Developers you wish were still around.

[Trent Kama]

Factor 5 and Ensemble Studios.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Sierra and Free Radical would both be on my short list; both gave me many hundreds of hours of childhood joy. I'd also add Sabarasa Studios to the list. They only managed to get one game released, with an updated remake ready for release, before the logistics of getting games published internationally as a small South American developer pulled them under. It's a shame, because their one game, Mazes of Fate, was an excellent little dungeon crawler in the vein of Dungeon Hack and the classic Eye of the Beholder trilogy.

 

[wammnebu]

Factor 5 and Ensemble Studios.

i loved the Age of Empires more than any other game as a kid, but it looks like a lot of creative energy had dissipated. Look at their successors

 

[Iwata]

SSI- No one has done strategy right on the PC since these guys went bust.

Sierra- Recent, but still missed...

Origin- BRING BACK MY WING COMMANDER!

 

[Vault101]

Bullfrog, Theme hospital was an awsome classic!

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

Appeal, creators of PC-game Outcast. Great game with some revolutionary features for its time. I wonder what they could do with that concept and modern tech.

 

[Super Toast]

Free Radical, we hardly knew thee...

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

Black Isle, Bullfrog, and Cavedog, to give my top three (and in that order). These guys gave us such classics as Fallout, Syndicate, and Total Annihilation - pure gaming gold.

 

[Anah'ya]

These guys:

I will love you forever, dear Looking Glass. You have my eternal thanks for Thief and System Shock.

 

[Nevyrmoore]

Sierra. Monkey Island will be missed.

Wrong company. Sierra was responsible for the Guide Damn It types of adventure games where you needed to be a fucking fortune teller to figure out that you're meant to keep that pie to throw at a Yeti. People who made MI were Lucasfilms Games.

As for my choice, Bullfrog. Pretty much every game they've made has been great.

 

[Demodeus]

- Attention To Detail short ATD for Rollcage and Rollcage Stage 2,
- Zono for Metal Fatigue (the strategy game with most potential wasted EVER which still beats the shit out of most new age rts crap)
Edit: Forgot to mention Blizzard.

Shut up, they died long ago.

 

[MercurySteam]

....and Grin

Wait, you actually liked one of their terrible games?

Black Isle to make a proper Fallout 3

They [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsidian_Entertainment] are. Fallout: New Vegas [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallout:_New_Vegas]

 

[infohippie]

Psygnosis, before they were gobbled up by Sony, damn them. They made the best games back in the old Amiga days.
Oh, and Bullfrog of course.

 

[onda]

Westwood

 

[linwolf]

Bullfrog that company made great games, and Squresoft it was never the same after the fusion.

 

[MercurySteam]

....and Grin

Wait, you actually liked one of their terrible games?

Black Isle to make a proper Fallout 3

They [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsidian_Entertainment] are. Fallout: New Vegas [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallout:_New_Vegas]

Obsidian is all Ex Black Isle people (more or less), but it's not all the black isle people there is a difference. And New Vegas won't be a proper F3, it'll be taking a bad game with a bad engine (VATS is broken, full stop) and trying to make something decent with it. A proper F3 would've been a finished vanburen that tech demo looked kinda sweet.

Unfortunately it's the closest thing we're ever gonna get. If fans of the original Fallout games disliked F3, then NV may not be much of an improvement in their eyes. New Vegas is basically Fallout 3 with references to previous Fallout games.

As I said, as close as we're ever gonna get.