Single-Man Studios

[northeast rower]

What do you guys think of the guys who seem to be the absolute "face" of a studio/game/series? I was thinking about this and figured out that most of the instantly recognizable games from the last few years have a single person attached to them that made them special. For instance:

-Hideo Kojima for Metal Gear Solid
-Gabe Newell for nearly everything made by Valve
-Cliff Blezinski (spelling?) for Gears of War
-Shigeru Miyamoto for the obvious
-Shinji Mikami for Resident Evil
-Ken Levine for Bioshock
-Peter Molyneux for Fable
-Frank O'Connor (arguably) for Halo

All of these games will be recognized decades from now for their innovation and high production values. Things like Modern Warfare and Fallout, despite being as good as they are, will almost certainly not be recognized- they are made by entire studios as opposed to single visionaries. Anyway, that's just my two cents.

 

[SomethingUnrelated]

Todd Howard for Bethesda? He's the main name I associate with them.

 

[minuialear]

I think it becomes a problem sooner or later, because eventually people start forgetting that there are entire teams behind these projects and that these people don't actually control everything that goes on within the project. Shigeru Miyamoto's still the face of Mario and Zelda, for example, but he doesn't control half as much of the development process as he used to. The fact that a couple years ago we heard conflicting stories as to whether there was a Zelda timeline (and what it was) is enough evidence of this.

Also then there's also the issue of, if people associate one person to a franchise and don't like that person, then the franchise suffers, regardless of how much influence the person has on a particular game in it. For example, a lot of people don't like Hideo Kojima and some of the stuff he's done in his games, so they refuse to play all Metal Gear games, even though some of them aren't helmed by him and/or don't contain all the...quirks that he tends to bring to his games. They miss out because they focus too much on the face of the franchise and not enough on who's actually making the game.