What's the greatest game developer company to ever have been in the business?

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Atmos Duality

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Overall presentation: Between Blizzard (pre-WoW) and Nintendo (pre-Wii)
Technical Prowess: id Software
Story: Tim Schafer. Far wittier and more memorable than most Bioware titles. Brutal Legend's references are comedic genius, even if much of the game is shite.
Style: Too many good individual examples to pin down.
 

ten.to.ten

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dolgion said:
You got a point there. Well, I'll edit the post. Also, it's not about a developer that was "only" superb. Hell, Origin released a few duds themselves. I meant more like the general contribution of the developer to the industry.
Okay, well I'll think of some...

Nintendo: While they've been pretty bad lately, and were the ones who are responsible for things like games being as expensive as they are and region coding, the contribution they made to gaming in the 80s and 90s can't be understated, and almost all of their games from this period have a timelessness to them that is rare in a medium with such rapidly progressing techology.

Square: For their RPG renaissance that started around the time of Chrono Trigger and ended around the time of Final Fantasy IX, where just about every single game they released was absolutely top grade.

Bullfrog: They might have only lasted for about a decade but made the best non-SimCity sim games ever. The fact that Theme Park keeps getting rereleased and is still just as fun to play as it ever was is testament to that.

LucasArts: The kings of point-and-click adventure games. Even though the genre is dead I hope that those games will still attract new fans, because there's nothing quite like them.

Bethesda: While they couldn't program a "Hello world" if their lives depended on it, Oblivion and Fallout 3 are by far the best and grandest games on the current generation of consoles. Both of them have stimulated my mind in a way that I thought wouldn't happen to me from playing a videogame again. There's a certain je ne sais quoi their games have that just makes them so magical. I think it's safe to say that Skyrim will continue this.
 

Kingsnake661

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Nintendo, Sega, and Atari. Lets face it, they layed the foundation for who came after them. And they still put out decent games.

But, if i had pick on publisher based on what games i enjoy playing the most, it's bioware. KoToR, and both Mass Effects make up 3 of my top 10 fav games of all time. ToR and ME3 are the games i'm look the most forward too. Bioware is where it's at for me ATM.
 

KineticFaction

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Batfred said:
Nostalgia tells me the answer is Ocean who gave us the 80's and 90's classics on the C64, Speccy and Amiga etc.
Close, I'd have to say Team17 :)

ProjectX, Apidya, Worms, The Alien Breed Series, Super Frog and Super Stardust (but I think they only published that)
 

emeraldrafael

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I'd say Atlus.

... What, I've never played a bad Atlus game, they're good to their fans, and they put out high quality titles.
 

ten.to.ten

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emeraldrafael said:
I'd say Atlus.

... What, I've never played a bad Atlus game, they're good to their fans, and they put out high quality titles.
Atlus are good to their American fans, I just wish they'd open up a foreign branch and start releasing their games globally. Come on, it's 2011, if Nippon Ichi can do it then why the hell can't Atlus? It really sucks having to wait in uncertainty for their games to be picked up by a third party (like Square Enix or Namco Bandai) to be released outside America, and most of them aren't.
 

Cavouku

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Eeeeeh... I want to say that Nintendo deserves some serious mention, because without them, videogaming as we know it may not be, after the crash. They were there for us.

They're in a bit of decline, and I hope they come back to their a-game, because videogaming without Nintendo just doesn't feel right, even if no one here's played their games.

Best games? Oh, I couldn't get into it. I like a lot of Ubisoft games, and Bioware, but there's so many games I like, and so many games I could like if I had the extra money.
 
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Nautical Honors Society said:
Valve created Steam, I think for that reason alone they are up there as the best in the business.
Very good point sir. I must admit I hadn't even considered Steam, as I was only thinking about games released, not software. I suppose when Steam is factored into the equation the influence Valve has had on the gaming community becomes truly massive.

+1 vote for Valve.
 

starwarsgeek

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dolgion said:
What are the greatest developers for each era, separated into PC and console gaming. Maybe that's easier to narrow down. So for example, my take would be Origin for the late 80's, early 90's for PC gaming. Nowadays, it'd be Blizzard in PC gaming. For consoles I think Nintendo really deserves the title for the entire 90's in console gaming, though I'm not a fan myself. I just respect their contribution and achievements.
Even seperated by era, that's hard to pin down...the great developers are great for different reasons. Nintendo still makes great platformers, adventures, and RPGs--but if you're not a fan of platformers, adventures (Zelda style, anyway...), or J-RPGs, you probably won't be a Nintendo fan. Anyway, here's my list.

