Video Game Developers Trivia Quiz

Answer: Shigeru Miyamoto

Miyamoto was instrumental in making Nintendo a household name. While not a programmer himself, he came up with gameplay ideas and characters that would go on to define many Nintendo series.

Miyamoto worked on the 1981 arcade game "Donkey Kong", and later the "Mario" and "Zelda" games for the Nintendo Entertainment System. He also helped with the "Starfox", "F-Zero", and "Pikmin" series.

Answer: Chris Roberts

Chris Roberts has been involved in the PC space flight sim scene for a long time. He released "Wing Commander" in 1990. The series would go on to have four main installments, and a few spinoffs. Roberts also created "Starlancer" in 2000, and its sequel "Freelancer" in 2003.

Flight sims were a big genre in early PC gaming, but by the turn of the century, they had fallen out of style. Roberts never lost hope, though, and put together a record-breaking crowd-funding campaign. He originally asked for two million dollars in 2012. By the end of the campaign, he had over four million. By the end of 2012, it had reached six million, and by the end of 2013, they had 35 million. In 2017, they crossed the 150 million dollar mark, 200 million in 2018, and 250 million in 2019. The original release estimates for "Star Citizen" were not met because all the crowd-funding stretch goals were reached, drastically increasing the size of the project.

Answer: Sid Meier

You can often find Sid Meier's name in front of his game titles. Most people will just say "Civilization", but the actual title is "Sid Meier's Civilization". The "Civilization" series started in 1991, and has had numerous main installments, expansions, and spin-offs.

The theme song from "Civilization IV" (2005), "Baba Yetu", made history by being the first video game song to be nominated for a Grammy award, and the first video game song to win a Grammy award (2011).

Answer: Tim Schafer

Tim Schafer started his career at LucasArts, making non-"Star Wars" games. LucasArts started its life as a more general studio that happened to have access to the "Star Wars" license, and grew to become a developer of almost exclusively "Star Wars" titles.

Schafer's games were often strange and humorous puzzle/adventure games, such as the "Monkey Island" series, "Day of the Tentacle", "Full Throttle", and "Grim Fandango". Schafer left LucasArts, and created Double Fine Productions, where he made "Psychonauts", and crowd-funded "Broken Age".

Answer: Will Wright

Will Wright had a strong interest in systems and possibility space. Rather than create a specific level with a goal, and a linear way to achieve it, Wright was interested in more open-ended games, without specific endpoints. In his "SimCity" game, players would start to build and manage a city, and had to deal with situations that arose based on their previous decisions.

For example, if a player made a very industrial city, it would be profitable until the pollution levels rose and made the citizens unhappy, who would then leave. Balancing these kinds of systems was key in all of Wright's games.

Answer: Hideo Kojima

Hideo Kojima originally aspired to be a film director, but in university he decided to join the video game industry instead. After a rough start at Konami, he took over the initially floundering "Metal Gear" project, and reworked it into one of the first "action stealth" games.

It was a huge success, and the "Metal Gear" series became Kojima's best-known property. His games have had some very lengthy, high-quality cutscenes, leading some to joke that Kojima never stopped wanting to be a film director.

Answer: John Carmack

John Carmack was a co-founder and lead programmer at id Software, where he worked with John Romero, another great video game developer. id Software's early games set the stage for an entire video game genre: the first-person shooter. While "Wolfenstein", "Doom" and "Quake" were all popular on their own, they paved the way for future record-setting series like "Halo" and "Call of Duty". Carmack supported open-source software as much as he could, removing barriers for future developers.

Answer: Peter Molyneux

Peter Molyneux's "god" games are somewhat like Will Wright's simulation games, mixed with real-time strategy elements. Apart from "Black and White" and "Dungeon Keeper", Molyneux also made the "Fable" series. "Fable" was a role-playing game that focused on the development of the player character, and having other characters and the story adapt to player choices. Molyneux was known for being a very public developer, with frequent interviews and convention appearances.

Answer: Markus "Notch" Persson

The youngest person mentioned in this quiz, Notch released "Minecraft" in 2011 (although many could play beta and alpha versions well before the official release) when the video game market felt saturated with hyper-realistic and violent games. A cartoonish, non-violent, creative game was a breath of fresh air. It gained a particularly large following among younger gamers (those too young to play the violent games). By some measurements, "Minecraft" became the best-selling video game of all time.

The blocky nature of "Minecraft" was heavily inspired by "Infiniminer", made by Zach Barth. Barth was also a prolific creator of "programming" games, sometimes called "Zachlikes".

Answer: Gabe Newell

Gabe Newell, with Mike Harrington, founded Valve in 1996. Their first game was the hugely successful "Half-Life", released in 1998. "Half-Life" redefined the first-person shooter genre after years of being dominated by "Doom" and "Doom-clones". Newell worked on the sequel, "Half-Life 2", while also creating Steam, which would become the first successful (and most popular) digital distribution service. Other companies would try to create their own proprietary distribution services (such as EA's "Origin"), but none would have the same library Steam had.

Valve often released editors or engines for their games, and encouraged users to create their own content. If content was particularly well made and popular, Valve would reach out to the developers to properly fund and create these projects. Some examples include "Team Fortress", "Counter-Strike", and "Portal", which were made using the "Half-life" engine. Valve also made "Dota 2", a sequel to a "Warcraft III" mod, and "Dota Underlords", based on a "Dota 2" custom game.