25 Most Influential – Wall Street Journal

I’m still on the thrashwagon lately, which is my excuse for not having written much. But this bit from the Wall Street Journal is quite interesting. They had a piece last weekend on “the new power players” in Hollywood, that is, the video game moguls. 🙂 Included in the piece is a top-25 which I’ll reproduce here since I can’t find it online – however, the original article is available here. It’s amusing to see the people they consider to be power players. Some I agree with, some… not so much! Many thanks to MB for saving the article for me!

Game Gurus

1. Sam Houser, President, Rockstar Games (Grand Theft Auto)
2. Jason Jones, Lead Designer, Bungie Studios (Halo)
3. Shigeru Miyamoto, Senior Managing Director etc, Nintendo (Mario, Zelda, etc)
4. Will Wright, Chief Creative Officer, Maxis (The Sims)

   Hardware

5. Satoru Iwata, President, Nintendo
6. Ken Kutaragi, President, Sony Computer Entertainment
7. Peter Moore, Corporate VP etc, Microsoft

   Entertainers

8. Jason Hall, Senior VP, Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment
9. Peter Jackson, Film director/producer (LOTR, King Kong)
10. Steve Schnur, Worldwide Executive of Music and Music Marketing, Electronic Arts
11. Larry Shapiro, Co-head Videogame Dept, Creative Artists Agency

    Online Players

12. Edward Castronova, Associate Professor, Indiana University
13. Rob Pardo, VP Game Design, Blizzard (World of Warcraft)

    Team Players

14. Tony Hawk, Professional Skateboarder
15. David Stern, Commissioner, National Basketball Association
16. Gene Upshaw, Executive Director, National Football League Players Association

    The Marketers

17. Mitch Davis, CEO, Massive Inc.
18. Brian Farrell, CEO, THQ
19. Frank Gibeau, Exec VP, Electronic Arts
20. Jill Hamburger, VP Gaming, Best Buy
21. Tim Harrison, Head of Games, Vodafone

    Money Man

22. John Riccitello, Managing Director, Elevation Partners

    Policy

23. Doug Lowenstein, President, Entertainment Software Association

    The Scribes

24. Hirokazu Hamamura, Editor-in-Chief, Famitsu/Enterbrain
25. Metacritic (CNet)

Do you agree? Disagree?