Portal:Video games
Portal maintenance status: (April 2019)
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The Video Games Portal
A video game, also known as a computer game or just a 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 1Kingdom Hearts is a series of action role-playing games created by Japanese game designers Tetsuya Nomura and Shinji Hashimoto, being developed and published by Square Enix (originally by Square). It is a collaboration between Square Enix and The Walt Disney Company, and is under the leadership of Nomura, a longtime Square Enix employee.
Kingdom Hearts is a crossover of various Disney properties based in an original fictional universe. The series centers on the main character, Sora, and his journey and experiences with various Disney characters, as well as some from Square Enix properties, such as Final Fantasy, The World Ends with You, and Einhänder, in addition to original characters and locations created specifically for the series.
The series consists of thirteen games available for multiple platforms, and future games are planned. Most of the games in the series have been positively received and commercially successful. As of March 2022, the Kingdom Hearts series has shipped more than 36 million copies worldwide. A wide variety of related merchandise has been released along with the games, including soundtracks, action figures, companion books, light novels, a collectible card game, and a manga series. (Full article...) -
Image 2Final Fantasy VII is a 1997 role-playing video game developed by Square for the PlayStation console and the seventh main installment in the Final Fantasy series. Square published the game in Japan, and it was released in other regions by Sony Computer Entertainment, becoming the first game in the main series to have a PAL release. The game's story follows Cloud Strife, a mercenary who joins an eco-terrorist organization to stop a world-controlling megacorporation from using the planet's life essence as an energy source. Ensuing events send Cloud and his allies in pursuit of Sephiroth, a superhuman who seeks to wound the planet and harness its healing power in order to be reborn as a god. Throughout their journey, Cloud bonds with his party members, including Aerith Gainsborough, who holds the secret to saving their world.
Development began in 1994, originally for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. After delays and technical difficulties from experimenting with several platforms, most notably the Nintendo 64, Square moved production to the PlayStation, largely due to the advantages of the CD-ROM format. Veteran Final Fantasy staff returned, including series creator and producer Hironobu Sakaguchi, director Yoshinori Kitase, and composer Nobuo Uematsu. The title was the first in the series to use full motion video and 3D computer graphics, featuring 3D character models superimposed over 2D pre-rendered backgrounds. Although the gameplay remained mostly unchanged from previous entries, Final Fantasy VII introduced more widespread science fiction elements and a more realistic presentation. The combined development and marketing budget amounted to approximately US$80 million.
Final Fantasy VII received widespread commercial and critical success. It remains widely regarded as a landmark title and one of the greatest and most influential video games ever made. The title won numerous Game of the Year awards and was acknowledged for boosting the sales of the PlayStation and popularizing Japanese role-playing games worldwide. Critics praised its graphics, gameplay, music, and story, although some criticism was directed towards the original English localization. Its success has led to enhanced ports on various platforms, a multimedia subseries called the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, and a high definition remake trilogy currently comprising Final Fantasy VII Remake (2020), and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (2024). (Full article...) -
Image 3Resident Evil 5 is a 2009 third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. It is a major installment in the Resident Evil series, and was announced in 2005—the same year its predecessor Resident Evil 4 was released. Resident Evil 5 was released for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles in March 2009 and for Windows in September 2009. It was re-released for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in June 2016. The plot involves an investigation of a terrorist threat by Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance agents Chris Redfield and Sheva Alomar in Kijuju, a fictional region of West Africa. Chris learns that he must confront his past in the form of an old enemy, Albert Wesker, and his former partner, Jill Valentine.
The gameplay of Resident Evil 5 is similar to that of the previous installment, though it is the first in the series designed for two-player cooperative gameplay. It has also been considered the first game in the main series to depart from the survival horror genre, with critics saying it bore more resemblance to an action game. Motion capture was used for the cutscenes, and it was the first video game to use a virtual camera system. Several staff members from the original Resident Evil worked on Resident Evil 5. The Windows version was developed by Mercenary Technology.
