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 1Sonic Adventure is a 1998 platform game developed by Sonic Team and published by Sega for the Dreamcast. It was the first main Sonic the Hedgehog game to feature 3D gameplay. It follows Sonic the Hedgehog, Miles "Tails" Prower, Knuckles the Echidna, Amy Rose, Big the Cat, and E-102 Gamma in their quests to collect the Chaos Emeralds and stop Doctor Robotnik from unleashing Chaos, an ancient evil. Controlling one of the six characters—each with their own abilities—players complete levels to progress the story. Sonic Adventure retains many elements from prior Sonic games, such as power-ups and the ring-based health system. Players can play minigames such as racing and interact with Chao, a virtual pet.
Sonic Team began developing Sonic Adventure in 1997, after the cancellation of the Sega Saturn game Sonic X-treme. Led by director Takashi Iizuka and producer Yuji Naka, the team strove to reinvent Sonic for the 3D era of video games. Adventure features a stronger emphasis on storytelling and role-playing elements in contrast to previous Sonic games, while Yuji Uekawa redesigned the series's characters for their transition to 3D. Sonic Team attempted to demonstrate the technical prowess of the Dreamcast with realistic graphics and drew inspiration from locations in Peru and Guatemala. The soundtrack was primarily composed by Jun Senoue, who preferred rock music over the electropop of previous Sonic games.
Following its reveal at the Tokyo International Forum in August 1998, Sonic Adventure was highly anticipated and was released in Japan in December 1998, North America in September 1999, and Europe in October 1999. It received critical acclaim and became the Dreamcast's bestseller, with 2.5 million copies sold by August 2006. Reviewers considered Adventure a major technical advancement and praised the visuals and gameplay. Though critics noted glitches and camera problems, and reactions to the audio were mixed, they considered Sonic Adventure an exceptional game; some speculated that it could help re-establish Sega as the dominant console manufacturer after the unsuccessful Saturn. (Full article...) -
Image 2Ultima 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 3The Mana series, known in Japan as Seiken Densetsu (聖剣伝説, lit. The Legend of the Sacred Sword), is a high fantasy action role-playing game series created by Koichi Ishii, with development formerly from Square, and is currently owned by Square Enix. The series began in 1991 as Final Fantasy Adventure, a Game Boy handheld side story to Square's flagship franchise Final Fantasy. The Final Fantasy elements were subsequently dropped starting with the second installment, Secret of Mana, in order to become its own series. It has grown to include games of various genres within the fictional world of Mana, with recurring stories involving a world tree, its associated holy sword, and the fight against forces that would steal their power. Several character designs, creatures, and musical themes reappear frequently.
Four games were released in the series between 1991 and 1999: the original Seiken Densetsu (1991)—Final Fantasy Adventure in North America and Mystic Quest in Europe—for the Game Boy, Secret of Mana (1993) for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Trials of Mana (1995) for the Super Famicom, and Legend of Mana for the PlayStation. A remake of the original game, Sword of Mana (2003), was published for the Game Boy Advance. All of the original games were action role-playing games, though they included a wide variety of gameplay mechanics, and the stories of the games were connected only thematically.
In 2006 and 2007, four more games were released as part of the World of Mana subseries, an attempt by Square Enix to release games in a series over a variety of genres and consoles. These were Children of Mana (2006), an action-oriented dungeon crawler game for the Nintendo DS; Friends of Mana (2006), a Japan-only multiplayer role-playing game for mobile phones; Dawn of Mana (2006), a 3D action-adventure game for the PlayStation 2; and Heroes of Mana (2007), a real-time strategy game for the DS. Children was developed by Nex Entertainment and Heroes by Brownie Brown, founded by several developers of Legend, though Ishii oversaw development of all four games. Three more games have been released since the World of Mana subseries ended: Circle of Mana (2013), a Japan-only card battle game for the GREE mobile platform, Rise of Mana (2014), a Japan-only free-to-play action role-playing game for iOS, Android, and PlayStation Vita, and Adventures of Mana (2016), a 3D remake of Final Fantasy Adventure for the PlayStation Vita, iOS, and Android. In addition to the games, four manga series and one novelization have been released in the Mana franchise. (Full article...) -
Image 4Final Fantasy Type-0 is an action role-playing game developed and published by Square Enix for the PlayStation Portable (PSP). Released in Japan on October 27, 2011, Type-0 is part of the Fabula Nova Crystallis subseries, a set of games sharing a common mythos which includes Final Fantasy XIII and XV. The gameplay, similar to Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, has the player taking control of characters in real-time combat during missions across Orience. The player also engages in large-scale strategy-based battles on the world map, and has access to a multiplayer option during story missions and side quests.
