Portal:Video games
Portal maintenance status: (April 2019)
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The Video Games Portal
A video game or computer 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 – load new batch
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Image 1Wolfenstein 3D is a first-person shooter video game developed by id Software and published by Apogee Software and FormGen. Originally released on May 5, 1992, for DOS, it was inspired by the 1981 Muse Software video game Castle Wolfenstein, and is the third installment in the Wolfenstein series. In Wolfenstein 3D, the player assumes the role of Allied spy William "B.J." Blazkowicz during World War II as he escapes from the Nazi German prison Castle Wolfenstein and carries out a series of crucial missions against the Nazis. The player traverses each of the game's levels to find an elevator to the next level or kill a final boss, fighting Nazi soldiers, dogs, and other enemies with a knife and a variety of guns.
Wolfenstein 3D was the second major independent release by id Software, after the Commander Keen series of episodes. In mid-1991, programmer John Carmack experimented with making a fast 3D game engine by restricting the gameplay and viewpoint to a single plane, producing Hovertank 3D and Catacomb 3-D as prototypes. After a design session prompted the company to shift from the family-friendly Keen to a more violent theme, programmer John Romero suggested remaking the 1981 stealth shooter Castle Wolfenstein as a fast-paced action game. He and designer Tom Hall designed the game, built on Carmack's engine, to be fast and violent, unlike other computer games on the market at the time. Wolfenstein 3D features artwork by Adrian Carmack and sound effects and music by Bobby Prince. The game was released through Apogee in two sets of three episodes under the shareware model, in which the first episode is released for free to drive interest in paying for the rest. An additional episode, Spear of Destiny, was released as a stand-alone retail title through FormGen.
Wolfenstein 3D was a critical and commercial success and is considered one of the greatest video games ever made. It garnered numerous awards and sold over 250,000 copies by the end of 1995. It has been termed the "grandfather of 3D shooters", and is widely regarded as having helped popularize the first-person shooter genre and establishing the standard of fast-paced action and technical prowess for many subsequent games in the genre, as well as showcasing the viability of the shareware publishing model at the time. FormGen developed an additional two episodes for the game, while Apogee released a pack of over 800 fan-created levels. Id Software never returned to the series, but did license the engine to numerous other titles before releasing the source code for free in 1995, and multiple other games in the Wolfenstein series have been developed by other companies since 2001. (Full article...) -
Image 2Crazy Taxi is a series of racing games developed by Hitmaker and published by Sega. It was first available as an arcade video game in 1999, then released for the Dreamcast console in 2000. It is the third best-selling Dreamcast game in the United States, selling over a million copies. The game was later ported to the PlayStation 2, GameCube, and IBM PC compatibles with sequels also appearing on the Xbox, Game Boy Advance, and PlayStation Portable systems.
Each game has the player assume the role of a taxi driver who must accumulate money by delivering passengers to their destinations in the fastest time possible, earning tips by performing "crazy stunts" before the time runs out. The franchise has been recognized for its innovative gameplay design which is easy to learn but difficult to master, its use of in-game advertising, and its soundtrack music provided by the bands The Offspring and Bad Religion. The core gameplay mechanic was patented by Sega, leading to at least one lawsuit over similar gameplay in The Simpsons: Road Rage, which was settled out of court. (Full article...) -
Image 3BioShock is a 2007 first-person shooter game developed by 2K Boston (later Irrational Games) and 2K Australia, and published by 2K. The first game in the BioShock series, it was released for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 platforms in August 2007; a PlayStation 3 port by Irrational, 2K Marin, 2K Australia and Digital Extremes was released in October 2008. The game follows player character Jack, who discovers the underwater city of Rapture, built by business magnate Andrew Ryan to be an isolated utopia. The discovery of ADAM, a genetic material which grants superhuman powers, initiated the city's turbulent decline. Jack attempts to escape Rapture, fighting its mutated and mechanical denizens, while engaging with the few sane survivors left and learning of the city's past. The player can defeat foes in several ways by using weapons, utilizing plasmids that give unique powers, and by turning Rapture's defenses against them.
