Raph's Website » I’m #9

I’m #9

May 28th, 2008 (Visited 1501 times) Tags: egoboo, game industry

Beckett Massive Online Gamer has selected a list of the “Top 20 Most Influential People in the MMO Industry.” I came in at #9.

Rob Pardo, Senior VP of Game Design, Blizzard Entertainment
Jeffrey Steefel, Executive Producer, Turbine
John Smedley, CEO, Sony Online Entertainment
Hilmar Pétursson, CEO, CCP
Jack Emmert, CCO, Cryptic Studios
Rob Seaver, CEO, Vivox
Min Kim, Director of Game Operations, Nexon America
Scott Hartsman, Formerly Senior Producer, SOE
Raph Koster, President, Areae
James Phinney, Lead Designer, ArenaNet
Richard Garriott, Creative Director, NCSoft
Starr Long, Producer, NCSoft
Cory Ondrejka, Formerly CTO, Linden Labs
Mark Jacobs, GM and VP, EA Mythic
Sulka Haro, Lead Concept Designer, Sulake
Sage Sundi, Global Online Producer, Square-Enix
Jess Lebow, Lead Quest Designer, Carbine Studios
David Perry, CCO, Acclaim
Sanya Weathers, Director of Community, Guildcafe.com
Daniel James, CEO, Three Rings Design

Quite flattering, and it’s really great company to be in.

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Sulka's Game wrote on June 2nd, 2008 at 1:46 pm:

The Beckett Massive Online Gamer magazine has a new annual article series titled Top 20 Most Influential People in MMOs and I’m deeply honored for having been chosen in the first set of people.Raph is covering this, having been listed. Congrats to everyone! Incidentally I got a copy of the magazine and enjoyed the _other_ articles as well. Wonder how I can get my hands on the Mabinogi beta. 29.05.2008 10:37 (Gaming and communities)

Ross Smith said on May 29th, 2008 at 3:12 am:

I think I need to learn more about the industry. I’m embarrassed to admit that I only recognised six names out of 20 (Rob Pardo, John Smedley, you, Richard Garriott, Cory Ondrejka, and Sanya Weathers).

Sulka Haro said on May 29th, 2008 at 3:18 am:

Grats!

Clint said on May 29th, 2008 at 7:15 am:

Cool, you beat out Richard Garriott — congrats!

Gene Endrody said on May 29th, 2008 at 9:05 am:

Congrats Raph.
I’m assuming we now get to nominate the ones that were missed like:

1. Robert Small, Miniclip CEO (I think Miniclip’s importance in the distribution of smaller MMOs is often overlooked)

2. Andrew Gower, co-founder of Jagex and lead developer of Runescape (certainly inspired me)

3. Matt Mihaly, CEO Iron Realms and Spark Play (Virtual Items Pioneer)

Raph said on May 29th, 2008 at 9:41 am:

Ross,

I know 16 of the 20 personally, I think, and count several of them as friends — but that still means I don’t know four of them at all!

Gene,

The article mentions that there were 80 nominees — so I am sure some of those folks were considered. There’s also a little block at the bottom with “people to watch for next year” that includes both new faces and familiar ones like Rich Vogel & Gordon Walton.

SirBruce said on May 29th, 2008 at 10:03 am:

So, most of you haven’t read the article yet, so I’ll let you in on a secret: I wrote the article and compiled the list myself, albeit with a lot of input from Doug Kale @ Beckett as well as several others.

We consulted a variety of industry insiders to assist in compiling a list of potential nominees. Then we developed a set of criteria to evaluate each candidate and rank them accordingly. To start with, we intentionally decided to highlight people who were actually working in commercial MMO development, as opposed to academics or the media. Secondly, we gave preference to those candidates who had worked on an MMO that either launched or shipped an expansion in 2007. And finally, we tried to focus on those individuals who were truly influential on the industry as a whole, rather than just on their own game.

In response to Gene’s suggestions, I can say both Andrew and Matt were on the nominees list, although I don’t think Robert Small was. Making the list was *hard*, and I expect there to be some disagreements. The most important thing to remind people is that it’s a list primarily for 2007, and many people you might expect to be on the list might show up next year… assuming the game’s they’re working on actually ship.

So go out and buy a copy today!

Morgan Ramsay said on May 29th, 2008 at 12:01 pm:

SirBruce is… ALIVE!

And finally, we tried to focus on those individuals who were truly influential on the industry as a whole, rather than just on their own game.

How did you measure this? Number of speeches/panels done? We know who wins there. ;p

SirBruce said on May 29th, 2008 at 1:10 pm:

Giving panels and speeches were certainly a factor. Of course, one could argue that doesn’t necessarily mean those people are *listened* to… perhaps they just make entertaining speakers.

But a big part of the problem with such a list is that every game is a team effort, yadda yadda yadda; it’s not just one person who is responsible. So often the high-profile evangelist is the one that gets seen as influential, even though the cool innovative design feature that every other MMO copies was really the work of a junior designer.

Another factor was recommendations. I quietly talked to several folks at various companies for suggestions and a lot of the same names turned up repeatedly, so you knew they were near the top. I also looked at other top developer lists, google hits, etc. But in the end a lot of it was just my personal judgement. People can disagree; I don’t mind taking the hit for it.

By focusing the list primarily on people who shipped a new product or expansion or made a big corporate move in 2007, it actually made the list much easier to handle. Dozens of people at EA Mythic, BioWare, Funcom, 38 Studios, Cheyenne, Perpetual, etc. didn’t make the cut simply because they didn’t ship anything new for MMOs last year.

Arrakiv said on May 29th, 2008 at 10:12 pm:

It looks like a pretty fair list over all, I would say.

Congrats - not that I find this exactly surprising.

Matt Mihaly said on May 30th, 2008 at 12:17 pm:

Fun list! Biggest surprise for me is the absence of anyone from Jagex and listing Cory Ondrejka but not Philip.

Incidentally, for what it’s worth, I agree with Gene that Robert Small from Miniclip should be considered in the future. Miniclip was a big factor in both Runescape and Club Penguin building their massive audiences.

–matt

hanshotfirst said on May 30th, 2008 at 1:20 pm:

I got a kick out of Scott Jennings’ Top Ten list on broken toys.

http://brokentoys.org/2008/05/29/top-ten-classes-in-mmos/

Wolfgang Wozniak said on May 30th, 2008 at 8:23 pm:

Sage Sundi is the man!

SirBruce said on May 31st, 2008 at 2:44 am:

Some Jagex’s folks were on my list but few people I talked to mentioned them. RuneScape is certainly a stand-out product, but is really influential? I see a lot more companies copying the Korean MMOs for their microtransaction approach rather than RuneScape.

As for Cory vs. Philip, it’s a toss-up, but Cory did actually write just about all the game’s code. Without Philip, Second Life would probably still exist; without Cory, probably not. Going forward, though, Phil is certainly in the driver’s seat now…

I’m #9

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