Do you have a favorite game studio, designer or publisher?

Separate from what r u playing thread, gamers these days are so well informed, some are studio fanboys now, instead of just hardware companies. Do you have any favorites? Designers have almost become rock stars thanks to events like E3 and endless online coverage.

With a lot of studios closing or eliminating branches, list whatever ones exist or used to that made games you love.

Mine:

Gearbox

Intelligent Systems

Valve of course

Nintendo EAD

Retro Studios

Q Entertainment

Pandemic RIP

DICE

Treasure

the ones that make pc exclusive games only.

2K cos of Borderlands and Bioshock.

Oh are they part of Gearbox?

Pennywise, 2k is its own company.

2k (bioshock, borderlands, a few others)

Gearbox (borderlands)

Valve (obvious reasons)

Amanita (botanicula and a few other point and clicks)

Camelot (golden sun)

Whoever made amnesia

Retro (metroid prime)

38 studios, for the lulz.

id , Valve and Crytek

id is just bad ass..

Not including defunct companies or ones that messed up like Bioware.

Great products and more (service, community interaction, company ethics...):

Valve

CD Projekt

Wolfire Games

Bohemia Interactive

id

Jonathan Blow

Great games:

From Software

Naughty Dog

Thatgamecompany

BGS

Rockstar

I had Blizzard now Mojang I guess.

Any designers that will make u buy a game on day 1?

Miyamoto

Blazinski

Molyneaux

Ken Lavine

Tetsuya Mizuguchi

Hironobu Sakaguchi

Sakurai

Tetsuya Nomura

Will Wright

Tim Schafer

Houser Brothers

Just the ones I could think of

I always liked id growing up, but I don't currently have any favorites. Bethesda is real good. I just play whatever, though.

Fumito Ueda/Team ICO. Shame this happened, probably means we won't see the like of ICO/SotC again anytime soon. Just finish The Last Guardian, that's all I ask...

Rockstar

There's a lot of Rockstar studios. But they never really seem to make bad games.

Valve

The Half-life series is probably my favorite video game series. But sometimes it feels like Valve has some problems with communicating with fans, getting stuff made on time, and delivering on promised stuff. But like Rockstar.. They've never really made a bad game.

BioWare

Never played KOTOR, Baldur's Gate etc... I've only played Mass Effect, but that series is a huge achievement. They have quickly become one of my favorite developers.

Irrational Games

Ken Levine.. Bioshock.. etc.

Bungie

Whether you like it or not they revolutionized the FPS genre with the Halo series. The Halo games have the most anvanced AI in any shooter game (if you ask me). They really suck at telling a good story, but they know how to make fun shooters.

Bethesda

Fallout, Elder Scroll.. What more is there to say.

Ubisoft Montreal

Assassin's Creed, Tom Clancy games and the upcoming Watch Dog game. So much talent in this studio.

DICE

I've never been a huge multiplayer gamer. But I always loved the Battlefield games. They also do some amazing things with first person animations and sound.

Rare

Well.. They used to be one of my favorites.

Relic Entertainment

They done some awesome stuff with the CoH series. Kings of the RTS genre.

Playdead

They made Limbo. That's enough to be listed here.

Remedy

Alan Wake & Max Payne.

I liked KOTOR infinitely more than Mass Effect, even w the shitty graphics.

id Software took up a great deal of my time for a few years.

originally i was a HUGE blizzard fan. some of my favorite games are warcraft and starcraft and an old gem called black thorn. but after WoW came out that quickly changed. so id say Bethesda, Bioware, Ubisoft, Baddog, Westwood (before they were bought), Sega, and Atlus. i probably have a lot more that i can't remember right now. but these are the biggest that come to mind as of right now.

Nintendo R&D1/SPD are legendary

Treasure of course, although they haven't been too busy lately

CAVE

I'm not wild about the "celebrity" game developer trend. The hype surrounding certain games has gone way, way out of control.

Anything developed by FROM Software, Valve and Nintendo will be an instant purchase.

recently? Nippon Ichi titles, also Double Fine titles (Stacking and CQuest, new Tim Schaefer collab thing coming), and anything from that dude that did Lone Survivor recently i'll purchase blindly

  On 8/1/2012 at 8:16 PM, Npoess said:

Rockstar

There's a lot of Rockstar studios. But they never really seem to make bad games.

 

Valve

The Half-life series is probably my favorite video game series. But sometimes it feels like Valve has some problems with communicating with fans, getting stuff made on time, and delivering on promised stuff. But like Rockstar.. They've never really made a bad game.

 

Irrational Games

Ken Levine.. Bioshock.. etc.

 

Bethesda

Fallout, Elder Scroll.. What more is there to say.

 

Ubisoft Montreal

Assassin's Creed, Tom Clancy games and the upcoming Watch Dog game. So much talent in this studio.

 

DICE

I've never been a huge multiplayer gamer. But I always loved the Battlefield games. They also do some amazing things with first person animations and sound.

 

Playdead

They made Limbo. That's enought to be listed here.

 

Remedy

Alan Wake & Max Payne.

Edited to my liking.

Tim Schaefer seems great too. I mean, he seems like such a great guy who wants to make fun games. I can get behind that

The only ones i really follow are valve and bethesda. Typical I know, but hey! They're great. Bethesda has some issues with quality control (I'm still tweaking skyrim every time i play to try to eliminate frame skipping and shadow glitches), and their current focus on designing for consoles first and PC second is annoying, but they make amazing games so I let it slide. Morrowind probably consumed more hours of my life than any other game.

Valve is amazing, you guys see their leaked employee handbook? I would kill to get a sound design job there.

From Software get all my sloppy bjs

Looking Glass, Black Isle, 90s Bioware.

  On 8/2/2012 at 12:37 PM, Iain C said:

Black Isle

This.

  On 8/2/2012 at 1:18 PM, Dan C said:

  On 8/2/2012 at 12:37 PM, Iain C said:

Black Isle

 

This.

Yes.

No love for Hideki Kamiya (the guy behind Devil May Cry, Viewtiful Joe, Okami and Bayonetta)? :(