[GuiA]

Jonathan Blow is one of my favorite game developers of recent times. Not only is he brilliant technically, he's also an amazing game academic (there are plenty of people on either side, but few manage to be both). The whole of his lectures, talks and writings are heavily recommended!

[telephonetemp]

If you liked Jonathan Blow's lectures make sure to check out Chris Crawford's. A number of them are on his channel on YouTube. Crawford was more or less the first game developer to combine practical work with academic study of game design (and he's wrote the first-ever book on it). Your might know him as the developer of Balance of the Planet and the founder of the GDC; the latter he then left after the famous "Dragon speech", which is probably the first thing of his you should look up.

[GuiA]

Oh yes, I absolutely love Chris Crawford's work as well- thank you!

An up and coming dev I really like is Andy Hull (from the Spelunky remake fame). He gave an amazing talk at GDC about drawing inspiration from children's toys in game design, and I see much promise in him. :)