Quietly, and almost by accident, the industry has begun to build itself a cast of characters. What's more, this list doesn't even feature a few of the most familiar names that you'd usually expect to hear in a piece like this. There's no Jon Hare here (Sensible Soccer), no Dave Perry (Earthworm Jim), no Eugene Jarvis (Defender, Robotron, er, Cruis'n USA), no Alexey Pajitnov (Tetris), no Sid Meier (Civilisation)... hardly any, then, of The Usual Suspects that are desperately called upon when we need some "personalities". Why? Because above all else, this is a list for the future. There's no denying the past influence of these and some of the others who don't appear in our 50, but the hard-faced, cold-hearted defining criterion we used was "If the people in the list were to be killed in a horrible and tragic car crash tomorrow, would it make a difference to the future of the games business?"

So here are the people Arcade will shortly be sending out squads of highly-trained, heavily-armed bodyguards to protect 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for the rest of time. Or at least, until they run out of good ideas. Hey, it's a harsh world out there.

NAME: Sir Clive Sinclair

POSITION: President, Sinclair Research

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: The ZX Spectrum, the computer that created the games market as we know it.

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? He's a bit of a wildcard in this list, but it's been a long time (almost a decade, in fact) since anyone's invented a successful new home computer, and the news (see Arcade issue 2) that Sinclair has one on the drawing board again got us all a little bit excited.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "...and this one's the size of a sugar lump!"

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "You can't beat the system."

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: Challenging the worldwide dominance of the PC. He thinks big, Sir Clive.

FUTURE PROSPECTS: First man on Venus. In an electric spaceship.

BOFFIN BOFFIN BOFFIN BRIT

NAME: Trip Hawkins

POSITION: MD, The 3DO Company

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Turning EA into the monster it is today, before leaving to invent the 3DO.

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? Difficult to say, really. Hawkins is one of the industry's larger-than-life figures, and will always draw a big crowd to a press conference. His actual track record, though, isn't much to sing and dance about - since leaving EA, he's been chiefly involved with 3DO (giant flop), M2 (didn't-even-come-out flop), and generally a lot of noise and bluster and very little result.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "I have seen the future!"

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "Sorry, no comment."

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: More games with tanks in, we imagine.

FUTURE PROSPECTS: Hawkins has been everywhere already.

CASH SUIT BULL BULL BULL MASK JET YANK

NAME: Nell McAndrew

POSITION: The "real life" Lara Croft

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Getting her hair cut in a tabloid paper.

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? She's a girl!

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "Actually, I really want a career in pop music."

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "You've finished all three of the games, you say? Mmm, sexy."

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: Fluid replacement, after days on end in Lara's ultra-sweaty clobber.

FUTURE PROSPECTS: Channel 5.

STAR TITS TITS TITS BRIT

NAME: Ron W Chaimowitz

POSITION: Chairman, GT Interactive

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: In a previous job, launched the musical career of Julio Iglesias.

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? If it hadn't been for the prolific GT, N64 owners would have had practically no games at all to play last year. Of course, looking at GT's catalogue (Bio Freaks, Gex 64, Mace, War Gods, Mortal Kombat Mythologies, NBA Hangtime, Rampage World Tour, San Francisco Rush), many of them might well have preferred it that way.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "Bung it out, those poor desperate suckers will buy anything."

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "I don't know if it quite meets our stringent quality standards."

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: Having lost Quake 2 to Activision, GT's big hopes for 99 lie with Duke Nukem: Zero Hour and, um, Rush 2.

FUTURE PROSPECTS: When you're head of a massive and wealthy company like GT, it's difficult to see many ways of advancing your career any further. Except perhaps in a spiritual sense.

CASH CASH SUIT YANK

NAME: John Carpenter

POSITION: Movie director

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: The Thing, Escape From New York, Dark Star, Halloween

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? While the videogames business likes to imagine it models itself closely on the movie-making community, the sad truth is that the same four directors are entirely responsible for the thematic influences in about 97% of games. To an extent, then, Carpenter is here also representing George Romero, James Cameron and George Lucas, but once you've thrown in the splattery gore of Halloween and the "streetwise" "attitude" of Escape From New York's "Solid" Snake Pliskin, you can pretty much stop your average game's character/plot development right there.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "You can stick your 24 hours up your ass."

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "Ooh, matron!"

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: Some better scripts, after the disastrous flop of his latest flick, Vampire.

BULB BULB STAR CASH JET YANK

NAME: Johnny Vaughan

POSITION: Presenter, The Big Breakfast, Channel 4

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Presenting The Big Breakfast. On Channel 4.

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? As well as influencing the majority of the games press with his cheeky, chirpy, a-little-bit-naughty cockney laddishness, Vaughan shows up here representing the nation's trendiness barometer - if the 18-35 demographic cares about it, you can be sure he'll have something to say about it. Coverage for games on shows like the BB is a significant step away from the for-kids image that still persists about the artform. Chris Evans? Yesterday's man.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "Parappa The Rapper? That's a show right there."

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "Always remember - Noel Edmonds killed a man."

FUTURE PROSPECTS: Will eventually own Channel 4.

STAR STAR STAR BULL BRIT BRIT BRIT

NAME: Yuji Naka

POSITION: Sonic Team, Sega

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: The Sonic series (financially), NiGHTS (critically).

