e throw around the names of game-industry figures around a lot, but it seems like we may be taking much of their influence and experience for granted. BioShock was a fantastic game, but was that a fluke? How are the other games that Ken Levine’s worked on? Will Wright’s responsible for the Sims and SimCity, so his average Metacritic rating must be through the roof, right?

In an attempt to answer some of these questions, we’ve made a few trading cards with a dozen of the biggest (or most interesting) names we could think of. After whittling down our list and picking our final rosters, we whittled down their gaming histories to titles they actually played a key role in. Playtesting and QA are important in game development, but we didn’t count those kinds of peripheral jobs. From there, we compiled the average score for those games via www.gamerankings.com, and then averaged that total.

We’ll be the first to admit that it’s not the most scientific approach, but we think it’s an interesting way to size up each individual. On each card we also give the year their first known title was published, the number of titles they’ve worked on and the number of those titles that have accessible reviews. (Many games, particularly those that Will Wright and Sid Meier worked on more than two decades ago, no longer have any reviews available.)

Today, we’ve got the national team, featuring six American industry vets. Tomorrow, folks from around the world come to represent the international team.