Resident Evil 5 received a positive reception, despite some criticism for its control scheme. The game received some complaints of racism, though an investigation by the British Board of Film Classification found the complaints were unsubstantiated. As of December 2023, when including the original, special and remastered versions, the game had sold 13.4 million units. It is the best-selling game of the Resident Evil franchise when not including remakes, and the original version remained the best-selling individual Capcom release until March 2018, when it was outsold by Monster Hunter: World. A sequel, Resident Evil 6, was released in 2012. (Full article...) -
Image 4The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask is a 2000 action-adventure game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64. It was the second The Legend of Zelda game to use 3D graphics, following Ocarina of Time (1998). Designed by a creative team led by Eiji Aonuma, Yoshiaki Koizumi, and Shigeru Miyamoto, Majora's Mask was completed in less than two years. It features enhanced graphics and several gameplay changes, but reuses elements and character models from Ocarina of Time, which the game's creators called a creative decision made necessary by time constraints. Set some time after Ocarina of Time in the land of Termina, the game's story follows Link who must prevent a powerful artifact from destroying the world with the moon's collision in three days.
The game introduces gameplay concepts revolving around a perpetually repeating three-day cycle and the use of various masks that transform Link into different forms. As the player progresses through the game, Link learns to play numerous melodies on his ocarina, which allow him to control the flow of time, open hidden passages, or manipulate the environment. Characteristic of the Zelda series, completion of the game involves successfully navigating through several dungeons that contain complex puzzles and enemies. Majora's Mask requires the Expansion Pak add-on for the Nintendo 64, which provides additional memory for more refined graphics and greater capacity in generating on-screen characters.
Majora's Mask earned universal acclaim from critics and is widely considered one of the best video games ever made. It received praise for its level design, story, and surrealist art direction, and has been noted for its darker tone and themes compared to other Nintendo titles. While the game only sold about half as many copies as its predecessor, it generated a substantial cult following. The game was rereleased as part of The Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition for the GameCube in 2003, and for the online services of the Wii, Wii U, and Nintendo Switch. An enhanced remake for the Nintendo 3DS, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 3D, was released in 2015. (Full article...) -
Image 5Perfect Dark is a 2000 first-person shooter developed and published by Rare for the Nintendo 64. The first game of the Perfect Dark series, it follows Joanna Dark, an agent of the Carrington Institute research centre, as she attempts to stop an extraterrestrial conspiracy by rival corporation dataDyne. The game features a campaign mode where the player must complete a series of levels to progress through the story, as well as a range of multiplayer options, including a co-operative mode and traditional deathmatch settings with computer-controlled bots.
As a spiritual successor to Rare's 1997 first-person shooter GoldenEye 007, Perfect Dark shares many features with its predecessor and runs on an upgraded version of its game engine. GoldenEye 007 director Martin Hollis led the game's production for the first fourteen months of its near three-year development cycle before he left Rare to pursue other interests. The game is one of the most technically-advanced titles for the Nintendo 64, and requires an Expansion Pak to access the campaign mode and most of the multiplayer features. Shortly before the game's release, a feature that would have allowed players to place a photograph of their choice onto the face of their multiplayer character was cut due to sensitive issues surrounding the ability for players to attack images of real people.
Upon release, Perfect Dark received critical acclaim and sold relatively well, eventually joining Nintendo's "Player's Choice" game selection. Critics widely praised its graphics, artificial intelligence, and number of multiplayer options, but some criticised its inconsistent frame rate. The game received the BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Moving Images Award for 2000 and the Golden Satellite Award for Best Interactive Product in 2001. The game is occasionally cited as one of the greatest video games of all time. It was supplemented by a Game Boy Color counterpart, which allows some gameplay options to alternatively be unlocked via a Transfer Pak. A remaster, also titled Perfect Dark, featuring enhanced graphics and online multiplayer, was released in 2010 for the Xbox 360. The game was re-released on the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack via the Mature 17+ app in June 2024. (Full article...) -
Image 6Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss is a first-person role-playing video game developed by Blue Sky Productions (later Looking Glass Studios) and published by Origin Systems. Released in March 1992, the game is set in the fantasy world of the Ultima series. It takes place inside the Great Stygian Abyss: a large cave system that contains the remnants of a failed utopian civilization. The player assumes the role of the Avatar—the Ultima series's protagonist—and attempts to find and rescue a baron's kidnapped daughter.
