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Tag: Video Game Publishers

  • Team17 To Begin Publishing Indie Games

    Game developer Team17 today announced that it will soon make a move into third-party publishing of video games. Team17 is best known as the development studio behind the Worms series of games, which debuted just over 18 years ago. More recently the studio rebooted its Superfrog franchise with Superfrog HD.

    Team17 was originally a third-party publisher behind classic games such as Alien Breed and Super Stardust in addition to Superfrog. In today’s announcement the studio explained why it is making its move back to publishing when it seems that other smaller video game publishers are struggling:

    Ultimately, the timing is right; Team17 is in a very fortunate position with a wealth of personal experience to share. Team17 has an incredible community running into many millions that we can cross-promote within and raise awareness for new IPs and specifically indie games, which are very close to our hearts and something we stand up for. Team17 is home to an awesome digital publishing team who have topped every digital chart from PC, console and mobile over the last couple of years. Most importantly, Team17 make games as well and know first-hand just what it takes to make a game and take it to market correctly across all platforms.

    Team17 already has one game on its publishing roster, and indie title called Light. The game is a top-down 2D game starring a square that can sneak around levels, quietly take out guards, and hack terminals. As per its name, Light plays around with light quite a bit, using the square’s field of vision to gradually reveal more of each level. The game is currently up for voting on Steam Greenlight.

  • Metacritic Scores 2012’s Best Game Publishers

    Metacritic, the popular video game review aggregator, has released its third yearly breakdown of the best gaming publishers. The rankings come as an aggregate of the critic Metacritic scores of each publisher’s titles released in 2012. Sales and user reviews are not taken into account.

    Somewhat surprisingly, Electronic Arts (EA) has topped review charts this year. This is despite being voted “Worst Company in America” by gamers fed-up with day-one DLC and micro-transactions that are popping up in every one of the publisher’s releases.

    Though it may be hard to remember due to the scandals over its ending and day-one DLC, Mass Effect 3 was well-reviewed upon release and tops EA’s list of 2012 games with a Metacritic score of 93. The publisher’s average score was 75.2, and none of its games scored a 49 or lower.

    The next three publishers on the list are all first-party publishers: Microsoft with a 73, Sony with a 72.3, and Nintendo with a 71.2. Microsoft was led by Mark of the Ninja‘s 91, but was balanced out by poorly rated Kinect and Xbox LIVE Arcade games. Nintendo was similarly balanced by casual-gamer targeted titles, though Xenoblade Chronicles‘ 92 saved it from falling lower on the list. Similar to EA, Sony also did not have any scores fall below 50, though a majority of its titles fell into the “average” range from 50 to 75.

    Capcom (70.4), Warner Bros (70.6), Ubisoft (68.2), Konami (69), Sega (69.9), and Activision Blizzard (64.4) rounded out the top ten. Activision’s highest-rated title was Diablo III (88), but the publisher was brought low by movie tie-in games such as 007 Legends, which managed a 25 Metacritic score.

    As for the “mid-size” publisher (those that released between 7 and 14 titles) rankings, Take-Two Interactive (83.1), Telltale Games (83.9), and Square Enix (75.2) led the list. Telltale Games was buoyed by each episode of its The Walking Dead adventure game, which managed to win quite a few game of the year awards.