Favourite developer this generation?

[Casual Shinji]

Hmmm, no one in particular.

I sorta liked Sucker Punch for being, as Yahtzee stated, the none squeaky wheel this generation. Bioware also, despite blundering pretty heavily, still gave me a fair amount of entertainment.

And I'll give a shout out to Sony Santa Monica for being involved in some of the best looking games this gen.

 

[thom_cat_]

Valve because The International 3 is going to be amazing. The amount of Dota 2 streams I have been watching has been ridiculous. If anyone likes to watch I advise this match:

Two steals one match + other hilarious and amazing plays. Was just entertaining from the start to end.

 

[WoW Killer]

To the topic: well, my two favourite series this gen have been TES and Borderlands. I can't really give it to Gearbox though because they are, to put it nicely, quite inconsistent. Even within the Borderlands games, the DLCs are quite inconsistent for instance: Moxxi's bad, Knoxx fantastic, Hammerlock's dismal, Tina's awesome. So yeah, Bethesda.

To this Mirror's Edge thing: loooooooooooooool. I don't know whether that's full on brain-dead or some kind of twisted genius marketing. I fully expect the game to sell well and simultaneously be meta-bombed into oblivion. There's that certain sort of gamer that rushes out to buy such things in the full knowledge they'll hate them. They'll probably be finalising the exact wording of their scathing review in their heads at the same moment they're handing their money over. EA seem to love that market.

 

[Vivi22]

I was going to say DICE, for picking up Star Wars Battlefront and Mirror's Edge, but then I saw they are being forced to work with Anita fucking Sarkeesian for Mirror's Edge.

Source please? I only ask because this is the first I've heard of it and a quick google search turned up absolutely nothing, so unlike other folks around here I'd rather not fly off the handle about how awful that is until I have confirmation from someone other than some guy on the internet. No offense intended of course.

EDIT: Never mind, saw your later post. Should have scrolled a bit farther I suppose. Still though, all we've got is a Destructoid blog post by someone from back in October. About eight months before the game was even officially announced. I'm not going to hold my breath on that being very true. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but I'll wait for something a bit more official before losing my shit over it. Plus I don't really have high hopes for Mirror's Edge 2 anyway. From what EA have said about it, they don't seem to have a solid handle on why the first one was good anyway, let alone how to improve it.

 

[spartandude]

CD Pojekt Red for me, not only did they make The Witcher 2 (my favourite game, sorry KotOR II) but also their general attitude towards customers and showing how bad the AAA sector is getting but making a game bigger, better for a fraction of the cost.

Runner up is Paradox (developer part, NOT publishing part) they know their niche and they stick to it providing some of the best strategy games ever

 

[lacktheknack]

I was going to say DICE, for picking up Star Wars Battlefront and Mirror's Edge, but then I saw they are being forced to work with Anita fucking Sarkeesian for Mirror's Edge.

Elaborate. NAO.

OT: CD Projekt, because the Witcher is fun and they run gog.com.

Well, two posts above.

You've probably seen the post already, so I'll hide it.

Spoiler

http://www.destructoid.com/blogs/TheKodu/the-sarkeesian-the-dice-and-the-mirror--235992.phtml

I can't find the actual TED she gave in motherfucking Sweden (because EA flew her to Sweden to work with DICE), but so far she's promised to change the control scheme to be 'easier', because she thought the game was too difficult for girls. Instead of Mirror's Edge immersive combo of parkour beauty, she wants you to hit one button and be over your obstacle of choice. Because differing control schemes scare off women.

EA probably is hanging onto her only to look progressive and I doubt DICE has a choice to deny any of her claims. So, they're having a rampant feminism gamer -- who is hated by gamers and probably feminists as well -- to work as a consultant to a game even though she's never been involved in a game's development before.

So yeah. Not getting Mirror's Edge 2.

...

You know, I never was outright outraged by Anita. I thought she was a bit patronizing, but whatever.

But if she SERIOUSLY said that the control scheme is "too complicated for girls", and will thus "empower them" by making it all easier...

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<youtube=F21aifX0lZY>

 

[Ulkjen]

Hmmm. If we are sticking to consoles and this generation, I would have to say Mojang and their Minecraft. It brought a lot of friends of mine off the x box and to the pc ;D.

 

[Fractral]

Atlus. All of my favourite games this gen have been made by them. Devil Survivor 2 was a masterpiece, let alone the Persona games.
I'm tempted to say Egosoft because they're making great, if very niche, games and supporting them for ages after release with new content and updates for free. I know everyone is talking about Star Citizen right now but until recently Egosoft was pretty much the only Dev still making space sim games, and X rebirth is looking pretty damn good.

 

[hooblabla6262]

Well, I definitely want to give mad props to TellTale for taking The Walking Dead and making a good character/story-driven game out of a series that prides itself on just that. Kudos!

I also want to mention Chucklefish, the developers of the currently unreleased Starbound. Now these guys are the standard to which we should hold many studios (so far). They have an incredibly strong rapport with their community, and they use this relationship to better improve the game.
I cannot stress how impressed I am with them. It's almost like making video games is a passion of theirs. Weird.

