Top 20 most influential businessmen in the MMO industry

Massive Online Gamer , one of the leading US gaming magazines, has named the Top 20 Most Influential Online Multiplayer Businesses. According to analysts of the publication, the list of iconic personalities who managed to excel and influence the industry as a whole in 2009 looks like this:

1. John Smedley and Laralin McVilliams (Sony Online Entertainment)
2. Huateng Ma (Tencent)
3. Mike Morheim (Blizzard)
4. John Ricquitillo (Electronic Arts)
5. Jack Emmert and John Needham (Cryptic Studios)
6. Tiancayo Chen (Shanda Entertainment)
7. Taek Jin Kim and Yongchan Jie (NCSoft)
8. Jim Crowley (Turbine)
9. Andreas Weidenhaupt ( Frogster Online Gaming)
10. James Ohlen (BioWare)
11. Gordon Walton and Rich Vogel (BioWare)
12. Yoichi Woda (Square Enix)
13. Hilmer Peterssson and Noah Ward (CCP Games)
14. Min Kim (Nexon America)
15. Jay Todd Coleman (KingsIsle Entertainment)
16. William Lei Ding (NetEase)
17. Steve Wadsworth (Disney Interactive Media Group)
18. Sergey Orlovsky (Nival)
19. Klaas Kersting (Gameforge)
20. Mark Pincus (Zynga)

Laurels of the most influential businessmen go to the gentlemen from Sony Online Entertainment . And there is a reason . No less worthy, in my opinion, were "made" by Turbine and BioWare , which are still gaining momentum due to a change in the DDO subscription modeland the social gaming network Social, respectively.

The presence of Sergey Orlovsky aka Warp007 in the top 20 is especially pleasing . The social network ZZima.com and now belonging to Mail.ru Allods Online have done their job.