Ultima Underworld has been cited as the first role-playing game to feature first-person action in a 3D environment, and it introduced technological innovations such as allowing the player to look up and down. Its design combines simulation elements with concepts from earlier role-playing video games, including Wizardry and Dungeon Master, which led the game's designers to call it a "dungeon simulation". As such, the game is non-linear and allows for emergent gameplay.
Ultima Underworld sold nearly 500,000 units, and was placed on numerous hall of fame lists. It influenced game developers such as Bethesda Softworks and Valve, and it was an inspiration behind the games Deus Ex and BioShock. The game had a sequel, Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds (1993), and a new game in the series, Underworld Ascendant, was released in late 2018. (Full article...) -
Image 7Outer Wilds is a 2019 action-adventure video game developed by Mobius Digital and published by Annapurna Interactive. The game follows the player character as they explore a planetary system stuck in a 22-minute time loop that resets after the sun goes supernova and destroys the system. Through repeated attempts they investigate the alien ruins of the Nomai to discover their history and the cause of the time loop.
The game began development in 2012 as director Alex Beachum's master's thesis. He was inspired to create a game focused on exploration in which the player character was not the center of the game world. Beachum led a small team in building the game, first as an independent project, then as a commercial game at Mobius after the project won the Excellence in Design and Seumas McNally Grand Prize awards at the 2015 Independent Games Festival. Annapurna joined the project as the publisher in 2015 and funded its expansion beyond a student project.
Outer Wilds was released for Windows, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 in 2019, for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S in 2022, and for Nintendo Switch in 2023. An expansion which explores further themes in a new location in the planetary system, Echoes of the Eye, was begun in 2019 and released for the same platforms in 2021. Outer Wilds was positively received upon release, with most critics acclaiming its design and some criticizing the uneven difficulty of gameplay and pursuing the game's mysteries. Echoes of the Eye was also positively received, with some criticism for its introduction of horror elements. Outer Wilds was featured in several game of the year lists for 2019 as well as game of the decade lists, and won in multiple categories at award shows, including the Best Game award at the 16th British Academy Games Awards. (Full article...) -
Image 8Katamari Damacy (lit. 'Clump Spirit') is a third-person puzzle-action video game developed and published by Namco for the PlayStation 2. It was released in Japan in March 2004 and later in North America in September. Designer Keita Takahashi struggled to pitch the game to Namco's superiors, eventually seeking student aid from the Namco Digital Hollywood Game Laboratory to develop the project for less than US$ 1 million. As director, Takahashi emphasized concepts of novelty, ease of understanding, and enjoyment.
The game's plot concerns a diminutive prince on a mission to rebuild the stars, constellations, and Moon, which were inadvertently destroyed by his father, the King of All Cosmos. This is achieved by rolling a magical, highly adhesive ball called a katamari around various locations, collecting increasingly larger objects, ranging from thumbtacks to human beings to mountains, until the ball has grown large enough to become a star. Katamari Damacy's story, settings and characters are highly stylized and surreal, often both celebrating and satirizing facets of Japanese culture.
Katamari Damacy was well received in Japan and North America, becoming a surprise hit and winning several awards. Its success led to the creation of the greater Katamari franchise, and inspired numerous subsequent games imitating its quirky, colorful charm. Some critics have hailed it as a cult classic and one of the greatest video games of all time, praising its gameplay, replay value, humor, originality, and shibuya-kei soundtrack. A high-definition remaster of the game, Katamari Damacy Reroll was released on Windows and Nintendo Switch in December 2018, on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in November 2020, and on Google Stadia in September 2021. (Full article...) -
Image 9Diary of a Camper is an American short film released in October 1996 that was made using id Software's first-person shooter video game Quake. The film was created by the Rangers, a clan or group of video game players, and first released over the Internet as a non-interactive game demo file. The minute and a half-long video is commonly considered the first example of machinima—the art of using real-time, virtual 3D environments, often game engines, to create animated films. The story centers on five members of the Rangers clan fighting against a lone camper in a multiplayer deathmatch.
