Top 5 Influential Game Critics/Developers

[captainballsack]

What critics/developers/people in the industry have really changed the way you play and perceive good and bad games?

My top 5:

1. Egoraptor
2. Yahtzee
3. Shigeru Miyamoto
4. Fumito Ueda
5. Jonathan Blow

Honorable mentions: Jontron, Totalbiscuit, Hideki Kamiya, AVGN, Anita Sarkeesian.

I was going to write out why for each of them, but it's 1:30am here in Australia and I want to go to bed. I just thought it would be a good topic idea and I wanted to get it out there. c:

 

[Casual Shinji]

Developers:

1) Shinji Mikami
2) Fumito Ueda
3) Hideo Kojima

Critics:

1) Matthewmatosis

I guess not that many people in this industry have much of an influence on me, but the ones that do have a big one.

 

[josemlopes]

In no particular order:

Cliffy B. - when he is invited to those talks he usually talks about cool stuff and the games that he had involvement were solid, needs to spend less time on twitter though

John Carmack - made a lot of cool stuff that we all need to be thankfull for

That guy from Gamespot, Danny or something, the guy that started Random Encounter - He really shows why there is a reason to like games and in the end avoids starting fires for the sake of it (as opposed to the rest of the staff at Gamespot). He is the only good thing on that site.

JohnTron - Its kind of like Egoraptor but has less ego (Egoraptor usually says a lot of shit regarding modern games because he doesnt put the same effort into them as he used to put with older games).

Adam Kovic - started Inside Halo, now Inside Gaming, sadly he kind of sold out as they are putting way too much content out there without the quality that it used to have.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

Adam Sessler and Morgan Webb (I wish she'd come back too...) are the only two critics that I know that I actually listen to. Tara is starting to make a good impression on me, but I always found that I agreed with everything those two said, and I liked their reasoning behind the scoring system they used (Five star scale ONLY, no halves or 10 point scale). Adam (and before, Morgan) just struck me as people who honestly believed what they felt about the games their reviewed, and laid their opinions out there with the best evidence they could gather. Plus, they were funny.

Developers...er, nope. No one comes to mind I'm afraid. I'm familiar with big names, but I've never seen a name on a box and went, "Oh, he made/directed/thought this game up? SOLD!"

 

[Simonism451]

In no particular order
Developers:
1. Hideo Kojima
2. Clint Hocking
3. Goichi Suda
4. Peter Molyneux
5. John Carmack

Critics
1. Ben 'Yahtzee' Croshaw
2. Film Crit Hulk
3. Tim Stone
4. Kieron Gillen
5. Markus 'Markus the Bavarian' Schwerdtel

 

[WoW Killer]

Seems crazy to name five off the top of my head. I'll do what I can.

Critic wise, I like Dennis Duhamel (Force) [http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGhs9S33RAeT5DEuKTO4Oew] a lot. He seems to be on a similar wavelength as me regarding gameplay, like, the the sort of games he likes I end up liking. And he doesn't stoop down to ethical arguments except on very rare occasions (and when he does, he's bloody right). Plus, he's one sexy bastard.

Dev wise, I like Greg Street (Ghostcrawler) just for being an active developer who really talks to gamers. Often you can get a dev decision which is a bit controversial, and many devs (looking at you, Bioware) will just sit silent and hope it all blows over. Greg does a great big blog every time and tells you, mechanically, why they've come to the decision they have. It might not please everybody (well, there's no pleasing some people), but for the majority of us right minded gamers, it means a lot.