BioShock's concept was developed by Irrational's creative lead, Ken Levine, and incorporates ideas by 20th century dystopian and utopian thinkers such as Ayn Rand, George Orwell, and Aldous Huxley, as well as historical figures such as John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Walt Disney. The game includes role-playing elements, giving the player different approaches in engaging enemies such as by stealth, as well as moral choices of saving or killing characters. Additionally, the game borrows concepts from the survival horror genre, notably the Resident Evil series. BioShock is considered a spiritual successor to the System Shock series, on which many of Irrational's team, including Levine, had worked previously.
BioShock received universal acclaim and was particularly praised by critics for its narrative, themes, visual design, setting, and gameplay. It is considered to be one of the greatest video games ever made and a demonstration of video games as an art form. BioShock was followed by two sequels, BioShock 2 and BioShock Infinite, released in 2010 and 2013, respectively. Ports of BioShock were released for macOS and mobile following its console releases. A remastered version of the game was released on Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch as part of BioShock: The Collection. (Full article...) -
Image 4The Sega Saturn is a home video game console developed by Sega and released on November 22, 1994, in Japan, May 11, 1995, in North America, and July 8, 1995, in Europe. Part of the fifth generation of video game consoles, it is the successor to the successful Genesis. The Saturn has a dual-CPU architecture and eight processors. Its games are in CD-ROM format, including several ports of arcade games and original games.
Development of the Saturn began in 1992, the same year Sega's groundbreaking 3D Model 1 arcade hardware debuted. The Saturn was designed around a new CPU from the Japanese electronics company Hitachi. Another video display processor was added in early 1994 to better compete with the 3D graphics of Sony's forthcoming PlayStation.
The Saturn was initially successful in Japan but not in the United States, where it was hindered by a surprise May 1995 launch, four months before its scheduled release date. After the debut of the Nintendo 64 in late 1996, the Saturn rapidly lost market share in the U.S., where it was discontinued in 1998. At 9.26 million units sold worldwide, the Saturn is considered a commercial failure; this was affected by the cancellation of Sonic X-treme, planned as the first 3D entry in Sega's popular Sonic the Hedgehog series. The Saturn was succeeded in 1998 by the Dreamcast. (Full article...) -
Image 5Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow is a 2005 action role-playing game developed and published by Konami. It is part of Konami's Castlevania video game series and the first Castlevania game released on the Nintendo DS. The game is the sequel to Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and incorporates many elements from its predecessor. Dawn of Sorrow was commercially successful. It sold more than 15,000 units in its first week in Japan and 164,000 units in the United States during the three months after its initial release.
Dawn of Sorrow continues the story of Aria of Sorrow: Dracula has been defeated, with his powers assumed by his reincarnation, Soma Cruz. With the help of his allies, Soma avoids becoming the new dark lord. A cult forms to bring forth a new one by killing Soma. Soma and his allies move to ensure that does not happen.
Dawn of Sorrow incorporates many features from earlier Castlevania games: the combination of elements from platform games and role-playing video games, the "Tactical Soul" system featured in Aria of Sorrow and a dark, gothic atmosphere. Dawn of Sorrow introduces gameplay elements, like the "Magic Seal" system, which requires the use of the DS stylus to draw a pattern to defeat powerful enemies, a distinctive anime character design, and a multiplayer mode, where two players compete for fastest times on a prerendered level. The game received high scores from many video game publications, and was considered one of the best games on the Nintendo DS for 2005. The game was re-released in Japan in June 2006, and later in North America during 2007 as part of the "Konami the Best" line. (Full article...) -
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Phantasmagoria is a point-and-click adventure horror video game designed by Roberta Williams for MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows and released by Sierra On-Line on August 24, 1995. It tells the story of Adrienne Delaney (Victoria Morsell), a writer who moves into a remote mansion and finds herself terrorized by supernatural forces. It was made at the peak of popularity for interactive movie games and features live-action actors and footage, both during cinematic scenes and within the three-dimensionally rendered environments of the game itself. It was noted for its violence and sexual content.
