Computer Game Designer

Jordan Mechner (born 1964) is a game programmer, game designer, and movie director. Mechner was born in New York City and graduated from Yale University in 1985. Mechner's first hit game was Karateka (1984), written while he was still an undergraduate. Prince of...

Robert Cook is a co-founder of Metaweb. He was a software programmer at Brøderbund in the 1980s and was the model for one of the characters in Jordan Mechner's game Prince of Persia. He designed and created the computer game D/Generation and was technical director for...

Sidney K. Meier (born 1954 in Detroit, Michigan) is an American programmer and designer of some of the most commercially and critically successful computer strategy game of all time. Meier has won several accolades for both his contributions to the computer games...

William Ralph Wright, Jr. (born January 20 1960 in Atlanta, Georgia) is an American computer game designer and co-founder of the game development company Maxis, now part of Electronic Arts. He is best known as the original designer of computer game such as SimCity...

Silas Warner (18 August 1949 – 3 March 2004) was a game programmer and the first employee of Muse Software. Among other games, he created Castle Wolfenstein and Beyond Castle Wolfenstein. These two games inspired id Software to create Wolfenstein 3D, the game that...

is a Japanese video game designer. He is the creator of the Mario, Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, Star Fox, F-Zero and Pikmin video game series, among others, for Nintendo game systems. He has also supervised many titles published by Nintendo on behalf of other...

Chris Crawford is a noted computer game designer and writer, responsible for a number of important games in the 1980s, for founding The Journal of Computer Game Design and for organizing the Computer Game Developers' Conference. After receiving a B.S. in physics from...

Brian Reynolds (born 1967) is a well known computer strategy game designer, formerly of MicroProse and Firaxis Games. He now runs his own game development company, Big Huge Games where he is CEO and creative director, and has been chairman of the International Game...

Chris Roberts (born May 27, 1968) is a computer game designer and programmer and a film producer and director. Often hailed as a visionary, he is best known for creating the popular Wing Commander series while employed at Origin Systems. Born in Redwood City,...

Roberta Heuer Williams (born February 16, 1953) is a retired computer game designer. She is perhaps most famous for her pioneering work in graphical adventure games, particularly the King's Quest series. In the eighties and nineties, Roberta and her husband, Ken...

Ken Williams (born October 1954) is an American game programmer and co-founder with his wife Roberta Williams of On-Line Systems, which later became Sierra On-Line. Roberta and Ken married at the age of 19 and have two children. The couple have been leading figures in...

Gary Grigsby is a computerized wargame designer and programmer. Grigsby's games were published by Strategic Simulations, Inc. (SSI) from his first game design in 1982 until 1997. During that time he created several titles that are considered classics of the wargame...

Warren Spector is a veteran computer game designer. He is known for having worked to merge elements of role-playing games and first-person shooters. He currently resides in Austin, Texas with his wife, fantasy writer Caroline Spector. Spector earned his BS in...

Robyn Charles Miller (born August 6, 1966, in Dallas, Texas) co-founded Cyan Worlds (originally Cyan) with brother Rand Miller. After releasing a number of children's adventure "worlds", the brothers finally hit on a success with the computer game Myst, which remained...

Rand Miller (born January 17, 1959, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.) co-founded Cyan (now Cyan Worlds) with brother Robyn Miller and became famous from the unexpected success of their computer game Myst, which remained the number one-selling game for the remainder...

Eugene Peyton Jarvis (born 1955) is a game designer and programmer, producing pinball machines for Atari and video game for Williams Electronics. Most notable amongst his works are the seminal arcade video game Defender and Robotron: 2084 in the early 1980, and the...

Joe Ybarra (born ~1954) is one of the original game producer at Electronic Arts in 1982 (along with Stewart Bonn, Dave Evans, Susan Lee-Merrow and Pat Marriott), where the concept of a game producer was created by Trip Hawkins. During this time he produced several...

Raymond Elias Feist (born 1945, Los Angeles, California) is an American author, mostly specialising in fantasy fiction. Raymond E. Feist was born in 1945 in Los Angeles, and was raised in Southern California. He was born with the surname Gonzales, before being...

Marc Blank is an American computer game designer and game programmer. He is best known as part of the team that created one of the first hit text adventure computer games, Zork. Blank first encountered Don Woods and Will Crowther's Adventure game while he was...

William Neal Hallford (born October 17 1966) is an American game designer, book author, screenwriter, and independent film director. He is best known for his work on the fantasy role-playing games Betrayal at Krondor, Dungeon Siege, and Champions of Norrath. On...

Jon Van Caneghem is a computer game designer and producer. He is most recognized for creating the Might and Magic role-playing game series and its strategy spin-off Heroes of Might and Magic. Van Caneghem founded New World Computing in 1983. The company was acquired...

Doug Carlston was CEO, chairman, and co-founder (with brother Gary) of Brøderbund Software, a software publishing firm that produced such hit titles as Myst and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?. Brøderbund was acquired by The Learning Company for $420 million,...

Chris Taylor is a computer game designer and entrepreneur most famous for developing Total Annihilation and the Dungeon Siege series and for founding Gas Powered Games. In 2002, GameSpy named him the 30th most influential person in gaming. Chris Taylor was born in...

Ken Levine is a founding member of, and creative director at 2K Boston, formerly known as Irrational Games. He previously worked at Looking Glass Studios, which he joined in 1995. He was born in New York. Some of the games he has worked on include Thief: The Dark...

Sean P. Clark is a game designer, director and programmer who worked on a number of notable LucasArts adventure games from early 1990 through to 2002.

Michael Stemmle is a computer game writer, designer and director (sometimes designated as a "project leader" in LucasArts parlance) who co-created some of LucasArts' adventure game in the 1990s and early 2000s. He was also an uncredited script doctor on some non...

Ron Gilbert is an American computer game designer, programmer, and producer, best known for his work on several classic LucasArts adventure game, including Maniac Mansion and the first two Monkey Island games. Gilbert was also co-founder of Humongous Entertainment and...