31 Video game developers

Nathan Adams, also known as Dinnerbone, is a British video game programmer. He has been working at Mojang Studios since March 2012 in developing the game Minecraft.

Ina Bäckström is a Swedish video game developer and the program leader and founder of Barcraft, Sweden's first e-sports pub. Bäckström was born on March 27, 1987, in Stockholm, Sweden.

Ralph Henry Baer was a German-Jewish inventor, game developer, and engineer.

Wafaa Bilal is an Iraqi American artist, a former professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and currently an associate professor at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. He is best known for his work, Domestic Tension, a performance piece in which he lived in a gallery for a month and was shot by paintballs remotely by internet users watching from a webcam and for his book, Shoot an Iraqi: Art, Life and Resistance under the Gun, based on that performance, which details the horrors of living in a conflict zone and growing up under Saddam Hussein's regime.

Michael Brough is a New Zealand-born indie video game developer known for his eclectic roguelike games. His games are often tightly-focused explorations of a single mechanical aspect of the roguelike genre, set on unusually small grids. This style of game, perhaps best exemplified by 868-HACK, has become widely known as the "Broughlike".

Raphaël Colantonio is a French video game designer, and was the founder and for 18 years president of Arkane Studios. He has served as creative director on several of Arkane's titles, including co-creator with Harvey Smith for the Dishonored series.

Bernard Louis De Koven or DeKoven was an American game designer, author, lecturer and fun theorist. He is most notable for his book The Well Played Game, for his contributions to the New Games Foundation, his pioneering work in computer game design, and for his long-running web site, deepFUN.com.

Wandersong is a puzzle adventure video game developed by American-Canadian indie developer Greg Lobanov. A music-themed game, it follows The Bard, a wandering singer, as they go on a quest to gather pieces of a song that will save their world from destruction. In the game, the player uses The Bard's singing to affect the environment, solve puzzles, and defend against enemies. Developed in GameMaker Studio, the game was inspired by Lobanov's experiences on a cross-country bike trip across the United States and juxtaposes a positive atmosphere and protagonist with an apocalyptic setting. Games such as Kirby's Epic Yarn and animated cartoons such as Over the Garden Wall and Steven Universe inspired the game's tone, pace, and art style. The game's audio was co-produced with A Shell in the Pit; Gordon McGladdery, who worked on Duelyst, Parkitect, and Rogue Legacy, composed the game's music and Em Halberstadt, who worked on Night in the Woods, directed the game's sound design. Wandersong was released on macOS, Microsoft Windows, and Nintendo Switch in September 2018, PlayStation 4 in January 2019, and Xbox One in December 2019.

Shivam Sai Gupta is a virtual reality evangelist, game developer and public speaker. He is a fellow of The INK Conference, in association with TED, and has spoken at several events including the NASSCOM Gaming And Animation Conclave. In 2014, Priyanka Chopra awarded him the Unbreakable Spirit Award by Viacom 18 Motion Pictures, Bhansali Productions and USHA International. Gupta became interested in computers after finding a PowerPoint presentation when he was 11 years old and shortly thereafter became interested in video games.

Manveer Heir is an Indian-American video game developer. After working at Big Huge Games, Raven Software and BioWare, Heir co-founded his own studio, Brass Lion Entertainment, in 2017. Heir is known to be outspoken on issues related to diversity in video games.

osu! is a rhythm game primarily developed, published and created by Dean "peppy" Herbert. Originally released for Microsoft Windows on September 16, 2007, the game has also been ported to macOS, Linux, Android and iOS. Its gameplay is similar to titles including Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan, Taiko no Tatsujin, Beatmania IIDX, Elite Beat Agents, O2Jam, StepMania, and DJMax. osu! has an active esports community, and is also sometimes recommended by professional players of other games to practice or warm up.

Michael Hicks is an American game designer, musician, programmer and writer. His most notable works include 2018's The Path of Motus and 2015's Pillar. Described as a "lone auteur", Hicks is noted for his innovative game concepts. His soundtrack work has also been critically acclaimed.

Jaron Zepel Lanier is an American computer philosophy writer, computer scientist, visual artist, and composer of contemporary classical music. Considered a founder of the field of virtual reality, Lanier and Thomas G. Zimmerman left Atari in 1985 to found VPL Research, Inc., the first company to sell VR goggles and gloves. In the late 1990s, Lanier worked on applications for Internet2, and in the 2000s, he was a visiting scholar at Silicon Graphics and various universities. In 2006 he began to work at Microsoft, and from 2009 has worked at Microsoft Research as an Interdisciplinary Scientist.

Danny A. Ledonne is an American film director and former video game developer. From 2011 to 2014, he worked as a professor in Film and Media Arts at American University, served on the board of the Southern Colorado Film Commission, and became the director for the 2015 edition of the festival. He is known for the documentary Playing Columbine, about the controversy surrounding his 2005 video game Super Columbine Massacre RPG!.

Jack McCauley is an American engineer, hardware designer, inventor, video game developer and philanthropist. As an engineer at Activision, he designed the guitars and drums for the Guitar Hero video game series and was the Chief Engineer at Oculus VR, which was later acquired by Facebook for $2 billion. At Oculus, McCauley was chief developer of the Oculus DK1 and DK2 virtual reality headsets.

