WatchMojo: Top 10 Modern Game Developers.

https://youtu.be/B9-E1eU-9L4

Overall a very good list. However, I don't think new Bioware deserves to be on the list. Same goes for Telltale, when you consider that their "games" are just interactive movies and there are better adventure developers like Daedalic Entertainment out there.

CD Projekt is rated too low especially when you look at Bathesda and new Bioware. Don't agree with Platinum games since they are very inconsistent. Agree with with number 1, Blizzard is the most consistent developer in modern industry and their post launch support is top notch. Naughty Dog is up there among the best, so agree with that too.

What you think?

Missing Monolith Soft, Intelligent Systems, Game Freak, Retro Studios, Soja Ltd, and Capcom. Otherwise, good list.

Also, Nintendo EAD is ranked way too low.

Uhh these guys. Makes some of the most tasteless lists out there.

I watched their top 10 hack n slash video the other day... I actually signed in just so I could thumbs down the video, something that I usually never do lol.

ScrewAttack are worse for the most part.

They just put mainstream devs these guys don't know about video games

CD Projekt Red should be top 5 and Platinum and TellTale shouldnt even be on the list imo

Never watch that much of screw attack but these guys have lists like top ten deaths or top ten facts about some shooting. sigh.

@Gamerno6666:

Ohhhhh, that's what you meant by tasteless. I thought you meant that they have poor taste in entertainment lol.

@Cloud_imperium: I agree it is a good list. But I wouldn't have Telltale in the top 10 I would put Bungie in there instead. Like getyeryayas and I were saying the other day, Destiny gets too much hate. Its a tighter and better game than given credit for. But with their decade run of Halo games, Marathon Durandal, Myth before that this studio makes better games than Telltale imo.

Touche. But still, ScrewAttack's lists for especially Nintendo consoles make me facepalm hard.

Yup. I'd replace Telltale with Daedalic Entertainment. They make better, more creative stories and game worlds, and their games have actual challenging but logical puzzles.

Yup.

Wow! Didn't even think of them. Good call.

For sure. They're one of the better commercial adventure game developers out there today. I enjoyed The Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav and Edna & Harvey: Harvey's New Eyes a great deal. Memoria slightly less, but it's still a quality game.

I don't wanna pick on The Walking Dead too much. The puzzles are meh, of course. But there was a lot of love that went into that game, and it shows in the story and in the characters. The sequel was much too short and too straight-forward for me, but still good in those other aspects. Other than that, I've really only played the Puzzle Agent games by them and their poker games though. And Hector: Badge of Carnage, but they just published that - pretty fun game regardless, though. ;)

I'll refrain from making a top 10 list myself, but it would look completely different from the above.

Hooray lets pick on lists, whatever.

CD PRojekt took 3 tries to make one good video game. The Witcher 1 is piss poor, admirable for how ambitious it was on such a little budget, but it plays like shit. The Witcher 2 is a poor man's souls game in combat, is actually worse than its predecessor plot wise, and focuses so much on the political stuff of its universe which isn't even remotely compelling,. The Witcher 3 is fairly good. I'd say they should have been lower, if not out right off the list. I mean they are great, if you're cool with your games clunky and shallow. But I like mechanical depth in my video games, sue me.

Platinum's inconsitency noted, but that has more to do with when they are relegated to cheap projects with low budgets on contract jobs. When they are given proper time and money, they are more or less Nintendo tier in terms of raw game mechanics design, and their gameplay loop at their best: The two Bayonetta games is some of the finest playing games on the market, immensely replayable, an ocean's worth of depth for proper player expression, and enough fun unlockables to give the player more than their money's worth. That and considering that studio is basically clover, you add their clover resume and it's about as good a resume as you can get.

Bethesda's spot is laughable. Bioware on an all time list? Sure, Bioware on a modern list? Eh.

Rockstar? LOL

Rocksteady was deserving of a spot on this list given how good the first two Arkham games were, and frankly Arkham Knight being disappointing shouldn't invalidate their position. That's a good game, their "disappointing games" are good ones. Perspective.

Retro Studios: On top of the Metroid Prime trilogy, they've been damn good with the Donkey Kong Country Returns series.

Jonathan Blow - Technically he has more of a team now, but given the rise of indie stuff in modern games, I'd say the list picked the wrong small fish by going with Telltale. Blow was a better pick: Braid is transcendent, and The Witness is fucking fantastic.

Blizzard at 1 is a good pick, not my pick, but they are good. I would have put them at number 1 for the stuff that isn't Diablo and World of Warcraft though.

Nintendo too low :P.

Don't agree with a large amount of the list, but opinions right?

WatchMojo? Really? They're a fucking joke. And it's not just a matter of difference of opinions. On more than a few occasions they've directly contradicted themselves and have shown to be just plain ignorant.

