Top 10 Up an Coming Studios

A site called Primotech has an article titled the The Top Ten Up and Coming Game Studios and is being pointed out on Obsidian's site because, well, they were #1. Flagship slipped into #2 and should send Primotech a statue thingy for the accolade.
More information.

Can't say I am surprised that Flagship and Obsidian top the list - they are founded by very experienced people from some of the best companies so far (Blizzard and Black Isle Studios).

Still, for a pure RPG developer company to be nr. 1 is very nice, hopefully they will produce more solid titles in the future - I actually have more faith in Obsidian than BioWare these days.

It is a nice reminder in these days of constant consolidation and big-house dominance that there are little guys out there like this.

I'm not saying I know everything about the industry, but it seems to me maintaining independence, and having the discipline to stay the course and not allow yourself to be bought out, is the way to go. Say whatever you want about their games, but Bethesda has done pretty well for themselves, IMO. Blizzard is another one. I could be wrong, maybe one or both of these companies has sold out and I'm just uninformed, but I've always been under the impression they are independent game developers.

That *is* the way to go but it is a hard route - you have to pitch ideas that get funded or have independent funding, and then have all of your ideas wind up profitable, or at least have the balance of ideas maintain a positive cash flow at any given time.

blizzard was bought by vivendi many years ago and bethesda...well i believe satan owns stock in them

Ummm... how exactly does Flagship deserve 2nd place if they haven't even released a game yet? At least to me, HGL looks extremely mediocre. This list is teh suck .

To be considered, the studio needed to be no older than five years and it could only have released a small number of titles

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And zero is about the smallest number you can get. I don't know about mediocre, though. Far from groundbreaking, but I expect HG:L to be a cut above most of what is being released in the action genre. (Or so I hope anyway.)

Thought it was nice that the Introversion guys made it on there. Darwinia was a cool game concept--someday I need to play it. (it's in that pile to the left of me with about twenty other games I haven't managed to get to )

"I'm not saying I know everything about the industry, but it seems to me maintaining independence, and having the discipline to stay the course and not allow yourself to be bought out, is the way to go. Say whatever you want about their games, but Bethesda has done pretty well for themselves, IMO. Blizzard is another one. I could be wrong, maybe one or both of these companies has sold out and I'm just uninformed, but I've always been under the impression they are independent game developers."

You forget size. Subway is not incorporated, but are they independent? No. Having one owner compared to multiple owners changes very little. The size of the company has a much larger impact on freedom than being a corporation, llc, llp, po, etc. Whats the difference of having a blizzard or bethesda as coprs rather than private? Do you think a ceo/cotb is much less of an owner than in a provate company? Do you think the owners of bethesda/zm and blizzard don't deligate responsiblity to executives?

Size is a much bigger factor in how a business is run than if that company pays out dividends or not. I really think people (not the guy I quoted) in general have been beaten over the head with how evil corporations are in movies and popular culture that they just assume horrible things happen if a company is one, or can't see that a huge company with a lot of employees (like blizzard) would be run exactly the same if it incorporated tomorrow, exept they'd have an increase in capital by sale od stock, have to pay out dividends, tie employees in with stock deals, and have to file and share information it doesn't now. Their management philosophy would stay the same, the managers would stay the same, their mission statement and goal, their current policies, everything would stay the same, etc. Marge would still answer the phone and get Brenda in HR coffee. The employees might be a little more excited because of the usual or traditional (in most cases) employee stock options, and then back to business as usual.

Thats it. No difference. Nothing.

Sir Markus said:

I'm not saying I know everything about the industry, but it seems to me maintaining independence, and having the discipline to stay the course and not allow yourself to be bought out, is the way to go. Say whatever you want about their games, but Bethesda has done pretty well for themselves, IMO. Blizzard is another one. I could be wrong, maybe one or both of these companies has sold out and I'm just uninformed, but I've always been under the impression they are independent game developers.

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Blizzard is part of Vivendi. The fact they they are controlled by the office in Paris was one of the main reasons for the Flagship guys to leave.

Bethesda is part of Zenimax, so they are not formally independent. It seems Zenimax leaves them a lot of breathing room as far as actual game development is concerned though.

The biggest problems for small studios are funding and risk. Failure to secure funding or a flopped game can kill the studio. I don´t blame studio owners who sell to a big publisher. It´s the fastest way to cash in the chips and reduce the risk to zero.

Moriendor said:

Ummm... how exactly does Flagship deserve 2nd place if they haven't even released a game yet? At least to me, HGL looks extremely mediocre. This list is teh suck .

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Read Olnigg's current satire on that and the amazon customer reviews after that ... Creepy, I say.

(And I mean Amazon Germany.)

Gorath said:

The biggest problems for small studios are funding and risk. Failure to secure funding or a flopped game can kill the studio. I don´t blame studio owners who sell to a big publisher. It´s the fastest way to cash in the chips and reduce the risk to zero.

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Luckily, Larian has found a way to fund their own games now so that they can stay truly independent (as far as I know), and I'm speaking of Ketnetkick.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

Read Olnigg's current satire on that and the amazon customer reviews after that ... Creepy, I say.

(And I mean Amazon Germany.)

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Hilarious, as always.

Luckily, Larian has found a way to fund their own games now so that they can stay truly independent (as far as I know), and I'm speaking of Ketnetkick.

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I wouldn´t be so sure about this.

It appears to me so.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

It appears to me so.

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I don´t doubt that.
Maybe you should consider how big a budget they need to make their new RPG in the desired size and quality on at least two platforms. Is one no.1 hit in a small market like Belgium enough to finance this?

Well, in that respect you seem to ghave more knowledge in that field than I do.
And I wouldn't use Belgium as the only market there - I'd rather speak at least of Benelux, if not even most of northern and middle Europe.