Remedy Entertainment. They have been making banger after banger in my opinion, all the way back to Max Payne (and i wasted so many hours on Death Rally). Always heavy focus on plot, and well developed gameplay. Memorable soundtracks on most cases too.
I dunno, my rich uncle is a boomer and back in the 90s he was one of the only people I knew who could afford a gucci PC and every big box FPS game. So it kinda makes sense from that perspective.
What metric are we using? The developer whose games I like the most? The developer who treats their employees best? Or treats their customers best?
Valve has produced mostly bangers, seems to treat customers well and is by all accounts a great place to work. They’ve also been pushing development for gaming on Linux. Hard not to go with them, even though it’s debatable whether they could be classified as a game developer anymore. But that’s fine.
Remedy deserves a shout-out for sticking to their guns, and continuing to produce weird artistic games that push the envelope in the AAA space.
I’m not as high on BG3 as most people (though it’s obviously a great game), but Larian also belongs in the discussion surely. I only ever hear good things about them.
Finally, the developer who inspires me the most is probably Lucas Pope. I love his ability to think outside the box and find entertaining gameplay loops in seemingly mundane things, but moreover I am just so impressed by how multitalented he is. I still can’t believe Obra Dinn was a one-man production. I love his artstyle and the music he makes as much as the games themselves.
My favorite publishing house is probably Bethesda. I came to this realization the other day when thinking of what my favorite types of games are. Just so happens Bethesda has published nearly all of them in recent years. Arkane is my favorite dev because they’ve kept immersive sims alive with titles like Dishonored 1+2/Prey/Deathloop. ID software/Machine Games both keep the tradition of the classic shooter alive while bringing them into the modern era, games like Wolfenstein (The Old Blood, 1+2), and DOOM. The only games I don’t really care for out of Bethesda are their recent RPG games, I believe they’ve peaked at Fallout New Vegas. But with the upcoming Indiana Jones game being developed by MachineGames, I think they’ll deliver another fun first person adventure. They also quietly released HiFi Rush last year from Tango Gameworks (who also did the awesome Evil Within 2 game) and that oozed PS2 era video games quite amazingly.
The most recent developer who has crept onto that list in recent years for me is definitely FROMSOFTWARE. No need to really explain here, they’ve made a handful of classic dungeon delving masterpieces with the Souls series. Then went onto Bloodborne and Sekiro, most recently Elden Ring (which was the first full game I ever beat from them).
I’ll also echo Remedy, and do an honorable mention to 4A Games (highly recommend the Metro series for those into First Person Shooters, some amazing atmosphere in those games still). Double Fine too, with the recent Psychonauts 2, they aren’t super prolific in recent years but that game was amazing. I think the industry needs more creativity like Psychonauts 2 offered and what the studio offers in general. Capcom in recent years has been on fire too the upcoming Dragons Dogma 2 looks like it could become a classic if it’s as good as all these previews make it seem to be.
Half tempted to love any gamedev company that promises to keep making singleplayer games, that can be played offline, without microtransactions and battlepasses. It would take more than a few botched game launches to make me give up on them.
Summoners War. Played for years, gave it up, got back into it recently. Very very good gacha game. Plenty of PvE to keep you coming and working towards something, plenty of great characters with awesome skins, TONNES of free stuff and 3-4 events running parallel at all times, booming community, and a very deep PvP scene if that’s your forte when you want to use the hard work you’ve done in PvE. Can recommend if you’re one for the gacha mobile games.
thab’s been trying to beat “The Last Dance” for a few days already, it’s really fascinating to watch. And even barb finished one level, then said “fuck this garbage” and spent the next days finishing Paper Mario and complaining how boring it is…
I like Honkai Star Rail, it is from the developers of Genshin Impact, but unlike Genshin, it is turned based so the grind is automatic(plus has others quality of life features). So i only have to actively play the actual content.
I think the production values are very high, especially for a mobile game. The story and characters are decent. The english localization(it’s a chinese game) is probably the best there is. And finally the music is insane. Hoyoverse is a music company that just happens to make videogames on the side.
What really blew my mind about Star Rail, was the fight against the final boss of the ice planet(second world, after the tutorial one). That was some anime good shit, definitely one of the hypest gaming moments ever and i have played thousands of games. The music they used and how it synced with the gameplay, perfect, absolutely perfect. You can watch this vod of a giant weeb playing the final fight, if you dont care about spoilers or dont intent do play the game(25mins in starts the hype part, though it is worth watching the entire video for context).
The space china world was kinda mediocre but the new Dream/Inception/Las Vegas world is pretty cool. Here is the trailer for this world(this song would have easily won Eurovision this year)
I guess the most impressive thing about the game is how much content and care has been put into this game. You have pc/console AAA GaS games, which produce very little new seasonal content, no cool trailers, etc. And you have this, till a few years ago random, chinese developer producing high quality content and advertising all the time, they just never miss. And of course now they can do that, they make a billion+ dollars a year but even with Genshin, they are just too good, not just for mobile games but as games.
I have, and the only thing I’m not trying is disabling multi-monitor support… but it still crashes to desktop. suspect that’s the culprit but I’ll be damned (really, can’t) if I have to turn off multiple displays lol
Are you playing it on disc by any chance? I know that I couldn’t get it working due to “Games for Windows Live”. I had to purchase it a second time on Steam before it worked (since they removed GFWL from the Steam and GOG versions).
Honestly, I don’t think it’s that simple. Console online services get away with making you pay because the system is locked and you don’t have a choice. Pc gamers can host their own servers, and if steam ever becomes so anti consumer as to charge for access to your library, competitors will rise and the market will balance.
That’s true, but games exist already where people can host their own servers. Pc gaming is kind of like the sandbox of platforms. Other major consoles solved that problem by sunsetting their free services so that you can’t just go play an existing online game for free on their platform.
It would be a gargantuan task to sunset free online connectivity as it exists in pc gaming today.
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