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Programming Technology Entertainment Games

An In-depth Look At European Game Developers 32

Posted by Zonk 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."
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An In-depth Look At European Game Developers More

An In-depth Look At European Game Developers

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  • What? (Score:5, Informative)

    by pubjames ( 468013 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @10:03AM (#14578481)
    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...
    • According to Wikipedia, Blizzard [wikipedia.org] is based in California and is owned by a French conglomerate [wikipedia.org].
      • Actually I think you're right. I was actually thinking of Edios, makers of Tomb Raider and Hitman etc, who are UK based.I should also mention "Team Soho", the makers of "The Getaway" and "Black Monday" (who are also in the UK), because they rock.

        My point still stands, this article is BS as they mention as few companies that nobody as ever heard of as being representative of gaming companies in Europe, when in actual fact there are various ones that everyone has heard about. The author probabaly doesn't know
    • Blizzard is and always has been a US dev house. They are now largely owned by Vivendi Universal, which is a French publisher.
    • Well, Rockstar North and Rockstar Leeds are British studios (and Rockstar Vienna is Austria, of course), so Grand Theft Audio is pretty European, but AFAIK Rockstar Games itself is an Ameican company (a Take 2 brand name reall).

      Kinda in reverse Ubisoft is a French company (so if the current Atari), but Prince of Persia was developed in Ubisoft Montreal.

    • Re:What? (Score:5, Informative)

      by MaWeiTao ( 908546 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @10:31AM (#14578752)
      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.
      • Blizzard, however, was an American company

        Yes, I made a mistake in my original post, I was thinking of Edios.

        Rockstar is very much a British company, and Unisoft is very much French.

        The vast majority of actual game development does come from the US or Japan.

        I disagree. I think it would be more accurate to say "The perception is that..."
      • Ubisoft is French, but that doesn't mean their developers are.

        Well, most of Ubisoft's internal studios are French (or in French-speaking areas). The Montpellier studio (headed up by Michel Ancel) did Beyond Good & Evil and most of the work on King Kong. The Annecy studio did the multiplayer parts of the Splinter Cell series and is working on Splinter Cell 4. The Montreal studio (in Quebec, of course) did the rest of the Splinter Cell series and Prince of Persia. The Casablanca studio (and French is
  • 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 [egosoft.com], 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 p

  • As a game developer in europe ... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 27, 2006 @10:20AM (#14578639)
    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".

  • Digital Illusions [global.dice.se], as in the creators of the Battlefield series? They're Swedish.

  • Expected more from the article (Score:4, Informative)

    by El_Muerte_TDS ( 592157 ) on Friday January 27, 2006 @11:32AM (#14579438) Homepage
    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.
    • Time to throw some national pride around, here are some Finnish game developers:

      Remedy (Max Payne, Alan Wake)
      Bugbear (Rally Trophy, Flatout)
      Housemarque (Supreme Snowboarding, Transworld Snowboarding)
      Frozenbyte (Shadowgrounds)
  • 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/ [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 attenti
  • 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.

    • Lemmings!

      First thing that comes to mind when you mention Psygnosis. ;)

      Another game I fondly remember playing on my old Mac Classic and Mac Performa was Oxyd, which I just found has become freeware [oxyd-game.com]. (There's also a clone called Enigma [nongnu.org].) Great puzzle game. Developed by Dongleware [dongleware.de], German, which looks like it turned into a webdevelopment company.

      Another game they created was the side-scrolling shooter Tubular Worlds, which had totally awesome graphics.

      • Well, to be really picky, Lemmings was only published by Psygnosis. The developers were DMA Designs, now known as... Rockstar North.

        Yup, the developers that created Lemmings are also responsible for the GTA series.

        And I do remember Tubular Worlds. I found the demo on one of those shovelware shareware CDs way back in the 90s. I enjoyed it, but not enough to actually buy the registered version.
  • 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.
    • Correction: They were bought by Microsoft three-and-a-half years ago, by which time, from what I've heard, many senior developers had left.

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