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? With all the other big-name Dreamcast titles slipping away into the summer and beyond, Sonic Adventure is the machine's only real hope of a killer app in the forseeable future. Naka is Sega's closest thing to a real innovator in the gameplay department.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "I've made it a bit faster this time."

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "It's just a modern-day Marble Madness, really."

CURRENTLY WORKING ON:

FUTURE PROSPECTS: Surely a man with such a need for speed has to have a classic racer inside him waiting to be let out?

BULB JAP

NAME: Yu Suzuki

POSITION: Head of AM2 development team, Sega

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Space Harrier, Out Run, Daytona USA, Virtua Fighter

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? Suzuki is the man largely responsible for two of the major shifts in direction governing the way games are played today. The "realistic" handling model now used by practically every racing game and the move into 3D for beat-'em-ups are both down to him.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "It's not a racing game, it's a driving game."

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "It's just Virtua Fighter 2 again, with slightly better graphics."

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: Shenmu, the game which started out life as Virtua Fighter RPG, but has developed into something rather more interesting-looking.

FUTURE PROSPECTS: A Dreamcast failure would surely be one Sega flop too far for Suzuki. Imagine what he could do with the audience of a successful machine to play to.

BULB BULB JAP

NAME: "Mr Bongo"

POSITION: Organiser of CLEAR ("Campaign to Leave Emulation Alone")

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? CLEAR is a pressure group formed in response to the ongoing attempts by US trade body the IDSA (see next entry) to "shut down the emulation scene" (in the words of IDSA's President). Formed when the ISDA succeeded in removing all game content from leading site Dave's Videogame Classics, CLEAR's hastily-constructed site drew over 14,000 visitors in just a couple of weeks and caused an avalanche of protests to arrive in the IDSA's mail.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "It's only some old Spectrum games, it's not hurting anyone."

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "All intellectual property is sacrosanct. Piracy is theft."

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: Standing in front of a column of tanks armed only with a carrier bag.

ROSE ROSE BULL EURO

NAME: Doug Lowenstein

POSITION: President, IDSA (Interactive Digital Software Association)

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? As head of the US's leading games industry trade body, Lowenstein is leading its campaign of wiping out the massively flourishing free emulation scene. With emulators now having reached the level of the Playstation, the implications of this campaign are serious not only for retrogaming fans (the most obvious victims), but also for the whole cultural heritage of gaming, which the IDSA appear to want to keep locked away and forgotten in a cupboard for eternity.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "All intellectual property is sacrosanct. Piracy is theft."

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "It's only some old Spectrum games, it's not hurting anyone."

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: Trying to kill worms by cutting them in half.

CASH SUIT SUIT SUIT BULL BULL YANK

NAME: Mr Cybernet

POSITION: Producer, Cybernet

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS:

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? Cybernet (from the makers of Movies, Games and Videos) is currently the only regular (in the loosest possible sense - it's rarely on on the same day two weeks running) videogames show on terrestrial television, offering half-an-hour of voiced-over news and reviews (and more actual footage of games than an entire series of Gamesmaster) to anyone prepared to stay up until 3am, which is when it's shown in most regions.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "Why has nobody ever heard of us?"

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "Tune in at the same time next week."

FUTURE PROSPECTS: Depressingly slim.

BULB STAR BULL BRIT

NAME: Pete Waterman

POSITION: President, PWL

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Rick Astley, Kylie Minogue, The Reynolds Girls

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? Textbook pop impresario Waterman made a colossal fortune in the 80s from constantly flogging essentially the same simple, unchallenging, superficial pop music time after time in slightly different packaging, in the process discovering a fantastically lucrative formula that EA and Eidos have been gratefully exploiting ever since. Sick of those thrice-yearly FIFAs? Blame Pete.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "I'd rather jack than John Carmack."

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "It's only rock'n'roll but I like it."

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: Steps.

FUTURE PROSPECTS: President of the Board Of Trade.

SUIT SUIT WHEELS CASH BRIT

NAME: John Carmack

POSITION: Owner and lead programmer, iD Software

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Doom, Quake

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? Where have you been for the last five years?

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "Well, you can't go wrong with brown."

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "Why can't we just all be nice and love each other?"

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: Quake Arena, a deathmatch-only sequel that's arousing plentiful controversy for its lack of a traditional one-player game.

FUTURE PROSPECTS: Quake's star is waning fast. Unless new ideas crop up soon, Carmack risks becoming an irrelevance.

BULB STAR PHONE YANK

NAME: Mike Connors

POSITION: MD, Datel Direct Ltd

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: The various incarnations of Action Replay

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? Another cipher entry here, with Connors appearing on behalf of all the clever people inventing ways to make your console games do things they're not supposed to, whether it be finding game-destroying cheat codes or playing import titles the publishers would rather you waited six months for. The console companies claim to hate them, but every time they put some clever new territorial protection or whatever into a game, that's just another cheat cart/converter you've got to buy, leaving the likes of Datel laughing all the way to the bank.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "Nice try."

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "I think they've got us flummoxed this time."

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: Ever-bigger Playstation memory cards (the latest is 50 times the size of the standard Sony model).