Williams had long planned to design a horror game, but she waited eight years for software technology to improve before doing so. More than 200 people were involved in making Phantasmagoria, which was based on Williams's 550-page script, about four times the length of an average Hollywood screenplay. It took more than two years to develop and four months to film. The game was originally budgeted for $800,000, but it ultimately cost $4.5 million to develop and was filmed in a $1.5 million studio that Sierra built specifically for the game.
The game was directed by Peter Maris and features a cast of twenty-five actors, all performing in front of a blue screen. Most games at the time featured 80 to 100 backgrounds, while Phantasmagoria includes more than 1,000. A professional Hollywood special effects house worked on the game, and the musical score includes a neo-Gregorian chant performed by a 135-voice choir. Sierra stressed that it was intended for adult audiences, and the company willingly submitted it to a ratings system and included a password-protected censoring option within the game to tone down the graphic content. (Full article...) -
Image 7Aquaria is a side-scrolling action-adventure game designed by Alec Holowka and Derek Yu, who published the game in 2007 as an independent game company Bit Blot. The game follows Naija, an aquatic humanoid woman, as she explores the underwater world of Aquaria. Along her journey, she learns about the history of the world she inhabits as well as her own past. The gameplay focuses on a combination of swimming, singing, and combat, through which Naija can interact with the world. Her songs can move items, affect plants and animals, and change her physical appearance into other forms that have different abilities, like firing projectiles at hostile creatures, or passing through barriers inaccessible to her in her natural form.
After more than two years of development, the game was released in late 2007 for Windows. A port of the game to Mac OS X was released in 2008 by Ambrosia Software, and an updated version of the game was released on the Steam service that same year. A Linux version of the game was released as part of the first Humble Indie Bundle collection in 2010, a version for the iPad was released in 2011, and an Android version debuted in 2013 alongside another Humble Bundle collection. In 2009, an album with the Aquaria soundtrack was released. It includes all of the music in the game, as well as a new nine-minute vocal track and a few remixes.
Reviews of the game were generally positive. Critics focused primarily on the visuals, music, and atmosphere as being particularly praiseworthy. The controls and gameplay were also lauded, while negative critiques more often centered on the map system and limited variety of objectives. The game won the Seumas McNally Grand Prize at the Independent Games Festival in March 2007. (Full article...) -
Image 8God of War is an action-adventure hack and slash video game developed by Santa Monica Studio and published by Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE). First released for the PlayStation 2 on March 22, 2005, the game is the first installment in the God of War series and the third chronologically. Loosely based on Greek mythology, it is set in ancient Greece with vengeance as its central motif. The player controls the protagonist Kratos, a Spartan warrior who serves the Olympian gods. The goddess Athena tasks Kratos with killing Ares, the God of War and Kratos' former mentor who tricked Kratos into killing his wife and daughter. As Ares besieges Athens out of hatred for Athena, Kratos embarks on a quest to find the one object capable of stopping the god once and for all: Pandora's Box.
The gameplay of God of War focuses on combo-based combat, achieved through the player's main weapon—the Blades of Chaos—and a secondary weapon acquired later in the game. It features quick time events that require the player to complete various game controller actions in a timed sequence to defeat stronger enemies and bosses. The player can use up to four magical attacks and a power-enhancing ability as alternative combat options. It also features puzzles and platforming elements.
