Off the Shelf Media

Videogame developers: We love them, we hate them, but we need them. This list is my top five favorite game developers of all time. The keyword in that sentence is favorite. There is a huge difference between favorite and best game developers of all time. The best would take my personal opinions out and look at it objectively. Now, where’s the fun in that? 

I think a list of favorites is better than a list of bests, so expect this list to be heavily biased, and I’m ready for all of you to yell at me for my reasoning. 

Before we get started, here are a few honorable mentions.

• Blizzard 
• CD Project Red
• Ubisoft
• EA Games (challenge everything era) 
• EA Sports (it’s in the game)
• VALVe
• Bungie
• Nintendo 
• Insomniac Games

5. Humongous Entertainment 

I originally had Ubisoft at number five, and I was ready to back it up, but then Humongous Entertainment popped into my mind, and it was a no-brainer from there. Humongous Entertainment needs more love and respect as one of the original game developers that helped foster an entire generation of videogame fans like myself. 

The games they made targeted 3-8-year-old kids, and they did it masterfully. Go up to any 30-something and ask them if they remember Freddi Fish, Putt-Putt, Spy Fox, or Pajama Sam, and watch their childhood flash before their eyes.

They are best known for the Backyard Sports franchise and made Pablo Sanchez a household name to every Millennial and Gen-Zer in America. The tradition lives on today as Mega Cat Studios revived the Backyard Sports franchise in 2024, which you can read our review on, and will continue to re-release and hopefully create new Backyard Sports games for a brand new generation. 

Humongous Entertainment peaked in the mid-1990s when the gaming industry was moving past arcade games and getting into narrative-driven adventure games. It’s a shame this developer shut down in 2005, but it had a solid 13-year run making video games for children like me.

I remember going over to my friend’s house and playing Freddi Fish, or waking up on a Saturday to play Putt Putt Saves the Zoo for the 100th time. I grew up with these games, and as I got older, so did the video game industry. The PC classics turned to the PS2, and then the Xbox-360, and then Xbox Live, then the PlayStation 4, and here we are today with a super PC playing video games into my 30s. 

This list would not exist without Humongous Entertainment. My love for video games would not exist without Humongous Entertainment, and as I finish writing this sentence, I feel ashamed for thinking of putting a garbage company like Ubisoft anywhere near this list. 

4. Bethesda 

Alright, alright, enough of the melodramatic nostalgia of a simpler life of a 6-year-old me, let’s get into the real games! 

Bethesda is one of those game studios you can never fully hate. Sure, Starfield wasn’t great, and they’ve let The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim carry their company for the past decade, but have you played Skyrim? That game is f-ing amazing. 

Bethesda turned the gaming world upside down in 2006 when they released The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Oblivion was one of the first open-world sandbox games that every other developer tried to copy. Ubisoft (I can’t believe I’m mentioning them again) tried with their Far Cry and Assassin’s Creed series, and while they both had great financial and critical success, they never quite had the formula that Bethesda games have. 

Bethesda knows how to create a world you want to explore over and over again. The attention to detail the developers go into is insane, from writing entire books nobody reads to throwing in a random easter egg from their other franchises. They truly mastered the sandbox idea, where they throw you in and it’s up to you to figure out what you want to do.

While doing my research for this list, I learned that Bethesda has been around since the 1980s, and their first game was called Gridiron!. That came out in 1986 for the Atari. Man, they’ve come a long way.

Bethesda has hit some speed bumps in recent years. Fallout 76 was a disaster at launch, but has since corrected itself and established a solid community of dedicated fans. The Elder Scrolls 6 or Fallout 5 is nowhere to be seen, even though fans have been clamoring for it forever, and they’ve bought studios just to shut them down. 

