[nxtbl]

They used to be, at least during the Amiga heydays.

Sid Meier's Pirates!, Civilization, Colonization, Railroad Tycoon etc. [1]

David Braben presents Frontier - Elite II

Also after Populous, games like Powermonger, Black & White etc were all known to be "by" Peter Molyneux.

Then there were also isometric shooters by some John Carmack

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_Meier#At_MicroProse

[tezza]

Sid Meyer says in his memoir that Pirates! was so unpopular with the business execs that the Execs suggested putting “Sid Meier’s” at the front to improve sales and associate any failure with Sid alone.

Sid says it stuck after Pirates! was a success.

[pwdisswordfish0]

Highly recommended book! Robin Williams apparently also played an indirect role, suggesting the OP’s question at some conference of the Software Publisher’s Association (although this is apocryphal even according to the book).

I also find it pretty amusing that the other big name on video game boxes – although not much involved with the games themselves – Tom Clancy, established this custom with a Sid Meier game, Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising.

There is actually only one other name I can think of that prominently appeared on the box, American McGee. Will Wright, Shigeru Miyamoto, Hideo Kojima, Tim Schafer, Ron Gilbert, John Romero and John Carmack could have pulled it off, but AFAIK never did, although their popularity did boost many a game’s sales. Cliffy B also comes to mind as a game designer I can put a name and face to.

[gabereiser]

Fact. He never intended for his name to prefix the game titles he made. Sid’s pretty humble.

[nicolas_t]

Sierra used to advertise their designers

So you have Al lowe's Leisure Suit Larry, Roberta William's king quests, Jane Jensen's Gabriel Knight, The Cole's Quest for Glory and Mark Crowe and Scott Murphy's Space Quest among the more well known.

[kaffeeringe]

Everybody knew, Lord British made Ultima.

[kyriakos]

Grew up on those games. Legendary story tellers.

[pvitz]

When John Romero was at Ion Storm, Daikatana's marketing was also centred around him.

[jstarfish]

IIRC these days he says he had nothing to do with that decision.

[m4tk4n45z051e]

Partly true. He said in an interview that it wasn't his idea, but one of the young employees of Ion Storm. He wasn't excited about it (infamous "John Romero's about to make you his b*ch"), but, reluctantly, he gave green light to it.

[mpeg]

They still are very much, especially for smaller studios

David Cage (Fahrenheit, Heavy Rain, etc.)

Hidetaka Miyazaki (Dark Souls)

[amalcon]

There have been at least a few games whose PR mentioned Warren Spector's involvement.

[bombcar]

Will Wright was up there, too.

[muzani]

He doesn't have a great rep for some reason. His biggest hits - The Sims, SimCity, and Spore are all quite hated, but those games have a large following of players and creators who don't do any other games.

So in a sense, there's someone out there who loves Spore but won't buy The Sims, because they don't need any other games.

[kungito]

Hated? Wow. Pretty bold thing to say. I have a feeling that every boy gamer had a sister who played Sims on their pc back in the day. Sure, if you're identity is "hc gamer" you wont play "casual games" like Sims but I really feel like what Candy Crush is today, Sims used to be. Of course, the whole market was smaller then

[muzani]

More in regards to the way The Sims handled expansions. With every sequel, all the expansions you bought were worthless. They're not cheap either; an expansion cost the price of an AAA game. With The Sims, EA popularized the model of selling incomplete games.

I think the casual players are the ones who hated it the most, while those who played the Sims hardcore got the most out of their money.

[TheCapeGreek]

Maybe I'm biased having grown up with the first 3 games and countless console spinoffs, but this only really became an issue with Sims 3 and especially with Sims 4.

Sims 3 was ambitious in scope and kept adding more. It's unplayable if you actually own all the content. Maxis coded themselves into a performance hole and couldn't get out. It stuck to Sims 2's Expansion and Stuff packs formula, with lots of Store content that drove revenue.

Sims 4 is much prettier but also dialed back. This lends well to what EA did by going even _deeper_ into the "spray and pray small amounts of content with huge prices" approach. It's no longer Expansion and Stuff packs with decent amounts of content, it's now various types that all have small-mid amounts for high prices: - Expansion Packs - Game Packs (mini expansions around one core concept) - Stuff Packs - Kits (mini stuff packs around one set of objects)

[bombcar]

Part of it was "developer betrayal" - if you were a fan of the SimCity games, you might "eh" the Sims, but Spore was just not at all related (and overhyped, to be fair).

[bombcar]

Yeah, he went across different types (they’re all roughly “simulators” but most games are) so it doesn’t have the same “this developer makes the same game over and over”.

[hombre_fatal]

Not really a “they used to be” when you almost named all of them.

[ethbr0]

+ Brian Fargo