Who is the most universally respected video game developer right now?

[XX]

CDPR or Naughty Dog

 

[MardyBum]

Pretty close between CDPR, Naughty Dog, and From.

 

[sexydonut]

Nintendo.

Naughty Dog has technical quality, but their products are more like interactive movies than games.

 

[Shareefruck]

Nintendo.

Naughty Dog has technical quality, but their products are more like interactive movies than games.

To pile on additional (probably disagreeable) criticism to that, even their value as interactive movies is pretty limited, grossly overstated, and only impressive relative to a medium that isn't great at it, in my opinion.

In the grand scheme of things, the immersive experience/presentation/storytelling/performances of games like Last of Us and Uncharted only really amount to being the video game equivalent of (at best I'd say marginally better than) mediocre/standard fare entertainment like The Mummy and The Walking Dead. Like sure, it's very impressive and ambitious that you're trying so hard to nail that type of thing and successfully doing it, but that thing you're trying to emulate isn't even all that great in the first place.

It's not like these games are the equivalent of genuinely great movies and it's just the fact that they aren't enough of a video game that is the deal breaker, IMO. For me, it's more that they're forgoing being a great game for the chance to be a run-of-the-mill movie.

Videogames that try to be like interactive blockbuster movies tend to have such a low bar for this kind of thing. Like, how on earth is David Cage successful and respectably reviewed rather than being universally treated like a Tommy-Wiseau-esque joke? The fact that these get so highly praised just make the potential of the medium appear so much lower than it it actually is.

 

[Commander Clueless]

In the world at large, I'd probably say Nintendo.

 

[tacogeoff]

CD Projekt Red/Naughty Dog/Rockstar

 

[bambamcam4ever]

To pile on additional (probably disagreeable) criticism to that, even their value as interactive movies is pretty limited, grossly overstated, and only impressive relative to a medium that isn't great at it, in my opinion.

In the grand scheme of things, the immersive experience/presentation/storytelling/performances of games like Last of Us and Uncharted only really amount to being the video game equivalent of (at best I'd say marginally better than) mediocre/standard fare entertainment like The Mummy and The Walking Dead. Like sure, it's very impressive and ambitious that you're trying so hard to nail that type of thing and successfully doing it, but that thing you're trying to emulate isn't even all that great in the first place.

It's not like these games are the equivalent of genuinely great movies and it's just the fact that they aren't enough of a video game that is the deal breaker, IMO. For me, it's more that they're forgoing being a great game for the chance to be a run-of-the-mill movie.

Videogames that try to be like interactive blockbuster movies tend to have such a low bar for this kind of thing. Like, how on earth is David Cage successful and respectably reviewed rather than being universally treated like a Tommy-Wiseau-esque joke? The fact that these get so highly praised just make the potential of the medium appear so much lower than it it actually is.

I feel like this may be due to game reviewers wanting to be viewed as more like film critics, and therefore praise games which are most similar to films.

I completely agree with you though, and unfortunately you often see games which emphasize these "cinematic experiences" put creativity in game design/gameplay systems to the wayside. If I want a good story I would watch a movie or read a book- if the game has an above average story it's a bonus, but the game itself is really the only thing that matters. I'm never going to play a game just because it has a "good story."

Plus, the games that tell the most effective stories are ones that the player themselves create as part of playing the game, not ones as part of a "choose your own adventure"-esque pre-created path.

 

[Shareefruck]

I feel like this may be due to game reviewers wanting to be viewed as more like film critics, and therefore praise games which are most similar to films.

I completely agree with you though, and unfortunately you often see games which emphasize these "cinematic experiences" put creativity in game design/gameplay systems to the wayside. If I want a good story I would watch a movie or read a book- if the game has an above average story it's a bonus, but the game itself is really the only thing that matters. I'm never going to play a game just because it has a "good story."

Plus, the games that tell the most effective stories are ones that the player themselves create as part of playing the game, not ones as part of a "choose your own adventure"-esque pre-created path.

We actually might disagree on a lot of that. I'm more in favor of directed and controlled storytelling than that "the player is the storyteller" mentality (although it's hard to know for sure what you're referring to), and my point was more that while playing a game for the story seems perfectly sensible to me, the blockbuster cinematic experiences they tend to emulate (Naughty Dog especially) actually have really weak, contrived, and manipulative storytelling that are among the weaker examples across all of the mediums, even beneath what already exists within traditional videogames that have stories. The story beats of something like Last of Us are really cheap, unoriginal, and formulaic (it relies on the same kind of hollow sympathy/engagement tricks that Walking Dead or totally throwaway survival movies regularly use), while the story beats of David Cage games are downright insultingly stupid and borderline immoral/offensive in how out of touch they are with reality. I see them as totally inferior to the storytelling of non-blockbuster-movie-like games such as Dark Souls or Portal, for example.

If anything, I see many of these Naughty-Dog-esque cinematic blockbuster games that get raised up on a pedestal as being a major step backwards for the medium rather than an evolution, even speaking purely in terms of storytelling. It's primarily just the more surface-level (I would argue less important) technical aspects (voice acting, facial movements, realistic models/environments that feel fluid/natural, etc.) that they thrive at and deserve praise for. The core gameplay AND storytelling are both usually pretty lame.

 

[syz]

Unfortunately expensive motion capture is enough to fool most people who play video games into believing a game has a good story.

TBH Naughty Dog and Rock Star are fine even if all they really do is ape other popular media. I have no idea why anybody still defends/funds David Cage, meanwhile.

