Townsend, DE
I like them all for different reasons for different types of game play. Just some days I like to drive a 1950 car instead of a 2010 car.
(Topic ID: 78580)
My favorite designer is Dennis Nordman because of his creativity. A Nordman game has no familiar signature or reused ideas. Look at some of his titles. Almost no similarities with others: white water, pirates, wheel of fortune, scarred stiff.
However , my favorite games come from Steve Ritchie. He just nails the types of games I like, fast with a lot of flow.
Brian Eddy only made 3 games. I love them all. But two of them (afm, mm) are not that clever in design and I attribute Lyman's code to be the reason they're so great.
Borg has made some great games I love: tron, ironman, avatar, Metallica, guns n roses, as a current designer that's cranking out great quality, its a sham that he isn't in the poll. Terrible poll 
Gomez is hit and miss. I like some of this stuff but there doesn't seem to be a lot of creativity there. Although he is primarily responsible for creating pinball 2000.
JPOP is one of my favorites for sure. I can't see ever selling Tom or TOTAN. I'm a buyer of zombie.
Pat Lawlor has some very popular games. But I really don't like most of them. At one point I owned 8 lawlor games at the same time. Now I have one (TZ). I think lawlor will be a good fit with JJP. He was creative at one point but there are lots of similarities in his designs. I thinks lawlor influences the age software more than most designers as well.
Joe Balcier probably should have been mentioned. He isn't at the top of my list but is a current designer and tspp, woz are popular titles. To me, Joe's games have a lot of features but not a lot of flow. He doesn't seem to like ramps that much and throws flippers in just to have them without anything useful to shoot at with them. Just my opinion of course.
Quoted from awarner:Actually, Python did most of the game design and left the specifics of detailed placement and such to other designers. I've seen his original design and artwork and he did the bulk of his games with input from others. He also was the first person to design a game with a complete backstory. I'd argue that he has changed pinball more than almost any designer.
Depends on what you consider game design. To me, still sounds more like a guy who had some ideas and probably story boarded them but then had to collaborate with someone else to have them manage, build and complete the design. There's no doubt he's made an impact on the industry, we can agree on that.
From what I can tell, the first game with a complete back story or first game to tell a story is Fathom, not HS.
Fathom_Flyer.jpgQuoted from markmon:Borg has made some great games I love: tron, ironman, Avatar, Metallica, Guns n Roses, as a current designer that's cranking out great quality, its a sham that he isn't in the poll. Terrible poll
Dude, he's in the poll - the poll continues into the 1st post, he currently has 4 votes.
Quoted from markmon:Joe Balcier probably should have been mentioned. He isn't at the top of my list but is a current designer and tspp, woz are popular titles.
Balcer is there as well, no votes so far.
Quoted from solarvalue:Dude, he's in the poll - the poll continues into the 1st post, he currently has 4 votes.
Balcer is there as well, no votes so far.
Nah. The poll is the thing at the top that shows the votes. Its in alphabetical order and rather than showing current designers like John Borg that have more games listed than any designer or JPOP who had three games in top 15, it lists designers that haven't made games in 15 years or aren't really attributed to making any games directly at all. I understand you can vote inline but it's not the same and to leave out someone like Borg in the voting list (in my opinion) invalidates the whole poll.
Quoted from markmon:Nah. The poll is the thing at the top that shows the votes. Its in alphabetical order and rather than showing current designers like John Borg that have more games listed than any designer or JPOP who had three games in top 15, it lists designers that haven't made games in 15 years or aren't really attributed to making any games directly at all. I understand you can vote inline but it's not the same and to leave out someone like Borg in the voting list (in my opinion) invalidates the whole poll.
Look, I am doing the best I can with the tools available. I wanted to put everyone in the poll at the top but, as you know, Pinside only allows 9 options. Furthermore, you can't edit the poll after it goes up which makes it even more difficult. I tried to choose the 9 designers that I thought would be likely to be the most popular to go in the poll at the top but in hindsight maybe Borg should have been in there instead of Anghelo (as suggested by RazerX early on) and if I could I'd swap them over. Nevertheless, that is the purpose of the whole exercise, to find out who is the most popular and it seems that is happening - we've found out that Borg is more popular than Anghelo. Maybe I should have known that but I'm not really up with the most recent games, my bad.
I'm also trying to make people aware of the other list in the first post by directing them to it in the heading and in the thread itself so cut me some slack. I hope you will reconsider and cast your vote if you haven't already, thanks.
P.S. JPop, at least, is in the poll at the top.
Quoted from dothedoo:Joe Joos
OK, sorry, I didn't have him in the list, I'll put you down as a vote for Joe Joos.
I figured it would be a Lawlor and Ritchie dominated poll. Lawlor made the best unique layouts while Ritchie perfected a tried and true style. Ritchie is the king of flow, and Lawlor is the king of, uh, stop and go, I guess.
Ritchie and Lawlor are running away with it, and it's really close between them. JPop's got a fairly firm hold on 3rd which is maybe a little surprising since he has a fairly short resume in comparison. Trudeau is my personal favorite, but I don't think you can go wrong with any one of these 4 guys.
If the poll were for favorite 90's designer Pat Lawlor would be my choice but looking at the overall body of work I had to go with Steve Ritchie. He had huge hits across every era. Black Knight and Firepower for early SS, High Speed, F14 and BK2K for system 11, T2, STTNG and Getaway for WPC and I like his Stern games much better than Pat's. I would take ACDC, SM, and Star Trek over any of PL's Stern offerings. With that being said if Pat knocks it out of the park with his new JJP game I could be persuaded to choose him as my overall favorite.
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