Who are the programing genius in each company ?

[Love_In_Rio]

Well, I have allways beein interested in the gurus of 3d programming work. Many times we think a company is a technical marvel but after one of these guys leaves, it is another company that becomes the marvel, the one the guy joins. For example: guys from first Medal of honor left EA and founded Infinity Wards, and we all know where is Medal of honor now, and where is COD ( although maybe here the issue is more about direction and art that about programming engines ).

We all know John Carmack is ID´s 3d engine genius. We all know Tim Sweeny is Epic´s genius. In Insomniac i think it´s Mike Acton.

Do you know who is the genius in Guerrilla, in Naughty Dog, in Crytek, in Pholiphony Digital, in Sony Santa Monica, in Team Ico, etc...

For example, who is responsible for the fantastic lighting engine in Killzone 2, Michal Valient, or a group o programmers, or it is a third party application ?.

I remember reading many years ago that while Carmack was programming Quake, he made a bet about programming the lighting casted by a projectile in a corridor in less than a day, and finally he made it in half an hour. Maybe this code still survives in today´s games, COD4 for example still uses a lot of Quake 3 code parts.

Do you know more anecdotes of this kind ?.

Thank you to all interested in the subject.

 

[griever9]

In Sony Santa Monica I think it’s Tim Moss.

In Naughty Dog it was Andy Gavin, he left the company in 2005, then it was Stephen White and left before Uncharted was finished.

 

[TheWretched]

You cannot distill such large projects unto one person. It is always a team effort... No matter how impressive your tech may be, your artists make it come to life in the end.

 

[obonicus]

Reminds me of that Warren Spector IGN quote.

"There's a tendency among the press to attribute the creation of a game to a single person," says Warren Spector, creator of Thief and Deus Ex.

 

[Love_In_Rio]

You cannot distill such large projects unto one person. It is always a team effort... No matter how impressive your tech may be, your artists make it come to life in the end.

Well, if there is no a person that emphasizes then there is no need to discuss it. I am refering to people that is famous inside the industry by its 3d programming skills, and that is far from the focus of the public. Curiosity about this business...

Another example I remember of a great but maybe unknown 3d coder: "Severance blade of darkness" lighting and shadow system was made by Angel Cuñado ( as well as the great system of fluids ). Did anybody know him ?. He made that game in the same time that Duke Nuken Forever was in the street, and technically they were games miles away from each other.

 

[griever9]

Every AAA game that is made always requires a team effort. But I think what Love_In_Rio is referring are people who skills are in another level. I don’t think that if everyone has the same skills there will be no job positions like for example Lead Programmer.

 

[zed]

Reminds me of that Warren Spector IGN quote.

brilliant

 

[ERP]

The short version is that your talking about a LOT of people.
A very small percentage of the very smart people in the industry have any public profile.
Big companies like EA have a lot of them despite what many think of their games.
And a lot of very smart engineers work on underperforming or just plain bad games.
As was mentioned before great product very much requires a team effort, top to bottom and I include studio management in that, no one will produce great product if they are under unrealistic time constraints or fiscal constraints.

 

[Fafalada]

A very small percentage of the very smart people in the industry have any public profile. Big companies like EA have a lot of them despite what many think of their games.

This.
Especially in the big companies, people behind the scenes will be that much more anonymous.

But I think what Love_In_Rio is referring are people who skills are in another level. I don’t think that if everyone has the same skills there will be no job positions like for example Lead Programmer.

Of course - but when you have a team of 150 people, there are usually multiple people of that caliber in it, not just one. They are also very unlikely to get the kind of publicity Rio is talking about.

 

[Love_In_Rio]

This.
Especially in the big companies, people behind the scenes will be that much more anonymous.


Of course - but when you have a team of 150 people, there are usually multiple people of that caliber in it, not just one. They are also very unlikely to get the kind of publicity Rio is talking about.

Fafalada ( or any other developer ) nowadays in developing gaming world who is the most reputated programmer ? Is still Carmack ?.

 

[swaaye]

It probably made more sense to "revere" some of the developers out there when things were very original and fresh and built by small teams. People that come to mind for me are, of course, Carmack with Doom/Wolf3D, Carmack + Abrash with Quake, ERP with TGR and WDC wink, Sweeney and Unreal. Honestly I've forgotten lots of the great evolutions in gaming. How about famous game designers like Andy Hollis, Jane Jensen, Roberta Williams, Sandy Peterson, Tim Schafer, Levelord, Sid Meier, Chris Crawford and the bunches of others.. Or renowned game music composers like Barry Leitch, Michael Land, Peter McConnell, Clint Bajakian, Bobby Prince, The Fat Man, Jeremy & Julian Soule, etc, etc.

While it's fun to rally behind the people you read about in the news, games today and for probably 20 years now are completely team efforts and no games except the ancient ones made by one person would exist without the work of everyone involved. You can't discount the value of the work of artists, level designers, composers, etc in favor of just the programming skill. Hell even the producer/director who sits at the top and tries to keep the team functioning smoothly is as important as anyone else.