One of my favorite games of 2023 was Hi-Fi Rush, which was developed by Tango Gamesworks and owned by Bethesda. The game was a huge success, but Bethesda shut down the studio, and all those people are out of jobs.  I get it’s a business, but it’s moves like that that make me slap my forehead and shake my head in shame. It was a bad look for Bethesda and part of a long line of bad moves since Microsoft purchased them in 2021. 

They’ve managed to earn some street cred back with the success of the Oblivion Remaster, the surprise hit in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, as well as the revival of the DOOM franchise. 

When Bethesda is firing on all cylinders, there’s nothing that can stop them. I have high hopes for Bethesda, but if they fall from grace, there are plenty of games and remasters out there to pick up the mantle and charge forward. 

3. Rockstar

Rockstar knows how to make a video game. Grand Theft Auto is arguably the most successful game franchise in history, and as much as we all want GTA 6, diehard fans want Bully 2 or Red Dead Redemption 3 just as bad. 

There isn’t a studio in the world that knows how to write a better story or develop better characters than Rockstar. They’ve managed to create a Tarantino-style universe in their games where they are all connected in some way, shape, or form. 

John Marston is one of the most beloved characters in any Rockstar game. In Red Dead Redemption, you play as the outlaw hunting down his former gang to save his family as well as himself from the boot of the U.S. Government. He is as vile as you can get, but at the same time, you want him to succeed. You feel bad for him while he hunts down his former friends to save himself. 

He’s a well-written character with a great arc, and when Red Dead Redemption 2 was announced as a prequel, we were all excited to pick up our cowboy hat and ride off as Marston once again. Then, Rockstar threw a wrench in that plan and had us play as Arthur Morgan, and we went through the same experience all over again. 

The problem with Rockstar, and why it’s not number one on this list, is the lack of releases in the past 10 years. GTA V was released in 2014, and since then, the only new game we’ve had was Red Dead 2. Don’t get me wrong, those two games are amazing games, but 10+ years is a long time to be working on a new game. 

From 2004 to 2014, Rockstar released GTA San Andreas, The Warriors (which is underrated and weird that Rockstar took a licensed property), Bully, GTA IV, Red Dead 1, L.A. Noire, and Max Payne 3. In addition to that, there are DLC expansions and definitive editions for a few of the games sprinkled in. 

My point is, Rockstar got lazy, and the money from GTA V online was too good and too easy to pass up. If you don’t have to work, why would you? I get it, and if it were me, I’d do the same thing, but it’s a shame because Rockstar owns some of the best IP in gaming history and they are doing nothing with it. 

GTA 6 will be worth the wait, but fans want love from the lesser series like Bully and L.A. Noire to hold them over before the 300+ hours we are all going to jam into GTA 6. 

2. Square Enix (FKA Square)

Remember when I told you this was a favorites list, not a bests list? Yeah, well, this is why. 

I love Square Enix and I will not apologize for it. Square Enix is number two on this list for one reason nd one reason only. Kingdom Hearts. Kingdom Hearts is my favorite game franchise of all time. It’s a series I will play over and over again because it’s fun and because someday I will be able to explain the story in a clear and cohesive manner. 

I have a list ranking my favorite Kingdom Hearts games, which can be found here.

And if you want to play them in chronological order, I have a guide for you here.  

If you really want to dive in, you can also find a few minigame playthroughs on Off the Shelf Media’s YouTube channel, courtesy of moi. 

Square Enix is not a perfect studio and nowhere near the best studio in comparison to others on this list, but I love their games. I love the art style. I love how the stories don’t always make sense, and most of all, I love the music. 

Yôko Shimomura is a legendary Japanese composer who has over four decades of experience crafting soundtracks for video games, including Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy XV. Music is an important part of video game development, and Square Enix has a library of games with outstanding music. They released Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory in 2020, which, in my opinion, is an ode to Yôko and all of her work she’s done for the franchise and company. 

