Opinion: What's So Special About Games' Living Luminaries?

[In this opinion piece originally published in Game Developer magazine's April 2011 issue, EIC Brandon Sheffield examines why we posses such reverence for some of the industry's most well-known pioneers.] At this year's GDC -- the 25th -- there were 11 postmortems of vintage games from important creators, all of them incredibly inspiring [and now available for free on GDC Vault]. This prompted me to think -- why do we hold these folks in such high regard? They deserve to be looked upon with respect, there's no doubt in my mind. But when you break it down, Toru Iwatani created Pac-Man, and that's pretty much it. Other luminaries like Jordan Mechner (Prince of Persia) and Eric Chahi (Another World) continue to work on games, but have few titles to their credit. Why do we revere certain people in the game industry? Is it because of the high quality of the games they created? Is it because of how influential they were? Do we color those past experiences with our memories? All of these are factors, but I think overall, our reverence for these people has to do with a pioneering spirit. Wild, Wild West I think most of us in the game industry have some sort of predisposition to thoughts of fantasy. To imagine, fantasize, and dream is human. But as working game developers, we actually make these visions come to life in ways that most people can only, well, dream about. So to us, that fantasy is closer at hand. We idolize cowboys, samurai, explorers, inventors, and astronauts because they fulfill that need for adventure and exploration we all feel. I don't know about everyone else, but part of why I work on games, and help to create worlds, is because of an urge to explore. I want to make my mark, and be the first one to step onto that alien soil and discover its secrets. Because after all, no matter how carefully we craft our games, there are always secrets, little twists of the world that we never anticipated. MMOs, open-world games, and sandboxes like Love and Minecraft are fantasy generators. They make us feel like the pioneers we admire. Coming upon some area you didn't know existed feels like you're discovering the lost city of Atlantis, if only for a moment. Forging those worlds has a similar feel, but most of us can't do that alone. We need a Minecraft to give us the tools, or else we need a team of artists behind us to create the assets that bring our code to visual life. Or as artists, you need coders and designers to help craft that universe. We have become extremely compartmentalized in our work, which is to the benefit of the large-scale games we create. Having a dedicated writer has proved to be very successful for certain teams. Dedicated network coders are hard to find, but an absolute necessity for most persistently online games. But sometimes that compartmentalization can diminish the feeling of creation and exploration. So we do hold up these luminaries for their pioneering spirit, but also for the fact they did nearly everything themselves, before tools to do so were even invented. The Will To Create Iwatani's Pac-Man was an early effort in fooling players into believing games had complex AI, while also proving the power of distinctive characters combined with tight control. Jordan Mechner knew he wouldn't be able to create perfect animation with the tools he had at his disposal at the time, so he filmed his brother running and jumping, then shrank the data and made pixel versions that have an incredible fluidity to them. Eric Chahi pushed polygons on early computers in an early stage, and where assembly failed him, constructed code language of his own, to create one of the most cinematic games of the era. Of course, it helps that all these games were excellent examples of what could be done with technology and design innovation in their respective eras. But I think what really fascinates us is that these creators managed to make these innovative games largely by themselves. The tools, designs, and art techniques they needed didn't exist, so they willed them into existence. These are persons of vision, with the ability to back that vision up with hard work and provable results. And who wouldn't respect that? The do-it-yourselfer will always be someone to learn from, no matter what his or her era of prominence. But when they can continue those ideas through to the future, and their original pioneering ideas are still applicable, you see that they're not just one-hit wonders. Sure, there are those in the industry who happened to hit on something at the right time, and made an impact in their day, but cease to retain relevance. I think those are fewer and farther between than those who do something great because that's what's in them, and whether they move on to education as Iwatani has, or continue to pioneer fluid gameplay like Chahi with his new game From Dust, their ideas remain strikingly relevant. This is what I've taken away from the vintage postmortems at GDC. What these fellows did back then was amazing, but what they think and do now is just as interesting. Every time I've spoken to Eric Chahi about modern game design, he's revealed to me something I wouldn't have thought of, even in genres he's never worked on. We can aspire to greatness ourselves, and this is part of current the indie fervor, I believe. If we apply what we know and try to make something different on our own -- something that comes from within -- we could be presenting our own vintage postmortems at the 50th GDC. Would anyone be surprised to see Minecraft's Markus Persson there?