FUTURE PROSPECTS: Until universal release schedules happen, extremely rosy.

BOFFIN BOFFIN BOFFIN BULB BRIT

NAME: John S Bridgeman

POSITION: General Director, Office of Fair Trading

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? A recent report by the National Consumer Council recommended that the OFT look into the issue of price-fixing by the games industry. If the OFT take up the investigation, the ramifications could be gigantic.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "Forty-five quid? For Space Invaders? Blimey, that's a bit stiff, isn't it?"

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "That BT, eh? Someone ought to do something."

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: More pressing matters.

ROSE ROSE SUIT BRIT

NAME: Jeff Minter

POSITION: Designer

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Tempest 2000

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? As well as being responsible for one of the greatest games of all time, Minter is also, unluckily, the man with the anti-Midas touch - every console he's written games for since leaving the Amiga for the Atari Jaguar has been a spectacular failure. Which must be slightly worrying for the Nuon team.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "Can I put some sheep in it?"

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "Hurray! Another smash hit!"

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: Tempest 3000 for the Nuon. And doubtless some more sound-to-light programs.

FUTURE PROSPECTS: Likely to be hit on head by a falling mirror while tripping over a black cat walking under a ladder.

BULB BULB STAR GENIUS BEARD BRIT

NAME: Iain Vallance

POSITION: Chairman, British Telecom

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Making more than your weekly salary in the time it's taken you to read this sentence.

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? No matter how many tedious articles people might write about online gaming being the future, it's never going to happen here while local phone calls are charged by the minute. In other countries they're not "free", as is often erroneously suggested, but you pay a simple flat rate of a few quid per month, then you can make as many calls as you like. The practice is used in much of the civilised world, but BT fiercely resist pleas to introduce it here.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "No."

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "We'll have an engineer with you in 20 minutes."

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: Conning Net users into doubling their phone bills with BT Highway.

CASH CASH CASH SUIT SUIT PHONE PHONE PHONE JET BRIT

NAME: Charles Cornwall

POSITION: MD, Eidos

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Forming a huge new company out of the wreckage of two old ones.

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? Eidos own three of the biggest properties in the gaming world - Lara Croft, Championship Manager and Michael Owen. And they're not afraid to use them.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "If only we could somehow combine the three. How about a Dungeon Keeper rip off called Tomb Manager, with Owen as a really crap monster who falls down theatrically when you so much as glance in his direction?"

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "I think Lara should bow out while she's at the top."

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: Recouping some of the £19-million losses announced in Eidos' last set of figures.

SUIT SUIT SUIT MASK BRIT

NAME: Tim Wright

POSITION: Production Manager, Jester Interactive

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Music (Codemasters), original music for Wipeout, Wipeout 2097 and many others, dating right back to Shadow Of The Beast and Lemmings on the Amiga.

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? One of the leading lights in the fledgling non-game Playstation niche (see also Sony's lightshow prog Baby Universe), which might yet help the machine blossom into a universal home-entertainment tool. Also influential in the more general musical sense - the sounds of Wipeout did a great deal to establish Playstation's "cool" in the critical early days.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "Hear the drummer get wicked."

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "Pass the dutchie on the left-hand side."

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: A PS follow-up to Music, and an unnamed game.

BULB BOFFIN BRIT

NAME: Richard Garriot

POSITION: Founder, Origin

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Ultima series

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? Ultima Online is by far the biggest commercial attempt at releasing a game specifically for online play. It's already big news in the US, and could mark the way forward for the venerable Ultima series, all of which come straight from would-be medieval prince Garriot, aka "Lord British of Brittannia".

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "Prithee, my Lord, dost thou looketh at mine flagon of mead, or what?"

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "Techno techno techno techno!"

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: Getting back to business after settling the recent Ultima Online court case, in which Origin lost many hit points to a group of disgruntled UO players who sued the company over bugges in ye game.

BULB BEARD BEARD BEARD PHONE PHONE YANK

NAME: Richard Miller

POSITION: Chief Executive Officer, VM Labs

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Not yet.

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? Miller is the man behind the Nuon (previously known as "Project X"), the only next-generation console which is definitely known to be in development. The Nuon's trick is to sneak into ordinary people's homes piggy-backed on DVD players and other items of consumer electronics.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "It is told that great wizards from both the Aristocracy and the Guilds did come to be disillusioned with the long war. In war, the Aristocracy and the Guilds gained but the People suffered woefully. So the malcontented wizards hied forth to the land called "High Places" where they struck a truce and a pact. Together they would build a Machine and Worlds Within the Machine...and it would be good for all of the People." (Straight from the company's website)

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "Basically, it's the new 3DO."

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: Better press releases.

FUTURE PROSPECTS: If Nuon flops, there's always a job going at Origin.

BOFFIN BOFFIN BEARD BULL BULL WHEELS YANK

NAME: Jeff Kaye/Stuart Dinsey

POSITION: Editors of trade newspapers CTW and MCV.

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? The forums where industry opinions are both displayed and formed.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "Impressive third-quarter results for the last fiscal accounting period."

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "You're all just a bunch of wankers."

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: Finding ways to fill pages while the entire industry hibernates after the Christmas frenzy.

