http://www.edge-online.com/features/the-hot-100-game-developers-2009?page=0%2C10

Top ten below, 1-90 in the link

10. Phil Frazier
Producer
EA Tiburon

Frazier has a long history with the Madden franchise, and is frequently described as being one of the instrumental members in the success of the football series’ PlayStation 2 years. But that was a while ago, so when it was announced that Frazier was returning to take the lead for Madden NFL 09, there were concerns that baggage from his underwhelming project NFL Tour would follow him. Frazier proved the doubters wrong however. Madden NFL 09 found aggregate review scores at their highest for the franchise since the PS2 years, and the game handily outperformed the unusually depressed analyst sales estimates. Under Frazier, Madden 10 should be expected to continue to climb up both those metrics.




9. Rich Farrelly
Creative Director
Treyarch

Farrelly’s career has followed the tangled path of Xatrix Entertainment since 1999, when he worked on that company’s Kingpin: Life of Crime. Then Xatrix became Gray Matter, and he worked on Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Then Gray Matter was purchased by Activision in 2004, and Farrelly took on the creative director roll for Call of Duty: United Offensive. Gray Matter was merged into Treyarch in 2005 but Farrelly’s relationship with Call of Duty endures. These days his team alternates yearly CoD releases with franchise creators Infinity Ward; the last effort of his studio, 2008’s World at War, was generally considered the best effort yet from the team. It was an effort the market rewarded.




8. Mark Healey
Creative Director
Media Molecule

Perhaps Healey found in his time at Lionhead Studios a sense of childlike wonder about games. He must have gotten it somewhere, because it’s all over LittleBigPlanet, a charming work of seemingly endless scope. It’s a marquee title for the PlayStation 3, certainly, and one that the market may pay Media Molecule back for over the course of a slow burn (it’s already at over a million worldwide, but deserves still better). Perhaps Healey and his team will announce a new game soon, perhaps not. But even if they spend the rest of the PS3 lifecycle iterating on LBP, that would make for a very nice career on its own.




7. Jun Takeuchi
Chief Producer
Capcom

Takeuchi is a seasoned development veteran, with his earliest credits being on Street Fighter II and the early Resident Evils. After contributing to the direction, production, and animation of the Onimusha franchise, he was tapped to produce Lost Planet. Now Capcom has chosen Takeuchi to lead the production of its most important game in recent memory, the hugely controversial Resident Evil 5. Accused of many things good and bad for years prior to its release, Takeuchi’s production might find incredible success or insurmountable difficulty, or some combination of both. But it will almost certainly be the most talked about game of the year.




6. Masahiro Sakurai
Founder
Sora

HAL Labs veteran and Kirby creator Sakurai released the latest in his Super Smash Bros. series internationally last year. It immediately broke sales speed records. Thanks to casual-friendly gameplay and a wealth of content that appealed strongly to a core already whipped to frenzy by Sakurai’s personally penned daily Smash Bros. Brawl updates, it was embraced as the Wii game with significant cross-market appeal. Sakurai's company, Sora, has recently been reborn; his team is currently working on a mysterious new game for Nintendo.




5. Shigeru Miyamoto
Senior Managing Director and General Manager
Nintendo

The most powerful creative force at gaming’s most powerful hardware purveyor, Miyamoto met stratospheric expectations in 2008 by selling bathroom scales by the millions in the form of Wii Fit. Wii Music did less impressively: rather than being a design-changing paradigm shift, it was only one in the top forty best-selling titles of the year. Also disappointed in Miyamoto in 2008 was the fickle core audience, though that audience should be placated in 2009 by the Miyamoto-produced Punch-Out. And that’s just one of the potential bestsellers Miyamoto is working on this year. For Miyamoto, just one is never enough.




4. Scott Pease
Studio Director
Neversoft

A year off from the studio-defining Tony Hawk series has done nothing to dull Neversoft’s star. This is of course thanks to 2008 being the year of Guitar Hero. Guitar Hero: World Tour returned the franchise to feature parity with its biggest rival, handily outselling the competition. Guitar Hero: Aerosmith outperformed Aerosmith’s latest studio album. Even 2007’s Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock reached a milestone in 2009, becoming the first single game to earn a cool billion dollars in sales.  So it was all success all the time for the rhythm genre leader, and it all happened under the direction of longtime studio stalwart Scott Pease.




3. Hideki Konno
Producer
Nintendo

The steady stream of market-embraced blockbusters helmed by Konno has ensured him a place on the Hot 100 since its inception (see the game-changing Nintendogs, the universally acclaimed Mario Kart DS, and so on). But 2008 saw what was his biggest coup yet. Mario Kart Wii, a seemingly unassuming entry in a franchise Konno has worked on since the SNES days, became the best-selling game of the year on the best-selling console of the era. Amazingly outselling bona-fide mainstream juggernauts including Wii Fit, Mario Kart Wii took a popular core franchise into the rarified space of pop culture superstardom. If Konno is now at the height of his influence, it’s only because there’s almost nowhere to go above him.




2. Rod Humble
Executive Vice President and Head of The Sims Label
EA

The release of a new numbered Sims game represents a tectonic event in PC gaming. So the fact that Humble was recently promoted to act as chief executor of this launch says volumes for what he’s done for the franchise in his five years of constant Sims 2 production. Humble for his part has earned every rung of the ladder; he’s a veteran of 16-bit game design, and his years of high-level production on the classic EverQuest were a significant contribution to the incubation of the entire MMO sector. And he continues to pay his dues, releasing one-man indie efforts like The Marriage despite his ever-increasing professional responsibilities. It’s likely that few people are more passionate about the medium than Humble.




1. Dan Houser
Co-Founder, Vice President of Creative
Rockstar Games

Nearly a year later, the release of Grand Theft Auto IV still resonates in not just the industry but western culture at large—the importance of the studio Houser leads cannot be underestimated. And yet he’s not just a director. He also rolled up his sleeves to take on lead writing duties for 2008’s biggest game. He’s so important, both to the industry and the creation of GTA IV, that he and his brother were at the center of a highly publicized retention struggle that ended when Take-Two basically acknowledged they were too necessary to lose. That’s a lot of power for Houser to wield, power that will only grow should GTAIV: The Lost and Damned spike sales for the company again.

For once Steel is speaking sense. Isn't 2009 only like 2 months old...?

I think they're referring for developers to look out for in 2009, such as Miyamoto with Punchout on the way.

It's like a 12 hour story, so think of it as an expansion pack?

Wait, number 1 for an expansion pack...

Actually I think I read that they use the success and press coverage of 2008 as a large part of the projection into 2009 for these people.

Anyway it was a pretty interesting article to read just on it's own as some info on some of these people. Personally I think some should be higher such as Cliff Blezinski who I think should be in the top ten.

Rod Humble looks constipated.