Game makers for whom I will buy a beer

Whoever made the decision to sign up Mark Hamill to continue voicing the Joker for Arkham Asylum.

Hmm, those that I know the names off:

Brad Wardell, Ken Levine, Richard Garriott, Warren Spector

Those that I don’t know the names off:

Makers of UFO: Enemy unknown, Pool of Radiance , Mass Effect 1 +2 and the makers of Assasin’s Creed 1 +2 and last, but not least, the makers of the original Keflings game.

Valve and Irrational.

Bunch of Indie Studios:

Blind Mind Studios - Star Ruler

Arcen Games - AI War Fleet Command

and

Black Chicken Studios - Academagia

Despite being small studios, these guys are working tirelessly to improve their games without trying to gouge more money from their paying customers.

to add to this:

guys who created the infinity engine - baldur’s gate, icewind dale, planescape aah good times

the guy who first thought of the MASSIVE Steam sales - from 0 to 113 games in 6 months
(however not sure to buy beer or punch him in the nose for this…)

lol after 113 purchases, you sure you still have money to buy beer for that guy? :)

Ichiro Lambe, from Dejobaan Games. I’ve mailed him a few times about their various games and he’s been consistently awesome. F’rinstance, their payment processor has been rejecting my credit card, so I can’t preorder ‘Kick It!’. They just gave me access to the alpha anyway, on the understanding I’ll be paying once I get another card. What other studio would do that? I’d buy him two beers.

Two beers for everyone that worked on Heroes of M&M 2 and 3. Minus 1 beer if they also worked on 4. Haha, j/k.

Also, Jeff Green. Always admired his work as a games journalist, and now that he works for Pop Cap, he’s eligible for a dev beer.

The people at 2K Marin, 2K Australia and Digital Extremes, because they’ll always stand in the shadow of Ken Levine and Irrational, even though they actually made Bioshock 2.

And Ken Levine, because he’s the creator of the Bioshock series.

The Collyer Brothers and everyone else who’s worked at Sports Interactive for 20+ years of Championship/Football Manager.

I don’t think there is a computer that I’ve owned, ever, that hasn’t given up a good deal of its CPU cycles running this game series.

If it’s taught me one thing it’s that Liverpool should have appointed me manager instead of Roy Hodgson.

My two beers go to Charles Moylan and Steve Grammont @ Battlefront for developing my favorite wargame ever: Combat Mission II: Barbarossa to Berlin.

hmmm, Anyone who had anything to do with the Gold Box Series from SSI, Richard Gariott, John Canegham, Soren Johnson, Jon Shafer, Sid Meier, the Gollop brothers, the Curries from Sirtech (Dr Q as well!) , Stephen Barcia (MoM), Ali Atabek (Magic Candle series / mindcraft), J E Sawyer, Feargus Urquhart, Chris Avellone, Laurence Holland (xwing), Brian Reynolds.

And whoever invented the Commodore 64. I want to say Tramiel, but I think he was the firm owner rather than designer. He can have a beer too for making it happen.

(They all have to pretend to be clients though, for “expense” reasons :-)

I think this thread demonstrates that some gamers do actually remember the names on the boxes and that the horrible myth that one person makes a game lives on. Although apparently I need to check who made the Gold Box.

2 beers for (in vaguely chronological order):

  • Will Crowther (Adventure)

  • Toy + Wichman (Rogue)

  • FTL Games (Sun Dog: Frozen Legacy devs)

  • Microprose + Simtex

  • Origin

  • New World Computing

  • Black Isle

  • whoever it was who came up with the Xenosaga setting

  • Atlus R&D 1, (an extra beer for Kazuma Kaneko)

No doubt I’m missing many others who are equally worthy, but these come to mind offhand.

Chris Park ruined my appreciation of other indie/freeware developers. I start to wonder why those slowpokes can’t release something more than once a year. I know it’s his full-time job and it’s his personal style to do a lot of interim beta releases. But I feel like selfishly keeping my beer when I haven’t heard from some of my favorite indie game makers since 2009.

Chris Park, for AI War. I’m obsessed with that game.

Brad Wardell for Gal Civ 2 (and hopefully someday Elemental).

Sid Meier for all the Civ games.

The whole crew for KOTOR. That game just blew me away.

Obsidian for being just plain awesome.

Whoever did Diablo 2- the greatest timesink of all.

Just off the top of my head

Bartender, a round of Guinness for me and these brilliant gentlemen here.

So guys, tell me more about the Batman: Arkham Asylum sequel you’re working on…

LATER THAT NIGHT, AT ANOTHER BAR, WITH ANOTHER GROUP…

You guyssth hiccup are the best! That Alpha Pro-prot-protools hiccup thing may not have worked out but…um where wasss I? Oh yeah, grats on a ssssuccesthful Fallout New Vegas release, ffffuckin A !!! Sssoooooo proud of you!!! Mask of The Betrayal was awesome!! And Knights of the Old Republicans 2 was the shit! Nooooo hahahahaha not “shit”, but “THE SHIT”. Anywaysss Oblivion sucks!!! Bartender, another round!!!

Sid Meier gets the first round.

F-15 Strike Eagle
Silent Service
Pirates
F-19 Stealth
Railroad Tycoon
Civilization
Colonization
Civ II
Gettysburg
Alpha Centauri
SimGolf
Civ IV

Huge list of games and quite diversified, so he’s gotta be a well rounded guy.

The first group that popped into my head when I heard this was Nadeo for making TrackMania. Great game and it doesn’t seem to get a lot of recognition when these ‘best’ discussions pop up.

That’s a punch in the face from me. I had a lot of fun with Trackmania at first. Then the frustration of getting those medals drove me mad. Obviously it’s my fault: I wasn’t prepared for endless retries like that because I haven’t played a NES game in 15 years. But who said we had to be reasonable about punching game developers?

“Blue Byte” Software, even if it is a different group of people. Dawn of Discovery, the gift that is still good years later. And Settlers 7, love them both.

Ghostcrawler from WoW

Mark Rosewater, lead designer of Magic the Gathering

Steve Bauman for Supreme Commander 2 production and support