Mummelmann said:
Conegamer said:
As an aside, some of the companies here don't belong on the list.
I mean, Piranha Bytes, for example. Their only games released are (from Wikipedia):
Gothic (2001)
Gothic II (2002)
Gothic II: Night of the Raven (2003)
Gothic 3 (2006)
Risen (2009)
Risen 2: Dark Waters (2012)
None of these games have threatened the 85, or even the 80 barrier from most reviewers, so is it fair to knock out Nintendo, or Naughty Dog, or even Capcom, all of which have numerous high-scoring games first, because of petty disputes?
Face it, guys. You may not like one of the above companies, but they aren't the worst on the list. Voting out Nintendo (the company which holds numerous entries in the top 10 games lists of all time) or Capcom (which have created a selection of great games) would be unfair.
And this is where these threads fall down. They have no consistancy and merely devolve into a voting war, so the eventual winner won't actually reflect people's opinions, but more the community spirit as a whole. Steps have been taken to improve things, but the fact is, only a closed ballot system would provide a relatively accurate answer. This seems to be more a case of garnering posts for the user(s) than actually achieving anything IMO.
For example, do you REALLY think that Studio 4C is the best games developer ever made, for example? Better than the rest on that list? Didn't think so. And yet, it is nearly the best scorer on the list...
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Have to disagree with you on your first part; Piranha Bytes make incredible games, the Gothic series have a horde of cult fans and most of the reason why the series never scored as high as, say, the Elder Scrolls is that they spent more time making a world for them and you to care about than adding silly gimmicks and stretching it to a great size for the sake of simply being big.
The stories in the Gothic games, and Risen for that matter, are easily on par with Elder Scrolls, the combat is better and the worlds are a lot more vibrant and fun than the soulless and barren expanses of the TES series. All in all, I think that the Gothic series is better than TES in almost every way.
Piranha spent their money on creating soul and charm rather than expensive voice actors and generating a vast but boring world, and even though reviewers never fully fell in love with their games, there are million of gamers who did. Their coding and programming is also better than many give them credit for, that much was evident when someone else took over the development and license, and Gothic 4 was a sorry-assed action game with flat content after losing Piranha Bytes. To top it off, the engine used in Gothic 3 was incredibly impressive, certainly more so than anything else in the genre at the time, and with mods there are still few RPG's which outperform Gothic 3 in visuals.
A company that has produced several RPG's with millions of fans and hundreds of hours of entertainment and sheer glee, then. If they don't deserve to be on the list because they never had the chance to recieve the highly inflated meta scores of this gen, then I don't know many who do. Similarily, some developers, such as Rockstar, almost always get inflated scores due to hype and fear of losing clicks so metascores aren't a straight and fair way of measuring the quality of entertinament for the end user just because gaming journalists come in their pants over games with guns and "mature" content (see also Mass Effect for a good example). A lot of games get away with glaring flaws and problems that aren't even mentioned and are given ridiculous scores and other games are simply rehashed, old shit with new labels (Modern Warfare series) which recieve high honors on virtually no grounds at all.
My best and biggest lesson of the 7th generation; never mind review scores and sales, none of the two are indicative of your enjoyment of a game, sales numbers and scores have lost all meaning in the 7th generation, at least for me and I also happen to know that I'm not alone.
Slightly OT: I do agree with you though, this "contest" is hopeless and can only serve to boost post counts and start arguments.
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Perhaps I didn't make myself overly clear in suggesting that they were rubbish because of low review scores.
What I meant really was the fact that, the company has released 5 games from 2 series', in the past 10 years. Most of the other companies represented here have been going for far longer, or released far more games, or have released games which appeal to a wider audience. The Gothic series of games never really appealed to the same crowd (however, like you say, they did create a large following from a select gaming community), and, as such, can not be treated as the best developer of all time.
In addition, the company specialises in only the one genre of games from the one series. I am aware that other developers on this list (heck, even Bethesda) do the same, but many of them do not. Many of them branch out into different sectors of the market and genres, and so appeal to a wider audience. Because of this, so long as the games are up to a good quality (which I believe is the case for all of the developers here), it shows more technical skill and that the studio can adapt. As such, I would regard the studio which releases more games into more genres of a slightly lower quality higher than the company which releases fewer, more controversial games in the one genre. I know this isn't the case for everyone, but it's personally why I believe Nintendo is still the best out there, simply due to the number of high-quality games in so many different genres.
To conclude, there will always be people who think differently and really love the one game or game series (which is why I believe Monolith should be up there), but, if they don't cater to a wide audience, and release games accordingly, I can't consider them the 'best'.
Oh, and I'm not saying that Pirahna is the worst on the list, or that it's a bad developer (it's a great dev, infact). But I believe, for the above reasons, that it's not the best, and that people should stop bickering and remove the 'lesser' developers first, because, well...it's unlikely to stop now.