STAR SUIT YANK/BRIT

NAME: Miles

POSITION: A&R, Polygram Records

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS:

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? The mysteriously single-monickered Miles is the man most involved in forging closer links between the worlds of videogaming and pop music. He's responsible for the creation of a catalogue of tracks from well-known artistes selected and made available off-the-shelf to game developers, and will be instrumental (ha!) in the compilation of the soundtrack for the UK version of Gran Turismo 2. (The original, of course, having featured groovy bands like Garbage, Ash and the Manic Street Preachers in place of the Japanese version's anonymous techno.)

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "Three Colours Red could use the exposure."

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "Have you considered getting Tommy Tallarico in?"

FUTURE PROSPECTS: Well-placed to become a Pete Waterman-style starmaker.

BULB SUIT WHEELS SCHMOOZE BRIT

NAME: Bob Dudani

POSITION: MD, Computer Exchange

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Having Dreamcasts for sale for £2,000 on the day of release.

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? Computer Exchange, and the similar smaller chains and independents springing up around the country, serve a dual purpose. They're the first stop for grey imported machines and games, but they also represent, crucially, a way of making gaming more affordable, by allowing you to trade in the old games you've finished or lost interest in in part-exchange for the latest big thing. Without shops like these, a substantial proportion of people simply wouldn't be able to afford to sustain an interest in videogames, and that would be bad news for the entire business.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "Actua Soccer 3 on PC? I'll give you a fiver."

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "Just wait for the PAL version, it'll be cheaper."

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: Expansion - exchange shops are becoming more and more common on UK High Streets with every passing day.

CASH SUIT BRIT

NAME: John Romero

POSITION: Ion Storm

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Doom, Quake

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? The reaction to, and success of, Daikatana when it's finally finished will, to a large extent, dictate the way programming "superstars" are treated in the future by the business.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "Look, it's NOT just Quake but grey instead of brown, okay?"

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "It's just Quake but grey instead of brown."

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: Daikatana 2 (using the Unreal engine), even though the original isn't finished yet.

BULB STAR STAR CASH YANK

NAME: Jarvis Cocker

POSITION: Singer, Pulp

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Common People, Glastonbury '95

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? Straddling the worlds of pop glamour and extreme geekdom, Cocker is the human embodiment of the changing image of the videogames player over the last few years, and several in-song game references cement the connection. How the future shapes up for Cocker could well foreshadow the fate of the image of gamers.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "Ridge Racer 4 is hardcore."

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "I should be so lucky - lucky, lucky, lucky."

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: That difficult 14^th album.

FUTURE PROSPECTS: Continuing on the current path of critical acclaim but commercial suicide could lead to Cocker being dubbed "the Jeff Minter of pop."

STAR STAR STAR BRIT BRIT

NAME: Tim Chaney

POSITION: MD, Virgin

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Completing the management buyout of VIE and ending two years of doubt over the company's future.

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? Before being hopelessly tangled up in a huge corporate mess, Virgin (the No.1 publisher as recently as three years ago) were one of the world's most reliable producers of consistently high-quality original games (and entertainingly controversial advertising campaigns).

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "We're back! Back! BACK!"

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "Hang on, what happened to all our development teams? Where is everyone?"

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: Viva Football will be Virgin's big comeback title. A football game, eh?

CASH SUIT WHEELS BRIT

NAME: Roger Bennett

POSITION: Director General, ELSPA

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS:

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? Bennett is the industry's main instrument of change, the industry's figurehead fighting for stronger anti-piracy legislation and freedom for the business from the confines of BBFC censorship. He's also a cheerleader for high game prices, claiming them to be still better value than other entertainment media.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "Personally, I'd quite happily pay £100 a game."

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "The industry's worth £1 billion a year, piracy can't be hurting us all that badly."

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: Deflecting media attention from the recent scandal where ELSPA accepted a £100,000 donation to their anti-piracy campaign from a fund set up to benefit sick children's charities.

SUIT SUIT ROSE BRIT

NAME: Peter Molyneux

POSITION: President, Lionhead Studios

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Populous, Syndicate, Theme Park, Dungeon Keeper

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? Still a maverick, Molyneux deserted the corporate and financial safety of EA to get his artistic freedom back.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "Great, now I can afford another bizarre Japanese toilet for my house."

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY:

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: Black and White, which promises to be a whole new kind of god sim.

BULB BULB SUIT STAR STAR GENIUS JET BRIT

NAME: Brett Sperry

POSITION: Producer, Westwood Studios

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Command & Conquer, Red Alert

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? On its release, Command & Conquer was perhaps the single closest thing the PC had to a killer app. But will Tiberian Sun be the new thing everyone wants to copy, or will it be lost in the subsequent flood of clones? Every PC game retailer in the country is waiting nervously for the answer - as will EA, who paid a fortune to buy Westwood from Virgin last year.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "Actually, I think it needs another couple of weeks."

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "Second sequels never do as well as the first ones, do they?"

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: Tiberian Sun. Still. And Lands of Lore 3, which we'd expect about 2004 if we were you.

