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Gamasutra's Top 10 Game Developers of 2015

Eolz

Eolz

Member
They do this list every year, and usually bring some good arguments to the table. You should read the full article here.
No order/ranking as usual, and always a good way to discover some devs too.
Not agreeing with 2-3 choices here, but here's the list + some quotes:

  • Bethesda Game Studios
    We noticed something about Fallout 4 after it launched. We noticed the same thing a couple weeks after launch…and we continue to notice it a month later. People, across all different tastes and backgrounds are still talking about Fallout 4, and likely will be for the foreseeable future. The game is inescapable; its popularity hitting a kind of critical mass that has outdone most other, if not all, triple-A games this year.
    Click to expand...
    Bethesda-style RPGs already are inclined to provide emergent gameplay and personalized experiences, but throw in user-generated content, and launch it on multiple platforms that allow for easy game streaming, you get a thoroughly shareable game that finally feels like it’s at home.
    Click to expand...
  • Blizzard Entertainment
    But beyond its market savvy, Blizzard deserves to be recognized for cultivating an environment where developers can work on a variety of projects with different scales, stakes, and design challenges. (...)
    Blizzard continues to experiment with new ideas and embrace popular shifts in the market while supporting its venerable franchises (and the developers who work on them), and for that we recognize it as a top developer of the year.
    Click to expand...
  • Colossal Order
    We recognize Colossal Order as a standout developer of the year not just because it made a great city management game, but because it did so with less than 20 people, one-upping entrenched market leader SimCity in the process. The studio saw an opening, recognized there was an underserved audience, and capitalized on that fact brilliantly.
    Click to expand...
  • Davey Wreden, Everything Unlimited, Ltd.
    With The Beginner’s Guide, Davey Wreden made a game that was ostensibly about game development, but it was in fact more purely about creating things and handing partial ownership of those things over to other people. It’s a game that walks the line between “about game development” and “about the existential crisis of a creator” and it often loses balance, finding itself on either side of that line at different points in time. It’s all deliberate and brilliantly authored, and it resonated strongly with game developers.
    Click to expand...
  • Kojima Productions
    Here's a doozy of a challenge for you: Take a beloved franchise, nearly two decades old, and known for its deep narrative and very specific style of handcrafted gameplay, and adapt it for the modern era of open-world games—without killing its soul or alienating its fans, and yet make it accessible and appealing to the players of today.
    Click to expand...
    The original 1998 Metal Gear Solid was itself a recapitulation of everything that made the first two 8-bit Metal Gear games into 1980s classics -- but reinterpreted for the original PlayStation, in 3D, and with an entirely new form of creative expression.

    Metal Gear Solid V may not be as epoch-making as that game, but it does prove that things like a singular creative vision, handcrafted levels, and an eye for idiosyncratic detail can thrive in an open-world game. These were not settled questions, by any means. If this is Kojima's last game for Konami, so be it -- there can be no question it was executed with the care and creativity we'd expect.
    Click to expand...
  • Moppin
    In a broader sense, Fumoto deserves to be recognized as an example of the sort of talent and creativity that’s brewing in the Japanese indie scene. His success this year with Downwell is a welcome one, and we look forward to seeing what he and his contemporaries do next.
    Click to expand...
  • Monolith Soft
    The secret to understanding this it to consider that the "Xeno" series mastermind, Tetsuya Takahashi, has never lacked for ambition—though his reach, in the past, exceeded his grasp. Not so this time. It's clear that it's the simple result of careful planning, long development experience, and hard work.

    And if Xenoblade Chronicles X had a mission statement, it would be "show the world that the Japanese RPG can stand toe-to-toe with Western ones." Outside of the struggling Final Fantasy series, there are so few examples of the genre that can truly be classified as triple-A; yet here's a game that has a truly staggering breadth of content (including both passive and active online modes alongside a deep and long single-player campaign) and which can legitimately wear that moniker.
    Click to expand...
  • Nintendo EPD
    Nintendo's internal development studio hit hard this year with two standout titles that were, in many ways, polar opposites.
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    Super Mario Maker may sound like a gimme, but realistically, to execute on this premise so well, it requires the patient craft of experienced developers and creative leadership who fully understand the soul of their own franchise.
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    Few teams can make a bold, playable, and distinctive game in a new genre the first time they tackle it; few games have as strong an identity as Splatoon, and certainly almost none approach its quality from a design perspective.