The story focuses on Class Zero, a group of fourteen students from the Vermillion Peristylium, a magical academy in the Dominion of Rubrum. When the Militesi Empire launches an assault on the other Crystal States of Orience, seeking to control their respective crystals, Class Zero is mobilized for the defense of Rubrum. Eventually, the group becomes entangled in the secrets behind both the war and the reason for their existence. The setting and presentation were inspired by historical documentaries, and the story itself was written to be darker than other Final Fantasy titles.
The game was originally announced as a title for mobile phones and the PSP called Final Fantasy Agito XIII. It was directed by Hajime Tabata, who took up the project after completing Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII. Initially designed to provide players with easy access to the Fabula Nova Crystallis universe, the mobile version was eventually cancelled and the game's title was changed to distance it from the subseries' flagship title Final Fantasy XIII. Releasing to strong sales, it received praise for its story and gameplay, but was criticized for its camera control and artificial intelligence. Further games related to Type-0 have also been developed, including a high definition remaster that was released internationally in March 2015. (Full article...) -
Image 5Satoru 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.
Nintendo saw growth under Iwata and, when Yamauchi retired, he became the company's president in May 2002. Under Iwata's direction, Nintendo developed the Nintendo DS and Wii game consoles, helping the company achieve financial success. As a self-declared gamer, he focused on expanding the appeal of video games across demographics through a "blue ocean" business strategy. Nintendo attained record profits by 2009, and Barron's placed Iwata among the top 30 CEOs worldwide. Iwata expanded his strategy by defining a quality-of-life product line for the Wii that evolved into a ten-year strategy to create standalone products. Later hardware such as the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U proved far less profitable than the Wii, and Nintendo's net sales fell by two thirds from 2009 to 2012; the company saw its first operating losses in 30 years during this time. Iwata voluntarily halved his salary in 2011 and again in 2014. In 2015, after several years of refusal, Iwata put a portion of Nintendo's focus into the rapidly growing mobile game market; a landmark partnership with mobile provider DeNA was established that March. Throughout his career, Iwata built a relationship with Nintendo fans through social media and his regular appearances in Iwata Asks and Nintendo Direct, becoming the public face of the company. (Full article...) -
Image 6Final Fantasy XIII is a 2009 role-playing video game developed and published by Square Enix for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles and later for Windows (in 2014). Released in Japan in December 2009 and international in March 2010, it is the thirteenth title in the mainline Final Fantasy series. The game includes fast-paced combat, a new system for the series for determining which abilities are developed for the characters called "Crystarium", and a customizable "Paradigm" system to control which abilities are used by the characters. Final Fantasy XIII includes elements from the previous games in the series, such as summoned monsters, chocobos, and airships.
The game takes place in the fictional floating world of Cocoon, whose government, the Sanctum, is ordering a purge of civilians who have supposedly come into contact with Pulse, the much-feared world below. The former soldier Lightning begins her fight against the government in order to save her sister who has been branded as an unwilling servant to a god-like being from Pulse, making her an enemy of Cocoon. Lightning is soon joined by a band of allies, and together the group also become marked by the same Pulse creature. They rally against the Sanctum while trying to discover their assigned task and whether they can avoid being turned into monsters or crystals at the completion.
Development began in 2004, and the game was first announced at Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) 2006. Final Fantasy XIII is the flagship title of the Fabula Nova Crystallis collection of Final Fantasy games and is the first game to use Square Enix's Crystal Tools engine. Final Fantasy XIII was critically acclaimed in Japan and received mostly positive reviews from Western video game publications, which praised the game's graphics, presentation, and battle system. The game’s linearity received a more mixed reception from some critics. Selling 1.7 million copies in Japan in 2009, Final Fantasy XIII became the fastest-selling title in the history of the series. As of 2017, the game has sold over 7 million copies worldwide on consoles. The Windows version has sold over 746,000 copies according to SteamSpy. A sequel, titled Final Fantasy XIII-2, was released in December 2011 in Japan and in February 2012 in North America and PAL regions. A second sequel, titled Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, which concludes Lightning's story and the Final Fantasy XIII series, was released in November 2013 in Japan and in February 2014 in North America and PAL regions. As of September 2014, the Final Fantasy XIII series has shipped over 11 million copies worldwide. (Full article...) -
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Namco Limited was a Japanese multinational video game and entertainment company founded in 1955 which operated video arcades and amusement parks globally, produced video games, films, toys, and arcade cabinets. They were one of the most influential figures in the worldwide coin-op and arcade game industry; Namco produced several multi-million-selling game franchises, such as Pac-Man, Galaxian, Tekken, Tales, Ridge Racer, and Ace Combat. In 2006, Namco merged with Bandai to form what is now named Bandai Namco Holdings; the standalone Namco brand continues to be used for video arcade and other entertainment products by the group's Bandai Namco Amusements division.
