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 1Five Nights at Freddy's (FNaF) is a 2014 point-and-click survival horror game developed and published by Scott Cawthon. The player controls Mike Schmidt, a night security guard at a family pizzeria. Schmidt must complete his shifts while avoiding the homicidal animatronic characters that wander the restaurant at night. The player has access to security cameras to monitor the animatronics throughout the shift, and a set of steel doors that can lock out the characters. Using the cameras and doors consumes the player's limited electricity, and draining all of the power causes these tools to become inoperable. If the player fails to keep the animatronics out of the office, they will be jumpscared and experience a game over.
Cawthon conceived the idea for Five Nights at Freddy's based on criticism of his previous game, Chipper & Sons Lumber Co. Reviewers complained of its unintentionally frightening characters that had animatronic-like movement, inspiring Cawthon to create an intentionally scarier experience. Developed in six months using the Clickteam Fusion 2.5 game engine, Five Nights at Freddy's was released for Windows through Desura on August 8, 2014, and through Steam on August 18. It was made available for Android, iOS, and Windows Phone later in 2014. Versions for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One were released in 2019.
Five Nights at Freddy's received generally positive reviews from critics, many considering it a frightening and unique horror game. Reviewers praised the atmosphere, sound design, and gameplay mechanics, although some found the jumpscares repetitive and the game to have little replay value. It became the subject of Let's Play videos on YouTube and gained a large fan following. The game's success led to the launch of a media franchise, including many sequels and books, and its popularity led to several imitations and fangames. Its successor and chronological prequel, Five Nights at Freddy's 2, was released on November 10 of the same year. A film adaptation by Blumhouse Productions was released in 2023. (Full article...) -
Image 2Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number is a 2015 top-down shooter video game co-developed by Dennaton Games and Abstraction Games and published by Devolver Digital. The game takes place before, during, and after the events of Hotline Miami (2012), focusing on the background and aftermath of the massacres committed against the Russian mafia in Miami by Jacket, the protagonist of the previous game. The player takes on the role of several different characters during the game, witnessing the events from different perspectives across the United States. In each level of the game, the player is tasked with defeating every enemy through any means possible. In the version of the game released on Steam, the player has access to a level editor, allowing them to create and share custom levels with other players.
The game was initially conceived as downloadable content for the previous game, but became a standalone sequel after its length surpassed that of the original. The game was first announced in December 2012 via Jonatan Söderström's Twitter. Developed as the final installment in the series, Dennaton incorporated all unused concepts from the first game's development into the sequel. It was formally announced at E3 2013, and after a few delays, was released worldwide on 10 March 2015 for Linux, OS X, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, and Windows.
Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number received generally positive reviews from critics, with reviewers praising the soundtrack and gameplay, but having diverse opinions on the level design and ending. A scene depicting sexual assault triggered a mostly negative response from media outlets and resulted in the game being refused classification in Australia. A localised version was released in Japan on 25 June 2015 as part of Hotline Miami: Collected Edition. An Android port was released on 4 August. The game was ported onto Nintendo Switch alongside the first game in the Hotline Miami Collection in 2019, which was later ported onto the Xbox One and Stadia in 2020 and the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S in 2023. (Full article...) -
Image 3The Sega Genesis, known as the Mega Drive outside North America, is a 16-bit fourth generation home video game console developed and sold by Sega. It was Sega's third console and the successor to the Master System. Sega released it in 1988 in Japan as the Mega Drive, and in 1989 in North America as the Genesis. In 1990, it was distributed as the Mega Drive by Virgin Mastertronic in Europe, Ozisoft in Australasia, and Tectoy in Brazil. In South Korea, it was distributed by Samsung Electronics as the Super Gam*Boy and later the Super Aladdin Boy.
Designed by an R&D team supervised by Hideki Sato and Masami Ishikawa, the Genesis was adapted from Sega's System 16 arcade board, centered on a Motorola 68000 processor as the CPU, a Zilog Z80 as a sound controller, and a video system supporting hardware sprites, tiles, and scrolling. It plays a library of more than 900 games on ROM-based cartridges. Several add-ons were released, including a Power Base Converter to play Master System games. It was released in several different versions, some created by third parties. Sega created two network services to support the Genesis: Sega Meganet and Sega Channel.