God of War received critical acclaim, being highly praised for its graphics, sound, story, and gameplay and has been cited as one of the greatest video games ever made. Regarded as one of the best action-adventure games for the platform, God of War won several "Game of the Year" awards. In 2009, entertainment website IGN named God of War the seventh-best PlayStation 2 game of all time. The game had sold over 4.6 million units by June 2012, making it the fourteenth best-selling PlayStation 2 game of all time. The success of the game led to the development of eight more games and expansion into other media. The game and its first sequel, God of War II, were remastered and released in November 2009 as part of the God of War Collection, and in 2012, the remastered version was re-released as part of the God of War Saga, both for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita. A novelization of the game was published in May 2010, and a film adaptation had been in development for many years but was ultimately canceled. (Full article...) -
Image 9The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes is a 2021 interactive drama and survival horror video game. Developed by Supermassive Games and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment, it is the third game of the first season of The Dark Pictures Anthology. The game features a multilinear plot in which decisions can significantly alter the trajectory of the story and change the relationships between the five playable protagonists; some lead to their permanent deaths. House of Ashes is set during the 2003 invasion of Iraq and follows five characters—four Americans working for the US Armed Forces and one Iraqi Republican Guard—who must escape from an underground Akkadian temple and survive the vampiric creatures that infest the area. Ashley Tisdale, who plays CIA operative Rachel King, was marketed as the game's leading actress. Jason Graves, a long-time collaborator with Supermassive for the series, composed the soundtrack during COVID-19 lockdowns in the United Kingdom.
Reappearing in House of Ashes are staple mechanics of The Dark Pictures Anthology, such as quick time events (QTEs), two single-player and two multiplayer modes, and collectibles that allow players to see visions of possible future events. New features include a more interactive camera system, a handheld light source for easier navigation, and three difficulty levels to manage QTEs. The films Aliens, Predator, and The Descent, as well as the H. P. Lovecraft novella At the Mountains of Madness and the myth of the Curse of Akkad were the main influences for the game. The creatures were made using motion capture and hand animation, and the temple's design was inspired by ancient Mesopotamian architecture. Military specialists and Arabic speakers were consulted to ensure a faithful depiction of the war.
House of Ashes was released for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on 22 October 2021, to mixed reviews. Several critics deemed it an improvement from the previous two instalments in the anthology, and points of praise included the replay value, QTE intensity, cinematography, multiplayer modes, and likeability of the Iraqi character. Critiques were directed towards the game's pacing, scare factor, facial animations, texture and animation glitches, and handling of the Iraq War. The fourth game in the series and the season one finale, The Devil in Me, was revealed in a teaser trailer at the end of House of Ashes and released on 18 November 2022. (Full article...) -
Image 10Super Mario World, known in Japanese marketing as Super Mario World: Super Mario Bros. 4, is a platform game developed by Nintendo EAD and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). It was released in Japan in 1990, North America in 1991 and Europe and Australia in 1992. The player controls Mario on his quest to save Princess Peach and Dinosaur Land from the series' antagonist Bowser and the Koopalings. The gameplay is similar to that of earlier Super Mario games; players control Mario through a series of levels in which the goal is to reach the goalpost at the end.
Nintendo Entertainment Analysis & Development developed the game, led by director Takashi Tezuka and producer and series creator Shigeru Miyamoto. It is the first Mario game for the SNES and was designed to make the most of the console's technical features. The development team had more freedom compared to the series installments for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Yoshi was conceptualised during the development of the NES games but was not used until Super Mario World due to hardware limitations.
Super Mario World is often considered one of the best games in the series and is cited as one of the greatest video games ever made. It sold more than twenty million copies worldwide, making it the best-selling SNES game. It also led to an animated television series of the same name and a 1995 sequel, Yoshi's Island. The game has been re-released on multiple occasions: It was part of the 1994 compilation Super Mario All-Stars + Super Mario World for the SNES and was re-released for the Game Boy Advance as Super Mario World: Super Mario Advance 2 in 2001, on the Virtual Console for the Wii, Wii U, and New Nintendo 3DS consoles, and as part of the Super NES Classic Edition. In 2019, it was released for Nintendo Switch Online as part of the classic games service. (Full article...)
Did you know... - show different entries
- ... that the robotic enemies in the video game The Incredible Hulk were influenced by Marvel Comics' objection to the Hulk killing humanoid characters?
- ... that the album series Jingle Cats spawned Jingle Dogs, Jingle Babies, and a Japanese video game in which "the object is to breed and care for cats, which begin to sing when they're done copulating"?
