
Develop, the international magazine for game developers, has produced a top
100 game developer list for 2010 in association with review aggregator site
Metacritic.
The developer rankings were arrived at using global review scores from last
year taken from Metacritic to determine who produced the best games. Or at
least, the best games according to the gaming press.
Some surprises are certainly thrown up, with some very successful indie
coders and mobile games doing very well, placing high in the top ten.
So who took the number one spot, any guesses? Ours was Rockstar or Blizzard,
but it was neither of these, although they did place in the top ten
obviously.
Nintendo EAD Tokyo took the crown as best game dev, thanks to Super Mario
Galaxy 2 for the Wii which scored an incredible 97% average at Metacritic.
At number two and three were a couple of those surprises we were talking
about. In second place was 2D Boy, the two-man team from California responsible
for World of Goo, followed by ZeptoLab who made Cut the Rope for iOS.
In fourth was SCE Santa Monica (God of War), followed by the first of our
big name picks, Blizzard. Japanese outfit Media Vision (Wild Arms) was sixth,
then Swedish-based 1337 Game Design (Dark Nebula).
Bungie was eighth, followed by Rockstar Leeds who could only manage ninth
(Rockstar North was in fact twenty-eighth). Finally, TheCodingMonkeys rounded
out the top ten developers.
Over half the list comprises of devs who have worked on iPhone and iPad
games, showing the growing strength of digital distribution on the smartphone
and tablet gaming market.
Develop Editor-in-Chief Michael French commented: “The potent mix of
traditional boxed console and PC games with plenty of digital releases sold
through the likes of Xbox Live Arcade and the Apple App Store shows the vibrancy of the games
industry.”
“For the first time since we’ve published the Develop 100, a huge proportion
of the list are independent developers, proving that there has never been so
many opportunities open to those making games.”
If you want to see the full hundred-strong list, then you’ll find it
here.