Welcome to the second annual GameDaily BIZ "Game Industry Persons of the Year" awards. Each day we'll announce the next person(s) on our top five list. 2006 was filled with tons of interesting happenings and people. There were numerous deserving people left off our list but our picks reflect those game industry people who we felt had the greatest impact during the last year—for better or worse.

So let's begin. Our No.5 choice is... a tie! We've selected Ted Price, CEO of Insomniac Games, and Bethesda Softworks' Todd Howard, executive producer of the The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

Oblivion was without a doubt one of the best games of 2006 and will certainly be nominated or selected by many in the industry as Game of the Year. In fact, the Spike TV Video Game Awards already did give it top honors. As executive producer, Howard had the unenviable task of overseeing this absolutely massive project, which took four years to complete. But the efforts of Howard and his team truly paid off... threefold.

First, when the game launched back in March Xbox 360 owners were still waiting for that "killer app," that one game to really show off the power of next-gen gaming. What they got was one of the most expansive, immersive, open, and detailed games ever made. (This editor, who has put in over 130 hours and is still not done with the game, likes to think of it as "massively single-player.") Second, as the exclusive console home of Oblivion Microsoft's Xbox 360 benefited greatly from the release, as the console got a real "shot in the arm" with its first true system seller. Who knows where the Xbox 360 would be today if not for this incredible RPG. If Microsoft is smart it'll make an effort to add Bethesda to its stable of Microsoft Game Studios, just as it did with Lionhead and the Fable franchise. And third, Howard obviously did his own company very proud as Oblivion has already sold 1.4 million copies in the U.S. alone (852K units on 360 and 486K units on PC), according to NPD data.

(Photo credit: G4 TV)

Insomniac Games' Ted Price has already been lauded for his work on the Ratchet & Clank games, among others, but in 2006 Price and his team had to deal with possibly one of the most challenging moments in his career: positioning his PlayStation 3 title Resistance: Fall of Man as THE game to back the launch of Sony's next-gen console. It became clear early on that Resistance would be spotlighted as the PS3's showcase title, its system seller. Everyone, including Sony, hyped the heck out of the first-person shooter (a new direction of sorts for Insomniac), and the pressure on Price to deliver an exceptional title that would (hopefully) spark PS3 sales this holiday and beyond must have been enormous.

Despite the fact that he probably felt like Atlas, his cool exterior during all these months has revealed no signs of buckling. Sony no doubt expected a lot from Price, and in the end he delivered not only the PS3's best game, but an outstanding game for any platform. While sales for Resistance are currently not that high (71K through November), certainly no one can blame Price for the fact that Sony's component shortages have led to fewer than 200K consoles being sold in the U.S. As the PS3 manufacturing ramps up and more gamers purchase the system, it's likely that a lot of these new PS3 owners will also be picking up Resistance.

Price also deserves to be on this list for the fact that he's been one of the more outspoken developers regarding the legislative efforts that have been levied against the gaming industry this past year. Back in June, he joined the fight against Louisiana's violent games law by writing a 21-page amicus.

In an interview with Jason Kraft and Chris Kwak of the Susquehanna Financial Group, Price explained, "Most legislation proposed has ambiguous definitions for what is 'violence' in games. The legislation that most of the states have proposed or have passed ignores the video game industry rating system, which has been well thought out and consistently applied across games for over ten years. As a content creator, it's very difficult to imagine what would happen if those laws stood, because we're dealing with ambiguous and arbitrary definitions of violence in games, and we have to figure out how to make content that doesn't trigger those laws. This can be impossible to do when the vague definitions for restricted content can be interpreted in multiple ways, and when each state takes a different approach.

"Furthermore, as a consumer and a parent, I worry this is the government attempting to tell us what our kids can and can't do. I prefer to take responsibility as a parent for what movies my kids watch, what TV programs my kids watch, and what games my kids play. I don't want the government telling me I'm prohibited from doing something, especially when it comes to the artistic content my family and I enjoy. Finally, as everyone understands within our industry, these laws tend to create a double standard for games. Despite the fact that the content we create is as artistically relevant and varied as film and television we're not being afforded the same constitutional protection. Under much of the legislation that has passed or is being considered, games are treated similarly to controlled substances like alcohol, drugs, and tobacco. As a content creator I believe that's inappropriate."

Be sure to check back tomorrow for our No. 4 pick!