Mikami Shinji, born August 11, 1965) is a Japanese video game designer, director, and producer. Starting his career at Capcom in 1990, he has worked on many of the company's most successful games. He directed the first installment of the Resident Evil series in 1996 and the first installment of the Dino Crisis series in 1999, both survival horror games. He returned to Resident Evil to direct the remake of the first game in 2002 and the survival horror third-person shooter Resident Evil 4 in 2005. In 2006, he directed his final Capcom game God Hand, a beat 'em up action game. Mikami founded PlatinumGames in 2006 and directed the third-person shooter Vanquish in 2010. That same year he left the studio and founded a new studio Tango Gameworks and directed the survival horror game The Evil Within in 2014. He has also served the roles of producer and executive producer for many games. In 2023, he left the studio and founded a new studio KAMUY in 2024.
  
  In 2009, he was chosen by IGN as one of the top 100 game creators of all time. (Full article...)
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  Kutaragi with his Lifetime Achievement Award at the Game Developers Choice Awards 2014

  Ken Kutaragi (久夛良木 健, Kutaragi Ken, born 2 August 1950) is a Japanese engineering technologist and businessman. He is the former chairman and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), the video game division of Sony Group Corporation, and current president and CEO of Cyber AI Entertainment. He is known as "The Father of the PlayStation", as he oversaw the development of the original console and its successors and spinoffs, including the PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, and the PlayStation 3. He departed Sony in 2007, a year after the PlayStation 3 was released.
  
  He had also designed the sound processor for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. With Sony, he designed the VLSI chip which works in conjunction with the PS1's RISC CPU to handle the graphics rendering. (Full article...)
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  Fischbach in 2022

  
  Mark Edward Fischbach (/ˈfɪʃˌbɑːk/ FISH-bahk; born June 28, 1989), known online as Markiplier, is an American YouTuber, actor and filmmaker. One of the most popular YouTubers on the platform, he is known for his "Let's Play" videos of indie horror games. He was listed by Forbes as the third highest-paid content creator on the platform in 2022, and has won four Streamy Awards and a Golden Joystick Award. He has spun-off his YouTube fame into a media career, venturing into acting and filmmaking.
  
  After joining YouTube in 2012, Fischbach became popular on the platform with Let's Plays of Amnesia: The Dark Descent (2010) and the Five Nights at Freddy's series; as of 2024, his channel had over 37 million subscribers. He signed with talent agency William Morris Endeavor in 2016. While with the agency, he released a clothing line, wrote and directed the YouTube Original series A Heist with Markiplier (2019) and In Space with Markiplier (2022), and hosted or co-hosted two podcasts which reached No. 1 on Spotify. (Full article...)
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  Kondo in 2015

  Koji Kondo (Japanese: 近藤 浩治, Hepburn: Kondō Kōji, August 13, 1961) is a Japanese composer and pianist at the video game company Nintendo. He is best known for his contributions for the Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda series, with his Super Mario Bros. theme being the first piece of music from a video game included in the American National Recording Registry. Kondo was hired by Nintendo in 1984 as their first dedicated composer and is currently a senior executive within their Entertainment Planning & Development division. (Full article...)
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  Bushnell in 2013

  
  Nolan Kay Bushnell (born February 5, 1943) is an American businessman and electrical engineer. He established Atari, Inc. and the Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre chain. He has been inducted into the Video Game Hall of Fame and the Consumer Electronics Association Hall of Fame, received the BAFTA Fellowship and the Nations Restaurant News "Innovator of the Year" award, and was named one of Newsweek's "50 Men Who Changed America". He has started more than 20 companies and is one of the founding fathers of the video game industry. He is on the board of Anti-Aging Games. In 2012, he founded an educational software company called Brainrush, that is using video game technology in educational software.
  
  He is credited with Bushnell's Law, an aphorism about games that are "easy to learn and difficult to master" being rewarding. (Full article...)
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  Baer in 2009

  
  Ralph Henry Baer (born Rudolf Heinrich Baer; March 8, 1922 – December 6, 2014) was a German-American inventor, game developer, and engineer.
  
  Baer's family fled Germany just before World War II and Baer served the American war effort, gaining an interest in electronics shortly thereafter. Through several jobs in the electronics industry, he was working as an engineer at Sanders Associates (now BAE Systems) in Nashua, New Hampshire, when he conceived the idea of playing games on a television screen around 1966. With support of his employers, he worked through several prototypes until he arrived at a "Brown Box" that would later become the blueprint for the first home video game console, licensed by Magnavox as the Magnavox Odyssey. Baer continued to design several other consoles and computer game units, including contributing to design of the Simon electronic game. Baer continued to work in electronics until his death in 2014, with over 150 patents to his name. (Full article...)
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  Naka in 2015

  Yuji Naka (中 裕司, Naka Yūji, born September 17, 1965), credited in some games as YU2, is a former Japanese video game programmer, designer and producer. He is the co-creator of the Sonic the Hedgehog series and was the president of Sonic Team at Sega until his departure in 2006.
  
