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An In-depth Look At European Game Developers

Posted by Zonk on from the good-games-and-even-better-cheese dept.

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."

3 of 32 comments (clear)

  1. What? by pubjames · · Score: 4, Informative

    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...

    1. Re:What? by MaWeiTao · · Score: 5, Informative

      You're a bit mistaken. Take2 Interactive, which owns Rockstar games is British. Vivendi which now owns Blizzard is french. Blizzard, however, was an American company and technically they still are, except for the division based in Canada. Ubisoft is French, but that doesn't mean their developers are.

      Which brings me to another point, Take2, Vivendi and Ubisoft, like EA are primarily publishers not developers. The vast majority of actual game development does come from the US or Japan. Hence all the attention they get.

      Not to take anything from the Europeans. One of the more prominent releases developed in Europe was Battlefield 2 and there's plenty coming from British developers.

  2. Expected more from the article by El_Muerte_TDS · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.