 

[TrevHead]

For me it's SEGA, with their old 16bit / arcade games, their own current gen IPs like Valkyria Chronicles, Binary Domain, Sonic Generations, Resonance of Fate, the excellent Platinum Games IP's and on the PC side Creative Assembly and Relic.

It's frustrating that SEGA don't localise all their JRPGs on the handhelds and have yet to port any of the Panzer Dragoons to current gen systems that includes Orta which doesn't work on PAL 360s grr. Then again I doubt those localisations would be profitable for them if they did as SEGA games tend to always drastically underperform.

Rising Star Games comes in 2nd

Just for giving the west some Japanese Shmups to play, even though the genre is a little too niche and quickly fell to the bargain bin.

Infact now I think about it the vast majority of my fave 360 games were bargain bin fodder, makes me think "Man! general video gamers have shit tastes and the retail system is broken" sigh.

 

[Collegeboy21]

I'm going to have to say Bioware for number one. They gave us Mass Effect and Dragon Age this generation. Not to mention SWTOR, which is actually pretty great, though not without its flaws.

Close second has to go to Bethesda for Skyrim. Man, I love that game.

 

[Nibiria]

Bethesda, for Skyrim and Oblivion.

Valve, for TF2 and Portal (the only two games I've played from them, both of which I've loved)

and...Gearbox. SHUT UP. I loved both Borderlands games and, even if their other games are shit (I'm looking at you, DNF & A:CM), I've logged countless hours into both games. They're fun for me, even after so many hours.

 

[MrMrAwesom]

PC gamer Suspicious Developments :3 GUNPOINT is amazing (YES THE TITLE IS IN ALL CAPS AAAAA)
& Tripwire Interactive for KILLING FLOOR (SAME HERE)

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

High Moon studios for making the awesome Transformers War & Fall of Cybertron and Deadpool hands down my absolute favourite for what they've done.

 

[Tanakh]

Valve

Because TF2, I've spent more hours with TF2 then I have with women.

I adhere to this statement, replacing TF2 with DotA2 and specifying that it would only be true if "with women" means to copulate.

 

[takemeouttotheblack]

Based purely on devs who made games that sucked me in, moved, inspired and entertained me the most and for the longest time I'm going to have to give it to Bethesda and Bioware.

Bethesda for both entries into the Elder scrolls series this generation, including associated expansion packs (yes yes I know; horse armor, calm down) and to a lesser extent Fall out 3 which was great in scope and atmosphere but try as I might, I couldn't get absorbed in the post apocalyptic dystopia.

Bioware for the Mass Effect series which I often worry i might love just a little bit too much and both dragon age games, which I managed to thoroughly enjoy despite some unfortunate flaws and design oversights.

Hounourable mentions go to:

Ubisoft montral, managing to have us murder countless englishmen, arabs, frenchmen, italians, turks and americans while still holding a valid message about racial balance and harmony and a strong moral imperative. Good job there.

Rocksteady, getting me even more interested in batman than christopher nolan did

Lionhead, Fable 2. Not so much Fable 3, though I enjoyed that as well.

Volition, proving you can out-silly yourself successfully

Relic, for some valiant attempts to bring the warhammer 40K Universe to life, even if they did come up with mixed results

Team Bondi, for struggling through the harsh strictures of an unforgiving buisiness model and recieving no reward at the end. Certainly not the only such story this generation, but it stands out in my mind as one of the most severe, especially since LA Noir was a real result in innovation, if again somewhat flawed.

And finally 38 Studios, for a brazen and interesting new IP which sadly may never again see the light of day despite showing a lot of potential.

Wow, I think this gentleman/lady may speak for me entirely. I'm mainly an RPG player, so Bioware and Bethesda on top, but also kudos to all of the above minus 38 Studios because I haven't played KoA yet, and I'd like to add Eidos for their work on Human Revolutions and Rockstar for RDR. A lot of the games these studios may have produced are flawed in some way, but I still enjoyed the hell out of them.

 

[dancowan15]

Best developers of this gen: BioWare, Naughty Dog, Irrational Games, Yager Entertainment, Valve, thatgamecompany, Sucker Punch, Telltale Games, Bethesda Game Studios, Arkane, Avalanche Studios, Insomniac Games, Criterion, Crystal Dynamics, and lastly, Firaxis.

 

[nathan-dts]

Naughty Dog, Irrational Games, Telltale Games, Kojima Productions and begrudgingly, Bioware; got to respect the men and women driving gaming forward by posing philosophical questions and making the industry respectable. All of them, except Irrational have made me cry this generation and all of them have made me think. That's important for the games are art movement, not that there's even a question about it.

Bioware have been slipping, but that trilogy, up to you know, was a masterpiece that challenged people to think about morality and philosophy. The Krogan stuff and the Quarian/Geth stuff were beautiful pieces of writing and although I'd like to exclude them because... you know... they did a lot with those three games.

 

[GonzoGamer]

Valve put out the Portal games so theres that.
My wife & I have probably spent most of our time playing Bethesda games. However I have a ps3 so i have a bit of a love/hate relationship with them.