In Japan, the Mega Drive fared poorly against its two main competitors, Nintendo's Super Famicom and NEC's PC Engine, but it achieved considerable success in North America, Brazil, and Europe. Contributing to its success was its library of arcade game ports, the popularity of Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog series, several popular sports franchises, and aggressive youth marketing that positioned it as the cool console for adolescents. The 1991 North American release of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System triggered a fierce battle for market share in the United States and Europe known as the "console war". This drew attention to the video game industry, and the Genesis and several of its games attracted legal scrutiny on matters involving reverse engineering and video game violence. Controversy surrounding violent games such as Night Trap and Mortal Kombat led Sega to create the Videogame Rating Council, a predecessor to the Entertainment Software Rating Board. (Full article...) -
Image 4Chrono Trigger (Japanese: クロノ・トリガー, Hepburn: Kurono Torigā) is a 1995 role-playing video game developed and published by Square. It was originally released for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System as the first entry in the Chrono series. The game's development team included three designers that Square dubbed the "Dream Team": Hironobu Sakaguchi, creator of Square's Final Fantasy series; Yuji Horii, creator of Enix's Dragon Quest series; and Akira Toriyama, character designer of Dragon Quest and author of the Dragon Ball manga series. In addition, Takashi Tokita co-directed the game and co-wrote the scenario, Kazuhiko Aoki produced the game, while Masato Kato wrote most of the story. The game's plot follows a group of adventurers who travel through time to prevent a global catastrophe.
Chrono Trigger was a critical and commercial success upon release, receiving multiple accolades from gaming publications, and is considered one of fourth-generation console gaming's most significant titles and among the greatest video games ever made. Nintendo Power magazine described aspects of the game as revolutionary, including its multiple endings, plot-related side-quests focusing on character development, unique battle system, and detailed graphics. The game's soundtrack, scored by Yasunori Mitsuda with assistance from veteran Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu, has been hailed as one of the best video game soundtracks of all time. Chrono Trigger was the second best-selling game of 1995 in Japan, and the various incarnations of the game have shipped more than 3.5 million copies worldwide.
Distributed in the Japanese and North American markets in 1995, the game has been re-released on several other platforms with varying differences. Square published a ported version by Tose in Japan for the PlayStation in 1999, which was later repackaged with a Final Fantasy IV port as Final Fantasy Chronicles (2001) exclusively in North America. A slightly enhanced Chrono Trigger, again ported by Tose, was released for the Nintendo DS in Japan and North America in 2008, and PAL regions in 2009. The game has also been ported to i-mode, the Virtual Console, the PlayStation Network, iOS, and Android. In 2018, a higher resolution version was released for Windows via Steam. (Full article...) -
Image 5Plants vs. Zombies is a 2009 tower defense video game developed and published by PopCap Games. First released for Windows and Mac OS X, the game has since been ported to consoles, handhelds, and mobile devices. The player takes the role of a homeowner amid a zombie apocalypse. As a horde of zombies approaches along several parallel lanes, the player must defend their home by placing plants, which fire projectiles at the zombies or otherwise detrimentally affect them. The player collects a currency called sun to buy plants. If a zombie happens to make it to the house on any lane, the player loses the level.
Plants vs. Zombies was designed by George Fan, who conceptualized it as a more defense-oriented sequel to his fish simulator game Insaniquarium (2001), then developed it into a tower defense game featuring plants fighting against zombies. The game took inspiration from the games Magic: The Gathering and Warcraft III; along with the movie Swiss Family Robinson. It took three and a half years to make Plants vs. Zombies. Rich Werner was the main artist, Tod Semple programmed the game, and Laura Shigihara composed the game's music. In order to appeal to both casual and hardcore gamers, the tutorial was designed to be simple and spread throughout Plants vs. Zombies.