Machinima had its roots in the demoscene of the 1980s, helping to inspire the demo recording modes of the video games Doom and Quake. Although players had previously recorded segments of gameplay, these were usually deathmatches or speedruns. Diary of a Camper was the first demo to contain a narrative with text-based dialogue, instead of merely showing gameplay. Commentators have called Diary of a Camper primitive, but acknowledge its importance in establishing video games as a medium for filmmaking; the film inspired machinima filmmakers and spurred more complex machinima works in Quake and other games. (Full article...) -
Image 10Giants: Citizen Kabuto is a third-person shooter video game with real-time strategy elements. It was the first project for Planet Moon Studios, which consisted of former Shiny Entertainment employees who had worked on the game MDK in 1997. Giants went through four years of development before Interplay Entertainment published it on December 7, 2000, for Microsoft Windows; a Mac OS X port was published by MacPlay in 2001, and the game was also ported to the PlayStation 2 later that year.
In the game, players take control of a single character from one of three humanoid races to either complete the story in single-player mode or to challenge other players in online multiplayer matches. They can select heavily armed Meccaryns equipped with jet packs, or amphibious spell-casting Sea Reapers; the game's subtitle, "Citizen Kabuto", refers to the last selectable race, a thundering behemoth who can execute earthshaking wrestling attacks to pulverize its enemies. The single-player mode is framed as a sequential story, putting the player through a series of missions, several of which test the player's reflexes in action game-like puzzles.
Game critics praised Giants for its state-of-the-art graphics on Windows computers, a humorous story, and successfully blending different genres. Criticisms focused on crippling software bugs and the lack of an in-game save feature. The console version rectified some of the flaws found in the PC versions, at the cost of removing several features. The game initially sold poorly for Windows and PlayStation 2, but it sold well afterwards, and gained a cult following. (Full article...)
Did you know... - show different entries
- ... that the video game Pyongyang Racer was developed in North Korea for Koryo Tours, which organises tours to the country?
- ... that the video game Serious Sam: Tormental was originally inspired by Geometry Wars?
- ... that a reviewer thought that the video game Robbery Bob contained cringeworthy dialogue?
- ... 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 Chicago Sun-Times credits JumpStart Toddlers as the first video game targeted towards babies?
- ... that a cheat code in the video game Spyro: Year of the Dragon grants access to a near-complete copy of Crash Bash?
- ... that Kainé from the video game series Nier was created in response to a female staff member's vague wish for a "male heroine"?
- ... that development on the video game Expeditions: Rome was not affected by lockdowns from the COVID-19 pandemic because the developer was already split between Copenhagen and Istanbul?
- ... that Rockstar Vienna was the largest video game developer in Austria when it closed in 2006?
- ... that the video game Manor Lords was wishlisted more than three million times on Steam after its developer had estimated it would receive around 14,000?
- ... that Splatoon 3 became the fastest-selling video game of all time in Japan three days after launch?
- ... that Terra Invicta's development company is a group of former volunteer video game modders that decided to release their own game after the success of their mod?
Selected biography – load new batch
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Raphael "Raph" Koster (born September 7, 1971) is an American entrepreneur, game designer, and author of A Theory of Fun for Game Design. Koster is widely recognized for his work as the lead designer of Ultima Online and the creative director behind Star Wars Galaxies. From 2006 until 2013 he worked as the founder and president of Metaplace (previously operating as Areae and acquired by social gaming company Playdom in 2010, which was in turn acquired by Disney) producing a Facebook game platform. (Full article...) -
Image 2Hiroshi 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 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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Nolan Kay Bushnell (born February 5, 1943) is an American businessman and electrical engineer. He established Atari, Inc. and the Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre chain. He has been inducted into the Video Game Hall of Fame and the Consumer Electronics Association Hall of Fame, received the BAFTA Fellowship and the Nations Restaurant News "Innovator of the Year" award, and was named one of Newsweek's "50 Men Who Changed America". He has started more than 20 companies and is one of the founding fathers of the video game industry. He is on the board of Anti-Aging Games. In 2012, he founded an educational software company called Brainrush, that is using video game technology in educational software.
