Top 10 Video Game Developers
3 - Bioware

Favourite games: Jade Empire, Mass Effect Series, Dragon Age: Origins

Bioware is mainly so high on my list because of one game, Jade Empire, which for a few reasons is one of my favourite games of all time. However other obvious greats like the Mass Effect Series and Dragon Age Origins also help, I've yet to play DA 2 though, I'm refusing to buy it with all the DLC already out for the game and the amount that was released for Origins. I'm going to borrow it and eventually buy the ultimate/GOTY edition to save a lot of money. I even considered taking them off my list because of the ridiculous pricing of Origins' DLC but decided not to since that is probably 99% EA's choice.

Other Bioware titles I have briefly played in the past (but not enough for me to put them on my favourite games list without lieing) include MDK 2 (I played the Demo on Dreamcast about 100 times), Baldurs Gate (played it at a friends house once), and KOTOR (barely played this one but played KOTOR 2 a fair amount, haven't got round to playing 1 yet but I need to!).

Sorry for the delay of this one, I kind of wanted to take some of the developers out of the top 5, and I have changed a few around, but only developers which no one voted for, so there's actually no difference to any of the guess votes made in the other blog. Anyway here it is...

Top 10 Video Game Developers
4 - Nintendo

Favourite games: Mario Kart: Double Dash, Legend of Zelda Windwaker, Super Smash Bros Melee, Super Mario Bros, Advance Wars, Yoshi's Island DS

Despite the 360 easily being my console of choice, Nintendo have still made it into the top half of my top 10 game developers because of their multitude of legendary games, series and characters. I'm by no means a Nintendo fanboy, but some of my favourite games and consoles have been made by Nintendo (see the list above for my favourite titles).

Past Nintendo handhelds I own include the Gameboy original, Gameboy Advance, Gameboy Advance SP, DS and the DS Lite. I also own a Wii and Gamecube (kind of, people in my house own them, I can play them if I want to, though I haven't in years :P). But enough about game consoles, this is a list of game developers!

Note that other games I enjoyed such as Golden Sun and the handheld Pokemon games (from Yellow through to Crystal) are not on the list as they weren't developed by Nintendo (instead developed by Camelot studios and Game Freak respectively). Since this list is for developers I can only list games I have enjoyed that were developed by teams within the main company of Nintendo.

You will probably be aware that the rating system on this site only goes up in incremements of .5. If you've been here a while you'll also be aware it used to be 0.1, and it's always bothered me how Gamespot decided to go to a much less precise scale. Most other sites still let you rate a game with 100 possible scores (IGN, metacritic etc.) but Gamespot for some reason decided to lower it to 19 (1 - 1.5 - 2 - 2.5 - 3 - 3.5 - 4 - 4.5 - 5 - 5.5 - 6 - 6.5 - 7 - 7.5 - 8 - 8.5 - 9 - 9.5 - 10).

Now you may be wondering why they would do this, or why I am making a blog over something so trivial (the answer is I'm bored and haven't written a blog in a while). The only answer I could of think of was that it was easy. Gamespot have to spend less time thinking up a score for a game, for example they may not be able to decide if a game is 9.1 or 9.2 out of 10, so they can just lump it into the 9.0 gap. Maybe I'm wrong and it's so the games on the site are easier to filter or categorise, if that's the case it's still a laziness issue.

Why am I annoyed by this so much? The system forces you to be less precise with your ratings, and as a result a game is often either scored above or below what it actually deserves. For example if you wanted to give a game 9.7/10 you either have to lie and say it's a 10/10 game (not many games deserve a perfect score!) or push it down to 9.5. In the end you will have multiple games on 9.5, a lot of these will be better or worse than others given the same score. Or you'll have a load of 10 out of 10s.

Why bother with that? It's like when youtube took away the 5 star system and replaced it with Like and Dislike. It just takes away a lot of choice and makes it easier and quicker to rate something. Basically, like a lot of things reviewing is "dumbing down" for the mass market.

The sheer amount of variation on offer

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Now it's your turn to post a comment, do you agree with me or disagree? Is Gamespot starting a trend or are they just plain lazy? Am I being ridiculous making a blog about this?Thanks for reading.