Plants vs. Zombies was positively received by critics and was nominated for multiple awards, including "Download Game of the Year" and "Strategy Game of the Year" as part of the Golden Joystick Awards 2010. Reviewers praised the game's humorous art style, simplistic but engaging gameplay, and soundtrack. Upon release in May 2009, it was the fastest-selling video game developed by PopCap Games and quickly became their best-selling game, surpassing Bejeweled and Peggle. By 2010, it had sold over a million copies worldwide and has since been considered one of the greatest video games of all time. In 2011, PopCap was bought by Electronic Arts (EA). The company laid off Fan and 49 other employees, marking a change of focus to mobile and social gaming. After the buyout, Plants vs. Zombies was followed by a multimedia franchise including two sequels, three third-person shooters, two comic book series, and several spin-off games, most of which have received positive reviews. (Full article...) -
Image 6Knight Lore is a 1984 action-adventure game developed and published by Ultimate Play the Game, and written by company founders Chris and Tim Stamper. The game is known for its use of isometric graphics, which it further popularized in video games. In Knight Lore, the player character Sabreman has forty days to collect objects throughout a castle and brew a cure to his werewolf curse. Each castle room is depicted in monochrome on its own screen and consists of blocks to climb, obstacles to avoid, and puzzles to solve.
Ultimate released Knight Lore third in the Sabreman series but later claimed to have completed it first and withheld its release for a year to position the company advantageously in anticipation of the game's effect on the market. Knight Lore's novel image masking technique, Filmation, let images appear to pass atop and behind each other without their contents colliding. This created the illusion of depth priority, which the computer did not natively support. By delaying Knight Lore's release, Ultimate protected sales of their then-upcoming Sabre Wulf and created another Filmation game before other developers could copy the style. Ultimate released the original Sabreman trilogy in quick succession in 1984 for the ZX Spectrum. Knight Lore came last, in November. Ports followed for the BBC Micro, Amstrad CPC, MSX, and Family Computer Disk System.
Knight Lore is regarded as a seminal work in British video game history and has been included in multiple lists of top Spectrum games. Critics considered its technical solutions and isometric 3D style a harbinger of future game design. They praised the game's controls and atmosphere of mystery, but noted its difficult gameplay and criticised its sound and occasional graphical slowdown. Knight Lore was named the 1984 game of the year by the Golden Joystick Awards and Popular Computing Weekly readers. Though it was not the first isometric 3D video game, Knight Lore popularised the format. When the isometric, flip-screen style fell out of fashion, Knight Lore's influence persisted in computer role-playing games. Retrospective reviewers remember the game as the first to offer an exploratory "world" rather than a flat surface, but consider its controls outdated and frustrating in the thirty years since its release. (Full article...) -
Image 7Shadow of the Colossus is a 2005 action-adventure game developed by Japan Studio and Team Ico, and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation 2. It takes place in a fantasy setting and follows Wander, a young man who enters an isolated and abandoned region of the realm seeking the power to revive a girl named Mono. The player assumes the role of Wander as he embarks on a mission that might entail Mono's resurrection: to locate and destroy the colossi, sixteen massive beings spread across the forbidden land, which the protagonist traverses by horseback and on foot.
The game was directed by Fumito Ueda and developed at Sony Computer Entertainment's International Production Studio 1, also known as Team Ico, the same development team responsible for the acclaimed PlayStation 2 title Ico, to which the game is considered a spiritual successor. Сonceived as an online multiplayer game titled NICO directly after Ico's completion, Shadow of the Colossus underwent a lengthy production cycle during which it was redeveloped as a single-player title. The team sought to create an outstanding interactive experience by including a distinct visual design, an unorthodox gameplay template, and non-player characters with sophisticated artificial intelligence such as the colossi and Wander's horse, Agro.
Cited as an influential title in the video game industry and one of the best video games ever made, Shadow of the Colossus is often regarded as an important example of video games as art due to its minimalist landscape designs, immersive gameplay, and emotional weight of the player character's journey. It received wide critical acclaim by the media and was met with strong sales compared to Ico, due in part to a larger marketing campaign. The game won several awards for its audio, design, and overall quality. A remastered version for the PlayStation 3 was released alongside Ico as The Ico & Shadow of the Colossus Collection in September 2011, developed by Bluepoint Games, who later produced a remake in high definition of the game for the PlayStation 4 in 2018. (Full article...) -
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Rockstar San Diego, Inc. (formerly Angel Studios, Inc.) is an American video game developer and a studio of Rockstar Games based in Carlsbad, California. The studio is best known for developing the Midnight Club and Red Dead series.