He is credited with Bushnell's Law, an aphorism about games that are "easy to learn and difficult to master" being rewarding. (Full article...) -
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Alfonso John Romero (born October 28, 1967) is an American director, designer, programmer and developer in the video game industry. He is a co-founder of id Software and designed their early games, including Wolfenstein 3D (1992), Doom (1993), Doom II (1994), Hexen (1995) and Quake (1996). His designs and development tools, along with programming techniques developed by id Software's lead programmer, John Carmack, popularized the first-person shooter (FPS) genre. Romero is also credited with coining the multiplayer term "deathmatch".
Following disputes with Carmack, Romero was fired from id in 1996. He co-founded a new studio, Ion Storm, and directed the FPS Daikatana (2000), which was a critical and commercial failure. Romero departed Ion Storm in 2001. In July 2001, Romero and another former id employee, Tom Hall, founded Monkeystone Games to develop games for mobile devices. (Full article...) -
Image 5Tōru 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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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. He was also the game director for Starfield. (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...) -
Image 8Hideo Kojima (小島 秀夫, Kojima Hideo, born August 24, 1963) is a Japanese video game designer. He is regarded as one of the first auteurs of video games. He developed a strong passion for film and literature during his childhood and adolescence, which in turn has had a significant influence on his games. In 1986 he joined Konami, for which he directed, designed and wrote Metal Gear (1987) for the MSX2, the game that laid the foundations for the stealth genre and the Metal Gear franchise, his best known and most acclaimed work. At Konami, he also produced the Zone of the Enders series, as well as designing and writing 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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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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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...) -
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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, Halo, 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, Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego? and Star Wars: The Clone Wars. 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. She is also known for voicing Jean Grey in a variety of Marvel media, most recently in X-Men '97. (Full article...) -
Image 12Yu 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...) -
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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...) -
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Richard Allen Garriott (born 4 July 1961) is a British-born American video game developer, entrepreneur and private astronaut.
Garriott, who is the son of NASA astronaut Owen Garriott, was originally a game designer and programmer, and is now involved in a number of aspects of computer-game development. On October 12, 2008, Garriott flew aboard the Soyuz TMA-13 mission to the International Space Station as a private astronaut, returning 12 days later aboard Soyuz TMA-12. He became the second space traveler, and first from the United States, to have a parent who was also a space traveler. During his ISS flight, he filmed a science fiction movie Apogee of Fear. (Full article...) -
Image 15Shigeru Miyamoto (Japanese: 宮本 茂, Hepburn: Miyamoto Shigeru, born November 16, 1952) is a Japanese video game designer, producer and game director at Nintendo, where he serves as one of its representative directors as an executive since 2002. Widely regarded as one of the most accomplished and influential designers in video games, he is the creator of some of the most acclaimed and best-selling game franchises of all time, including Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Donkey Kong, Star Fox and Pikmin. More than 1 billion copies of games featuring franchises created by Miyamoto have been sold.
Born in Sonobe, Kyoto, Miyamoto graduated from Kanazawa Municipal College of Industrial Arts. He originally sought a career as a manga artist, until developing an interest in video games. With the help of his father, he joined Nintendo in 1977 after impressing the president, Hiroshi Yamauchi, with his toys. He helped create art for the arcade game Sheriff, and was later tasked with designing a new arcade game, leading to the 1981 game Donkey Kong. (Full article...) -
Image 16Satoru 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 17Ken 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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Markus Alexej Persson (/ˈpɪərsən/ ⓘ PEER-sən, Swedish: [ˈmǎrːkɵs ˈpæ̌ːʂɔn] ⓘ; born 1 June 1979), also known as "Notch", is a Swedish video game programmer and designer. He is the creator of the video game Minecraft, which since its release has become the best-selling video game in history. He founded the video game development company Mojang Studios in 2009.
