Very Important Game People in the History of Computer and Video Games

Abstract

This thesis covers the history of 30 very important game people (in alphabetical order): David Arneson, Ralph Baer, Daniel Bunten, Nolan Bushnell, John Carmack, Chris Crawford, Richard Garriott, Gary Gygax, Trip Hawkins, Rob Hubbard, Toru Iwatani, Eugene Jarvis, Ken Kutaragi, Ed Logg, Sid Meier, Jeff Minter, Shigeru Miyamoto, Peter Molyneux, Yuji Naka, Alexey Pajitnov, John Romero, Hironobu Sakaguchi, Chris Stamper, Tim Stamper, Yu Suzuki, Satoshi Tajiri, Ken Williams, Roberta Williams, Will Wright and Gunpei Yokoi. It includes their background, their most important games and game-related work. It also provides information about the companies they worked for and the people they worked with. The thesis was created by gathering information from large number of sources, including books, internet, magazines, games and contacting some of the actual people. The thesis also contains a timeline of the most important events in the history of computer and video games and a chapter on the precursors of videogames, namely money game machines and pinball. The thesis is illustrated with several hundred pictures.