  Naka joined Sega in 1984 and worked on games including Girl's Garden (1985) and Phantasy Star II (1989). He was the lead programmer of the original Sonic the Hedgehog games on the Mega Drive in the early 1990s, which greatly increased Sega's market share. Naka developed Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (1992), Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (1994) and Sonic & Knuckles (1994) in California with Sega Technical Institute. (Full article...)
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  Tokuro Fujiwara (藤原 得郎, Fujiwara Tokurō, born April 7, 1961), sometimes credited as Professor F or Arthur King, is a Japanese video game designer, involved in the development of many classic Capcom video games. He directed early Capcom titles such as the run-and-gun shooter Commando (1985), the platformers Ghosts 'n Goblins (1985) and Bionic Commando (1987), and the survival horror game Sweet Home (1989). He was also a main producer for the Mega Man series and worked on the CP System arcade game Strider (1989). He also conceived of Resident Evil as a remake of his earlier game Sweet Home and worked on the game as general producer. He worked as the general manager of the Capcom Console Games Division from 1988 to 1996.
  
  After working at Capcom for thirteen years, he left the company to form his own studio, Whoopee Camp. His latest game was Ghosts 'n Goblins Resurrection for former employer Capcom. He is notorious for making his titles difficult for the average video game player and strict personality among peers. IGN listed Fujiwara at number 13 in its "Top 100 Game Creators of All Time" list. (Full article...)
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  Hale in March 2024

  
  Jennifer Hale is a Canadian-born American voice actress. She is best known for her work in video game franchises such as Baldur's Gate, Mass Effect, Metal Gear Solid, BioShock Infinite, Metroid Prime, Halo, Overwatch, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. In 2013, she was recognized by Guinness World Records as the most prolific video game voice actor.
  
  Hale is featured in animation such as The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest, The Powerpuff Girls, Codename: Kids Next Door, The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, Brandy & Mr. Whiskers, Totally Spies!, Avatar: The Last Airbender and its continuation The Legend of Korra, Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego? and Star Wars: The Clone Wars. She also voices Thorn of the Hex Girls in various Scooby-Doo movies and TV episodes, as well as Cinderella and Princess Aurora in various Disney Princess media of the 2000s and 2010s. She is also known for voicing Jean Grey in a variety of Marvel media, most recently in X-Men '97. (Full article...)
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  Newell in 2018

  
  Gabe Logan Newell (born November 3, 1962), also known by his nickname Gaben, is an American businessman who is the president and co-founder of the video game company Valve Corporation.
  
  Newell was born in Colorado and grew up in Davis, California. He attended Harvard University in the early 1980s but dropped out to join Microsoft, where he helped create the first versions of the Windows operating system. In 1996, he and another employee, Mike Harrington, left Microsoft to found Valve and fund the development of their first game, Half-Life (1998). Harrington left in 2000. (Full article...)
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  Garriott in July 2008

  
  Richard Allen Garriott (born 4 July 1961) is a British-born American video game developer, entrepreneur and private astronaut.
  
  Garriott, who is the son of NASA astronaut Owen Garriott, was originally a game designer and programmer, and is now involved in a number of aspects of computer-game development. On October 12, 2008, Garriott flew aboard the Soyuz TMA-13 mission to the International Space Station as a private astronaut, returning 12 days later aboard Soyuz TMA-12. He became the second space traveler, and first from the United States, to have a parent who was also a space traveler. During his ISS flight, he filmed a science fiction movie Apogee of Fear. (Full article...)
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  Mechner in 2017

  
  Jordan Mechner (born June 4, 1964) is an American video game designer, graphic novelist, author, screenwriter, filmmaker, and former video game programmer. A major figure in the development of cinematic video games and a pioneer in video game animation, he began his career designing and programming the 1984 martial arts game Karateka for the Apple II while a student at Yale University. The game was a bestseller. He followed it with the platform game Prince of Persia five years later; it was widely ported and became a hit. Both games used rotoscoping, where actors shot on film by Mechner were drawn over to create in-game animation. Prince of Persia has become the basis for a long-running franchise, including a 2010 live-action film released by Walt Disney Pictures and an ongoing series of video games, published by Ubisoft.
  
  Mechner is the recipient of many accolades, including the 2017 GDC Pioneer Award. His works are often included in all-time lists of the game industry's best and most influential titles. (Full article...)
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  Rolfe in character as the Nerd in 2021

  
  James D. Rolfe (born July 10, 1980) is an American YouTuber, filmmaker, and actor. He is best known for creating and starring in the comedic retrogaming web series Angry Video Game Nerd (2004–present). His spin-off projects include reviews of retro films, television series, and board games. He is considered a pioneer of internet gaming videos and is noted for his widespread influence on YouTube content after the series premiered on the platform in 2006.
  