Outside of Kingdom Hearts, Square Enix is famous for the Final Fantasy franchise, which has transformed and transcended video games for the better part of 30 years. As the video game world has adapted, so has Square Enix and Final Fantasy. It started as a top-down game with turn-based combat on the NES and is now an open-world RPG with compelling stories and intense combat. 

I have a soft spot in my heart for Japanese culture, or at least how it’s represented in American media. The art style pops differently from American games. The stories are sometimes cliche but also layered with twists, turns, and betrayals. You live in the world that the developers create, and feel like you’re fighting alongside some of your favorite characters. 

I’ll never outgrow a Square Enix game. I played Kingdom Hearts in fifth grade for the first time, and I’ll still be playing it for years and years to come because Square Enix took something and turned it into an artistic masterpiece that blows me away every single time. 

1. Naughty Dog

Here we are at number one. Naughty Dog is my favorite developer for one simple word. Change. Naughty Dog, as a studio, has grown up with their audience. 

Naughty Dog started with Crash Bandicoot in the 1990s. Cartoonish and fun for the whole family. Then they moved on to Jak and Daxter with a similar theme. Cartoonish and fun for the whole family. 

Then, in 2003, they released Jak 2 and never looked back. It still had its childish charm, but it moved away from the 8-11 age demographic to the 12-15 age demographic and stood the course. I talk about why Naughty Dog made the shift in my Jak 2 review. 

Fast forward to 2007, and the kids who grew up on Crash and Jak are now teenagers looking for something else. A new adventure they would enjoy, and their parents would buy for them. Naughty Dog answers the call with Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune.  Uncharted is an action-packed treasure hunter adventure with the wit and charm of a classic Naughty Dog tale. 

Uncharted was a turning point for Naughty Dog. They shifted away from gameplay and more towards a story. Uncharted was one of the first games I played where it felt like a movie. It’s a linear story with memorable characters, great writing, and enough gameplay to leave me satisfied while waiting on my toes for more. Naughty Dog delivered three more games in the series, each being better than the last. 

The Last of Us Part 1 is as good as it gets when it comes to storytelling in video games. If the opening scene doesn’t hit you straight in the heart and fighting back tears, man, you might not be human. *Spoiler: Whatever glass ceiling existed in video games got shattered the second Joel’s daughter, Sarah, gets shot in the opening scene.* Naughty Dog brought us into a new era of video games. The cinematic era. 

The Last of Us is a game for adults, and by the time it came out in 2013, the audience who played Crash back in the 90s were adults. They grew up with these games, and Naughty Dog brought something new for each stage of their lives. 

You have the whimsical adventure in the 90s and early 2000s. Every teenage boy’s adventure dream was where they saved the girl, found the treasure, and became a hero in the mid-2000s and early 2010s. Then, the sad and dark reality of adulthood in the mid-2010s and beyond. Your life has changed. Your interests have changed, but the games you love and the developers who make them, changed with you, and there’s comfort in that. 

We’ve seen plenty of game developers phone it in and release the same game over and over again. Or lie back and let their licensed content bring in buckets upon buckets of cash year over year, and lose any interest in innovating, and then there’s Naughty Dog. 

Here is a list of their games. Find me one bad one after 1996. There isn’t one. Find me one time they phoned it in for a lazy cash grab and then took a break for 3-5 years. You can’t. Yes, they released remastered versions or definitive collections, but they released them alongside new games from their franchises. 

Naughty Dog announced a new game called Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet. No idea what it is. No idea what it’s about. No idea when it is being released. I know nothing, but I already know the game is going to be amazing. 

Naughty Dog doesn’t release bad games. They take time to craft an amazing story and adapt to the landscape of video games, or they flip it on its head. Naughty Dog has built up a solid reputation for delivering on their promises, and they have earned the trust of their audience. 

Part of that trust is making good games people want to play, but it also comes with an understanding of who their core audience is and making games for that audience while bringing in new fans along the way. I have no idea how they do it, but they do, and I will argue that they are the best videogames have to offer in every way, shape, and form.