Top 10 Game Developers of 2020 (I)

Recently, Gamasutra, the well-known website of global developers, has selected the top 10 game developers of 2020 all over the world. The list includes game giants like Nintendo and Blizzard Entertainment, as well as several independent game studios.

Blizzard Entertainment

Even though it was a quieter year release-wise for Blizzard Entertainment, the company have a robust transition to work-from-home in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Blizzard reappropriated its office supplies for employees to take home, and it delayed World of Warcraft: Shadowlands’ launch. What’s more, it punted BlizzCon out a few more months into an online format.

Blizzard’s process for managing the pandemic's impact on its employees is commendable, and may inform how other major companies navigate future crises.

EA Motive

Since its inception 5 years ago, EA Motive has been facing an identity crisis for a long time. Is it a new intellectual property factory for EA? Is it a Star Wars support studio? While corporate HQ worked behind the scenes to figure out what to do with the Montreal-based company, its developers took the ball into their own hands and ran with it all the way to the release of Star Wars Squadrons.

Star Wars Squadrons is a flight sim with MOBA influences, whose contents are not as abundant as the other flagship games (with In-App Purchase and online service) of EA. Its developer design the game in order to show their passion for Star War, and to show their respect for that category of PC game in 1990s.

The Game Band

The Game Band launched Where Cards Fall with Apple Arcade. It seemed like a studio with a similar identity to other great indies: it made great, beautiful puzzle games for casual platforms. Six months later, they blasted people’s expectations away with the creation of Blaseball, a game that is somehow baseball, but not baseball, but is still baseball, but is actually pure chaos.