Who are your top 25 people of the year?

There are many lists out there. A list of leaked questions from a videogame company. A list of top selling titles for the month of November. And so on. You can ask me now who I think is the best person in the world and the answer I will give you is my girlfriend. While you may not agree with me, the point here is that everything is just a matter of perspective.

So for today, we’d like to share with you the perspective being held gaming site NextGen regarding the top 25 people of the year. According to them,

This list is not a ranking of the best, most powerful, most talented, most amazing people in the industry. It is a ranking of the people who, we at Next-Gen feel, have made positive, significant and noteworthy contributions to gaming and the game industry through 2006.

Among the personalities who made it in the list, there are a couple of faces that made me think twice. Take for example the case of Patricia Vance of ESRB. According to NextGen, Vance has helped the industry keep control of a system that is proven to be effective. While I have no issues with that, I can’t help but remember some of your comments regarding this organization. Again, at the end of it all, everything is just a matter of perspective.

Of course, the gaming site provided a few explanations about their list. It’s quite a long read but if you are interested, you can access it via the read link below. But if you just want to know who made it in the said list, here’s the short version. Please feel free to speak your mind.

See the list after the jump!

There are many lists out there. A list of leaked questions from a videogame company. A list of top selling titles for the month of November. And so on… You can ask me now who I think is the best person in the world and the answer I will give you is my girlfriend. While you may not agree with me, the point here is that everything is just a matter of perspective.

So for today, we’d like to share with you the perspective being held by gaming site NextGen regarding the top 25 people of the year. According to them:

This list is not a ranking of the best, most powerful, most talented, most amazing people in the industry. It is a ranking of the people who, we at Next-Gen feel, have made positive, significant and noteworthy contributions to gaming and the game industry through 2006.

Among the personalities who made it in the list, there are a couple of faces that made me think twice. Take for example the case of Patricia Vance of ESRB. According to NextGen, Vance has helped the industry keep control of a system that is proven to be effective. While I have no issues with that, I can’t help but remember some of your comments regarding this organization. Again, at the end of it all, everything is just a matter of perspective.

Of course, the gaming site provided a few explanations about their list. It’s quite a long read but if you are interested, you can access it via the link below. But if you just want to know who made it in the said list, here’s the short version. Please feel free to speak your mind.

• Patricia Vance (ESRB)
• Mike Cassidy (Xfire)
• Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins (Penny Arcade)
• Laurent Detoc (Ubisoft)
• Torsten Reil (NaturalMotion)
• Jill Hamburger (Best Buy)
• Patrick Seybold (SCEA)
• Mitch Lasky (EA Mobile)
• Stacey Hirata (RedOctane)
• Dan DeMatteo (GameStop)
• Yannis Mallat (Ubisoft)
• Chris Delay (Introversion)
• Catherine Fowler (Konami)
• John Johnson )Relic Entertainment)
• Alfred Reynolds (Valve)
• Mark Beaumont (Capcom)
• Larry Hryb (Microsoft)
• Ted Price (Insomniac)
• Peter Dille (SCEA)
• Todd Howard (Bethesda)
• Jane Cavanagh (Eidos / SCi)
• Reggie Fils-Aime (Nintendo)
• Cliff Bleszinski (Epic Games)
• Satoru Iwata (Nintendo)
• Peter Moore (Microsoft)