The Namco name comes from Nakamura Manufacturing Company, derived from its founder Masaya Nakamura. In the 1960s, it manufactured electro-mechanical arcade games such as the 1965 hit Periscope. 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 market in 1984 with conversions of its arcade games for the MSX and the Nintendo Family Computer, later expanding to competing platforms, such as the Sega Genesis, TurboGrafx-16, and PlayStation. Namco continued to produce hit games in the 1990s, including Ridge Racer, Tekken, and Taiko no Tatsujin, but later endured financial difficulties due to the struggling Japanese economy and diminishing arcade market. This led to the 2005 announcement of a merge with toy maker Bandai, which was completed in 2006 as Namco Bandai Holdings; Namco's former video games division was merged into a subsidiary of the holdings company, Namco Bandai Games, now called Bandai Namco Entertainment. Namco is remembered in retrospect for its unique corporate model, its importance to the industry, and its advancements in technology. (Full article...) -
Image 8The Simpsons Game is a 2007 platform game based on the animated television series The Simpsons made for the Nintendo DS, Wii, Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable. The game was published and distributed by Electronic Arts. It was released in North America in October 2007 and worldwide in November 2007, a few months after The Simpsons Movie. It features an original storyline, not related to the movie, written by Simpsons writers Tim Long and Matt Warburton. In the self-referential plot, the family discovers that they are forced to participate in another The Simpsons video game. Similar to the show, the game pokes fun at popular culture, many other video games, and Electronic Arts, its publisher.
The game follows the five Simpsons family members—Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie—who learn they are part of a video game and are given superpowers to resolve several situations. Eventually, they must save their 8-bit predecessors from Will Wright, and the creator of their video game character selves, Matt Groening. The Simpsons family travels to four scenarios in parodies of other games to collect key cards used to infiltrate their creator's mansion and ultimately to save their predecessors from destruction to reverse their generations old ban on video games.
The game was met with mixed to positive reception from video game critics. They praised its visuals, writing, and faithfulness to the original material, while they criticized its short length and poor camera system, which did not always function properly. The Simpsons Game received the Best Game Based on a Movie or TV Show award at the 2007 Spike Video Game Awards and was nominated for Best Video Game Writing at the 2007 Writers Guild of America Awards. As of January 31, 2008, four million copies of the game have been sold worldwide. (Full article...) -
Image 9Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Wrath of the Darkhul King is a 2003 video game developed by the Japanese company Natsume and published by THQ for the Game Boy Advance. It is an action platformer and the third of six video games based on the supernatural television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Set in the show's fourth season, Wrath of the Darkhul King focuses on Buffy Summers who attempts to prevent a demonic warlord from initiating an apocalyptic event. The player controls Buffy through 16 levels that focus on solving puzzles and defeating enemies by using customizable weapons. THQ produced Wrath of the Darkhul King in a publishing agreement with Fox Interactive.
Natsume developed Wrath of the Darkhul King as an action game; dialogue was limited in order to focus on gameplay, and puzzles were added for variety. The game received generally negative reviews from critics, who disliked the controls, combat system, and level design. The graphics and audio received a more mixed response. Retrospective reviews of Wrath of the Darkhul King have remained negative. For two weeks, the game was in the top ten most-ordered games on Amazon. (Full article...) -
Image 10System Shock is a 1994 first-person action-adventure video game developed by LookingGlass Technologies and published by Origin Systems. It was directed by Doug Church with Warren Spector serving as producer. The game is set aboard a space station in a cyberpunk vision of the year 2072. Assuming the role of a nameless security hacker, the player attempts to hinder the plans of a malevolent artificial intelligence called SHODAN.
System Shock's 3D engine, physics simulation and complex gameplay have been cited as both innovative and influential. The developers sought to build on the emergent gameplay and immersive environments of their previous games, Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss and Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds, by streamlining their mechanics into a more "integrated whole"; it is considered one of the defining examples of an immersive sim.