BULB BULB YANK

NAME: Tony Mott

POSITION: Editor, Edge magazine

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? While it has pretty much the lowest circulation in the entire games magazine business, Edge's importance comes not from the quantity of its readers, but the quality. It's the magazine that's read by the industry, and accordingly offers ordinary gamers not only an insight into what's really happening, but also a doorway into the business itself - the magazine routinely devotes twice as much space to job advertisements as it does to game reviews, and is the only public place where those not in the industry already can find such opportunities.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "Queues in Tokyo's Akihabara district."

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "Why can't we just be happy with what we've got?"

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: In-depth preview stories about consoles nobody's even thought of yet.

FUTURE PROSPECTS: Almost here.

BULL BOFFIN SUIT BRIT

NAME: Jeremy Smith

POSITION: MD, Core Design

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Thunderhawk on the Mega CD. What do you think?

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? Smith, of course, is the man vigorously milking the udders of the cash cow that is Lara Croft. Made the financial pages of all the broadsheet papers last year after being paid a massive 7-figure bonus.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "Sales are down, make her tits bigger."

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "Hey, come on, let's get that control system sorted out, it's important."

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: A clutch of new TR-related titles, not by the Tomb team.

CASH CASH SUIT SUIT TITS BRIT

NAME: Andreas Whittam-Smith

POSITION: Chairman, British Board of Film Classification

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Banning the full-blooded version of Carmageddon 2, despite its mooted 18 certificate and despite the near-identical Carmageddon having been passed the year before.

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? It's practically impossible to get a game with "controversial" or "adult" content released in this country, because the BBFC have to classify it as if it was a movie, yet are drastically technically unqualified to do so and take several months to reach a decision, making it uneconomic for publishers to do anything other than take out any remotely dubious content in order to bypass the BBFC altogether.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "Why can't you all just play that nice Spyro The Dragon?"

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "Jesus motherfucking Christ, we're all grown-ups, what's the problem?"

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: Attempting to cause a rain to come and wash the filth off these mean streets.

FUTURE PROSPECTS: If it's really true that watching violence on screen causes real-life violence, a kill-crazy gun spree outside a McDonald's somewhere near you any day now.

ROSE SUIT BULL TITS BRIT

BULBNAME: Gabe Newell

POSITION: Director, Valve Software

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Half-Life

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? After a year in which the PC was almost suffocated by witless, pointless, formulaic first-person shooters, Valve's astonishing debut title simply redefined the genre's standards on the PC in the same way Goldeneye did for consoles. A one-hit wonder, or the birth of a new force? We'll see.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "Feel the experiential density."

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "Let's put some orcs in it."

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: Console conversions, we hope.

FUTURE PROSPECTS: The shadow of a lucrative buy-out deal by Eidos or EA looms large.

BULB BULB YANK

NAME: Hironobu Sakaguchi

POSITION: Vice President, Square Soft

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Final Fantasy VII

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? Love its deeply involved plotline or hate its linearity and irritating battle system, FFVII did more than any game in history to open up the European market to the joys of the RPG. With the groundwork done, FFVIII is likely to be an even bigger hit, which could turn the current trickle of role-players into a flood.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "Let's make an even more deeply involved plotline."

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "Let's dump that really annoying random battle system."

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: Final Fantasy VIII, due out in Japan any time now. There's also a Final Fantasy Anthology in the pipeline.

FUTURE PROSPECTS: Likely to be shot by a crazed stalker.

BULB BULB BULB JAP

NAME: Giles Thomas

POSITION: Head of PR, Sega

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? After the horrible botch-up of the Japanese launch, Sega's entire fortunes may well rest on how well the Dreamcast does in the West. And in turn, the future direction of the entire games business is likely to be strongly shaped by whether or not Sony finds itself with strong competition or a clear path to lasting domination of the market by the end of the year. As yet, there's no evidence that Sega have learned any lessons from the PS's incredibly successful marketing, though, so don't hold your breath.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "Ah, but by the time of the UK launch, there'll be loads of top games."

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "Hey everyone, have some free review machines. We could use the goodwill."

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: The European launch of Dreamcast, sometime this year.

FUTURE PROSPECTS: Depression, especially given Sega's latest attempt to shoot itself in the face by cracking down on Dreamcast grey imports.

BULL BULL SCHMOOZE SCHMOOZE BRIT

NAME: David Jones

POSITION: President, DMA Design

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Lemmings, Grand Theft Auto, Body Harvest, Silicon Valley

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? One of the very few prominent design outfits currently working across all the major formats, DMA have long been one of the most celebrated names in innovative, original game design. Despite being head of the company (now a subsidiary of Gremlin), Jones still takes an extremely hands-on creative approach.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "I've had an idea."

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "Let's just do a beat-'em-up."

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: Wild Metal Country, a no-nonsense multi-player knockabout with tanks.

FUTURE PROSPECTS: With the administrative side of business now taken care of by Gremlin, the way seems clear for DMA to concentrate on pure development. The future's bright.

BULB BULB BULB SUIT GENIUS STAR BRIT

NAME: Scott Sellers

POSITION: Co-founder, 3Dfx

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Inventing the Voodoo Graphics chipset and making 3D accelerators standard equipment in new PCs.

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? The pace of technological advance in the PC graphics market is terrifying, and with the announcement of Voodoo 3, has now reached the point where the development of major new graphics technology now takes less time than the development of a new game, with obviously chaotic implications. As the PC falters as a games platform, having £200 graphics cards become obsolete in a year isn't good news for anyone, and if "progress" continues at the same rate of acceleration, it won't be long before you won't be able to buy a single new game without simultaneously upgrading your hardware. Soon, something's going to have to give.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "Voodoo 2? That's so last week, man."

