I'm not sure I have a favorite developer anymore. They all seem to inevitably get too big for their own good. If there's one thing I've learned it's that the moment you start to believe someone can do no wrong, they do.

Rockstar North and San Diego, soon most likely also to be Team Bondi.

Bioware though they're kind of falling out of favor right now

Bethesda for obvious reasons

Obsidian for obvious reasons

I think that's it.

Nobody mentioned Raven Software?

Come on... :clap: ... that's it... :clap:

lol... I'm just filling gaps here. I share favourites with pretty much everyone here. They've all done good work. Good work. :clap: and bad

enix.ivalice.series

Clover Studios, for Viewtiful Joe. Searching for a copy of Okami.

Platinum Games, for MadWorld. They also have some people from Clover.

Capcom, for Phoenix Wright.

Ska Studios.

Nintendo.

Pandemic

Free Radical, for Timesplitters.

Bay12.

Bioware- I love Mass Effect and Dragon Age with all my heart. I've put tons of hours into those games.

Pandemic- Four words and a colon. Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction. This game pretty much made up my entire time of owning a PS2. Unfortunately, EA came along and had to put them out of business due to one unappreciated game; Mercenaries 2: World in Flames. Personally, I like the game a lot even though it doesn't compare to the great Mercs1.

Square Enix- I like Just Cause, just 'cause it's awesome. :tongue:

Bungie- Halo. All of them. I've never played a game that told such a tale of desperation quite like the Halo series.

Rockstar- I started with Red Dead, and made it to GTAIV. My only disappointment was the ending to Red Dead.

Naughty Dog- When I wasn't playing Mercs, I was playing Jak 2, 3, and X. That was one of the most fun and unique games I have ever played. When I had a PS3, I played Uncharted, which is a really great adventure game, but the lack of an open world kind of ruined it for me.

EDIT: How could I forget Gearbox!? Borderlands and Brothers in Arms are fantastic!

Heretic
Hexen
Hexen II
Heretic II

:celebration:

Valve

id

Raven Software

Midway! Midway were brilliant. Once they were as powerful in gaming as Sony and Nintendo are today.


Once they got hold of Williams' best franchises, anyway.

Bethesda
rockstar- gta
paradox- their strat games
lucas arts- kotor
and whatever company made rome total war

Square Enix ( liked 'em more back in the Squaresoft days, but they're still my favorite developer)
Nintendo (EAD Group 3 mostly)
Atlus
Kojima Productions
Mistwalker
Irrational Games

Hmm... Most have already been said, and I feel no need to reiterate. There's one I notice hasn't yet, though:

Telltale Games, for helping bring the adventure game genre out of a long post-90's lull, where despite adventure games still being released, very few captured media attention. Oh, and also for resurrecting the Monkey Island series in (mostly) satisfactory style.

Nobody mentioned Relic? I guess I've pumped my fair share of hours into the Dawn of War series, especially the DoW base game online. So...

... Relic Entertainment.

Anyone remember when Codemasters was good? lol Dizzy! Epic!

Atari... for uh... Paperboy!

Fox Interactive for... AvP2! Oh wait that was Rebellion. Fox for... Virtual Springfield. That game rawked... its way to the fires of HELL! Oh that was Digital Evolution. Fox did... uh... Croc: Legend of the Gobbos. Legendary.... [censored]. Nope... what have Fox developed? Anyone?

Edit: TEAM MEAT!

Origin Systems Inc.

* Ultima series (1983–1999)
* Caverns of Callisto (1983)
* Autoduel (1985)
* Moebius: The Orb of Celestial Harmony (1985)
* Ogre (1986)
* Ring Quest (1986)
* 2400 A.D. (1987)
* Times of Lore (1988)
* Knights of Legend (1989)
* Tangled Tales (1989)
* Omega (1989)
* Space Rogue (1989)
* Windwalker (1989)
* Wing Commander series (1990–1998)
* Bad Blood (1990)
* Shadowcaster (1993)
* Strike Commander (1993)
* Privateer (1993)
* System Shock (1994)
* Pacific Strike (1994)
* Wings of Glory (1994)
* Bioforge (1995)
* Crusader series (1995–1996)
* CyberMage: Darklight Awakening (1995)
* Jane's Combat Simulations: AH-64D Longbow (1996)
* Jane's Combat Simulations: AH-64D Longbow: Flash Point Korea (1996)
* Privateer 2: The Darkening (1996)
* Jane's Combat Simulations: Longbow 2 (1997) Windows
* Ultima Online (1997)


The greatest pioneering development house in history in my opinion. Origin were always on the cutting edge until they were driven into the ground by EA in 2004.