Critics praised System Shock and hailed it as a major breakthrough in its genre. It was later placed on multiple hall of fame lists. The game was a moderate commercial success, with sales exceeding 170,000 copies, but Looking Glass ultimately lost money on the project. A sequel, System Shock 2, was released by Looking Glass Studios and offshoot developer Irrational Games in 1999. The 2000 game Deus Ex (produced and directed by Spector), the 2007 game BioShock, and the 2017 game Prey are spiritual successors to the two games. A remake by Nightdive Studios was released on 30 May 2023. (Full article...)
Did you know... - show different entries
- ... that the illustrations in the 1992 video game Tetris Classic are based on scenes from Alexander Pushkin's poem Ruslan and Ludmila?
- ... that the web-based video game Moderator Mayhem was based on a card game meant to demonstrate the difficulties of content moderation?
- ... that a video game consisting solely of a clickable image of a banana was briefly the second-most played game on Steam?
- ... that the character Psycho Mantis in the video game Metal Gear Solid breaks the fourth wall by identifying the player's other games?
- ... that a reviewer thought that the video game Robbery Bob contained cringeworthy dialogue?
- ... 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 classified documents of the United States were partially leaked onto a Discord server for the video game Minecraft?
- ... that the video game mode Ultimate Team has been criticized for its reliance on loot box packs, considered to be a controversial form of gambling?
- ... 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 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 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 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?
Selected biography – load new batch
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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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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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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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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 5Daigo Umehara (Japanese: 梅原 大吾, Hepburn: Umehara Daigo, born 19 May 1981) is a Japanese esports player and author who competes competitively at fighting video games. He specializes in 2D arcade fighting games, mainly those released by Capcom. Known as "Daigo" or "The Beast" in the West and "Umehara" (ウメハラ, written in katakana instead of kanji) or "Ume" in Japan, Daigo is one of the world's most famous Street Fighter players and is often considered its greatest. His longevity is seen as an incredibly rare thing in the world of competitive video games. He currently holds a world record of "the most successful player in major tournaments of Street Fighter" in the Guinness World Records and is a six time Evo Championship Series winner.
Before properly being called a pro gamer from signing a sponsorship deal with Mad Catz, Japanese media usually referred to Daigo as "the god of 2D fighting games" (2D格闘ゲームの神, 2D Kakutō Gēmu no Kami). (Full article...) -
Image 6Keiji Inafune (稲船 敬二, Inafune Keiji, born 8 May 1965) is a Japanese video game producer, character designer, game designer, and businessman. In 2009, he was chosen by IGN as one of the top 100 game creators of all time.
Starting his career at Capcom in the late 1980s, his job was as an artist and illustrator. The first two games he worked on were the original Street Fighter and Mega Man in 1987. He was then a character designer and planner of the Mega Man series during the NES and Super NES era. For Mega Man X, he created and designed the character Zero. (Full article...) -
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Alfonso John Romero (born October 28, 1967) is an American video game developer. He co-founded 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 the id 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, he and another former id employee, Tom Hall, founded Monkeystone Games to develop games for mobile devices. (Full article...) -
Image 8Yuji Naka (中 裕司, Naka Yūji, born September 17, 1965), credited in some games as YU2, is a former Japanese video game programmer, designer and producer. He is the co-creator of the Sonic the Hedgehog series and was the president of Sonic Team at Sega until his departure in 2006.
Naka joined Sega in 1984 and worked on games including Girl's Garden (1985) and Phantasy Star II (1989). He was the lead programmer of the original Sonic the Hedgehog games on the Mega Drive in the early 1990s, which greatly increased Sega's market share. Naka developed Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (1992), Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (1994) and Sonic & Knuckles (1994) in California with Sega Technical Institute. (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 October 2024[update], his channel had over 37 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...) -
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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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Nolan North (born October 31, 1970) is an American actor best known for his voice acting roles.
After his breakthrough role as Dr. Chris Ramsey on the ABC soap opera Port Charles in 1997, North moved into voice acting when the show ended in 2003 and has since become best known for his video game roles as Nathan Drake in the Uncharted series, Desmond Miles in the Assassin's Creed series, Merasmus in Team Fortress 2, the Prince in Prince of Persia, Dr. Edward Richtofen in the Call of Duty franchise, Deadpool in various Marvel Comics media, the Penguin in the Batman: Arkham franchise, Captain Martin Walker in Spec Ops: The Line, David in The Last of Us, himself as one of the voices for the player character in Saints Row IV, Tony Stark in Marvel's Avengers, and Ghost in the Destiny video game series. (Full article...) -
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Ralph Henry Baer (born Rudolf Heinrich Baer; March 8, 1922 – December 6, 2014) was a German-American inventor, game developer, and engineer.