Laralyn McWilliams is an American game designer and video game producer.

Marc Mencher is an American executive in the video game industry, who has written multiple articles and books about gaming careers, such as the 2003 book Get in the Game: Careers in the Game Industry. He is best known as co-founder and CEO of the recruiting agency GameRecruiter.com, and is a frequent contributor to game developer trade magazines and websites such as Gamasutra.

Jason Nelson is a digital and hypermedia poet and artist. He is a lecturer on Cyberstudies, digital writing and creative practice at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia. He is best known for his artistic flash games/essays such as Game, Game, Game And Again Game and I made this. You play this. We are Enemies. He has worked on the Australia Council of the Arts Literature Board and the Board of the Electronic Literature Organization based at MIT.

Jay Phillip Obernolte is an American politician, businessman, and video game developer serving as a member of the California State Assembly since 2014. He is a Republican representing the 33rd State Assembly district. He was elected to the city council of Big Bear Lake, California in 2010, where he served as mayor. He is the owner, president, and technical director of FarSight Studios, an American video game developer established in 1990.

Taehoon Oh is a computer graphic specialist, game designer and developer. He is a co-founder and COO at Studio Roqovan, formerly known as Reload Studios. He was a lead artist and was one of the pioneer developers of the Call of Duty game franchise. He is also one of the co-founders of the non-gaming virtual reality subdivision of Studio Roqovan called Rascali, launched in September 2015.

Sergey Orlovskiy is the founder and CEO of Nival, one of the oldest game development companies in Eastern Europe. He is widely recognized as one of the founding fathers of the Russian game industry. In addition to heading Nival, Orlovskiy is a member of the board of directors of Alawar Entertainment.

David Perry is a Northern Irish video game developer and programmer. He became prominent for programming platform games for 16-bit home consoles in the early to mid 1990s, including Disney's Aladdin, Cool Spot, and Earthworm Jim. He founded Shiny Entertainment, where he worked from 1993 to 2006. Perry created games for companies such as Disney, 7 Up, McDonald's, Orion Pictures, and Warner Bros. In 2008 he was presented with an honorary doctorate from Queen's University Belfast for his services to computer gaming. He was the co-founder & CEO of cloud-based games service Gaikai, which was acquired by Sony Computer Entertainment. In 2017 Perry became the co-founder & CEO of a customer intelligence startup called GoVYRL, Inc. developing a new advanced brand dashboard called Carro.

Jory Prum, also known as Jory K. Prum, was an American audio engineer, best known for his work in film and video games. He was the owner of a recording studio located in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Jason Rohrer is an American computer programmer, writer, musician, and game designer. He publishes most of his software into the public domain and charges for commercial platform distributed versions of his games, like on the iPhone appstore or Steam. He is a graduate of Cornell University. From 2004 until 2011 he practiced simple living, stating in 2009 that his family of four had an annual budget of less than $14,500. They have since relocated from Las Cruces, New Mexico to Davis, California. In 2005 Jason Rohrer worked on a local currency, called North Country Notes (NCN), for Potsdam, New York. In 2016 Rohrer became the first videogame artist to have a solo retrospective in an art museum. His exhibition, The Game Worlds of Jason Rohrer, was on view at The Davis Museum at Wellesley College until June 2016.

Unravel is a puzzle platform video game developed by the Swedish company Coldwood Interactive and published by Electronic Arts. It was announced on 15 June 2015 and released in February 2016 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Microsoft Windows. The game centres on Yarny, a small anthropomorphic creature made of yarn the player navigates through the environment, utilizing the unraveling yarn which makes up Yarny to solve puzzles, avoid dangerous creatures, and traverse obstacles.

Behdad Sami is an Iranian American professional basketball player. Behdad was the world's first Iranian basketball player to play professionally at any level in the United States when he played in the minor-league American Basketball Association in 2007. In October 2010, he became the first Iranian to play pro basketball in Portugal.

Andy Schatz is a video game designer based in San Diego. He began developing video games at a young age and graduated from Amherst College. After graduation, he worked for various video game development companies, including TKO Software, before founding his own independent video game development studio Pocketwatch Games in 2004. Attempting to expand his company, Schatz tried enrolling into business school; all applications were rejected. As a result, he began working on games he was passionate about. Schatz has released four video games: Wildlife Tycoon: Venture Africa, Venture Arctic, Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine, and Tooth and Tail. His design philosophy revolves around taking inspiration from already existing media, such as films, and transforming it into a video game.

Kathy Sierra is an American programming instructor and game developer.

Yat Siu is a Hong Kong based entrepreneur and angel investor who was born and raised in Vienna, Austria. He worked at Atari. He founded an internet provider in Hong Kong. He is the CEO and Founder of the game-company Outblaze and co-founder of Animoca and has received recognition for his role as an entrepreneur focused on Internet and technology companies in Hong Kong. In 2009 he sold a part of his business to IBM's Lotus Software Division which opened its first cloud computing laboratory in Hong Kong with the assets it acquired from Outblaze.

Feargus Urquhart is a Scottish video game designer and CEO of Obsidian Entertainment.

Thais Weiller is a Brazilian game designer and producer. Together with Danilo Dias she co-founded JoyMasher and released Oniken, Odallus, and Blazing Chrome.