The most influential gaming man of all time is...

ZombieFan said:
Right. I'm going to say it...

I think Steve Jobs does belong in this list.

Not at the top though, but there seems to be a lot of ignorance to what Steve Jobs did for the games industry.

Back in the late 1970s, before Apple was founded, he used to work at Atari with Steve Wozinak. While there, he developed Atari Breakout. This was one of the first coin-op games which used integrated circuits rather than discrete logic, but it had to be manufactured using discrete logic due to costs. Obviously, breakout has gone on to influence a whole load of other games, such as Arkanoid etc.

After leaving Atari he formed Apple. One of their early computers was the Apple II.

The Apple II never took off in the UK and left the door open for the Spectrum and Commodore 64 to get there foot in. However, it was huge in the USA and was most peoples first home computer. Due to Steve's background at Atari, it was easy to program games for and formed the first real cottage games industry in the US. Many of the developers who created some of the iconic early games started programming because of the Apple II.

So, yea, I think he should be in there. And before you ask, I haven't read his autobiography and am not an Apple fan. I own one Apple product - an iPod. I've just read a few books on the history of video gaming, and Steve Jobs and the Apple II come up quite a bit.
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Except their justification for Jobs being there is because of the iPhone...go figure...
 
In recent years... Garriot, he's a failure in his own right but at least he spawned so many mimics both successful and not.
 
Why not Kazunori Yamauchi? I mean, he made two professional drivers, and helped in the GTR production, sort of ;)

But Jobs being the most influencial? Slightly joining the looooong queue of disagree'ers :)
 
Fledge said:
I still can't accept iphone games as games.
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I can, especially when you take things like Chaos Rings, and many other fully fledged games into account. Dungeon Defenders was a big hit on mobile devices, and lots of successful other PC and Console games have had ports as well. It's far from the "most influential" device, but it's not all Angry Birds and Paper Toss on there.

However, while I don't think that Steve Jobs should be on the list for a minute, it's a shame this thread has become more bash Jobs/Apple, while discussion about who should be at the top of the list seems to be in the minority.
 
Globul said:
YES

But seriously, jobs? SERIOUSLY. Even I know that's stupid

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he has my respect and there are many more even though he gave the ****ing soldiers faster weapons.
 
don't hate me but the only names I have seen in the thread that I recognise are jobs and facebook guy. I can be pretty sure the bulk of gamers would be the same, and the influence could be taken from a public perspective not involvement in the games per se.

Just my 2 cents, and I don't think jobs or facey man deserve to be there either.
 
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