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "Couldn't we just help people to program the old one better?"

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: Voodoo 4, we bet.

CASH CASH BOFFIN BOFFIN BOFFIN MASK MASK YANK

NAME: Hideo Kojima

POSITION: Producer, Konami Japan

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Metal Gear Solid

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? Before even being released over here, MGS has given birth to a whole new genre, the "stealth" game. Kojima's intelligent, inventive design and direction of the groundbreaking title gives cause for belief that he might be about to enter the really big league, and become the Playstation's first real design superstar (something the machine oddly lacks, hence the high placing). His obvious personality and ease with the media won't do him any harm in that respect either.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "Got a light?"

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY:

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: A suntan, we imagine.

BULB BULB BULB STAR GENIUS JAP

NAME: Andi Peters

POSITION: Commissioning Editor for Young People, Channel 4

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Working with Edd The Duck.

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? With Gamesmaster dead for over a year, there's now no mainstream TV coverage of videogames in the UK whatsoever, an absolutely astonishing state of affairs given the massive popularity of the pastime. It's not only Peters at C4 who's responsible for this, of course - it's a telling fact that the BBC (supposedly a public-service broadcaster) doesn't even have a department that could possibly be imagined to be appropriate for dealing with games (when we phoned them up, their best suggestion was the Light Entertainment division). It's a disgrace, but when you don't even know who to complain to, what can you do about it?

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "You know... for kids."

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "Let's do one like Fantasy Football."

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: Bugger all.

STAR SUIT ROSE BRIT

NAME: Paul Rose ("Mr Biffo")

POSITION: Editor, Digitiser, Channel 4 Teletext

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: The snakes; Morse and Lewis.

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? As the nation's only daily games magazine, Digi is always first to the punch with both hot rumours and hard news. Its viewing figures of 1.5 million give it more readers than every print games mag in the country put together, yet the industry bafflingly keeps it largely at arm's length, an approach which allows Digi's irreverent and disrespectful style free rein, since having no industry friends or advertisers in the first place means it's got none to lose with hard-hitting stories and reviews. It's all presented in a densely comic style which is at once the source of its popularity and the thing that deters those would-be readers incapable of grasping even the sledgehammer sarcasm presented by characters like "Insincere Dave".

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "We just hate everybody equally."

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "Here's a review of an early production copy we were sent by the publisher."

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: Tomorrow's issue.

FUTURE PROSPECTS: Having been commissioned to write a movie script for Sky, Rose may eventually find the demands of coming up with Digi six days a week, 52 weeks a year too much of a drain.

BULB BULB STAR STAR BULL BRIT

NAME: Gerry Berkeley

POSITION: Head Games Buyer, Blockbuster Video

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Used to do the same job for the HMV/Our Price chain.

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? Dictating what is and isn't available on the rental shelves affects the shape of the charts, and in turn the entire future release schedules. Nobody ever really notices Blockbuster in a games business context, but their influence on all of us is enormous. Could quite plausibly damage sales of the fantastic but short-lived Metal Gear Solid, for example.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "I think we're out of Tomb Raiders. How about a Psybadek?"

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "The Atari Greatest Hits Collection Volume 2? Order a million."

FUTURE PROSPECTS: The only thing that could hurt Blockbuster is a dramatic reduction in the price of games. No worries there, then.

CASH SUIT WHEELS JET BRIT

NAME: Bill Gates

POSITION: Chairman, Microsoft

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Amassing a personal fortune in excess of $40 billion; making more money in an average minute (asleep or awake) from interest alone than most people earn in a year.

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? Despite Microsoft having very little presence in the games market as such, they occupy a pivotal position in every PC gamer's life on account of the fact that almost every PC game is written to run exclusively on their operating system. The bugged, games-hostile Windows 98 has played an undoubted part in the PC's recent decline as a force in the gaming world, and Windows 2000 will have to buck its ideas up fast if Gates is to avoid killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. (Clearly the PC itself isn't going to die, but it's in danger of becoming a seriously unworkable economic prospect for gaming.)

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "Hush, my pretty one. Ah-ha ha haaarrggh." ("Miaow.")

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "You know, I think I have enough money now."

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: Total world ownership.

FUTURE PROSPECTS: Total world ownership.

CASH CASH CASH CASH CASH MASK MASK MASK MASK MASK YANK

NAME: Hiroshi Yamauchi

POSITION: President, Nintendo of Japan

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Turning Nintendo into one of the world's most profitable companies of any kind.

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? It's quite likely that the legendarily grumpy Yamauchi's last decision as Nintendo chief (see below) will be to decide what - if anything - comes after the Nintendo 64. It's (extremely) difficult to imagine the company giving up on hardware, yet Sony have moved the goalposts in such a dramatic fashion that a base-level shift in strategy might yet be on the cards - Nintendo have, after all, always made the vast bulk of their money from games, but as cartridge becomes a devalued and impractical format, their traditional economic model might become defunct. The choices Yamauchi makes now could drastically change the entire shape of the games world in years to come.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "Hrmph."