- ... that the case Lewis Galoob Toys, Inc. v. Nintendo of America, Inc. was considered essential to the future of video game modding in the United States in 1992?
- ... that Kamibox's video game A Joke That's Worth $0.99 is permanently on special offer because Itch.io does not allow $0.99 as a regular price?
- ... that a reviewer thought that the video game Robbery Bob contained cringeworthy dialogue?
- ... that the video game Fursan al-Aqsa received an update that allows players to reenact the October 7 attacks on Israel?
- ... that the music for the video game Rings of Power was composed by a first-year medical student?
- ... that after becoming paralyzed from the neck down, Rocky "RockyNoHands" Stoutenburgh broke two Guinness World Records in the video game Fortnite?
- ... that classified documents of the United States were partially leaked onto a Discord server for the video game Minecraft?
- ... that Tetris Holding won an injunction in 2012 to stop sales of a video game clone of their famed Tetris game?
- ... that the success of Kingdom Rush prompted plans to grow the video game industry of Uruguay?
- ... that the web-based video game Moderator Mayhem was based on a card game meant to demonstrate the difficulties of content moderation?
Selected biography – load new batch
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Nolan North (born October 31, 1970) is an American actor best known for his voice acting roles.
After his breakthrough role as Dr. Chris Ramsey on the ABC soap opera Port Charles in 1997, North moved into voice acting when the show ended in 2003 and has since become best known for his video game roles as Nathan Drake in the Uncharted series, Desmond Miles in the Assassin's Creed series, Merasmus in Team Fortress 2, the Prince in Prince of Persia, Dr. Edward Richtofen in the Call of Duty franchise, Deadpool in various Marvel Comics media, the Penguin in the Batman: Arkham franchise, Captain Martin Walker in Spec Ops: The Line, David in The Last of Us, himself as one of the voices for the player character in Saints Row IV, Tony Stark in Marvel's Avengers, and Ghost in the Destiny video game series. (Full article...) -
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Sidney K. Meier (/ˈmaɪər/ MIRE; born February 24, 1954) is an American businessman and computer programmer. A programmer, designer, and producer of several strategy video games and simulation video games, including the Civilization series, Meier co-founded MicroProse in 1982 with Bill Stealey and is the Director of Creative Development of Firaxis Games, which he co-founded with Jeff Briggs and Brian Reynolds in 1996. For his contributions to the video game industry, Meier was inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame. (Full article...) -
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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 since January 1999, when Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. became a subsidiary of Vivendi Games. (Full article...) -
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William Ralph Wright (born January 20, 1960) is an American video game designer and co-founder of the game development company Maxis, which later became part of Electronic Arts. In April 2009, he left EA to run Stupid Fun Club Camp, an entertainment think tank in which Wright and EA are principal shareholders.
The first computer game Wright designed was Raid on Bungeling Bay in 1984, but it was SimCity that brought him to prominence. The game was published by Maxis, which Wright co-formed with Jeff Braun. Wright continued to innovate on the game's central theme of simulation with numerous other titles including SimEarth and SimAnt. (Full article...) -
Image 5Yu Suzuki (鈴木 裕, Suzuki Yū, born June 10, 1958) is a Japanese game designer, producer, programmer, and engineer, who headed Sega's AM2 team for 18 years. Considered one of the first auteurs of video games, he has been responsible for a number of Sega's arcade hits, including three-dimensional sprite-scaling games that used "taikan" motion simulator arcade cabinets, such as Hang-On, Space Harrier, Out Run and After Burner, and pioneering polygonal 3D games such as Virtua Racing and Virtua Fighter, which are some of the games besides others from rival companies during that era credited with popularizing 3D graphics in video games; as well as the critically acclaimed Shenmue series. As a hardware engineer, he led the development of various arcade system boards, including the Sega Space Harrier, Model 1, Model 2 and Model 3, and was involved in the technical development of the Dreamcast console and its corresponding NAOMI arcade hardware.