    Pulling all of this together shows the formidable skill of Nintendo's internal development teams, indeed.
    Click to expand...
  • Psyonix
    In a year that saw many developers try their hands at emulating established successes, we recognize Psyonix for sticking with -- and ceaselessly iterating on -- a set of core concepts that it knew, internally, would make for a great game if brought together in just the right way. Such tenacity in itself is admirable, so much more so when it brings about a game like Rocket League that will be played and talked about for years to come.
    Click to expand...
  • Tale of Tales
    Even if the studio never made another game, the fact would remain that Tale of Tales is a developer that inspired and influenced a modern design apparent in games like Gone Home from Fullbright and SOMA from horror game studio Frictional Games, among others. And those games, and games like them, will continue to reach and inspire ever more developers.
    Click to expand...
 
D

Dangoesforth

Member
From Software and CD Projekt Red produced two of the best games of 2015 without any controversial DLC packages. I am bemused by their omission.
 
Eolz

Eolz

Member
Please note that Gamasutra's tops aren't about just making a good game.
It's a site for developers before anything else.

edit:
Tinfoilhatsron said:
Also lol at this stuff. Not really best Devs or Companies but a hidden Top 10 Games in disguise IMO.
Click to expand...
They do their own top 5 games later, as every year, along with other developers.
Seriously people...
 
D

Durante

Member
While it's generally futile to talk about omissions in these list threads, I still have to agree with the common "where's CDPR" sentiment. Not naming names, but I really don't see how you could put some of these on the list and not CDPR.

Mass_Pincup said:
Those are just more of the same though (as is Fallout 4 but it's way more popular).
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I'd argue that Witcher 3 really isn't "more of the same". Particularly in development terms, it's an entirely different beast compared to Witcher 2.
 
L

Lime

Member
I wonder what the work conditions in all those companies are. I wonder if the author even considered that.
 
D

DNAbro

Member
Tinfoilhatsron said:
Also lol at this stuff. Not really best Devs or Companies but a hidden Top 10 Games in disguise IMO.
Click to expand...

uhh no. I'm talking as a developer. They were able to release a huge RPG, supplement it with free DLC, have reasonably priced expansions, and develop a ridiculous amount of goodwill with their customer base. Quality of Witcher aside it was incredibly impressive and I wish more companies respected their consumers as much as they do. I'm confused why Bethesda is there.
 
R

Ryoku

Member
No CD Projekt Red, but Bethesda makes the list.

Interesting.

I'm glad some other developers have made the list. Psyonix is deserving.
 
S

Strax

Member
I've never understood "Best game studio" awards. Surely they are just "Best game" + they patched bugs and didn't introduce microtransactions
 
B

brandonh83

Banned
Here's a doozy of a challenge for you: Take a beloved franchise, nearly two decades old, and known for its deep narrative and very specific style of handcrafted gameplay, and adapt it for the modern era of open-world games—without killing its soul or alienating its fans
Click to expand...

But... I mean that's exactly what happened.
 
L

Lingitiz

Member
How do we get Bethesda on here? Fallout 4 feels like the most stagnant move from game to game they've made. It's a game that comes off as being developed in a bubble, ignoring the progress other devs (including one they contracted themselves!) within the RPG genre.

Xav said:
- No Rocksteady Studios

Seriously?
Click to expand...

They shouldn't be on any top list considering the PC version.
 
iNvid02

iNvid02

Member
- releasing your AAA game DRM free, without alternate forms of monetisation even being a conversation point
- reward pre-orders with copies of prior games, the soundtrack, high quality videos, artwork, & comics
- credit customers for regional price differences
- give away numerous DLC
- provide post release support to the tune of 11 patches in 5 months
- offer paid content that sometimes exceeds the quality of the main game
- create not only one of the best RPGs of all time, but arguably one of the best games of all time

no cdpr
Click to expand...

uc2cb4X.jpg
 
R

Ryoku

Member
Lingitiz said:
They shouldn't be on any top list considering the PC version.
Click to expand...

Agreed. Even if Arkham Knight on PC was good, I think there are other developers that have had far more ambitious releases this year than Rocksteady. Arkham Knight looks pretty, but it's not exactly ambitious or really shakes up a genre or the industry in a meaningful way.
 