Bethesda is my favorite, but other favorites include Square Enix and BioWare (though I'm not really interested in their newest stuff - seems stale, repetitive, and lacking very much in the gameplay department... meaning lacking very much as games; let me know when the next single-player KotOR game comes around).

SquareEnix-For their Final Fantasy Games.

XSeed-For bringing Ys Chronicals, Ys III: Oath in Felgana and Ys Seven to the PSP and to North America, now if they can just do IV and V.

Falcom-For the Ys Series.

Bethseda-For The Elder Scrolls Series.

Konami-For the Castlevania Series.

and to LJN: If it wheren't for you AVGN wouldn't have alot of great episodes lol .

Other than Bethesda...

Blizzard, for Starcraft alone. Arguably the best since of doing something ever when you win starcraft.

Nintendo, Seriously Mario 3 and Legend of Zelda Link to the Past

Capcom, Street Fighter and Resident Evil

Midway/Willaims Entertainment: Mortal Kombat, NFL Blitz

Electronic Arts; Every football game

hmm... in order without Bethesda being number one...

1. Rockstar- GTA games were awesome, but they sold me with Red Dead Redemption. Really hope they make another one. Preferably when the west WASN'T dying.

2. Blizzard- For the old war craft Reign of Chaos and Frozen throne games, and for both Starcraft 1 and 2. They were pretty much the first series (not game) I liked.

3. Epic Studios- Gears of war is.... well EPIC!!! haha. awesome game series. I can't wait to see what series they will be working on next (bulletstorm doesn't count for me!) and I hope my friend was wrong when he told me they might be teaming up with bungie for a game series. PLEASE DON'T LET IT BE TRUE!!!

4. Volition, Inc- I love love love the Saints Row series. I have always thought it was better then GTA.

5. Sega- Not for the Sonic games, but for an underrated Viking Battle for Asgard. I loved that game. It was a mindless hack and slash, and it really relieved a bunch of stress during my Junior Year's Summer Vacation. Good buy when it was $15.00.

Bethesda will always be #1 for me, but since I couldn't add it, I stuck with those.

For ones I don't like-

1. Square Enix- ENOUGH ALREADY!!!!! They are sliding downhill even as I type IMO.

2. Radical Entertainment- I wasted $40.00 on Prototype. It was the only game I sold back... I was looking forward to it to. HUGE disappointment.

3. Bungie- Sorry Guys but the only halo game I really enjoyed all the way through was Reach. The other ones were kind of corny for my taste.

4. Ubisoft- Only game I liked was Assassins Creed 2. All the other Prince of Persia, Tom Clancy, Far Cry, Shaun White Snowboarding games didn't catch my interest.

Edit: Switched my dislikes around.

I was always a huge fan of Midway games from the time I started seriously getting into gaming back on the Snes. They were involved in a lot of my favorite games. Gauntlet, Mace: The Dark Ages, LA RUSH, Ready 2 Rumble boxing, etc. And of course, my favorite series of all time* Mortal Kombat. When Warner Brothers bought out the MK team and re-named them NetherRealm studios I was hoping for a real rebirth of MK and it looks to be better than I ever thought possible.

Every studio under the Rockstar banner is just fantastic. When I see the R* logo I know I'm in for a really fun and entertaining experience. Whether it's systematically stalking guys from the shadows in Manhunt, rising to the top of the criminal underworld in GTA, or kicking ass in the old west as John Marston. You just can't go wrong. They're masters at building incredible worlds and great characters.

And obviously Bethesda Game Studios. I don't feel like I have to explain why I love their games. I mean, I'm on their forums all the time debating and discussing their games. :wub:

Honorable mentions would include:

Dice for Mirror's Edge,
Valve for the first Left 4 Dead, (not really a huge fan of 2 because of the cast)
Bungie for Halo. I've had countless hours of fun in that world and the universe they have created is really interesting,
BioWare for Dragon Age Origins and the Mass Effect series,
Volition inc for Saint's Row (series)
And many others I cannot think of right now.

*Favorite series alongside Elder Scrolls.

Don't forget Banjo Kazooie/Tooie and Conker's.

