Sid Meier civilization, the original is still the best. (well apart from phalanx defeating battleships and bomber planes occasionally)

CliffyB and UT, still THE BEST Unreal game.

So true for me too.

I guess technically Miyamoto was the first, but I had already fallen in love with his games before I had a clue as to who the man was.

With Ken Levine it was more real time "in the moment" admiration while playing Bioshock.

I knew Miyamoto, Iwata, and Itoi.  I remember Miyamoto because of Link to the Past and I read every name that made it.  Same goes for Earthbound.  And as soon as the net became a bigger thing I started looking into those games and really following the directors/developers.  So it was those three guys at the same time since I see celebs as people you start following and keeping tabs on.

He's still a developer, it's for that reason I specifically said developer and not designer, programmer, etc. 

@Darth- ::blush:: not a celebrity :-p

oh yeah. I wanna change my answer to Sid Meier, I also wanted the many many Sid Meier games that I saw shamefully advertised when you got out of Civ

Hideo Kojima

I had never played MGS before, but I read an interview of him about Snake Eater and got the game.  Still my most favorite game ever.

Mine could also be Roberta Williams.

Or Sid Meider perhaps.

I've never actually considered composers as developers. After all, it's possible for many of them to work without ever even laying eyes on the game in question. Referring to them as developers would technically include someone like Harry Gregson-williams simply because he composed for MGS.

They created content to the game, why wouldn't they be one of the developers?  Even if the composer never played the game, music is still as big of a part as something like art direction yet you would still count the art director as a developer.