In 1999, PC Gamer assembled a cast of industry luminaries that became known as the “Game Gods”
PC Gamer (US) Issue 64 September 1999: The World’s 25 Greatest Gamemakers ~ Together for the First Time
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The one woman is Roberta Williams?
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Yes, follow the link to read the articles and see more pictures.
Steve Meretzky in the list too. Pleasantly unexpected.
Why? 
You know, the article is from 1999, and text adventures were long out of fashion…
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Wonder how Peter Molyneux ended up on what looks like an all-American list otherwise (granted, I haven’t heard of some of the folks, and did not check everyone’s birthplace, so he may not be the sole exception).
Otherwise, fun times back then, when you could match a name to a game. Something you mostly find with Indie developers these days. The big stuff is pretty anonymous, and likely went through many hands who’d rather not be associated with the result.
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Populous is as big as Civilization among a certain generation, but indeed physical location must’ve played a big role. Maybe they did it on the side of E3 or something like that?
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He is the father of god games, they better have him included in a list about game gods!
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If you had to write that article today, and retrospectively pick up the 25 game gods of 1999… do you think somebody of them didn’t deserve to be there? Is somebody missing?
I’m quite surprised there are no racing games developers. I mean, where are Geoff Crammond and David Kaemmer? In the eighthies this kind of games had a very tiny market share, but in 1999 racing games were an established phenomenon, yet.
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I’m pretty sure Shigeru Miyamoto was at least as important in '99, possibly more so, not to mention Hideo Kojima (but perhaps Metal Gear Solid hadn’t been digested yet even if his older titles are well appreciated).
We can continue in Japan with Hironobu Sakaguchi (Final Fantasy series, perhaps most notably VII, Chrono Trigger, to keep it in '98).
More interesting to me are the people I haven’t heard of, like Andy Hollis. And how C&C is/was one of my favorite games ever yet I didn’t know Brett Sperry. 
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True in most cases, with few notable exceptions:
Chris Roberts / Star Citizen
Davide Braben / Elite Dangerous
Fun facts:
- Chris Roberts is also in the 1999 article
- Both games are space simulators
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That’s the difference, though: they’re both veterans of the industry (and IMHO Braben deserves a place among the gods much more than Roberts, with Elite predating Wing Commander by half a decade).
Yeah, well I guess its mostly because outside of a few exception such as FF7 PC port most of these Japanese game creators solely worked in the console space and this is a PC Gamer article.
I think its a pretty solid list of people with good track record at the time. Both Ron & Tim made it… big fan of Westwood Studios and Steve Meretzky’s work for both Infocom and Legend as well.
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