Off the top of my head, I can't really think of any standout game programmers. Games are made by big teams with tons of programmers, and group code review. You can't pinpoint anyone's contributions from the outside.

I can think of lots of standout designers though.

Shiguru Miyamoto, Hideo Kojima, etc...

Quote:Original post by SpriteChild
"What makes a rockstar programmer?"

Outstanding problem-solving skills and a bulldog tenacity to solve them. Work ethic (doesn't slough off, works on what's expected, achieves objectives) and good helpful attitude. Clean well-written code and a low bug rate.

Quote:
I'm going to deprecate myself here, but as an IT programmer, I feel like most game programmers could code circles around most IT programmers, even if they weren't doing games.

I might not go that far. Even in the gaming industry, a lot of the 'hard stuff' is done by a few core developers. The main difference is that bizdev tends to get more of the 'professional' programmers. They only do it for a paycheck, and don't really think about programming or work to expand their knowledge. The difficulty in getting into the industry isn't so much the skill required as the volume of competition.

I've known a few rockstar programmers in my time, but they were all in bizdev. A guy who could debug linux gigabit ethernet drivers from a hexdump, by sight. A guy who wrote an entire kernel level solaris virtualization engine, in a week. A guy who, without a computer, would debug the policy processing engine (in COBOL) for a national insurance firm by telling the guy on the phone what line number the error was on.

These are of course the far end of the scale [edit: and that's of course in addition to doing well all of the simply 'difficult' stuff that other devs could do]. There's been studies that show that good programmers get orders of magnitude more things done than an average programmer. Great programmers, orders of magnitude more than those. Rockstar programmers are just the ones with enough experience and talent (knowledge is less important) to just be in the top tier of that productivity, even for decidedly hard problems.

Quote:Original post by SpriteChild
Every senior programmer is basically equal?

Not in a million years.

Quote:Original post by SpriteChild
what more is implied by "rockstar" programmer? What can we focus on to stand out from our peers?

The creative spark to come up with something new. I worked with a really good programmer at Virgin Interactive. Great but not rockstar. Every time a new piece of tech came out (Doom engine, Fractal landscapes etc) he looked at it and said "I could do that". He was right he could work out how they had done it and make a version - but he couldn't invent it in the first place.

However, being a rockstar isn't the only way to stand out. Developers don't need an office full of rockstars - in fact it would be a disaster. Many of them are great at coming up with new tech, but not very good at the production work needed to push that tech from prototype through to finished game. One rockstar per team is about all you need, which means there are more jobs out there for people able to get projects finished.

To me, the guys that stand out are the ones who've been in the job for 20 years, and aren't 19 years out of date. Having worked in corporate and games programming, I've seen a lot of guys who've been in the job for a decade, and not cared about learning anything new over that whole time period (beyond what they had to in order to fulfil their day-to-day duties). Then there's the guys who've been in the job for a decade and can discuss the latest tech/fads/ideas with the youngin's and still be a mentor in those emerging fields (without just being arrogant / dismissive / etc).
Initiative to learn, I guess.

Quote:Original post by Obscure
Many of them are great at coming up with new tech, but not very good at the production work needed to push that tech from prototype through to finished game. One rockstar per team is about all you need, which means there are more jobs out there for people able to get projects finished.

On that note, there was a saying going around the office recently - "Real artists ship". So basically, no matter how great your creation is, it doesn't count one bit unless you ship it! (which means there's no such thing as a "starving artist", if you don't ship, you're not an artist ;P)
So perhaps the "roadies" are just as important as the "rock stars" ;)