The Colombian entrepreneur Diego Angel founded the company as Angel Studios in January 1984 after studying film in Chicago, where he had grown fond of computer animation. The studio began with a focus on animation and visual effects for multimedia productions, such as advertisements, films, and music videos. Notable works include the film The Lawnmower Man and the music video for Peter Gabriel's song "Kiss That Frog". Angel Studios began working in the video game industry during the 1990s, creating cutscenes for Ed Annunziata's Ecco: The Tides of Time (1994) and Mr. Bones (1996). The company fully developed games with Nintendo (Major League Baseball Featuring Ken Griffey Jr. and Ken Griffey Jr.'s Slugfest) and Microsoft (Midtown Madness and Midtown Madness 2), and it produced a port of Capcom's Resident Evil 2 for the Nintendo 64.
Rockstar Games was impressed with the studio's work on Midtown Madness and offered a long-term partnership in 1999, which resulted in the creation of the Midnight Club and Smuggler's Run series. The publisher's parent company, Take-Two Interactive, acquired Angel Studios in November 2002 and integrated it with Rockstar Games as Rockstar San Diego. Angel left the studio in May 2005 and returned to Colombia. Since 2004, Rockstar San Diego has operated an internal game engine team that develops Rockstar Games's proprietary Rockstar Advanced Game Engine, which is used in most of the publisher's titles. The studio led the development of further Midnight Club games, Red Dead Revolver (2004), Red Dead Redemption (2010), and its expansion pack Undead Nightmare. It collaborated with other Rockstar Games studios on Max Payne 3 (2012), Grand Theft Auto V (2013), and Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018). (Full article...) -
Image 9The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II is a 2006 real-time strategy video game developed and published by Electronic Arts. The second part of the Middle-earth strategy game series, it is based on the fantasy novels The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien and its live-action film series adaptation. It is the sequel to Electronic Arts' 2004 title The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth. Along with the standard edition, a Collector's Edition of the game was released, containing bonus material and a documentary about the game's development.
The story for The Battle for Middle-earth II is divided into Good and Evil Campaigns. The Good Campaign focuses on Glorfindel, an Elf who is alerted to a planned attack on the Elven sanctuary of Rivendell. With help from the Dwarves and other Good forces, the Elves attempt to eliminate Sauron and his army to restore peace in Middle-earth. In the Evil Campaign, Sauron sends the Mouth of Sauron and the Nazgûl to muster wild Goblins. With his army, Sauron moves forward with his plan to destroy the remaining Good forces in the North. The Windows version of the game was released in March 2006 and the Xbox 360 version was released in July 2006.
The Battle for Middle-earth II received generally favorable reviews from video game critics. Reviews praised the game's integration of the Lord of the Rings universe into a real-time strategy title, while criticism targeted the game's unbalanced multiplayer mode. The Battle for Middle-earth II received numerous awards, including the Editors' Choice Award from IGN. At the end of March 2006, The Battle for Middle-earth II reached fourth in a list of the month's best-selling PC games. A Windows expansion pack for the game was released in November 2006, called The Rise of the Witch-king, which features a new faction known as Angmar, new units, and several gameplay improvements. The official game servers were shut down for Windows in 2010 and Xbox 360 in 2011; however Windows users may still play online using unofficial game servers. (Full article...) -
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Namco Limited was a Japanese multinational video game and entertainment company, headquartered in Ōta, Tokyo. It held several international branches, including Namco America in Santa Clara, California, Namco Europe in London, Namco Taiwan in Kaohsiung, and Shanghai Namco in mainland China.
Namco was founded by Masaya Nakamura on June 1, 1955, as Nakamura Seisakusho, beginning as an operator of coin-operated amusement rides. After reorganizing to Nakamura Seisakusho Co., Ltd. in 1959, a partnership with Walt Disney Productions provided the company with the resources to expand its operations. In the 1960s, it manufactured electro-mechanical arcade games such as the 1965 hit Periscope. The name comes from Nakamura Manufacturing Company. It entered the video game industry after acquiring the struggling Japanese division of Atari in 1974, distributing games such as Breakout in Japan. The company renamed itself Namco in 1977 and published Gee Bee, its first original video game, a year later. Among Namco's first major hits was the fixed shooter Galaxian in 1979. It was followed by Pac-Man in 1980. Namco prospered during the golden age of arcade video games in the early 1980s, releasing popular titles such as Galaga, Xevious, and Pole Position.