I have a feeling too that talented people are perhaps not always interested in being spectacles for the press.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Fafalada ( or any other developer ) nowadays in developing gaming world who is the most reputated programmer ?

If you want an answer to that question, answer these ones - Who is the best musician in the world? Who is the best actor?...

 

[Love_In_Rio]

It probably made more sense to "revere" some of the developers out there when things were very original and fresh and built by small teams. People that come to mind for me are, of course, Carmack with Doom/Wolf3D, Carmack + Abrash with Quake, ERP with TGR and WDC wink, Sweeney and Unreal. Honestly I've forgotten lots of the great evolutions in gaming. How about famous game designers like Andy Hollis, Jane Jensen, Roberta Williams, Sandy Peterson, Tim Schafer, Levelord, Sid Meier, Chris Crawford and the bunches of others.. Or renowned game music composers like Barry Leitch, Michael Land, Peter McConnell, Clint Bajakian, Bobby Prince, The Fat Man, Jeremy & Julian Soule, etc, etc.

While it's fun to rally behind the people you read about in the news, games today and for probably 20 years now are completely team efforts and no games except the ancient ones made by one person would exist without the work of everyone involved. You can't discount the value of the work of artists, level designers, composers, etc in favor of just the programming skill. Hell even the producer/director who sits at the top and tries to keep the team functioning smoothly is as important as anyone else.

I have a feeling too that talented people are perhaps not always interested in being spectacles for the press.

Which games are TGR and WDC ?.

mmm, before Return to Castle wolfenstein, and looking at the 16 and 8 bits era i would mention...Jon Ritman! How good moments with match day 2, Batman, Head Over Heels...!

Shifty, my intention is not to talk about the best of the world, but about good people we don´t meet in today´s big productions filled with giant teams. I am not a fan of music groups, a fan of film actors or a fan of football players, but if i could be called a fan of something it would be about clever people, call it good coders, good scientists, and so on. This world should pay more attention to these people IMHO. Do many people know who made the marvelous voxel´s engine of Outcast that run great in a pentium 200 ? That was almost magic, and art state action. Not many ( myself included ), and i think we should appreciate these people more.

But in the end i supposse is difficult to talk about these things in such a big industry. Before it was a little more...romantic.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

Not that I would know anything, but I agree with that its never 1 person who makes a game great. Funny thing is btw that if a game sucks people always say its because of the whole studio but if somebody makes a good game they go talk about one person.

At best I think a highly skilled person can make things move in the right direction better but if he got 100 people working for him not knowing left from right no matter how good he is its not going to work.

Maybe nintendo is a good example. Miyamoto is seens as the person for alot of their franchise, but I dont think miyamoto actually ever made any content at all for a game.

 

[Rodéric]

Maybe nintendo is a good example. Miyamoto is seens as the person for alot of their franchise, but I dont think miyamoto actually ever made any content at all for a game.

Since he is a game designer, that wouldn't be a surprise.
He produces the gameplay (ie player/game interactions), he doesn't have to produce art neither code...

 

[obonicus]

Since he is a game designer, that wouldn't be a surprise.
He produces the gameplay (ie player/game interactions), he doesn't have to produce art neither code...

I think he was a programmer on the very first games, no? DK, SMB?

 

[Skrying]

I think he was a programmer on the very first games, no? DK, SMB?

Nope, he's never coded in his career. The only asset creation that I know of was the music for Donkey Kong. He was hired as a staff artist and I'm sure he's done conceptual art but not exactly so for the actual game assets.

Miyamoto also guides projects, and his power of being able to reject anything really gives him a more honest shake at the "one person" type of view. But again, Mario wouldn't be Mario without the proper execution from the staff. Nintendo is simply a tightly run ship, so they're consistent.

 

[swaaye]

Which games are TGR and WDC ?

Top Gear Rally and World Driver Championship. They are two of my favorite N64 games. The vehicle physics was great stuff, especially during TGR's time.

 

[grandmaster]

Ezra Driesbach produced the SlaveDriver engine for the Saturn and PlayStation, which powered those incredible Sega ports of Quake and Duke Nukem 3D, and of course the superb Exhumed/PowerSlave.

Not 100% sure what he's been doing since then (I think the PS2 Baldur's Gate games may be his) but I know what he's done recently - Deathtank for XBLA which is utterly brilliant

 

[Shifty Geezer]

He's been at Snowblind Studios for as long as PS2 it seems. I think BGDA was his. He's credited on CON as Lead & Engine Programmer and Original Game Design, and CON is an evolution of BGDA. I don't have the original to check. The BGDA engine was fabulous!

I presume he's working on the upcoming project(s) from Snowblind Studios which sadly we never hear about, and created Deathtank in his spare time as a bit of a hobby.