Wow am I glad I made the decision to miss out this game. Dragon Age had an obscene amount of DLC available, mere months after the games release you could spend more buying the DLC packs than the actual price for buying the game brand new. I didn't bother buying any and sold it.

A year or so later I bought the ultimate edition and the first DLC I tried out was the Wardens Keep (priced at 560 MSP, $7 or just under £5). The DLC took me about 20 minutes to complete, and I got two achievements and some armour. Even though I basically got it for free (with the ultimate edition including the game and all the DLC) I still felt ripped off. I haven't even bothered with the rest of the DLC (I tried Darkspawn Chronicles and got intensely bored in the first fight sequence, it felt so cheap, basically one movie then you are put straight into a fight with no customisation of your moves or character).

EA's profits from Dragon Age probably look something like this.

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Now Dragon Age II is out, I wanted to wait til next year to get the GOTY/Ultimate Edition and save a LOT of money. And look, on the day of release the DLC for the game is already worth 1350 MSP! True you can get them for free if you buy the game new and get a certain edition, but the fact they are already charging for content is just disgraceful. It's blatantly obvious they could have put it in the game but they delayed it and are now charging extra for it. I also heard that the game doesn't even end properly and it hints that you need to buy a future DLC pack to see what happens!

ENJOY THE MARKET UNTIL SKYRIM CRUSHES THE **** OUT OF YOU EA

So I'm back from a 3 day suspension. Not sure if I am allowed to go into detail but basically me and JMC were editing posts at the Fallout Outcasts union as a joke, it was all in good fun but I can easily see why it's a moddable offense and I'm not at all against getting punished for it. It seems a perfectly moddable offense especially by Gamespots standards. @Falcon084 - Sorry I guess, won't do it again :D
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I've got some more blogs planned for after this one, I will finish my top 10 Game developers and then move onto another series, which will be top 30 (or 20 depending on how many I find) hardest achievements. These will be achievements I myself have unlocked so obviously I won't be able to do every achievement that's hard. I'll probably do 5 per blog until the top 10 when I will do 2 per blog until the last 5 or so which will have a blog per achievement.
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So sorry to the unions and blogs I frequent, as I haven't been able to post lately, but I'm back now. So.. see ya.

Thanks to N7v1K0, PHILRYABKIN, Bamul, grungehead1991, theslimdavylp, zombie_veteran and junglemanchiId for submitting their guesses in the previous blog! I've totalled the scores up and already know the winners, but I'll leave it til after my top Game developer is revealed to show who the winner is! Obviously now I am about to announce my 5th favourite game it's not fair if people join now knowing the 5th game, so the competition is closed.

Top 10 Video Game Developers
5 - Infinity Ward

Favourite games: Call of Duty 4, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Infinity Ward was an obvious choice for one my favourite developers, seeing as they created one of my favourite game series (Call of Duty of course), and within that series made one of my favourite games of all time, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. This series needs no explanation, as pretty much everyone will have played a Call of Duty title at some point, and hate it or love it everyone knows about it. I'm a big fan of the series, mainly for the multiplayer which has hooked me for at least a few in game days on every title (from Call of Duty 2). It's one of the most played online games for a reason, the gameplay is great (when it works) and the introduction of RPG like elements with the online ranking systems and xp makes it hugely addictive. Even though Activision has gone overboard with a yearly release for a new CoD title, the games still remain fun and fresh, even if the core gameplay is more of the same (so similar in fact they rarely remove faults between the titles, yet they still break records with every game).

Multiplayer isn't the only draw of these games though, IW have proved time and time again they can create exciting, fast paced and often inspired campaigns. My favourite singleplayer experience in a game ever is still the mission All Ghillied Up from Call of Duty 4. The setting and story of that mission is unlike anything else I've played and is still the most impressive and tense level I've played in a video game. Also the games can be challenging at times (particularly in CoD 4, MW 2 was an easy game in comparison) and it feels rewarding to complete the game on Veteran.

So I've went from my 10th to the 6th of my favourite video game developers, and thought that before I began on the top 5 I would host a sort of competition. Basically all you need to do is type what you think my top 5 developers will be. Please write them in order. The person who is the closest will win, and I'll announce the winner after I've unveiled the last 5 developers on the list. Not sure how I'll work the winner out yet, but I guess you will get points for every developer you get right, the one who is the closest wins.