Enough of what, if I may ask? I'll be the first to admit that they've gone downhill the last decade or so, but the decline has been gradual and, IMO, minimal. Few series have a streak that can contend with Final Fantasy through Final Fantasy X. Even then, Final Fantasy XI has remained highly successful in the face of World of Warcaft, which is more than a lot of MMOs can say, and while possibly my least favorite game of the series, Final Fantasy XII was well-received. It seems to be a favorite among folks that didn't like previous games in the series.

Final Fantasy X-2, XIII and XIV are possibly the series' biggest "failures", though I'd say X-2 and its revival of the job system was a triumph, making for some of the best combat in a long time. I also enjoyed XIII, though it wasn't without its problems. XIV was pretty terrible though, there was no excuse for that game releasing the way it did. They've also handled their remakes well, but spin-offs have been hit or miss. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiIx9VJWSl8&hd=1 looks like it'll get the series back on track, with an amazing trailer and extremely promising quotes from Nomura. It looks like the Final Fantasy game I've been waiting for since X.

Then there's Dragon Quest, Kingdom Hearts, Star Ocean, etc. that retain their quality for the most part.

http://irrationalgames.com/ - creator of System Shock 2, SWAT4, Bioshock and upcoming Bioshock Infinite.

http://platinumgames.com/ - the people from the former Clover studio deliver games that aren't particulary deep, but great deal of arcadish fun like Mad World and Vanquish.

http://www.sega.com/ - Virtua Fighter, Shenmue, Yakuza, Valkyria Chronicles and so on, they developed a lot of great games over the years. They are probably my favorite publisher of 2010 as well, considering how they released a lot of new IPs that year instead of just playing safe like most publishers do and rely on sequels. SEGA isn't without fault regarding this though, as they milk Sonic like crazy, but meh

http://www.konami.com/ - because of their 2D Castlevania games but especially their Suikoden series. I want a Suikoden VI!

http://www.obsidianent.com/ - for Alpha Protocol and Fallout: New Vegas.

But my favorite game studios of all time are Origin Systems (Wing Commander, Privateer, Bioforge, Crusader), Looking Glass Studios (System Shock & Thief), Ion Storm (Deus Ex) and Troika Games (Bloodlines), and they are all dead now Especially LGS was super awesome.

There are numerous other studios I hold in high regard because of one game or another, but eh, this list would be too damn long if I wrote them all down


I kinda agree with those, but I dislike Valve for another reason. I dislike Valve simply because they introduced online DRM for single player games. Even if you buy Half-Life 2 in a store, you still need to go online and activate the game to be able to play the single player part of the game. That's a horrible development, and since then we seen a lot of other companies doing similiar things. But Valve created the snowball and got it running, and for that I despise them.

Lucasarts used to be the greatest developer studio in the world as far as I'm concerned, but then in 1997 they released Star Wars: Masters of Ter?s K?si and since then they continued to go downhill with various poor Star Wars games. Now they are nothing.

Ubisoft haven't managed to release a game that catched my interest since Beyond Good & Evil back in 2003. I was majorly disappointed in the Splinter Cell series as well as the Thief series have much better sneaking mechanics, and also disappointed in that they actionified their two strategic shooter series Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon. Their extreme DRM last year didn't really make me think better of them either.

I'm also rather disappointed at what Square-Enix done lately. All they seem to do is to release remakes of their older FF & DQ games. And their newer games have gone downhill ever since FFX (which I think was rather poor aswell). During the PS1 days they created numerous of new IPs and they were all great fun, like Threads of Fate and so on. Now they just play safe, which is boring. They did release a lot of brilliant games for the SNES and PS1 though and are still worth watching (especially so after buying Eidos) so I don't really dislike them. Just disappointed in the direction their FF series gone and a few other things.

Other then Bethesda,

Obsidian: For underated Alpha Protocol and Fall Out New Vegas both good games but I do wish that the company would hire a more substantial beta tester team.

Bioware: However I am quickly losing respect for them and view Mass Effect 3 that will be a great game but should have more development time for it to be the great finale for the trilogy. Something not about to happen however on EA's watch.

Activision: For the Total War games and this is despite having only played Rome Total War.

Star Dock: Loved playing their games from Galactic Civilization to Sins of a Solar empire.

Activision have nothing to do with the Total War series. The games are developed by The Creative Assembly and published by SEGA (who owns The Creative Assembly).

same, they got swallowed up by EA, i think they do the shooting for the mass effect games these days, but man SW Battlefront was a glorious open-ended game, the first Mercenaries too, it's too bad they don't get to make their own sandbox titles anymore.