Game design superstars

DevilRedeemed

teh
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Was thinking about this the other day. The era of the game designer as some sort of celebrity seems to me to have passed.
You still have Miyamoto touted as videogame pope, and assorted old school designers carrying their own weight, Kojima and the like. And then there's Hidetaka Miyazaki who is the most relevant game designer of these times.

But in the 80s and 90s games would sell based on who was making them much of the time.
Yu Suzuki is a legend to us, but as a game designer in today's world, he's nobody.
Maybe nowadays it's the team that gets the credit which is reasonable, but they always did get the credit.

I'm talking cult of personality.
David Jaffe at his peak to me represents this and maybe the last of it.

Is this right? Has this aspect in gaming changed?

At least in those days you felt there was a creator behind the game and the authorship guaranteed some level of personality
 

famicommander

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There are still some big ones plugging away but they seem to stick to one or two key series now.

Eiji Aonuma at Nintendo (basically began taking over for Miyamoto on Zelda with Ocarina of Time, and by Wind Waker was making almost all the decisions)

Toshihiro Nagoshi at SEGA (lead producer of all the Yakuza series and Monkey Ball series among others)

Masahiro Sakurai at Sora Ltd and Nintendo (lead producer of Super Smash Bros and Kirby)

Katsuhiro Harada at Namco (lead producer of Tekken and Namco's contributions to Smash Bros)

Ed Boon at NetherRealm (lead producer of Mortal Kombat and Injustice)

I think part of it has to do with the size and scale of these productions. Most of these games have hundreds of people working on them over the course of two years or more, and many of said people never meet one another or the person ultimately in charge of the final product.
 

Dr Shroom

made it in japan
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this guy

d4094b1d1cfe186077033a9d77dd2ab5.jpg
 

oldschool

Cock Killer with Ice D,
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One that comes to my mind is Shigesato Itoi. Not sure if his game design has existed in the last few years but still an absolute powerhouse.
 

evil wasabi

The Jongmaster
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Eikichi Kawasaki

No clue who the rest of those faggots are you homos mentioned.
 

theMot

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The teams back then were much smaller so the personality of the people would shine through. There was similarities and stylistic similarities across titles. You could see it with a lot of the British developers especially. Bitmap brothers, sensible software etc.
 

Burning Fight!!

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The teams back then were much smaller so the personality of the people would shine through. There was similarities and stylistic similarities across titles. You could see it with a lot of the British developers especially. Bitmap brothers, sensible software etc.

Damn, why did you have to remind me that modern games follow a similar mold more often than not because of a homogenized "game design" modern school of thought.
 

Heinz

Parteizeit
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Yeah we should worship these blown out of proportion project managers with an artistic flare, it works out so well! Death Stranding was so innovative! So fresh, best game ever made, Kojima is a genius!
 

SpamYouToDeath

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Yeah we should worship these blown out of proportion project managers with an artistic flare, it works out so well! Death Stranding was so innovative! So fresh, best game ever made, Kojima is a genius!

He probably made more money from that game than you've made in 10 years.

"Genius" by many definitions.
 

Heinz

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He probably made more money from that game than you've made in 10 years.

"Genius" by many definitions.

Oh? How can you be so sure? Maybe I'm a millionaire who's sitting on the deck of a yacht sipping 50yo scotch on the regular? It's anyones guess.

Spoiler:
I float in the public pool drinking fosters until they kick me out.
 

BanishingFlatsAC

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Nobody knew who Miyamoto or any of these guys were in the 90s, because most people were playing the games instead of obsessing over them. It wasn't until the mid 2000s when these games became "retro" and cool that people started worrying about this stuff.
 

LoneSage

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Nobody knew who Miyamoto or any of these guys were in the 90s, because most people were playing the games instead of obsessing over them. It wasn't until the mid 2000s when these games became "retro" and cool that people started worrying about this stuff.

Gotta disagree bigtime here. Maybe you didn't notice it at the time, but there were definitely people who put a face on their company and games.

A few that were well-known by gamers in the 90s, and featured in gaming mags, off the top of my head:

Kojima got huge with MGS in '98
Dave Perry (Shiny Entertainment)
Yuji Naka
Boon & Tobias
Trip Hawkins (eh, I'm reaching here - he was more of an entrepreneur)
Kenji Eno
Shinji Mikami
Tommy Tallarico
Tim Schafer

If you didn't read gaming magazines at the time then of course you wouldn't know anything about the people who made the games, though.
 
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GohanX

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What's hilarious is when the so-called superstar leaves the company that's holding them back, forms their own company and then utterly fails to produce anything worthwhile ever again. Maybe they weren't the rockstars they thought they were.
 

Burning Fight!!

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What's hilarious is when the so-called superstar leaves the company that's holding them back, forms their own company and then utterly fails to produce anything worthwhile ever again. Maybe they weren't the rockstars they thought they were.

CiYofkvVEAEmZ53.jpg
 

JoeAwesome

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Oh? How can you be so sure? Maybe I'm a millionaire who's sitting on the deck of a yacht sipping 50yo scotch on the regular? It's anyones guess.

Spoiler:
I float in the public pool drinking fosters until they kick me out.

maxresdefault.jpg


Nobody knew who Miyamoto or any of these guys were in the 90s, because most people were playing the games instead of obsessing over them. It wasn't until the mid 2000s when these games became "retro" and cool that people started worrying about this stuff.

I hate to agree with LS, but it’s true, even if all those names aren’t. Maybe the magazines were asked to help make names in the industry, but people began attaching names to games in the late 90s.
 

famicommander

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Kojima disappeared entirely up his own ass during the hype around the MGS4 release.

He thinks he's a filmmaker but his stories are ridiculously stupid and convoluted even for video games.

I nope'd the fuck out of any future Kojima games during the ending of MGS4, with the retarded microwave hallway and stupid shirtless fist fight.
 

Late

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What's hilarious is when the so-called superstar leaves the company that's holding them back, forms their own company and then utterly fails to produce anything worthwhile ever again. Maybe they weren't the rockstars they thought they were.

Never forget
 

jro

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What's hilarious is when the so-called superstar leaves the company that's holding them back, forms their own company and then utterly fails to produce anything worthwhile ever again. Maybe they weren't the rockstars they thought they were.
Ah, the Tomonobu Itagaki.

Good call on Yoko Taro Shroom.
 

Heinz

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Kojima biggest hack going. MGS1 is still amazing tho

They give him too much credit like voters give the president, there's a fucking team that actually made the game you love, lets give them some damn credit! Oh and maybe the company that bloody bankrolled it!
 

famicommander

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Yuji Naka made a buncha weird Wii games I liked. Fishing Resort, Ivy the Kiwi?, Rodea the Sky Soldier (Wii version only; the Wii U/3DS version was an unrelated team), Let's Tap. Not attention-seeking AAA bugeted flops like some of the stuff we've seen from Inafune or Itagaki.

Fishing Resort in particular is my favorite fishing game ever.
 
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