In 2003, Suzuki became the sixth person to be inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences' Hall of Fame. IGN listed him at #9 in their Top 100 Game Creators of All Time list. In 2011, he received the Pioneer Award at the Game Developers Choice Awards. (Full article...) -
Image 6Satoru 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...) -
Image 7Hiroshi 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 subsequently 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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Geoff Keighley (/ˈkiːli/; born (1978-06-24)June 24, 1978) is a Canadian video game journalist and television presenter, best known for his role as the host of several video game industry conferences & presentations. He is the executive producer and host of The Game Awards since its inception in 2014, having previously served as the executive producer of the Spike Video Game Awards. He also hosts and produces Summer Game Fest, and has hosted live events for trades fairs GamesCom and the now-defunct E3.
He previously hosted the video game show GameTrailers TV, and G4tv.com. Keighley is also a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Kotaku among other publications. His multi-media series The Final Hours, originally an article series published by GameSpot, features in-depth interviews and behind-the-scenes with developers of popular franchises like Portal, Mass Effect & Tomb Raider. (Full article...) -
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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...) -
Image 10Satoshi Tajiri (Japanese: 田尻 智, Hepburn: Tajiri Satoshi, born August 28, 1965) is a Japanese video game designer and director who is the creator of the Pokémon franchise and the co-founder and president of video game developer Game Freak.
A fan of arcade games in his youth, Tajiri wrote for and edited his own video gaming fanzine Game Freak with Ken Sugimori, before evolving it into a development company of the same name. Tajiri claims that the joining of two Game Boys via a link cable inspired him to create a game which embodied the collection and companionship of his childhood hobby, insect collecting. The game, which became Pokémon Red and Pokémon Green, took six years to complete and went on to spark a multibillion-dollar franchise which reinvigorated Nintendo's handheld gaming scene. Tajiri continued to work as director for the Pokémon series until the development of Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire, when he changed his role to executive producer, which he holds to this day. (Full article...) -
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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, 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, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego? 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. (Full article...) -
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Anita Sarkeesian (/sɑːrˈkiːziən/ sar-KEE-zee-ən; born 1983) is a Canadian-American feminist media critic. She is the founder of Feminist Frequency, a website that hosts videos and commentary analyzing portrayals of women in popular culture. Her video series Tropes vs. Women in Video Games, examines tropes in the depiction of female video game characters.
Media scholar Soraya Murray calls Sarkeesian emblematic of "a burgeoning organized feminist critique" of stereotyped and objectified portrayals of women in video games.
In 2012, Sarkeesian was targeted by an online harassment campaign following her launch of a Kickstarter project to fund the Tropes vs. Women in Video Games series. The threats and harassment generated widespread media attention, and resulted in the project far exceeding its funding goal. The media coverage placed Sarkeesian at the center of discussions about misogyny in video game culture and online harassment. She has spoken to TEDxWomen, XOXO Festival, and the United Nations' Broadband Working Group on Gender, and appeared on The Colbert Report discussing her experiences of harassment and the challenge of attempting to improve gender inclusivity in gaming culture and the media. (Full article...) -
Image 13Tōru Iwatani (岩谷 徹, Iwatani Tōru, born January 25, 1955) is a Japanese video game designer who spent much of his career working for Namco. He is best known as the creator of the arcade game Pac-Man (1980). In 2009, he was chosen by IGN as one of the top 100 game creators of all time. (Full article...)
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Image 14Jun Maeda (麻枝 准, Maeda Jun, born January 3, 1975) is a Japanese writer and composer. He is a co-founder of the visual novel brand Key under Visual Arts. He is considered a pioneer of nakige visual novels, and has mainly contributed as a scenario writer, lyricist, and musical composer for the games the company produces.
