It's that time of year again. 2008 has been an exciting year for the video game industry and a number of people made their presence felt. Today, GameDaily BIZ is pleased to kick off our annual Persons of the Year selection.

Our only condition for this honor is that these individuals had to have a big impact on the industry as a whole – whether for good or ill. These are truly the people who made the video game world go 'round this year. Let's get started...

#10 Alex Rigopulos, Harmonix
We begin our countdown with the CEO of MTV-owned Harmonix. Sure, Activision's Guitar Hero may enjoy better sales and greater mindshare, but there would be no Guitar Hero without the innovation that Alex Rigopulos and his very talented team brought to the table.

Moreover, while Guitar Hero: World Tour now has multiple instruments as well, Rock Band did it first, and Rock Band remains to this day possibly the most "evergreen" game ever created. GameDaily BIZ rarely goes more than a few days without getting at least one Rock Band session in, and we know plenty of people who play more Rock Band than anything else. Part of this "addiction" has been fueled by Harmonix's steady addition of new downloadable content. There are now more than 500 songs to download, and Harmonix recently said that an incredible 28 million downloads have been paid for to date.

In a year in which video games will once again set an all-new sales record in the U.S. (around $21-$22 billion), music-based titles are still a key driver of sales, even if there has been a bit more "softness" in the category in recent months. Music games have accounted for 16 percent of software sales this year (according to NPD data), and the music industry itself should be thankful for the boost these games are providing recording artists and music labels.

It's hard to imagine a video game industry today without games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band and we salute the pioneering work of Rigopulos and his team, going all the way back to the days of FreQuency and Amplitude. We're excited to see how Harmonix's new Beatles game turns out and we can't wait to see what else the developer has in store.

(Image credit: Ethan Miller / Getty for AIAS, thanks Time.com)

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