10 Greatest Game Developers of All Time

Bethesda’s claim to fame is their incredibly immersive, open-world first or third person games. Their games have a lot of elements that an RPG would have, but stray from that genre a bit, almost creating their own unique style of game. The Elder Scrolls (TES) series and the Fallout franchise. Bethesda’s baby of sorts is TES. They created it and have so far made 5 titles in the main series, along with a spin-off game, Elder Scrolls Online (ESO), developed by ZeniMax Online Studios.

Fun fact about Mario is that there are over 170 games in the franchise. That’s more than any other game character can say. Now sure, a lot of them are spinoffs, since there’s a Mario game in just about every single genre you can think of. I could go on and on about Mario, but Nintendo has more than a few gaming franchises that span back as far as 15-20 years in the making.

Naughty Dog’s crowning achievement for why it’s cemented in history as one of the greats, is because of The Last of Us. My personal opinion is that The Last of Us is the best game of all time, and it’ll be nearly impossible to top. The stunning environment, the immersive and fun gameplay, all topped off with the story that shook everyone to their core, The Last of Us is a work of art that only comes along once.

They infused video games with unparalleled horror with the Silent Hill series, and revolutionised football games with ISS (which would later evolve into Pro Evo). Even though Hideo Kojima was always presented as the mastermind behind Metal Gear Solid, his superstar status shouldn't overshadow the fact that the Konami's development team made it happen, and deserves a solid share of the credit for the legendary series.

There was Killer Instinct in beat-'em-ups, legendary 3D platformers like Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong for the N64, not to mention Goldeneye and Perfect Dark - two shooters that revolutionised split-screen gaming on consoles.

Setting aside the fact that Valve revolutionised PC gaming thanks to its Steam digital games platform, the all power corporation has also proved itself to be one of the greatest developers of all time. Counter-Strike and Team Fortress redefined online shooters, Half-life 2 reshaped the FPS genre just like its predecessor, while Portal proved that a non-violent puzzle game could enthral the world. Not to mention Dota 2 - the game responsible for turning eSports into a global phenomenon.

The GTA series has, ever since the third game, pushed boundaries not just in terms of what can and can't be depicted (which is the only aspect of the games that mainstream media seems capable of talking about), but technologically too. GTA III realised a living, breathing 3D city for the first time ever, while also being relentlessly satirical of US - and western - society.

While they have 4 games, only 3 of them are the beloved Batman Series. The first one was for the PS2 and Xbox back in 2006 and it was called Urban Chaos: Riot Response. Batman: Arkham Asylum was released in 2009 and people couldn’t get enough of it and it scored a 91% on Metacritic.

Blizzard began by offering us the excellent puzzle-platformer The Lost Vikings in 1992, but it was the creation of a nifty little strategy game called Warcraft: Orcs & Humans that marked their major breakthrough. Since then, they've gone on to become the kings of addictive games that have managed to transcend the medium in various ways; StarCraft has become one of the world's most popular eSports, while a certain MMO called World of WarCraft has become a cultural phenomenon.

Known for creating an RPG in it’s truest form, Square Enix has three major franchises it’s known for, and you’ve probably played at least one of them. Dragon Quest, Kingdom Hearts, and of course, Final Fantasy.