Baer's family fled Germany just before World War II and Baer served the American war effort, gaining an interest in electronics shortly thereafter. Through several jobs in the electronics industry, he was working as an engineer at Sanders Associates (now BAE Systems) in Nashua, New Hampshire, when he conceived the idea of playing games on a television screen around 1966. With support of his employers, he worked through several prototypes until he arrived at a "Brown Box" that would later become the blueprint for the first home video game console, licensed by Magnavox as the Magnavox Odyssey. Baer continued to design several other consoles and computer game units, including contributing to design of the Simon electronic game. Baer continued to work in electronics until his death in 2014, with over 150 patents to his name. (Full article...) -
Image 13Jun Maeda (麻枝 准, Maeda Jun, born January 3, 1975) is a Japanese writer and composer. He is a co-founder of the visual novel brand Key under Visual Arts. He is considered a pioneer of nakige visual novels, and has mainly contributed as a scenario writer, lyricist, and musical composer for the games the company produces.
After graduating with a degree in psychology from Chukyo University, Maeda contributed to the scripts and scores of games released under the Tactics brand of Nexton: Moon and One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e. He has contributed both to writing music and scripts to most games released under the Key brand, notably writing the majority of Air and Clannad. He also served as a screenwriter and composer for several anime series produced by P.A. Works, such as Angel Beats! and Charlotte. (Full article...) -
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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...) -
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Gabe Logan Newell (born November 3, 1962), also known by his nickname Gaben, is an American businessman who is the president and co-founder of the video game company Valve Corporation.
Newell was born in Colorado and grew up in Davis, California. He attended Harvard University in the early 1980s but dropped out to join Microsoft, where he helped create the first versions of the Windows operating system. He and another employee, Mike Harrington, left Microsoft in 1996 to found Valve, and funded the development of their first game, Half-Life (1998). Harrington left in 2000. (Full article...) -
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Todd Andrew Howard (born 1970) is an American video game designer, director, and producer. He serves as director and executive producer at Bethesda Game Studios, where he has led the development of the Fallout and The Elder Scrolls series. He was also the game director for Starfield. (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...) -
Image 18Yu Suzuki (鈴木 裕, Suzuki Yū, born June 10, 1958) is a Japanese game designer, producer, programmer, and engineer, who headed Sega's AM2 team for 18 years. Considered one of the first auteurs of video games, he has been responsible for a number of Sega's arcade hits, including three-dimensional sprite-scaling games that used "taikan" motion simulator arcade cabinets, such as Hang-On, Space Harrier, Out Run and After Burner, and pioneering polygonal 3D games such as Virtua Racing and Virtua Fighter, which are some of the games besides others from rival companies during that era credited with popularizing 3D graphics in video games; as well as the critically acclaimed Shenmue series. As a hardware engineer, he led the development of various arcade system boards, including the Sega Space Harrier, Model 1, Model 2 and Model 3, and was involved in the technical development of the Dreamcast console and its corresponding NAOMI arcade hardware.
In 2003, Suzuki became the sixth person to be inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences' Hall of Fame. IGN listed him at #9 in their Top 100 Game Creators of All Time list. In 2011, he received the Pioneer Award at the Game Developers Choice Awards. (Full article...) -
Image 19Hideo 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...) -
Image 20Satoshi 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 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...) -
Image 22Shinji 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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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...) -
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Steven Scott Ritchie (born February 13, 1950) is an American pinball and video game designer. His career began in the 1970s. Ritchie holds the record for best-selling pinball designer in history. He has been called "The Master of Flow" due to the emphasis in his designs on ball speed, loops, and long smooth shots. Ritchie was also the original voice of Shao Kahn in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series, serving as the announcer of Mortal Kombat II (1993), Mortal Kombat 3 (1995), and the updates to Mortal Kombat 3. He is the older brother of fellow pinball designer Mark Ritchie. (Full article...) -
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William Ralph Wright (born January 20, 1960) is an American video game designer and co-founder of the game development company Maxis, which later became part of Electronic Arts. In April 2009, he left EA to run Stupid Fun Club Camp, an entertainment think tank in which Wright and EA are principal shareholders.
The first computer game Wright designed was Raid on Bungeling Bay in 1984, but it was SimCity that brought him to prominence. The game was published by Maxis, which Wright co-formed with Jeff Braun. Wright continued to innovate on the game's central theme of simulation with numerous other titles including SimEarth and SimAnt. (Full article...)
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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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