Stieg Hedlund

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Stieg Hedlund
Stieg Hedlund
Born	1965 (age 58–59) Portland, Oregon
Occupation(s)	Game designer, video game artist, writer

Stieg Hedlund (born 1965) is a computer and video game designer, artist, and writer who has worked on more than thirty games in the video game industry.^[1] He is best known for his work in action RPGs, and has also worked on games on real-time strategy, tactical shooter, beat-'em-up and action-adventure games.

In 2009, he was chosen by IGN as one of the top 100 game creators of all time.^[2]

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Hedlund moved on to Japanese publisher Koei in 1990, which had established a North American subsidiary, Koei Corporation, in California two years earlier. Working at Koei both in Northern California and Japan, he either created or was the lead designer for a number of games including Liberty or Death, Celtic Tales: Balor of the Evil Eye, Gemfire and Saiyuki: Journey West. In 1995, shortly after Hedlund left the company, the subsidiary ceased its game development efforts.^[3]

After working on an unreleased Lord of the Rings–based title for Electronic Arts in the early '90s, Hedlund began working for the Sega Technical Institute (STI) in 1994, where, as an artist and game designer, he worked on titles like Comix Zone,^[4] The Ooze^[5] and Sonic X-treme.^[6]

In 1996, three years after he first interviewed with the company, Hedlund ran into the three founders of Condor. He was impressed by the potential of their latest game, Diablo, and immediately joined the team taking on the lead design role. Three months before the release of Diablo, Blizzard acquired Condor and renamed the company Blizzard North.^[7] Diablo would go on to become one of the most highly rated games of 1996.

In the wake of Diablo's success, Hedlund designed Diablo II which performed well (For more details, visit Diablo II Awards and Sales).

While at Blizzard, he also participated in the design of both StarCraft and the Diablo II: Lord of Destruction expansion pack. StarCraft was the best-selling PC game of 1998 and received numerous Game of the Year awards.^[8] Diablo II: LOD was released in 2001, and helped to “reinforce the staying power of an already legendary RPG”.^[9] It too received numerous awards, including several for Best Expansion Pack of the Year, and tied with Baldur’s Gate II for Best RPG of the Year.^[10]

On April 17, 2000, Hedlund announced that he would be leaving Blizzard North "as soon as his responsibilities for Diablo II (had) been fulfilled" in order to start a new game-development firm called Full-On Amusement Company^[11] with business partners, programmers, and artists from Virgin Interactive, Sega, Sony Computer Entertainment, Electronic Arts, and Maxis. During this time, Hedlund collaborated with director David Lynch on his unreleased Woodcutters from Fiery Ships game project.^[12]

Later in 2000, Hedlund joined Konami as the company's Creative Director and worked on titles such as the iconic Frogger and Contra series. In 2002, he went to work as Creative Director for Ubisoft/ Red Storm Entertainment^[13] on games such as Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon 2 and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Lockdown, as well as contributing to Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter. He also spent some time with Oddworld Inhabitants doing foundational work for Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath.

Beginning in August 2004, Hedlund signed on with Perpetual Entertainment as Design Director for Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising,^[14] officially announced in March 2005. The game was shown at E3 2006 and received several "Best of Show" awards, with particular notice being paid to its innovative "minion" system.^[15] Although it was well into “content complete” beta testing by September 2007,^[16] the technology behind the game could not be stabilized, and after numerous delays and several rounds of layoffs^[17] the game was "indefinitely suspended" in mid-October 2007 even as further stability testing was underway.^[18] Hedlund left the company during its ensuing dissolution in the months that followed. The game was published in June 2011.

After leaving Perpetual, Hedlund founded Turpitude^[19][20] an independent game development firm, along with partner Natalie Fay. As the Chief Creative Officer for Turpitude Design, Stieg oversees the team of game designers and producers working on the company's projects. Turpitude would fade into obscurity, and Hedlund would go on to work for nWay Inc. and Zynga.^[21]

IGN named Hedlund as being one of the top 100 game creators of all time (number 62).^[22] His games have an average rating of 88%, and have received numerous awards including:

Diablo: GameSpot's Game of the Year Award, and No. 1 spot of all PC games.^[23]

StarCraft: GameSpot's Greatest Games of All Time,^[24] Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Game of the Year,^[25] Computer Gaming World Game of the Year,^[25] PC PowerPlay's Game of the Year,^[25] PC Gamer's Real-time strategy Game of the Year,^[25] Games Domain Strategy Game of the Year,^[25] GameInformer's 35th Greatest Game of All Time.

Diablo II: Guinness Book of World Records Fastest Selling Computer Game Ever Sold,^[26] Interactive Achievement Awards Computer Game of the Year,^[27] Interactive Achievement Awards Computer Role Playing Game of the Year,^[27] Interactive Achievement Awards Game of the Year,^[27] PC Gamer No. 16 "50 Best Games of All Time",^[28] PC Gamer No. 82 "Top 100 Games", Computer and Video Games No. 25,^[29] "The 101 Best PC Games Ever",^[30] GamePro No. 11 "The 32 Best PC Games",^[31] Destructoid No. 7 "Top Video Games of the Decade".^[32]