Gamasutra's Top 5 Developers of 2007

[Bodhesatva]

Picko said:
Why should Nintendo be on the list?

As good as SMG is, the five developers on the list did various things that will change the way future games are made. Bioshock and Mass Effect from a storytelling point of view, Halo 3 with Forge and various multiplayer developments, Orange Box through Portal, and Rock Bank through the use of a multiplayer control scheme. Can one say the same for SMG? The platformer genre is basically dead and that is unlikely to change any time soon. Essentially SMG is a wonderful game but is not going to have much effect on the direction gaming will take in the future.

I know most people love Nintendo here but they really do not appear to fulfill the criteria for this list. So leaving them off seems ok.

 While I would agree that it's fine that Nintendo isn't on this list, I'd point out they've done a good deal more than just release SMG this year, and I can say with confidence that Wii Sports (which was released late last year, and thus isn't in contention) will be far more influential than any of these games listed here; in fact, I'm not sure any developer has so powerfully affected the course of gaming singlehandedly in a long time, if ever.

Again, the vagueness of the title here ("Grit?" "Pushing the envelope," without saying what envelope that is?) allows Gamasutra to do whatever they want, but that doesn't change the fact that Nintendo released the best reviewed game of the year and are unquestionably the most influential designer this year. EA (EA Casual), Ubisoft (Ubisoft Casual), and several other major developers have already set up new divisions -- not just studios, but entire divisions -- to mimic Nintendo's success. A game as great as Mass Effect will be lucky to have one or two developers design a couple games built around their option-driven dialogue style, while Nintendo is quite visibly warping the entire video game industry around itself. 

But Nintendo sure isn't gritty, I'll give you that.