Markus Alexej Persson, better known as Notch, is a Swedish video game programmer and designer. He is best known for creating the sandbox video game Minecraft and for founding the video game company Mojang in 2010, alongside Carl Manneh and Jakob Porser.
Video games, Business and economy, Science
Satoru Iwata was a Japanese video game programmer and businessman who was the fourth president and chief executive officer (CEO) of Nintendo. He is widely regarded as a major contributor in broadening the appeal of video games to a wider audience by focusing on novel and entertaining games rather than top-of-the-line hardware.
Bill Budge is an American video game programmer and designer. He is best known for the Apple II games Raster Blaster (1981) and Pinball Construction Set (1983).
Francisco "Paco" Menéndez (1965–1999) was a Spanish computer game programmer who wrote games for 8-bit computers. His most famous work is La abadía del crimen which is regarded as one of the best games made for 8 bit computers.
Christopher King is a designer and producer of several grand strategy video games, most notably Hearts of Iron, Europa Universalis IV, Victoria II and Crusader Kings II.
Michael Abrash is a programmer and technical writer specializing in code optimization and 80x86 assembly language, a reputation cemented by his 1990 book Zen of Assembly Language Volume 1: Knowledge and a monthly column in Dr. Dobb's Journal in the early 1990s. A later book, Zen of Graphics Programming, applied these ideas to 2D and 3D graphics prior to the advent of hardware accelerators for the PC. Though not strictly a game programmer, Abrash has worked on the underlying technology for games, such as Quake, for much of his career.
Chris Sawyer is a Scottish video game designer and programmer who is best known for creating the Transport Tycoon and RollerCoaster Tycoon series. He is also the founder of 31X, a mobile game development company.
Soren Johnson is a video game designer and programmer. He was employed by Firaxis Games from 2000 to 2007, where he co-designed several of their most popular games. In 2013 he co-founded Mohawk Games.
Russ Wetmore is an American computer programmer best known for writing a number of commercial products for the Atari 8-bit family in the early to mid 1980s. He wrote the Frogger-inspired Preppie! (1982), its maze-game sequel Preppie II (1983), and ported Sea Dragon from the TRS-80 (1982). All three games were developed under the name Star Systems Software and published by Adventure International.
Masaki Ukyo is a video game designer and programmer at R.U.N and a former Fill-in-Cafe and Treasure game designer. He joined Treasure from April 1993 to April 2004. He established the company R.U.N with former Fill-in-Cafe employee Masatoshi Imaizumi.
Jon Freeman is an influential game designer and co-founder of software developer Automated Simulations, which was later renamed to Epyx and became a major company during the 8-bit era of home computing. He is married to game programmer Anne Westfall, and they work together as Free Fall Associates. Free Fall is best known for Archon: The Light and the Dark, one of the earliest titles from Electronic Arts.
Jens "Jeb" Bergensten is a Swedish video game designer. Since December 2010, he has worked for the video game developer Mojang as a programmer and game designer. He became the lead designer and lead developer of the indie sandbox game Minecraft, after Markus "Notch" Persson stepped down from his position in December 2011. He is known by his in-game name "jeb_".
Don Daglow is an American computer game and video game designer, programmer and producer. He is best known for being the creator of early games from several different genres, including pioneering simulation game Utopia for Intellivision in 1981, role-playing game Dungeon in 1975, sports games including the first interactive computer baseball game Baseball in 1971, and the first graphical MMORPG, Neverwinter Nights in 1991. He founded long-standing game developer Stormfront Studios in 1988.
David Mark Byttow is an American Internet entrepreneur who was the co-founder and CEO of the mobile application Secret (app).
Daniel "Dan" Warner "Toasty" Forden is an American sound programmer and music composer, and was the lead programmer on several high-profile arcade and pinball games. He is best known for working on the Mortal Kombat fighting game series. He has also played bass in the band Cheer-Accident.