[nxtbl]

They used to be, at least during the Amiga heydays.

Sid Meier's Pirates!, Civilization, Colonization, Railroad Tycoon etc. [1]

David Braben presents Frontier - Elite II

Also after Populous, games like Powermonger, Black & White etc were all known to be "by" Peter Molyneux.

Then there were also isometric shooters by some John Carmack

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_Meier#At_MicroProse

[tezza]

Sid Meyer says in his memoir that Pirates! was so unpopular with the business execs that the Execs suggested putting “Sid Meier’s” at the front to improve sales and associate any failure with Sid alone.

Sid says it stuck after Pirates! was a success.

[pwdisswordfish0]

Highly recommended book! Robin Williams apparently also played an indirect role, suggesting the OP’s question at some conference of the Software Publisher’s Association (although this is apocryphal even according to the book).

I also find it pretty amusing that the other big name on video game boxes – although not much involved with the games themselves – Tom Clancy, established this custom with a Sid Meier game, Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising.

There is actually only one other name I can think of that prominently appeared on the box, American McGee. Will Wright, Shigeru Miyamoto, Hideo Kojima, Tim Schafer, Ron Gilbert, John Romero and John Carmack could have pulled it off, but AFAIK never did, although their popularity did boost many a game’s sales. Cliffy B also comes to mind as a game designer I can put a name and face to.

[gabereiser]

Fact. He never intended for his name to prefix the game titles he made. Sid’s pretty humble.

[nicolas_t]

Sierra used to advertise their designers

So you have Al lowe's Leisure Suit Larry, Roberta William's king quests, Jane Jensen's Gabriel Knight, The Cole's Quest for Glory and Mark Crowe and Scott Murphy's Space Quest among the more well known.

[kaffeeringe]

Everybody knew, Lord British made Ultima.

[kyriakos]

Grew up on those games. Legendary story tellers.

[pvitz]

When John Romero was at Ion Storm, Daikatana's marketing was also centred around him.

[jstarfish]

IIRC these days he says he had nothing to do with that decision.

[mpeg]

They still are very much, especially for smaller studios

David Cage (Fahrenheit, Heavy Rain, etc.)

Hidetaka Miyazaki (Dark Souls)

[amalcon]

There have been at least a few games whose PR mentioned Warren Spector's involvement.

[bombcar]

Will Wright was up there, too.

[muzani]

He doesn't have a great rep for some reason. His biggest hits - The Sims, SimCity, and Spore are all quite hated, but those games have a large following of players and creators who don't do any other games.

So in a sense, there's someone out there who loves Spore but won't buy The Sims, because they don't need any other games.

[hombre_fatal]

Not really a “they used to be” when you almost named all of them.

[ethbr0]

+ Brian Fargo