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "Come in, come in, let me show you around. Tea?"

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: His golf swing.

FUTURE PROSPECTS: Yamauchi has announced plans to retire next year.

CASH CASH CASH SUIT SUIT SUIT MASK JAP

NAME: Tim and Chris Stamper

POSITION: Rare

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Donkey Kong Country, Banjo-Kazooie, Blast Corps, Goldeneye.

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? The enigma-shrouded Rare team are the only serious challengers to Shigeru Miyamoto as the world's best videogame designers. Their track record of success goes right back to the days of the Spectrum, and is barely blemished by a single less-than-stellar title, with Goldeneye many people's choice for best videogame of all time. They're also unusually prolific for such a high-quality stable, with at least four potential crackers due in the next year.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "We just do what we do, and if anyone likes it it's a bonus."

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "And here's one for all you Playstation owners."

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: Perfect Dark, Banjo-Tooie, Jet Force Gemini, Donkey Kong World

FUTURE PROSPECTS: Being 25% owned by Nintendo might limit Rare's future growth as the PS increasingly marginalises all competition. But maybe they like it that way.

SUIT SUIT BULB BULB GENIUS GENIUS BRIT BRIT

NAME: Bruce McMillan

POSITION: EA Sports

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Getting three different FIFA Soccers to the No.1 spot in a single year.

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? Completely regardless of what anyone ever says in reviews, EA Sports games fly off shop shelves as regular as clockwork, especially in America where the brand is simply a licence to print money. Even the quite astonishingly dreadful FIFA 64 wasn't enough to dissuade the general public from lapping the licenced footy game up every 12 months, until 1998 when the World Cup provided the perfect excuse for EA to get them to lap it up every 6 months. It's difficult to imagine what it would take to screw it up now - you get the feeling McMillan could buy up the Trainspotting licence and release a heroin-shooting game every year and still bulge the coffers.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "What say we try for four FIFAs this year?"

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "Anyone fancy a bit of a change?"

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: FIFA 2000, NHL 2000, Madden 2000, NASCAR 2000, NBA Jam 2000...

FUTURE PROSPECTS: It's surely only a matter of time before EA Sports games achieve independent sentience and have us all killed by Arnold Schwarzenegger robots. Only then might McMillan be undone by his own creation.

CASH CASH CASH MASK MASK MASK YANK

NAME: Larry Probst

POSITION: Chairman, EA

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Finally beating off all the competition. To be the world's undisputed No.1 software publisher, that is.

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? The really scary thing (and the reason we have two EA entries side-by-side) is that you could split EA down the middle, making EA Sports an entirely separate company, and they'd very probably simply go from being the world's undisputed No.1 to being the world's undisputed No.1 and No.2 software publishers. The model is essentially the same in both cases - get a few popular licences/franchises, and then bring out slightly updated versions of the same half-dozen games every year - but original-formula EA have a knack of publishing more standalone hits too, like Die Hard Trilogy and Croc (via Fox Interactive), or Theme Park and Dungeon Keeper (from Bullfrog). The company is so huge and strong it could afford to totally ignore the N64 at its launch, waiting until Nintendo came up with a more agreeable profits structure - indeed, it's probably not too fanciful to say EA's delayed support played a significant part in the machine's relatively disappointing sales performance. If you're launching new hardware, you don't want to do it without EA onboard.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "Steady as she goes."

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "I am SO bored of Test Drive."

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: Finding ways of fiddling calendars to make years shorter.

FUTURE PROSPECTS: Bill Gates' job.

CASH CASH CASH JET JET SUIT SUIT YANK

NAME: Ken Kutaragi

POSITION: Head of Technical Development, Sony Computer Entertainment

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Inventing the Playstation.

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? However long it might be delayed by Sony while the PS carries on destroying all before it, one thing that's certain is that there WILL eventually be a follow-up machine, and when there is, Ken Kutaragi will be the man behind it.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "Playstation has not reached the end of its natural lifespan."

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "Actually, I've been working on PS2 for three years now and it's ready to hit the streets as soon as someone says the word."

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: Well, who knows?

FUTURE PROSPECTS:

BOFFIN BOFFIN BOFFIN JAP

NAME: Shigeru Miyamoto

POSITION: Creative Director, Nintendo of Japan

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Where do you start? Donkey Kong, Super Mario World, Mario 64, Zelda etc etc

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? You could, of course, argue that someone working exclusively for Nintendo was operating in far too small a market to justify a placing this high. Big fish, small pond, and all that stuff. But Miyamoto represents something far more significant than a licence to print money for the Big N. In an increasingly corporate, conservative and mainstream-oriented business, he's one of the last bastions - and certainly the figurehead - of the purist's ideal of gameplay. Miyamoto's games have no truck with "realism" (except in obeying the internal logic of their own abstract worlds), none of the sex and/or extreme violence now used to sell most titles - these are videogames made the way videogames used to be made, as a valid artform in their own right rather than an "interactive" version of something else.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "Just stick a pudding bowl on it and do a quick trim round with the scissors."

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "Oh sod it, it'll do, release it now."

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: Super Mario 64 2. Or possibly not.

FUTURE PROSPECTS: It's unlikely anyone else would offer the twin attractions of financial reward and total artistic indulgence that Miyamoto enjoys at Nintendo, or that he'd leave even if they did.

