i thought it was an interesting thing to do, so i stole this from my friend ownbones over on fa.

q: what do you do for modding/amateur game dev?

a: i do mostly programming and design, sometimes sound design and music

q: what caught your interest to do so:

a: i got into programming before i got into game dev. i was a kid, maybe 9 or 10 when i started programming. the reason i started was because i wanted to make a website. i started out with plain html, sadly, but i don't consider it my first programming language. however, i wasn't satisfied. i wanted to make a dynamic interactive website, like this one and many others. somehow, i stumbled onto c++, and even though i knew it wasn't for server-side scripting, i learned it regardless, so that was my first programming language. around the same time, i started playing runescape extensively, and for whatever reason, i wanted to make a java mmorpg like it. that was the point where i got into game dev and starting learning it. unfortunately, while i didn't lose interest in neither programming nor game dev, i did sort of "forget" about it for a few years during my teens. so fast forward to age 17, only three years ago. i got into game dev again. i had been play unreal tournament 1 and half-life 2 for years, but i had just discovered that you can mod them, so i starting experimenting with that. and that resurged my interest in game dev and programming.

q: what game devs inspire you?

a: john carmack, ryan 'icculus' gordon, thomas grip

q: what have these devs worked on?

a: john carmack was the lead programmer/technical director of id software since the very beginning. most notably, he worked on wolfenstein 3d, doom, and quake. now he's the cto of oculus vr. ryan gordon is a freelancer who ports video games to linux and mac os x. he's an avid supporter of open source, especially in video games, and is a unix geek. thomas grip is the lead designer at frictional games and was formerly their lead programmer. he has worked on penumbra, amnesia: the dark descent, and is now working on SOMA.

edit: i misinterpreted this last question as "why" so i'm gonna add a new question with the proper answer.

q: why have these devs influenced you?

a: i really look up to john carmack as a programmer because he's a really intelligent guy. like icculus, he's an avid supporter of open source software, and tries to open up his games to the community when he can. he's super progressive for technological advancement. like me, he wants realtime, interactive 3d graphics to be so realistic, it's indistinguishable from film and even real life. he's really a key figure in the development of realtime 3d graphics and has developed some really popular rendering techniques that are still used in video games today. many of the games he's worked on have pushed the limits of computers at the times of release. code and technology is in his blood. he's also really big on elegance and beauty in code, as well as speed, and i admire that.
ryan gordon is a major influence because, like carmack and myself, he believes in open source software. he believes games and software in general should be open source and that it would be beneficial. since he's also a unix geek, he makes a living porting video games to smaller platforms, like linux and mac os x. he wants to give those platforms a chance and let their users play the games that windows people get to play. next to its creator, sam lantinga, he's also one of the lead developers of SDL, a cross-platform library that takes care of all the low-level platform-specific stuff so you don't have to worry about that and just make your game. it's also designed to make porting your game easier, which is very nice, so i admire him and lantinga for developing it. his personal website, icculus.org, is an incubator for open source projects, primarily gaming-related, and a lot of really neat and useful stuff is hosted and developed there. he's just all-around an awesome dude that believes in linux as a gaming platform and open source software in video games and i admire that.
i like thomas grip because not only does he prove that you can be incredibly smart and write some advanced code while also being super creative and talented game designer, but he tackles some really challenging problems in game design and he really knows how to scare the player. one of the problems he's trying to solve is how to fuse gameplay mechanics with narrative, and not make the player's actions arbitrary, as well as making it immersive and terrifying. with every game, he improves and gets one step closer to solving this difficult design problems. and like me, he's also a lovecraft fan, which is a huge influence on his work. he's just a great designer and is fantastic at horror in video games. as a designer, i really strive to be like him.
i think what i like about these people is that i really relate to them. they all believe in things that i believe in (in terms of game dev, technology, etc), do things that i do/want to do, solve similar problems, and are simply very similar in many ways. it's because they're successful, that i look up to them and strive to be like them.

q: how have these devs influenced you?
in terms of game design, i like to fuse narrative with mechanics, so that neither is an afterthought and everything blends together perfectly. i also like to make art games fun to play, and are not just interactive paintings. i like it when you can replay games that are narrative-driven and artsy and have fun with them. products that you can only play through once lose value in my eyes, especially if the game is short. and this presents an interesting challenge if you're making a horror game because things lose their fear factor when you get used to them. i'm not sure how to approach this problem, but i hope to solve it some day. when it comes to programming, i like to write clean, elegant code (who doesn't?) and i try to learn more. it's really hard to explain how john carmack and icculus influenced me. i seem to be at a loss of words for this part. it's mainly that i've adopted much of carmack's design choices and such. i also try to make my games cross-platform and open source (if possible). open source is optional, but it's recommended. however, linux support is mandatory. i like to use SDL and opengl as much as possible. i like to avoid using directx and any platform's api directly. it's a lot of tedious work, especially with winapi and icculus has done all of that work for everyone. plus, directx locks you to microsoft platforms and, in my view, there's no reason to have multiple renderer backends, unless you intend to support legacy hardware. that's all that really comes to mind.