  Rolfe began creating homemade video productions in the late 1980s, having made more than 270 videos and short films by 2004. Among these were the first Angry Video Game Nerd episodes (originally known as Bad NES Games, and later Angry Nintendo Nerd), which were released on his Cinemassacre website in 2004. Two years later, he gained mainstream attention when the series went viral after being published to YouTube. Following its success, Rolfe released a feature-length film based on the series in 2014, which received a mixed reception. (Full article...)
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  Bartle in 2011

  
  Richard Allan Bartle (born 10 January 1960) is a British writer, professor and game researcher in the massively multiplayer online game industry. He co-created MUD1 (the first MUD) in 1978, and is the author of the 2003 book Designing Virtual Worlds. (Full article...)
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  Lim Yo-hwan in 2021

  
  Lim Yo-hwan (Korean: 임요환; Hanja: 林遙煥, born September 4, 1980), known online as SlayerS_'BoxeR' (usually shortened to BoxeR), is a former professional player of the real-time strategy computer game StarCraft. He is often referred to as The Terran Emperor, or simply The Emperor, and is widely considered to be one of the most successful players of the genre as well as a pop culture icon.
  
  Lim won his first StarCraft: Brood War tournament in 1999. From 2001 to 2002, he won multiple major championships, including two OnGameNet Starleague titles and two World Cyber Games gold medals. In 2002, he also created the team Team Orion, which later became SK Telecom T1 (SKT T1) in 2004. He began his compulsory military service in 2006, where he played on South Korea's newly formed Air Force esports team Airforce Challenge E-sports. In late 2010, he retired from StarCraft: Brood War and founded the StarCraft II team SlayerS. He then briefly returned to SKT T1 as a coach in 2012 before retiring due to health related issues. Lim finished his playing career with a record of 603 wins and 430 losses (58.4%). (Full article...)
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  Romero at the Game Developers Conference in 2022

  
  Alfonso John Romero (born October 28, 1967) is an American video game developer. He co-founded id Software and designed their early games, including Wolfenstein 3D (1992), Doom (1993), Doom II (1994), Hexen (1995) and Quake (1996). His designs and development tools, along with programming techniques developed by the id programmer John Carmack, popularized the first-person shooter (FPS) genre. Romero is also credited with coining the multiplayer term "deathmatch".
  
  Following disputes with Carmack, Romero was fired from id in 1996. He co-founded a new studio, Ion Storm, and directed the FPS Daikatana (2000), which was a critical and commercial failure. Romero departed Ion Storm in 2001. In July 2001, he and another former id employee, Tom Hall, founded Monkeystone Games to develop games for mobile devices. (Full article...)
• 
  Hiroshi Yamauchi (山内溥, Yamauchi Hiroshi, 7 November 1927 – 19 September 2013) was a Japanese businessman and the third president of Nintendo, joining the company on 25 April 1949 until stepping down on 24 May 2002, being succeeded by Satoru Iwata. During his 53-year tenure, Yamauchi transformed Nintendo from a hanafuda card-making company that had been active solely in Japan into a multibillion-dollar video game publisher and global conglomerate. He was the great-grandson of Fusajiro Yamauchi, Nintendo's first president and founder. Hiroshi Yamauchi owned the Seattle Mariners baseball team from 1992 until his death.
  
  In April 2013, Forbes estimated Yamauchi's net worth at $2.1 billion; he was the 13th richest person in Japan and the 491st richest in the world. In 2008, Yamauchi was Japan's wealthiest person with a fortune at that time estimated at $7.8 billion. At the time of his death, Yamauchi was the largest shareholder at Nintendo. (Full article...)
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  Carmack at the 2017 Game Developers Choice Awards

  
  John D. Carmack II (born August 21, 1970) is an American computer programmer and video game developer. He co-founded the video game company id Software and was the lead programmer of its 1990s games Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, and their sequels. Carmack made innovations in 3D computer graphics, such as his Carmack's Reverse algorithm for shadow volumes.
  
  In 2013, he resigned from id Software to work full-time at Oculus VR as their CTO. In 2019, he reduced his role to Consulting CTO so he could allocate more time toward artificial general intelligence (AGI). In 2022, he left Oculus to work on his AGI startup, Keen Technologies. (Full article...)

Selected image -

Jason Della Rocca, former executive director of the International Game Developers Association

Recent video game-related events

September 12, 2024 – 2023–2024 video game industry layoffs

Microsoft announces that it will lay off 650 Microsoft Gaming employees as part of cuts to its workforce. (Variety)

August 15, 2024 –

American video game magazine Game Informer discontinues publication after 33 years. The magazine's website is also shut down. (BBC News)

May 24, 2024 – Uvalde school shooting

Families in Uvalde, Texas, U.S., file a lawsuit against Daniel Defense and Activision Blizzard for creating the DDM4 V7 gun and promoting the weapon through the game Call of Duty, respectively. They also sue Meta Platforms for owning Instagram, which was used by the gunman. (AP)

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