Of course no competition is complete without a prize. I can't offer much over the internet but I guess I could take a signature request or something if the winner wants one. I'm not particularly great but whatever.

Recap

Just to remind you the 5 that have appeared so far, so you won't go putting developers on the list that I have already listed :P

6. Ensemble Studios (Age of Empires series, Halo Wars)

7. Bungie (Halo series)

8. Treyarch (Tony Hawks Series, Call of Duty: Black Ops)

9. Free Radical/Crytek UK (Time Splitters series, Second Sight)

10. Neversoft (Tony Hawks Pro Skater series, Guitar Hero 3)

Thanks for reading, post a comment and good luck!

Top 10 Video Game Developers
6 - Ensemble Studios

Favourite games: Age of Mythology Series, Age of Empires series, Halo Wars

Unfortunately Ensemble Studios was disbanded in 2009 after releasing it's final game Halo Wars (hopefully those two events are not linked :P). Despite this though they still claim a spot on my list after developing a legacy of amazing games. One of the leading developers in the Real Time Strategy genres, they created the legendary series Age of Empires, and another favourite of mine (and in some ways I prefer it to AoE) the Age of Mythology series. Despite some differences, both the series typically feature the player raising an army and turning a settlement into a city using villagers to build structures, forage and mine the land, and creating units from buildings such as a Barracks or Stable.

In 2009 they made their final game, another RTS but in a drastically different universe to their earlier games. Halo Wars was based on the Halo Universe, which was very different to the historical settings of the earlier games, in terms of the story, types of units and buildings you had and the setting and environments. The game was a lot more simple than it's PC brethren but still had a lot of depth and variety with the unit types and sorts of strategies you could employ. A lot of people didn't enjoy the game, but to me it was a decent RTS and a nice addition to the Halo series, and a good enough send off for Ensemble being disbanded.

After disbanding, four companies were set up by various employees of Ensemble, so in the future it's possible we'll see some RTS games similar to Ensembles earlier games.

Top 10 Video Game Developers
7 - Bungie

Favourite games: Halo series

You either love or hate the Halo series, so chances are you either love or hate Bungie as well. Obviously, I'm a Bungie lover since they've made my list, and I've been a fan of the Halo games all the way from Combat Evolved to Halo Reach. What makes Bungie special though is their commitment and innovation to the games even after release. Take Bungie.net as an example, as far as I know it was one of the first sites to track your stats to a ridiculous amount of detail, giving you records for every game you've ever played (and every game your friends have ever played), showing the medals you've achieved, your score, your kills, your deaths. Kills with every weapon, kills on each map, heatmaps showing the locations of your kills and deaths on said maps. The amount of data on Bungie.net is ridiculous, the fact Bungie maintain this whilst making astounding games just shows they are on a whole level above most developers in terms of commitment.

Other things like Theatre, and Custom games present in the Halo games are other things which allow for so much more scope than just playing the game, Halo was one of the first games which brought extensive customisation and creative tools to the console gamers, much like what PC gamers have been used to for a while (through mods and private servers). With huge options for creating your own custom modes, saving them and sharing them online, as well as creating maps, the possibilities are endless, and games like Halo 3 still have active communities to this day.

Hmm, I'm kind of regretting putting Bungie this low on my list now :P

With their new deal with Activision, I'm looking forward to seeing the new IPs Bungie create (FPSMMO I heard!), whatever it is you can expect a GOTY contender.

Top 10 Video Game Developers
8 - Treyarch

Favourite games: Tony Hawks Series, Call of Duty Black Ops

You will probably assume Treyarch is in my top 10 developers because of it's success with Call of Duty Black Ops (and CoD 3 + WaW to a lesser extent). Whilst I did enjoy these games and they were a contributing factor in making Treyarch one of my favourite developers, the number one reason is that Treyarch started the Tony Hawks series making the excellent Tony Hawks Pro Skater 1 and 2. Other games of note include the Spiderman series on the 6th generation consoles (PS2, XBOX, Gamecube), and obviously CoD 3, WaW and Black Ops.

A fun fact: Treyarch hold the record for biggest ever entertainment release with $310 million worth of sales on the first day of release with Black Ops.