Namco entered the home console market in 1984 with conversions of its arcade games for the MSX and the Nintendo Family Computer. Its American division majority-acquired Atari Games in 1985, before selling a portion of it in 1987 following disagreements between the two companies. Arguments over licensing contracts with Nintendo led Namco to produce games for competing platforms, such as the Sega Genesis, TurboGrafx-16, and PlayStation. (Full article...)
Did you know... - show different entries
- ... that the game designer of the video game Hades said that the characters were attractive "because Jen Zee"?
- ... that the contrabass trombone has experienced a revival in film music and video game soundtracks?
- ... that deceased YouTuber Technoblade beat the video game Minecraft in hardcore mode using a racing-wheel controller?
- ... that Elena from the video game series Street Fighter uses a capoeira fighting style, for which the development team used travel videos as reference material as they had no experience with the style?
- ... that MicroProse was formed to publish Hellcat Ace after Sid Meier boasted that he could design a better video game than Red Baron in a week?
- ... that the urban legend Herobrine was ranked on a Guinness World Records poll of the best video game villains, despite never existing?
- ... that the video game Serious Sam: Tormental was originally inspired by Geometry Wars?
- ... that the video game Fursan al-Aqsa received an update that allows players to reenact the October 7 attacks on Israel?
- ... that the developers of the video game Golf Club: Wasteland jokingly announced that they would only sell one copy at a price of $500 million?
- ... 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?
- ... that a version of the video game Rhino Rumble was not released due to the creators not wanting to add licensed characters?
- ... that the illustrations in the 1992 video game Tetris Classic are based on scenes from Alexander Pushkin's poem Ruslan and Ludmila?
Selected biography – load new batch
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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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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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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 4Satoshi 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...) -
Image 5Yoko 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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Image 6Yu 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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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...) -
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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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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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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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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 and 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 and Tomb Raider. (Full article...) -
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Mark Edward Fischbach (/ˈfɪʃˌbɑːk/ FISH-bahk; born June 28, 1989), known online as Markiplier, is an American YouTuber, actor and filmmaker. He mainly uploads Let's Plays and is known for his videos of indie horror games. After joining YouTube in 2012, Fischbach became popular on the platform with Let's Plays of Amnesia: The Dark Descent (2010) and the Five Nights at Freddy's series. As of August 2024[update], his channel had over 36.8 million subscribers.
Fischbach is one of the most popular gaming YouTubers on the platform. He was listed by Forbes as the third highest-paid content creator on the platform in 2022, and has won four Streamy Awards and a Golden Joystick Award for "Best Streamer/Broadcaster". (Full article...) -
Image 13Tokuro Fujiwara (藤原 得郎, Fujiwara Tokurō, born April 7, 1961), sometimes credited as Professor F or Arthur King, is a Japanese video game designer, involved in the development of many classic Capcom video games. He directed early Capcom titles such as the run-and-gun shooter Commando (1985), the platformers Ghosts 'n Goblins (1985) and Bionic Commando (1987), and the survival horror game Sweet Home (1989). He was also a main producer for the Mega Man series and worked on the CP System arcade game Strider (1989). He also conceived of Resident Evil as a remake of his earlier game Sweet Home and worked on the game as general producer. He worked as the general manager of the Capcom Console Games Division from 1988 to 1996.
After working at Capcom for thirteen years, he left the company to form his own studio, Whoopee Camp. His last game was Ghosts 'n Goblins Resurrection for former employer Capcom. He is notorious for making his titles difficult for the average video game player and strict personality among peers. IGN listed Fujiwara at number 13 in its "Top 100 Game Creators of All Time" list. (Full article...) -
Image 14Shinji Mikami (三上 真司, Mikami Shinji, born August 11, 1965) is a Japanese video game designer, director, and producer. Starting his career at Capcom in 1990, he has worked on many of the company's most successful games. He directed the first installment of the Resident Evil series in 1996 and the first installment of the Dino Crisis series in 1999, both survival horror games. He returned to Resident Evil to direct the remake of the first game in 2002 and the third-person shooter Resident Evil 4 in 2005. In 2006, he directed his final Capcom game God Hand, a beat 'em up action game. Mikami founded PlatinumGames and directed the third-person shooter Vanquish in 2010. The same year, he founded his own studio Tango Gameworks which has since been acquired by the American company ZeniMax Media. Under his studio, he directed the third-person horror game The Evil Within in 2014. He has also served the roles of producer and executive producer for many games.
