Bartle’s List:

• Edward Castronova
• Raph Koster
• Jessica Mulligan
• Jake Song
• Roy Trubshaw

Matt’s List:

• Rob Pardo
• Timo Soininen
• Jun Zhu
• Andrew Gower

My List: (keeping in mind that Raph, Jessica Mulligan, and Rob Pardo are ‘taken’.)

• Richard Garriot - Cuz that Ultima Online thing was kinda important. All respect to Meridian 59 and Brian Green, but UO caused something of a stir with the massive and the multiplayer and the whatnot and the hey. A bunch of the crankiest of current Massive commentators are still quietly talking about the days pre-Trammel under their breath, in one way or another. If nothing else, the Ultima series got a lot of other people into the business in the first place. Heck, he was even the victim of one of the earliest well-documented griefings.
  
• Nick Yee - Nick has overcome personal hardship, sweated, toiled, and cried … all to tell us which age group is most likely to participate in gender play. Nick’s research is not only fascinating and well done, it’s compelling stuff. Via the player essays he takes in, it’s also deeply personal and always worth reading.
• Richard Bartle - Hah! Easy one. I suppose he sort of ‘goes without saying’, which is why he’s not on Matt’s list, but I very much think he’s worth mentioning. Above and beyond his work with Roy Trubshaw, he kind of wrote the book on the subject of making massives. He’s an engaging speaker, a funny guy and intelligent guy, and a personal inspiration. Well deserving of ‘most important’ status.
  
• Hiromichi Tanaka - One of the driving forces behind Final Fantasy XI, that ‘other’ really popular subscription-based Massively Multiplayer game. FFXI is incredibly important and (I feel) too often overlooked by western gamers. They have top-notch customer service, an amazing events team, the game is now on (PS2/360/PC) three separate platforms … and we owe a lot of thanks to Tanaka for all of that.
  
• John Smedley - So he’s done some unpopular stuff. Some gamers think he’s the closest thing Massive games have to a great Satan. And yet … SOE is profitable, pulling in more games via Platform Publishing and Station Access, and is branching out into F2P titles. I’d say that’s pretty important.

So … who is on your list?

I’ll admit it; last week I wasn’t sure if this was worth it any more. I put a lot of work into these things, and I wasn’t sure if people really dug em’. This week, I think things turned out really well. Plus, the Big Story is kickass. Way to go, Flying Lab.

The Big Story
After months and months of radio silence, the folks at Flying Lab Software have come out swinging. Pirates of the Burning Sea finally, finally, finally has a publisher. Pirates of the Burning Sea will be published by Sony Online Entertainment. Though they’re best known for developing games like EverQuest and Star Wars Galaxies, they also publish titles via their ‘Platform Publishing’ label. Gods and Heroes is one title taking advantage of this service, and Vanguard used to be a Platform client, as well. Platform allows SOE to keep another developer in the driver’s, while they handle physical distribution and advertising. Indeed, that is the relationship Flying Lab and SOE will have for Pirates of the Burning Sea.

The announcement lays it out like this:

“Flying Lab Software handles the Game Development, Community, Customer Support, Server Operations. Sony Online Entertainment handles the Billing, Launcher, Retail Distribution, Localization, Marketing.”

They’ve updated the PotBS site a bunch recently, and today they’ve got one up that takes the cake:

Pirates of the Burning Sea will be published in partnership with Sony Online Entertainment’s Platform Publishing. This is an important deal for Flying Lab Software and we know how passionate our community is about this issue. So before you start posting your thoughts on our forums, let me share how this particular arrangement differs from publishing deals you may have read about in the past.

Nicely done for both Flying Labs and SOE. In case you were wondering, this right here is this week’s “Big Story”. :)

ps: Last week’s Massive Update did go up, just late. This time it was my fault. It went up here. Go read it if you missed it.