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…

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

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

Congrats – not that I find this exactly surprising.

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.

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

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!

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.

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)