According to Wall Street Journal writer Nick Wingfield, these are "some of the people ... who are
reshaping the videogame busines." In no particular order:
- Sam Houser (34): President, Rockstar Games, Take-Two Interactive Software. He's the "Quentin Tarantino of videogame designers." Come on. He's not nearly as annoying.
- Jason Jones (34): Lead designer, Bungie Studios, Microsoft. Halo 3. 'nuff said.
- Shigeru Miyamoto (53): Sr. managing director and general manager, entertainment analysis & development division, Nintendo.
- Will Wright (46): Chief creative officer, Maxis Electronic Arts. According to the WSJ, Will's about to ski-jump a shark--he's exploring a reality-TV project.
- Satoru Iwada (46): President, Nintendo. He's "shunning the battle between Microsoft and Sony for domination of the living room.
- Ken Kutaragi (55): President, Sony Computer Entertainment, Sony.
- Tony Hawk (37): Professional skateboarder and game celebrity. Didja know that the series of games bearing his name have sold more than $1 billion?
- David Stern (63): Commissioner, NBA. He controls the NBA licensing. Clearly, though, he's got no power to keep games based on the NBA license from sucking. That's too bad.
- Gene Upshaw (60): Executive director, NFL Players Association. Same deal as Stern, different sport.
- Mitch Davis (43): CEO, Massive. Massive puts ads in games, gingerly.
- Brian Farrell (52): CEO, THQ. He's listed and the CEOs of Activision and EA are not because his stock is up way more than either of his rivals'.
- Frank Gibeau (37): Executive VP, general manager, North American publishing, EA.
- Peter Moore (50): Corporate VP interactive entertainment business, entertainment and devices division, Microsoft.
- Jason Hall (34): Sr. VP, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, Time Warner. He's heading up a game based on Dirty Harry. Could be sweet.
- Peter Jackson (44): Film director, producer.
- Steve Schnurr (44): World-wide executive of music and music marketing, EA.
- Larry Shapiro (41): Co-head, videogame department, Creative Artists Agency. Hollywood agent that perpetrates hate crimes against games in the form of games-turned-movies. Doom and whatnot.
- Edward Castronova (43): Associate professor and director of graduate studies, telecommunications department, Indiana University (Bloomington). He writes about games from an academic perspective. Pretty cool gig, if you can get it.
- Rob Pardo (35): VP of game design, Blizzard Entertainment, Vivendi Universal.
- Jill Hamburger (47): VP of gaming domain, Best Buy. Now gamers have an effigy to burn for warmth when we're shivering outside Best Buy on a cold fall night awaiting the launch of the next big gaming console.
- Tim Harrison (35): Head of games, Vodafone Group
- John Riccitello (46): Managing director and co-founder, Elevation Partners. He's behind the purchase of Pandemic and Bioware.
- Doug Lowenstein (54): President, ESA. This man is fending off attacks from rabid, misguided politicians who are looking for a galvanizing election issue. He's got his work cut out for him.
- Hirokazu Hamamura (45): Editor in chief, Famitsu Editorial Board; President, Enterbrain. It's hard to understate the importance of this magazine in that market.
- Metacritic, CNET.
