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» MEDIA (1) Will Wright, rockstar!

Something that has always bothered me about the market for games is how poorly it acknowledges the individuals whose creativity and craft are responsible for the games we play. Outside of a few superstar game designers - the Will Wrights and Shigeru Miyamotos of the world - the gamer and critic typically spends little time considering just who exactly deserves credit for the games they play.

This isn't merely a matter of appropriate recompense to the people who work on games. The relative obscurity of game designers has unfortunate consequences for the structure of the industry and the its willingness - or lack thereof - to innovate. Gamers usually don't follow the work of favorite designers the way that readers can follow the work of a favorite author, or film buffs of a favorite director, so the way for game publishers to create and capitalize on brand recognition is to establish franchises and crank out sequels. Because franchise rights are typically under corporate control, sometimes the creative people responsible for originally establishing a successful franchise aren't even around to reap the rewards.

Sadly, this state of affairs may simply be inherent to the how games are made. A modern video game is a massive, multi-million dollar undertaking involving a large staff and the contributions of many individuals. Even disregarding the non-creative jobs involved in creating a video game - QA, publishing, etc. - that still leaves a large group of people. It'd be equally unjust to reduce the group effort involved in this truly collaborative enterprise into a single individual designer.

If I read a good book, I have but to look at the cover to know who was responsible. If I watch a great film, I know that the director is in large part responsible, and if it's a specific aspect of the movie that I enjoyed - witty repartee and bon mots in the screenplay, gorgeous color and composition, or an especially riveting performance - there are more specific credited individuals I can look up and whose careers I can track from now on. But for Bioware's Knights of the Old Republic, there are 7 individuals credited for "Core Game Design" - including a "Head Writer"� and "Lead Designer"� - and 8 more who are credited simply as "Designers" - and all this is before we consider the many engine coders, artists, animators, sound engineers and composers that were involved in the creation of the game. If I'm fond of the structure of a specific line of quests, or for the witty dialogue of a particular NPC, who should I praise?

To some extent gamers can acknowledge the collaborative nature of video game design and development by following the work of specific studios, which is largely how things work now. But this solution is an imperfect one. People can change employers, studios are swallowed by larger companies, or a development house can simply go out of business.

If you've been a devotee of Blizzard's work ever since you've played Starcraft, for instance, it might surprise you to learn that a good chunk of the development team responsible for that game has since moved on to NCsoft subsidiary ArenaNet. At least this particular creative migration was documented and relatively well-covered in the press and promotional material for ArenaNet. On the other hand, if you happen to be a fan of Activision's prolific mid-90's output as a development house, including classics such as MechWarrior 2, Interstate '76, and Battlezone, you're simply out of luck. Activision no longer develops games in-house and even MobyGames.com can't tell you where the designers for some of those games ended up.

I'm not sure if there's anything to be done; these are simply the facts of the industry. As savvy consumers, though, we can take note when franchise rights change hands, or when migrations of key talent occurs. And remember that it's people, not brand names, franchises, or corporate entities, that ultimately deserve credit for the game experiences that we cherish.