Persson began developing video games at an early age, making games both professionally and for pleasure for much of his life. His commercial success began after publishing an early version of Minecraft in 2009. Prior to the game's official retail release in 2011, it had sold over ten million copies. After this point, Persson stood down as the lead designer and transferred creative authority to Jens Bergensten. In September 2014, Persson announced on his personal website that he had concluded he "[didn't have the connection to his fans he thought he had]", that he had "become a symbol", and that he did not wish to be responsible for Mojang's increasingly large operation. Persson left Mojang in November of that year, selling his company to Microsoft for a reported US$2.5 billion. The acquisition made Persson a billionaire. (Full article...) -
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Richard Allan Bartle FBCS FRSA (born 10 January 1960) is a British writer, professor and game researcher in the massively multiplayer online game industry. He co-created MUD1 (the first MUD) in 1978, and is the author of the 2003 book Designing Virtual Worlds. (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...) -
Image 21Akira Toriyama (Japanese: 鳥山明, Hepburn: Toriyama Akira, April 5, 1955 – March 1, 2024) was a Japanese manga artist and character designer. He first achieved mainstream recognition for creating the popular manga series Dr. Slump, before going on to create Dragon Ball (his most famous work) and acting as a character designer for several popular video games such as the Dragon Quest series, Chrono Trigger, and Blue Dragon. Toriyama came to be regarded as one of the most important authors in the history of manga with his works highly influential and popular, particularly Dragon Ball, which many manga artists cite as a source of inspiration.
He earned the 1981 Shogakukan Manga Award for best shōnen/shōjo manga with Dr. Slump, and it went on to sell over 35 million copies in Japan. It was adapted into a successful anime series, with a second anime created in 1997, 13 years after the manga ended. (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 from January 1999, when Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. became a subsidiary of Vivendi Games, until July 2008. (Full article...) -
Image 23Yoko Kanno (菅野 よう子, Kanno Yōko, born 18 March 1963) is a Japanese composer, arranger and music producer of soundtracks for anime series, video games, television dramas and movies. She has written scores for Cowboy Bebop, Terror in Resonance, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Wolf's Rain, Turn A Gundam and Darker than Black. Kanno is a keyboardist and the frontwoman for Seatbelts, who perform many of her compositions. (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...) -
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William James Mitchell Jr. (born July 16, 1965) is an American video game player. He achieved fame throughout the 1980s and 1990s by claiming numerous records on classic video games, including a perfect score on Pac-Man. Twin Galaxies and Guinness World Records recognized Mitchell as the holder of several records earned playing classic video games, and he has appeared in several documentaries on competitive gaming and retrogaming. However, in 2017, the legitimacy of a number of his records was called into question, leading to Twin Galaxies stripping Mitchell of his records.
Mitchell rose to national prominence in the 1980s when Life included him in a photo spread of game champions during the height of the golden age of arcade video games. In 1999, Mitchell was the first person to claim a perfect score of 3,333,360 points on the arcade game Pac-Man. A 2007 documentary, The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, follows his attempts to maintain the highest score on Donkey Kong after being challenged by newcomer Steve Wiebe. (Full article...)
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Recent video game-related events
- September 12, 2024 – 2023–2024 video game industry layoffs
- Microsoft announces that it will lay off 650 Microsoft Gaming employees as part of cuts to its workforce. (Variety)
- August 15, 2024 –
- American video game magazine Game Informer discontinues publication after 33 years. The magazine's website is also shut down. (BBC News)
- May 24, 2024 – Uvalde school shooting
- Families in Uvalde, Texas, U.S., file a lawsuit against Daniel Defense and Activision Blizzard for creating the DDM4 V7 gun and promoting the weapon through the game Call of Duty, respectively. They also sue Meta Platforms for owning Instagram, which was used by the gunman. (AP)
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