C

Conkerkid11

Member
Eolz said:
Please note that Gamasutra's tops aren't about just making a good game.
It's a site for developers before anything else.

edit:

They do their own top 5 games later, as every year, along with other developers.
Seriously people...
Click to expand...
Yeah, but do they have some insider info on how well devs are treated within these studios or something? Generally with lists like these, we're basing our knowledge of the studios on what we witness from the outside, and ranking them based on how in-touch with their audience they appear to be.

Bethesda just seems like a weird decisions, because they're completely out of touch. Far too many people still agree that the only game in the Fallout series that they didn't develop is the best Fallout game. They released a F2P mobile game under the pretense that it wouldn't have microtransactions, when in reality its structured just like any other F2P mobile game. Fallout 4 also didn't release with mod support because they want their own marketplace of mods to exist, presumably to push the paid mods they attempted to push to the Steam Workshop for Skyrim, which is why they ommited Steam Workshop from Fallout 4.

Fallout 4 being worse than previous games in the series at the same time as The Witcher 3 being a major improvement over The Witcher 2 tells me CD Projekt Red has some idea what they're doing.
 
L

Lunar15

Member
All the picks are great. No CDPR or From is mindboggling. Post launch support was legendary from CDPR and bloodborne was one of the first games this gen to live up to the hype.
 
P

Pie and Beans

Look for me on the local news, I'll be the guy arrested for trying to burn down a Nintendo exec's house.
I can only hope the Bethesda listing is some running joke when you consider the "not glitchfest" games other countlessly talented studios put out through the year.
 
Eolz

Eolz

Member
Conkerkid11 said:
Yeah, but do they have some insider info on how well devs are treated within these studios or something?
Click to expand...

Yes, they are/were developers, work with developers, and know how developers work most of the time.
Hence why I shared this list, I thought people would read a bit more than "title+list-quotes" but I guess it was a big mistake. Shame there's so many drive-by posts.
 
M

minameissteve

Banned
Take a beloved franchise, nearly two decades old, and known for its deep narrative and very specific style of handcrafted gameplay, and adapt it for the modern era of open-world games—without killing its soul or alienating its fans...
Click to expand...

Heh. Not quite sure about that.
 
P

ps3ud0

Member
Does it have to be developers that released a game in 2015? As tbh I think Evolution should be there because of all the updates to DC

Bethesda doesnt deserve to be in that list.

ps3ud0 8)
 
B

brandonh83

Banned
Vice said:
Or, they just felt that the 10 listed met their criteria better.
Click to expand...

It's more to do with them or CDPR not being on there but Kojima/Konami being on there, who released an incomplete title deliberately designed to milk people with DLC. It angered many and rightfully so. Whereas these other developers delivered and didn't try to pull any ridiculous shenanigans.
 
B

brianmcdoogle

Member
brandonh83 said:
It's more to do with them or CDPR not being on there but Kojima/Konami being on there, who released an incomplete title deliberately designed to milk people with DLC. It angered many and rightfully so. Whereas these other developers delivered and didn't try to pull any ridiculous shenanigans.
Click to expand...
So, the mention is given to Kojima Productions and not Konami. I assume like the Tale of Tales mention, despite the game they released this year being absolute terrible like I mentioned earlier, it's more of a lifetime or final recognition since this will be the last metal gear game with Kojima as director and with the audio already disbanded.
 
A

antonz

Member
CDprojekt Red established them as a premier Developer with the Witcher 3. They went from well done standard type RPGs to a massive open world RPG that rivals the very best games ever made.

Bethseda on the list is a joke just like when they won Studio of the year for Skyrim when half the platforms the game was released on couldn't play it properly.
 
S

Sumio Mondo

Member
If this is what they think are the 10 best game devs then it's no wonder the AAA industry is in the stagnating rut it's in then. Also the buggy/unfinished rut it's currently in.
 
B

brandonh83

Banned
brianmcdoogle said:
So, the mention is given to Kojima Productions and not Konami. I assume like the Tale of Tales mention, despite the game they released this year being absolute terrible like I mentioned earlier, it's more of a lifetime or final recognition since this will be the last metal gear game with Kojima as director and with the audio already disbanded.
Click to expand...

It's unfortunate that the whole mess just gave everyone involved a bad rap, and I suppose what you're saying has truth to it so I'll back down. Reasonable enough. But their blurb about the game is still way off.
 
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