 

[bambamcam4ever]

I see a lot of people chose CDPR here, seems that aged poorly.

 

[tacogeoff]

I see a lot of people chose CDPR here, seems that aged poorly.

why?

 

[Beau Knows]

why?

Because they've lost a lot of respect with the release of their latest game, which is a broken mess.

 

[SuperScript29]

I see a lot of people chose CDPR here, seems that aged poorly.

I think Larian has the potential to be the best when it comes to RPG. CDPR are overrated imo.

 

[Papa Francouz]

Supergiant Games is the only right answer here.

 

[Frankie Spankie]

I think Larian has the potential to be the best when it comes to RPG. CDPR are overrated imo.

Larian's a good choice. Indie developers are generally seen as the darling child because they don't have any big dollars backing them forcing unfinished products out the door or jamming microtransactions into games.

Supergiant Games is the only right answer here.

I genuinely feel like they're the most overrated developer out there. Every game I constantly hear "OMG, this is the best indie game in years!" I play them and they're all so surprisingly average. I haven't played Hades but I've played all the others to the same effect. I'm just done with them entirely.

 

[TheDoldrums]

There's no way it's Nintendo. Universally respected is not possible with them considering their history with legal battles. There was just a huge controversy last week.



Not to mention basically everything internet related with them has been bad to some extent. I play my Switch everyday and love their games to death, but frankly they don't deserve universal respect.

I think the right answer is probably FromSoftware or Rockstar depending on your view of crunch. But since most of the big names have been mentioned, here are a few smaller/different ones that I think everybody respects

Platinum
Bluepoint
Kojima
Falcom

 

[x Tame Impala]

Not to be a snarky douche here, but why were people saying CDPR? Isn’t Witcher 3 their only major success? Temporarily forgetting about the problems with Cyberpunk...What makes people love them so much?

 

[Leafs at Knight]

Not to be a snarky douche here, but why were people saying CDPR? Isn’t Witcher 3 their only major success? Temporarily forgetting about the problems with Cyberpunk...What makes people love them so much?

As someone that loves and Witcher and cyberpunk (so far) CDPR should've never been mentioned. They have crunch problems for awhile, and now have issues with transphobic stuff in cyberpunk.

But CDPR have had stuff like free dlc, they did amazing post launch work on the Witcher, DRM free, their dlc are basically games themselves and actually aren't overpriced. They're doing another Witcher update sometime next year for free while companies like Bethesda and rockstar keep charging people full price for ports, to further improve the game, etc. Basically #forthegamers stuff..


Yea there isn't many options for this thread tbh. If you dive deep enough you're going to have issues with things like crunch, workplace harassment, exploitation, etc. So probably some indie developers would be the best option.

 

[Blitzkrug]

If we're talking just from a pure development standpoint, it's probably Nintendo. The games they put out are pure quality and I can't ever recall having major issues with any of their games at launch. The dev teams and games are still the gold standard on the market as far as I'm concerned.

Again this is just from a pure development standpoint. The business end of Nintendo can go eat a bag of dicks and said quality is why they're allowed to get away with most of the shit they pull.

 

[KeithIsActuallyBad]

The correct answer is nobody.

 

[Papa Francouz]

I genuinely feel like they're the most overrated developer out there. Every game I constantly hear "OMG, this is the best indie game in years!" I play them and they're all so surprisingly average. I haven't played Hades but I've played all the others to the same effect. I'm just done with them entirely.

Really? I would never call their games "the best indie game in years," but they do pump out very high quality games every few years. I feel like they've only gotten better since Bastion despite Transistor and Hades both playing somewhat similar to that game. Pyre, specifically, really stuck out to me because it was a break from their usual formula and played as a pseudo-sports game more than anything else. If their games don't interest you, that's totally fine; I'm not about to rag on someone for having different tastes than me. But I do feel like Supergiant Games does what they say they're going to do, and in the current gaming landscape that's all it really takes to become respected by the public.

Maybe all the positive press surrounding Hades has made them become more talked about in gaming circles, but I haven't seen or heard any of it from my immediate friend group. Time to expand my gaming friend group, I guess

 

[Frankie Blueberries]

It's damn-near impossible for a developer to maintain high quality and a great reputation for a prolonged period of time. Almost like it's near impossible for musicians to put out consistently amazing material for their entire career.

Almost every developer has a great run and then shit goes sideways at some point. I remember thinking that there was no way DICE could make a bad game after enjoying a run of their Battlefield franchise that included 1942, 2, 2142, Bad Company 1 and 2, 1943, Vietnam, 3, etc. but then EA bought them and pressured them to monetize their games more (their DLC was free until EA bought them, and then they introduced loot boxes into SW Battlefront which was obviously a huge fail) and also made them develop too many games simultaneously while pushing for sharp deadlines, resulting in buggy, unfinished games like Battlefield V.

 

[The Crypto Guy]

Naughty Dog

 

[Mikeaveli]

Larian is a decent choice but some Baldurs Gate oldheads have a problem with them making BG3 turn based lol. Naughty Dog would have been a good choice before Last of Us 2. My pick is From Software.

 

[S E P H]

The correct answer is nobody.

Disagree, I suggest that Nintendo is a pretty damn respected company. I am not saying their games are amazing or appeal to everyone, but they rarely have huge glitch issues, microtransactions, nor incomplete games. I think a good deal comes from a huge level of secrecy, but Metroid is probably the "biggest" fiasco that has happened to them in the last five or so years that I can remember. Plus they made one of the greatest games of all time with Zelda: BotW.