I mean, that stuff is par for the course for this industry, but that doesn't make it easier to tolerate.

Yeah, their GameCube list showed this. They have a rule that no ports are going to be added and yet, they put the original Animal Crossing on there, which is a port from an N64 game that released only in Japan.

WatchMojo is a bigger joke than VGChartz

ND and Rockstar ahead of Nintendo EAD?

Rockstar North is my number 1. I don't see another studio that creates games with half the content and size as Rockstar North and GTA.

Didn't watch the video yet

But if Bungie isn't on that list...

Lucasarts and Origin Systems

Jk. I miss the 90s.....

Naughty Dog, Rockstar and CDPR should be the top 3.

Nintendo EAD

Naughty Dog

Valve

CD Projekt Red

Kojima Productions

As others have said I think DICE, Sony Santa Monica and Rocksteady are far, far more competent developers than say Telltale. Even though Ubisoft Montreal gets bullied a lot and have done some missteps, they are also very talented for sure.

Have tried two Blizzard games: Diablo 3 and Overwatch, didn't like either tbh. They seems to be masters of exploiting the human mind, which is kind of disturbing in a way. I guess for me it's between Nintendo and Naughty Dog. Having played a bunch of Nintendo stuff lately (Wind Waker, Twilight Princess and currently going through SMG2) I think they are the top for me as their work is so pure gaming.

Nintendo EAD tops their every list. It's nice see something different for a change.

The fact that Nintendo EAD is at #4 surprises me as Watchmojo.com seems to have a certain bias towards Nintendo and its games.

Agreed.

Do you guys even like video games?

Platinum is very inconsistent. Read the video description. It says, every game these devs make is "seal of approval". That's not true as far as Platinum in concerned. Sure they make brilliant stuff like Bayonetta, Vanquish etc but meanwhile they also make plenty of trash and slightly above average games.

All three Witcher games have abyssal combat.

That's just too bad, because it's what kept me from getting into the first Witcher game. Seemed like it had potential otherwise.

I don't disagree, but I'd rather have an inconsistently good developer than a consistently poor developer. That "seal of approval" sure as hell doesn't work for CDPR lol.

CDPR - Two mediocre games followed by a third game that excels at everything but gameplay. And they should be in the top 5?

Platinum - Some mediocre games, yes, but also a few games that are very good and a couple that are straight up excellent. Yet they shouldn't be on the list at all?

As far as gameplay goes the very best CDPR game doesn't even stack up favorably against the worst Platinum games. But you're gonna put a shoddy gameplay dev in the top 5 and dismiss a dev who actually has delivered mechanical brilliance off the list entirely... Come on bro.

This is why I ask, do you even like video games?

According to who? You? Sorry man, but you are in minority. All 3 Witcher games are praised by most people. Platinum has made plenty of games that are hated by most people including the most recent disaster known as Star Fox Zero.

I never had a problem with Witcher's gameplay and I'm sure I'm not the only one. It's just not for you and that's it.

Game of the generation apparently.

No. As a matter of fact, it was a nobody of a series until TW3 came out. Let's not get revisionist about it here bro, TW3 was the golden ticket for CDPR. TW1 was generally considered to be shit by the few who even knew it existed and TW2 was mixed, but decidedly unfavorable.

Even the biggest TW fans will concede that at least TW1 was poor. And how many times since TW3 came out have you seen people say shit like "Well, I hated the first two games, but I love this one!".... yeah. Constantly.

Beyond that, think I give a **** what popular gamer mentality thinks anyways? lol no. If I cared for general consensus I'd find myself playing a lot of shitty games and ignoring a lot of good ones.

Yes you never had a problem with it because you don't mind bad gameplay. And yes it's just not for me because I can't stand bad gameplay.

-

Still beside the point though man. I know you like these games. You know I dislike these games. We're not exactly breaking new ground here lol. I don't care about you having your opinion, you're free to enjoy any terrible games if it makes you happy.

But when you want to put CDPR up on the pedestal WHILE AT THE SAME TIME shitting on a much better developer? Nah, sorry bud. That's just wrong. I actually enjoy this medium. When I see the better dev getting shat on of course I'm going to speak up.

@ConanTheStoner: Granted, CDPR is not big on combat but gameplay in a RPG is not all about combat and hell even that is rather a matter of preference, for instance, i find its combat pretty enjoyable, Kevin Van 'Ord (Who gave the game a 10/10 score) finds it great, etc.

And i don't think it's fair that we gloss over other aspects of The Witcher 3 ... narrative and story, being one.

Dont agree! drawing up a ranked list isnt that easy.. but oh well as for the opinion Platinum and CDPR they need to mature first for the given ranks!

Which are nothing more than contract jobs for Activision where it's painfully obvious they had no real budget to work with. The Star Fox Zero example hardly flies, since in that case they were just there to co-develop and pump the game out the door. It's more a Miyamoto and Nintendo game to begin with. The Witcher games being shoddy from a game design perspective has the budget excuse, the first time, the 2nd and 3rd game? Not so much. It's presentation over gameplay.

