List of Famous Game Designers

Reference
Updated June 15, 2019 39.5K views231 items

List of famous game designers, with photos, bios, and other information when available. Who are the top game designers in the world? This includes the most prominent game designers, living and dead, both in America and abroad. This list of notable game designers is ordered by their level of prominence, and can be sorted for various bits of information, such as where these historic game designers were born and what their nationality is. The people on this list are from different countries, but what they all have in common is that they're all renowned game designers.

List people include Mike Oldfield, Richard Garriott and many more.

From reputable, prominent, and well known game designers to the lesser known game designers of today, these are some of the best professionals in the game designer field. If you want to answer the questions, "Who are the most famous game designers ever?" and "What are the names of famous game designers?" then you're in the right place. {#nodes}
Ranked by
  • Neal Stephenson
    Neal Town Stephenson (born October 31, 1959) is an American writer known for his works of speculative fiction. His novels have been categorized as science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk, postcyberpunk, and baroque. Stephenson's work explores subjects such as mathematics, cryptography, linguistics, philosophy, currency, and the history of science. He also writes non-fiction articles about technology in publications such as Wired. He has also written novels with his uncle, George Jewsbury ("J. Frederick George"), under the collective pseudonym Stephen Bury. Stephenson has worked part-time as an advisor for Blue Origin, a company (founded by Jeff Bezos) developing a spacecraft and a space launch system, and is also a cofounder of Subutai Corporation, whose first offering is the interactive fiction project The Mongoliad. He is currently Magic Leap's Chief Futurist.
  • Mike Oldfield
    Michael Gordon Oldfield (born 15 May 1953) is an English multi-instrumentalist and composer. His work blends progressive rock with world, folk, classical, electronic, ambient, and new-age music. His biggest commercial success is the 1973 album Tubular Bells – which launched Virgin Records and became a hit in America after its opening was used as the theme for the film The Exorcist. He recorded the 1983 hit single "Moonlight Shadow" and a rendition of the Christmas piece "In Dulci Jubilo". Oldfield has released 26 albums, most recently a sequel to his 1975 album Ommadawn titled Return to Ommadawn, on 20 January 2017.
  • Richard Garriott
    Richard Allen Garriott de Cayeux (né Garriott; July 4, 1961) is an English-American video-game developer and entrepreneur. He is also known by his alter egos "Lord British" in the game series Ultima and "General British" in Tabula Rasa. Garriott, who is the son of NASA astronaut Owen Garriott, was originally a game designer and programmer, and is now involved in a number of aspects of computer-game development. On October 12, 2008, Richard flew aboard the Soyuz TMA-13 mission to the International Space Station as a private astronaut, returning 12 days later aboard Soyuz TMA-12. He became the second astronaut, and first from the U.S., to have a parent who was also a space traveler. Garriott founded a new video-game-development company in 2009, called Portalarium. His current project is Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues where his primary role is as CEO and Creative Director. In 2011, Garriott married Laetitia de Cayeux. Both changed their last names to Garriott de Cayeux.
  • Shigeru Miyamoto
    Shigeru Miyamoto (Japanese: 宮本 茂, Hepburn: Miyamoto Shigeru, pronounced [mijamoto ɕiɡeɾɯ]; born November 16, 1952) is a Japanese video game designer and producer at Nintendo, where he serves as one of its representative directors. He is the creator of some of the most acclaimed and best-selling game franchises, such as Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Star Fox, F-Zero, and Donkey Kong. Miyamoto joined Nintendo in 1977, when it was moving into video games away from the Japanese playing cards it had made since 1889. His games have been flagships of every Nintendo video game console, with his earliest work appearing on arcade machines in the late 1970s. He managed Nintendo's Entertainment Analysis & Development software division, which developed many of the company's first-party titles. As a result of Nintendo president Satoru Iwata's death in July 2015, Miyamoto fulfilled the role of acting president alongside Genyo Takeda until being formally appointed as the company's "Creative Fellow" a few months later.
  • Peter Molyneux
    Peter Douglas Molyneux (; born 5 May 1959) is an English video game designer and programmer. He created the god games Populous, Dungeon Keeper, and Black & White, as well as Theme Park, the Fable series, Curiosity – What's Inside the Cube?, and Godus. He currently works at 22Cans as the founder.
  • Tim Schafer
    Timothy John Schafer (born July 26, 1967) is an American computer game designer. He founded Double Fine Productions in July 2000, after having spent over a decade at LucasArts. Schafer is best known as the designer of critically acclaimed games Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, Psychonauts, Brütal Legend and Broken Age, co-designer of Day of the Tentacle, and assistant designer on The Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge. He is well known in the video game industry for his storytelling and comedic writing style, and has been given both a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Game Developers Choice Awards, and a BAFTA Fellowship for his contributions to the industry.