Since I already mentioned them, I'll start with Nintendo. In the 80's, they released a hit arcade game that would go on to practically create the Platformer--Donkey Kong. With that, the company was pulled out of a tough financial time and the most well known video game protagonist was born. After the great market crash of '83, Nintendo was the company that saved the American console market with the NES. To attack the problems of low-quality shovel ware and porn games that plagued the Atari 2600 (and added to the problems that led to the crash in the first place), they used a "seal of quality" system as a self-imposed censorship and used cartridges that could only be produced by Nintendo themselves. This heavy-handed approach would eventually hurt them, but that part comes later.

The company would prove to be pretty far ahead of its time--experimenting with motion controls and as early as the 80s. In addition, their more popular games tend to help define their genres, especially when the games in question were different enough to actually start their genres:

Metroid's blend of platforming and adventure led to an action-adventure sub-genre that's actually (partially) named after the game--Metroidvania.

Super Mario Bros., while Donkey Kong created the platformer, and Pitfall added the sidescrolling element, it's this game that refined the genre's basic mechanics and helped define it. Side scrolling, power ups, secrets, and--of course--lots of running and jumping.

The Legend of Zelda. Not the first action-adventure game (I think that was Adventure for the Atari 2600, but my pre-Nintendo game history knowledge isn't that great...yet), but it certainly helped to evolve the genre, open-world gaming, and--eventually, 3D gaming as a whole.

I would go on, but this is getting long and I've got other developers to talk about. Basically, more sub-genres were created and popularized by Mario Kart (which possibly went on to inspire car fighting games like Twisted Metal, but that'd just be a guess on my part), Mario Party (Boardgame-based mini game collections), Super Smash Bros.(a fighter that allows four players at once, uses heavy doses of platforming mechancis, and doesn't use a healthbar), Pikmin (Action-RTS? I know games like that have come out since Pikmin, but I can't recall any before), and Wii Sports.

In addition to creating/popularizing/evolving a handful of genres, they also practically created the handheld market as we know it today, started a chain of events that led to Sony getting into the market, popularized touch screen and motion controls for gaming, and helped expand the typical gaming audience.

You know...this post is definitely getting too long, and I've got an exam to take. I'll just do a second post later today giving my opinion on the influence of Capcom, Konami, Sega, Square Enix, Sony, Microsoft, Bungie, Valve, Id Software, Epic Games, Bioware, Bethesda, Blizzard, and anyone I can think of who's started or made a huge contribution towards a genre or market...even Zynga...*shudders*
 

DracoSuave

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Activision.

Nintendo.

Every single gaming developer in the entire world owes their paycheck to the foundations these three companies laid down in terms of development.

Console Developers would not EXIST without Atari programmers being sick of grinding out shovelware and forming a company that wanted to focus on making games they wanted to play and make. From the fast, furious, frantic action of Spider Fighter, to the deep gameplay of Starmaster, Activision set out to prove that the success in the industry was about the talent, not about promotion. Before them, you worked for the company that made the machine itself, and you put out whatever game you could pound out in 2 weeks for Time-Warner. Activision survived the crash of the industry, while Atari is just a name companies trade for the brand recognition value. Protip: Atari's actually been 6 different companies. I hear it's a french company these days.

Nintendo saved the industry, ressurecting it from the ashes with a clever marketting gimmick that was designed not to sell the NES to american consumers, but to get the system on the shelves at all. This, combined with a desire, similiar to Activision, to make the games the lead designers WANTED to play, this company really showed people what a home console could do. They pushed the boundries, inventing entire new genres simply because they could.


Atari, however, deserves special notice, for both creating, and destroying, the video game industry. They exist as a cautionary tale on the dangers of doing it for 'the moneh' after they destroyed their competition with a simple, cheap, easy to program machine called the 2600. Their mistakes, however, are directly responsible for the resurgence of the industry. They treated programmers poorly, causing them to leave and form Activision. Nintendo approached them with the Famicom, seeking to team up with Atari to market the system in North America.... Atari thought the 7800 was going to save the industry, so they turned them down, meanwhile finding less and less opportunity to find retailers willing to take the risk of even having videogames on their shelves.

The games section of your local store might have been three bland boxes on a shelf, with one of the boxes opened by shoplifters. And so Nintendo went to a different company to distribute their product... Mattel. Mattel and them created the R.O.B., a toy robot that interacted with... one game. Ever. The genius here was that the ROB got the NES into toy stores. They carried the 'normal' ROB package, and stocked some of the 'bargain' NES package, consisting of the system and super mario brothers. And it sold. Big.

The rest is history.
 

Royta

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For it's Retro Studios with their Prime series. But I also have a growing passion for PlatinumGames (Bayonetta, Vanquish) and From Software (Demon's Souls, Dark Souls).