Hard work, intentionality, and most importantly luck.
There are many famous game devs including Shigeru Miyamoto, Todd Howard (I'm not sure if you were joking in your first comment because he definitely used to have a cult following), Peter Molyneux, Gabe Newell, Carmack and Romero, Will Wright.
[quote]There are many famous game devs including Shigeru Miyamoto, Todd Howard (I'm not sure if you were joking in your first comment because he definitely used to have a cult following), Peter Molyneux, Gabe Newell, Carmack and Romero, Will Wright.[/quote]
Well, I consider myself a serious gamer but I have no idea who Todd Howard is... <googles>... oh, Bethesda.
That kinda proves my point because I have bought and played most Bethesda titles. Had absolutely no idea who the lead designer/director was though.
However, I absolutely knew about Kojima from MGS 1 onwards...
You forgot Warren Spector btw :) But there was no "Peter Molyneux's Black and White", or "Will Wright's The Sims". Was there?
That would be Carmack. But Carmack and Romero are pretty much the Ryu and Ken, respectively, of 90s PC gaming, so their achievements are almost always considered together.
As for the most influential game designer, Miyamoto by a country mile. His games established or refined the modern vocabulary of the medium.
If we credit all of valve's accomplishments to Gabe I would argue he is up there as well, for the games, but even more for Steam, given the influence it has had on pc gaming, and indie games in particular.
Isn't that more applicable to John Carmack? If I remember it correctly, Romero was the game designer type, while Carmack was clearly the technician at id.
He was the "architect" in a literal sense of the word. Romero was the lead level designer for Doom and contributed prominently to the level design of Quake.
I probably should have left out "engines" from that sentence for it to be the most literally accurate.
One could argue that Quake's tone set the tone for half-life, which was a big advance for narrative storytelling in the medium, which means half-life in turn heavily influence the tone of the medium in future generations. There is a bit of a void in this thread that things run into after ~2010 where things like tone and storytelling are washed away in most games. Romero's influences were games of the time, but also HP Lovecraft. A lot of what is in Quake and Doom feels pretty original and influential. I'd be happy to be corrected though.
There are many famous game devs including Shigeru Miyamoto, Todd Howard (I'm not sure if you were joking in your first comment because he definitely used to have a cult following), Peter Molyneux, Gabe Newell, Carmack and Romero, Will Wright.