In 2009, he was chosen by IGN as one of the top 100 game creators of all time. (Full article...) -
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Jeremy Soule (/soʊl/ SOHL; born December 19, 1975) is an American composer of soundtracks for film, television, and video games. He has composed soundtracks for over 60 games and over a dozen other works during his career, including The Elder Scrolls, Guild Wars, Icewind Dale, and the Harry Potter series.
He became an employee of Square in 1994 after several years of private composition studies. After finishing the soundtrack to Secret of Evermore in 1995, he left to join Humongous Entertainment, where he composed for several children's games as well as Total Annihilation, his first award-winning score. In 2000, he left to form his own music production company, Soule Media, later called Artistry Entertainment. In 2005, he founded DirectSong, a record label that published digital versions of his soundtracks as well as those of classical composers. DirectSong remained active until 2019. (Full article...) -
Image 16Shigeru 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...) -
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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...) -
Image 18Tomohiro Nishikado (西角 友宏, Nishikado Tomohiro, born March 31, 1944) is a Japanese video game developer and engineer. He is the creator of the arcade shoot 'em up game Space Invaders, released to the public in 1978 by the Taito Corporation of Japan, often credited as the first shoot 'em up and for beginning the golden age of arcade video games. Prior to Space Invaders, he also designed other earlier Taito arcade games, including the shooting electro-mechanical games Sky Fighter (1971) and Sky Fighter II, the sports video game TV Basketball in 1974, the vertical scrolling racing video game Speed Race (also known as Wheels) in 1974, the multi-directional shooter Western Gun (also known as Gun Fight) in 1975, and the first-person combat flight simulator Interceptor (1975). (Full article...)
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Image 19Hironobu Sakaguchi (坂口 博信, Sakaguchi Hironobu, born November 25, 1962) is a Japanese game designer, director, producer, and writer. Originally working for Square (later Square Enix) from 1983 to 2003, he departed the company and founded independent studio Mistwalker in 2004. He is known as the creator of the Final Fantasy franchise, in addition to other titles during his time at Square. At Mistwalker, he is known for creating the Blue Dragon and Terra Battle series among several standalone titles, moving away from home consoles and creating titles for mobile platforms.
Originally intending to become a musician, he briefly studied electronics and programming, joining Square as a part-time employee, then later a full-time employee when Square became an independent company in 1986. He led the development of several titles before helping to create the original Final Fantasy, which proved highly successful and cemented his status within the company. Following the financial failure of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, his debut as a film director, Sakaguchi withdrew from Square's management and eventually resigned in 2003. He continued his game career through Mistwalker, first co-developing projects through external partners and then smaller in-studio mobile projects. (Full article...) -
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James D. Rolfe (born July 10, 1980) is an American YouTuber, filmmaker, and actor. He is best known for creating and starring in the comedic retrogaming web series Angry Video Game Nerd (2004–present). His spin-off projects include reviews of retro films, television series, and board games. He is considered a pioneer of Internet gaming videos, and is noted for his widespread influence on YouTube content after the series premiered on the site in 2006.
Rolfe began creating homemade video productions in the late 1980s, having created more than 270 videos and short films by 2004. Among these were the first Angry Video Game Nerd (originally known as Bad NES Games, and later Angry Nintendo Nerd) episodes, which were subsequently released on his Cinemassacre website that same year. Two years later, he gained mainstream attention after the series went viral upon being published to YouTube. Following its success, Rolfe released a feature-length film based on the series in 2014, which was met with generally mixed reception. (Full article...) -
Image 21Koji Kondo (Japanese: 近藤 浩治, Hepburn: Kondō Kōji, August 13, 1961) is a Japanese composer and pianist at the video game company Nintendo. He is best known for his contributions for the Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda series, with his Super Mario Bros. theme being the first piece of music from a video game included in the American National Recording Registry. Kondo was hired by Nintendo in 1984 as their first dedicated composer and is currently a senior executive within their Entertainment Planning & Development division. (Full article...)
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Image 22
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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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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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 25Hideo 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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Recent video game-related events
- 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)
- April 16, 2024 – 2023–2024 video game industry layoffs
- American video game company Take-Two Interactive lays off 5% of its workforce. (Reuters)
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