Slashdot Mirror
An In-depth Look At European Game Developers
beastiecube wrote to mention a GameDaily article going into detail about some accomplished European game developers. American and Japanese companies seem to get most of the press, but there are several development houses in the EU that are producing solid work. From the article: "Criterion is certainly no stranger to never before seen products. Its critically acclaimed Burnout series introduced us to the most terrifyingly amazing crashes ever seen in videogames, and it's looking to spice up the shooting genre with Black, a highly intense FPS where the guns are the stars. Most of them are nothing new, because after all, you see one AK-47, you've seen them all, but unlike in most games, Black's weapons are extremely loud and in your face. But what's even cooler than the hot assortment of deadly toys is the environmental interaction."
American and Japanese companies seem to get most of the press, but there are several development houses in the EU that are producing solid work.
A lot of the top games are made in Europe. Heard of Rockstar games, makers of the Vice City series? It's a UK company. Blizzard, publishers of the World of Warcraft series? Also British. Ubisoft, publishers of the Prince of Persia series, amongst others? French. I could go on...
The guy's somewhat right- the projects that he lists are quite impressive in that they promise a hell of a lot. However, in my experience with European developers, even if they have cool features or awesome graphics, their game will smack you down somewhere.
X3 Reunion, for example, suffers from high system requirements and it lacks the features that would make its innovative features great (e.g., you can't relocate or dismantle a station after you've built it). Moreover, the game universe makes freeform play almost too overwhelming to enjoy.
Neocron was plagued by seemingly endless bugs that ruined any coolness that any new patch would add.
I will say that some of the coolest games I've played have come out of Europe (e.g., Uplink), but they've had their fair share of duds (e.g., Iron Storm).
If anyone is looking for a superb indie/euro game, check out Space Rangers 2. Its like Freelancer, Star Control, Elite, Privateer, etc. Its a great game that doesnt focus on killing and has a lot of interesting gameplay elements. Check it out. http://www.elementalgames.com/
I can tell you that there's no fun. Most of it is pretty much the same as writing business software, but with a prettier GUI. Still the same old database work, ...
The fun is still had by the graphics artists and modellers. We end up doing the boring crap. At least we get some decent visual feedback though...
C'mon, he wrote the visualization platform for the Xbox360 BIOS. He's instantly who I think of when I hear "European game developer".
and I want it now!
Digital Illusions, as in the creators of the Battlefield series? They're Swedish.
An "in-depth" look my arse. The article is fine but it's just an overview of several new games. C'mon /. edit those summaries.
A couple of European game developer studios:
Rockstar North (San Andreas)
Nadeo (Trackmania)
CroTeam (Serious Sam)
Quantic Dreams (Fahrenheit)
Funcom (the Longest Yourney)
Revolution (Broken Sword)
EgoSoft (X3)
Well... I could go on for a while.
It's not the problem that European game devs don't get a lot of attention. It's more that nobody realises that these dev studios are European. They are often mistaken for American.
Another game everyone knows of but probably doesn't realise it's made by Europeans:
FarCry (developed by Crytek, a German company).
Part of the reason why a lot of people don't know where games got made is the fact that journalists always mention the publishers first, and the developers second. They give the publishers all the credit, undeservedly so. If you ask a random gamer "Who made Battlefield 2?", he'll say "Electronic Arts", not "DICE".
Oh, I forgot to mention Codemasters (http://www.codemasters.co.uk/) in my previous post. They're a European publisher and developer (they do both) based in England. They're a f***ing huge company and make loads of different games, ranging from MMORPGs (D&D: Stormreach, DF Online), tactical shooters (Operation Flashpoint), racing games (TOCA series, Colin McRae series), and loads of other stuff.
Some of their sports games (Colin McRae Rally, their snooker and football series) don't seem to get any attention in America and Japan, since those sports aren't very popular there, I guess. Their Colin McRae games are the best rally driving games ever, yet if you search for CMR reviews, you'll only find few, mostly on European gaming sites.
Some dev teams from Czech Republic:
Illusion Softworks: Hidden & Dangerous, Mafia, Vietcong
Bohemia Interactive Studio: Operation Flashpoint
I think these games are quite popular, at least in Europe.
What, no mention of the internal Sony studio that was once the major developer/publisher Psygnosis?
They're responsible for the only game worth buying a PSP for - Wipeout Pure. Looking at the credits, most of the people who worked on Wipeout Pure also worked on the previous Wipeout games while still under the Psygnosis name.
Rare is based in England, and have made some of the best games the world has ever known. Hopefully that trend will continue, they were bought by Microsoft last year.
Lionhead studios [nt]