Forums » Everything else » Great game programmers/designers from the Golden Days

I don't know about you guys, but there are a number of game programmers from that time I hold in high regard. Maybe this has to do with me being aged 30+.

Guys like Paulie Hughes, Simon Phipps, Jordan Mechner, Eric Chahi (...) are a great source of inspiration. Reading their stories helps me a lot.

What about you? Anyone whose game blew your mind and made you want to make games?

I'm a fan of Jason Rohrer and his work, especially Sleep is Death. That one blew my mind.

I grew up idolizing Rand and Robyn Miller, the brothers behind the Myst series. I actually worked in an office right next to them for a bit. Sometimes you could see them outside throwing a frisbee around. ;)

I think my fist game was actually in Hypercard because of these guys.

Heh, I'm perhaps a few years younger (30 is still a few years off) but I still know the sorts of people you're referring to.

The sad part is there are a number of folks I could name that I hold in a high regard that I suspect all too few will have heard of. Though it's not just individual developers but the teams as a united front.

Peter Molyneux I suspect most here will have heard of (Bullfrog, specifically Populous, Syndicate, Dungeon Keeper), not so many perhaps for Jon Hare and Chris Yates (Sensible Software, notably Sensible Soccer, Wizkid), or Shigeru Miyamoto (Nintendo, notably The Legend of Zelda), Raph Koster (Ultima Online) or The Bitmap Brothers (Gods, Speedball), but I have no doubt I could reel off a list of people I seriously looked up to when I was younger, people who amazed me with what they had made, the journeys they went on and the tales of which we got to enjoy after.

I think we've sort of forgotten the roots of those times - there's so many 'me too' games of all genres out there that the contributions made by the above in forging new territories for gaming have been almost lost to the ravages of time.

I'd honestly love to see new ideas for games, not slight tweaks of existing games.

Molyneax isnt the man you think he is For example Populous as a prototype a job applicant showed him, they offerred him a piece of the company but he just wanted a programming job!


Jon hare used to sit in a teachers desk on a raised platform overseeing the office.

Miyamoto is INCREDIBLE though, very humble and allways getting teams to focus on the GAMEPLAY, not signing games up until the prototype was playable, regardless of the tech or visuals.

The bitmap bros are and were cool though!

Actually I got it wrong! The teachers platform was the TD of DMA design (of dave jones and lemmings fame).

Jon Hare was awesome, they ploughed all their money from Sensi soccer into a game called Sex 'n' Drugs 'n' Rock 'n' Roll the opening sequence was the rock and roll hero nailed to a cross and also snorting coke o f a busty womens tits! Allegedly they were a few Cd's into the project before they realized no publisher would touch them!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Cv5AL3myYo

Well, this article about Populous' beginning seems to disagree with the view that he's not who I thought he was - http://www.edge-online.com/features/making-populous (it backs up everything I've thought about Populous, even from back the days when it was new) but anyhow, I don't think there's much debate that he is one of the luminaries that pushed the industry along with new ideas at times.

That sounds like the sort of thing I can imagine Hare doing, though, he is an odd fellow. I find it interesting to note that people like Molyneux, the Bitmap Bros, Hare etc. are all English - it would be interesting to see how many big rock-star names from each generation of gaming are from different countries, I know Japan would obviously have some big names in there like Miyamoto, but I have a feeling that there would be a surprisingly large UK contingent.

guess if you knew the kid in question ... :-D

Definitely Steve Grand for his Creatures game series.. I was only 11yrs old back then, and the slogan "Digital DNA" got me hooked.

Spent my waking hours in news groups, editing Norn colors ina Hex Editor, and creating objects with sprites and CAOS scripts..

ahh.. those were the days..

My "heroes" were american mcgee (his quake levels were the nutz), sandy peterson (the guy john romero took all the limelight from), David jones for the insane stories i heard about him when researching GTA (and his quality designs prior to that).

@paulh: are there none of our original heroes we can actually look up to legitimately? ;)

LOL, probably not Arantor, the dirky depths of game development since the eighties has been filled with questionable ethics, deception, fraud and large ego's leaching off geeks = geeksploitation.

But dont let me put you off your heroes, specially not Molyneaux, he's employed a lot of good people for many many years in the UK!

dont ask about the sega guys covered in tatoo's with their "suitcases full of cash" though....