After graduating with a degree in psychology from Chukyo University, Maeda contributed to the scripts and scores of games released under the Tactics brand of Nexton: Moon and One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e. He has contributed both to writing music and scripts to most games released under the Key brand, notably writing the majority of Air and Clannad. He also served as a screenwriter and composer for several anime series produced by P.A. Works, such as Angel Beats! and Charlotte. (Full article...) -
Image 15Ken 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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Alexey Leonidovich Pajitnov (born April 16, 1955) is a Russian computer engineer and video game designer who 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. Pajitnov did not receive royalties from Tetris prior to this time, despite the game's high popularity. (Full article...) -
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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. He and another employee, Mike Harrington, left Microsoft in 1996 to found Valve, and funded the development of their first game, Half-Life (1998). Harrington left in 2000. (Full article...) -
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Todd Andrew Howard (born 1970) is an American video game designer, director, and producer. He serves as director and executive producer at Bethesda Game Studios, where he has led the development of the Fallout and The Elder Scrolls series. (Full article...) -
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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...) -
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William Murray "Trip" Hawkins III (born December 28, 1953) is an American entrepreneur and founder of Electronic Arts, The 3DO Company, and Digital Chocolate. (Full article...) -
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John Bruce Thompson (born July 25, 1951) is an American activist and disbarred attorney. As an attorney, Thompson focused his legal efforts against what he perceives as obscenity in modern culture. Thompson gained recognition as an anti-video game activist, criticizing the content of video games and their alleged effects on children. He also targeted rap music and radio personality Howard Stern.
Thompson's legal career was further recognized for his actions against The Florida Bar, including challenging its constitutionality in 1993. In 2008, he was permanently disbarred by the Supreme Court of Florida for inappropriate conduct, including making false statements to tribunals and disparaging and humiliating litigants. (Full article...) -
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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...) -
Image 23Hideo Kojima (小島 秀夫, Kojima Hideo, born August 24, 1963) is a Japanese video game designer. He is regarded as an auteur of video games. He developed a strong passion for film and literature during his childhood and adolescence. In 1986, he was hired by Konami, for which he designed and wrote Metal Gear (1987) for the MSX2, a game that laid the foundations for stealth games and the Metal Gear series, his best known and most appreciated works. At Konami, he also produced the Zone of the Enders series, as well as wrote and designed Snatcher (1988) and Policenauts (1994), graphic adventure games regarded for their cinematic presentation.
Kojima founded Kojima Productions within Konami in 2005, and he was appointed vice president of Konami Digital Entertainment in 2011. Following his departure from Konami in 2015, he refounded Kojima Productions as an independent studio; his first game outside Konami, Death Stranding, was released in 2019. (Full article...) -
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Peter Douglas Molyneux OBE (/ˈmɒlɪnjuː/; born 5 May 1959) is an English video game designer and programmer. He created the god games Populous, Dungeon Keeper, and Black & White, as well as Theme Park, the Fable series, Curiosity: What's Inside the Cube?, and Godus. In 2012 he founded and currently runs 22cans, a video game development studio.
In 2009, he was chosen by IGN as one of the top 100 game creators of all time. (Full article...) -
Image 25Koji Kondo (Japanese: 近藤 浩治, Hepburn: Kondō Kōji, August 13, 1961) is a Japanese music composer, pianist, and sound director for the video game company Nintendo. He is best known for his many contributions to the Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda series of video games, among others produced by the company. Kondo was hired by Nintendo in 1984, becoming the first person hired by them to specialize in video game music. His work in the Mario and Zelda series have been cited as the most memorable in video games, such as the Super Mario Bros. overworld theme. (Full article...)
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Recent video game-related events
- April 16, 2024 – 2023–2024 video game industry layoffs
- American video game company Take-Two Interactive lays off 5% of its workforce. (Reuters)
- April 10, 2024 – 2023–2024 video game industry layoffs
- American video game company Epic Games announces that it will lay-off around 870 employees, roughly one-sixth of its workforce, due to slower growth than expected. (CBC via Yahoo! News)
- December 22, 2023 –
- China passes a series of regulations aimed at limiting video game microtransactions. The new rules include banning rewards for logging on for multiple consecutive days and banning rewards for players if they spend money in a game for the first time. (Reuters)
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