As for the "minority opinion" defense, that same logic would apply to you thinking Telltale isn't all that worthy of a spot, because recently the popular opinion is too look at them as one of the better adventure game devs.

Picking a dialogue option isn't exactly something that has much going on above the brain stem fam, and while exploring a setting certainly has its merits. It's not exactly like there is anything complicated going on there, and given how much of the questing comes down to Geralt goes to place, to kill thing, that shit better actually be good.

And as far as RPG's are concerned, the Witchers are pretty fucking shallow on the rpg side of things. It doesn't quite become the uber streamlined suck-a-thon that mass effect became, but it's not exactly some golden pillar of the genre either in terms of the other strengths of a rpg.

I wouldn't have gone as far as to say "Do you even like video games" or whatever, I get the love for The Witcher 3 a hell of a lot more than say, a Rockstar video game, but their resume is no less bullet proof than anyone else. For the crowd willing to overlook some gameplay issues, sure The Witcher games have some dope stories, and not even in just a "for a video game" sort of way. I can respect that, but it's also not unheard of to judge stuff in this medium on the gameplay side of things. And that stuff is pretty easy to criticize in their games, there are empirically obvious short comings in the first 2.

Kevin also gave Journey and fucking MGS4 of all things a 10/10 lol.

I understand that combat doesn't have to be the central focus of an RPG, but with a game like TW3 that is so incredibly reliant on combat to carry the experience moment to moment, it should be much better.

And yeah, the other aspects of TW3, at least from what I've played, are pretty damn excellent! I get that. It seems to be a stellar game when it comes to everything but gameplay.

And that's what my beef is in this current discussion. How are we gonna put CDPR in the top 5 and dismiss Platinum entirely from a top video game developers list, when Platinum is light years ahead of CDPR at game design.

I'm used to seeing "gamers" brush aside the strengths of this medium while cheering for some nonsense, but that's just going too damn far for me.

I've settled on the whole TW3 thing, I get that people love it, that's fine. But Jesus, am I crazy for having respect for this mediums strengths in a top 10 developers list? Is that wrong? Is gameplay really some unimportant thing and I'm the odd man out? Seems like it sometimes lol.

You are just making excuses now. Platinum is inconsistent, that's a fact. They are hit or miss developers. As I said before, they've made plenty of great stuff but meanwhile they've made plenty of mediocre titles.

WatchMojo doesn't really make good lists on anything, much less videogames.

Telltale makes games in the same way you could say a choose your own adventure book is the same thing as a fantastic novel.

If we're going by consistency rather than quality games then we might as well crown Guerrilla Games as king since they consistently put out mediocrity. While we're at it, let's just remove Nintendo from the equation altogether since they've had so many highs and lows.

Seriously, this is a stupid goal post to be hanging your hat on. Furthermore, CDPR doesn't fit that narrative either.

Again, you are just in minority, who is stating opinions as facts. All three games including the first Witcher has scored well and are praised by most of the fans. Most "fans" don't consider Witcher 1 and 2 poor and mediocre as you describe them. You don't have anything to prove that most people consider them average or blew average.

Witcher 1 EE currently has 86 average score from critics and 85 from users, 2 has like 88 or something, that's is hardly a "poor" or "mediocre" reception. As for "I liked Witcher 3 but didn't like first two", they improved their games with sequels which is hardly a bad thing.

Not to mention, Witcher 3 is open world game, while other two were linear. Different people have different preferences, so that doesn't mean first two games were bad. They were just different from the third one. They were still praised by most people who were in those kind of games.

I love ND's games but sorry, they are not better than From Software or Nintendo or Platinum.

No Epic Games or Kojima Studio...

In a creative field "consistency" is a pretty overrated thing to bank on given one can achieve that by simply being safe, and while it doesn't absolve Platinum of their shitty games, it's not exactly like I'm incorrect about why those games were poor. We've already seen them make better versions of those type of games, they just had better resources and more time to actually finish those games. They weren't exactly reflective of what Platinum is actually capable of, as we have more definitive examples of that. Consistency is easy when you're on one franchise or make more or less the same game over and over (From Software). But Platinum even while working the same genre, has been far more diverse in that aspect as Bayonetta's battle system isn't exactly like Revengeance, which doesn't play like Wonderful 101, and neither of them play like Anarchy Reigns.

I'd much rather take the devs track record on the games that were actually well made, and Platinum at their peak make excellent gameplay. CDPR? 3 tries to make 1 good video game, with the same series no less. You can spare me the metacritic and the fans, because that's never stopped you from downplaying a Telltale, or Call of Duty, or calling other games overrated.

All three Witcher games are excellent video games.