BULB BULB BULB GENIUS GENIUS GENIUS JAP

NAME: Chris Deering

POSITION: President, Sony Computer Entertainment

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: You really haven't been paying attention, have you? Does "The most successful console of all time, first try" ring any bells?

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? The PS's success isn't just in the numbers, huge though they are. The machine has been directly responsible for a massive and fundamental shift in the type of people who play videogames. The average gamer has aged 10 years since the PS came out, and it's no coincidence. Sony targeted the older, mainstream audience and hit it right on the nail. By next year, Deering will move in for the real kill - Playstation-branded consoles as common as VCRs.

MOST LIKELY TO SAY: "Saturn 2" every time he refers to the Dreamcast for the next 6 months.

LEAST LIKELY TO SAY: "It's a bit boring with no competition, isn't it?"

CURRENTLY WORKING ON: Not the Playstation 2, definitely not, no way.

THE FUTURE: As we mentioned last month, the only fly in Sony's ointment is judging exactly when and how to go about upgrading from Playstation 1. It's still doing far too well to be pensioned off just yet, but they can't wait forever for fear of allowing a new pretender to gain a foothold. As dilemmas go, though, it's a pretty nice one. As for Deering himself, of course, only bullets could stop him now. He's the most important man in the videogames industry.

KEYWORDS FOR SYMBOLS:

CASH - money

SUIT - suit

BULB - creative

TITS - tits

MUSIC - music

ROSE - political

BULL - mouthpiece

BOFFIN - boffin

STAR - media/personality

BEARD - beardy

MASK - scary/evil

GENIUS - genius

WHEELS - wheeler dealer

JET - international

SCHMOOZE - schmooze

KEYWORDS FOR SYMBOLS:

CASH - money

SUIT - suit

BULB - creative

TITS - tits

MUSIC - music

ROSE - political

BULL - mouthpiece

BOFFIN - boffin

STAR - media/personality

BEARD - beardy

MASK - scary/evil

GENIUS - genius

WHEELS - wheeler dealer

JET - international

SCHMOOZE - schmooze

KEYWORDS FOR SYMBOLS:

CASH - money

SUIT - suit

BULB - creative

TITS - tits

MUSIC - music

ROSE - political

BULL - mouthpiece

BOFFIN - boffin

STAR - media/personality

BEARD - beardy

MASK - scary/evil

GENIUS - genius

WHEELS - wheeler dealer

JET - international

SCHMOOZE - schmooze

KEYWORDS FOR SYMBOLS:

CASH - money

SUIT - suit

BULB - creative

TITS - tits

MUSIC - music

ROSE - political

BULL - mouthpiece

BOFFIN - boffin

STAR - media/personality

BEARD - beardy

MASK - scary/evil

GENIUS - genius

WHEELS - wheeler dealer

JET - international

SCHMOOZE - schmooze

KEYWORDS FOR SYMBOLS:

CASH - money

SUIT - suit

BULB - creative

TITS - tits

MUSIC - music

ROSE - political

BULL - mouthpiece

BOFFIN - boffin

STAR - media/personality

BEARD - beardy

MASK - scary/evil

GENIUS - genius

WHEELS - wheeler dealer

JET - international

SCHMOOZE - schmooze

KEYWORDS FOR SYMBOLS:

CASH - money

SUIT - suit

BULB - creative

TITS - tits

MUSIC - music

ROSE - political

BULL - mouthpiece

BOFFIN - boffin

STAR - media/personality

BEARD - beardy

MASK - scary/evil

GENIUS - genius

WHEELS - wheeler dealer

JET - international

SCHMOOZE - schmooze

KEYWORDS FOR SYMBOLS:

CASH - money

SUIT - suit

BULB - creative

TITS - tits

MUSIC - music

ROSE - political

BULL - mouthpiece

BOFFIN - boffin

STAR - media/personality

BEARD - beardy

MASK - scary/evil

GENIUS - genius

WHEELS - wheeler dealer

JET - international

SCHMOOZE - schmooze

KEYWORDS FOR SYMBOLS:

CASH - money

SUIT - suit

BULB - creative

TITS - tits

MUSIC - music

ROSE - political

BULL - mouthpiece

BOFFIN - boffin

STAR - media/personality

BEARD - beardy

MASK - scary/evil

GENIUS - genius

WHEELS - wheeler dealer

JET - international

SCHMOOZE - schmooze

KEYWORDS FOR SYMBOLS:

CASH - money

SUIT - suit

BULB - creative

TITS - tits

MUSIC - music

ROSE - political

BULL - mouthpiece

BOFFIN - boffin

STAR - media/personality

BEARD - beardy

MASK - scary/evil

GENIUS - genius

WHEELS - wheeler dealer

JET - international

SCHMOOZE - schmooze

KEYWORDS FOR SYMBOLS:

CASH - money

SUIT - suit

BULB - creative

TITS - tits

MUSIC - music

ROSE - political

BULL - mouthpiece

BOFFIN - boffin

STAR - media/personality

BEARD - beardy

MASK - scary/evil

GENIUS - genius

WHEELS - wheeler dealer

JET - international

SCHMOOZE - schmooze