id Software LLC is an American video game developer based in Richardson, Texas. It was founded on February 1, 1991, by four members of the computer company Softdisk: programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer Tom Hall, and artist Adrian Carmack.
Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one of the largest third-party video game publishers in the world and was the top United States publisher in 2016.
Sierra Entertainment, Inc. was an American video game developer and publisher founded in 1979 by Ken and Roberta Williams. The company is known for pioneering the graphic adventure game genre, including the first such game, Mystery House. It is known for its graphical adventure game series King's Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest, Gabriel Knight, Leisure Suit Larry, and Quest for Glory, and as the original publisher of Valve's Half-Life series.
Bethesda Softworks LLC is an American video game publisher based in Rockville, Maryland. The company was founded by Christopher Weaver in 1986 as a division of Media Technology Limited. In 1999, it became a subsidiary of ZeniMax Media. In its first 15 years, it was a video game developer and self-published its titles. In 2001, Bethesda spun off its in-house development team into Bethesda Game Studios, leaving Bethesda Softworks to focus on publishing operations.
Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. is an American video game holding company based in New York City founded by Ryan Brant in September 1993.
Titus Interactive SA, known as Titus France SA until March 1999, was a French software publisher that produced and published video games for various platforms. Its head office was located in Parc de l'Esplanade in Lagny sur Marne in Greater Paris. At one time, it was instead located in Montfermeil, also in Greater Paris.
Warner Bros. Games is an American video game publisher based in Burbank, California, and part of the Global Streaming and Interactive Entertainment unit of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD). The publisher was founded as Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment on January 14, 2004, under Warner Bros. Entertainment and transferred to its Home Entertainment division when that company was formed in October 2005. Warner Bros. Games manages the wholly owned game development studios TT Games, Rocksteady Studios, NetherRealm Studios, Monolith Productions, WB Games Boston, Avalanche Software, and WB Games Montréal, among others.
Psygnosis Limited was a British video game developer and publisher headquartered at Wavertree Technology Park in Liverpool. Founded in 1984 by Ian Hetherington, Jonathan Ellis, and David Lawson, the company initially became known for well-received games on the Atari ST and Amiga. In 1993, it became a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) and began developing games for the original PlayStation. It later became a part of SCE Worldwide Studios. The company was the oldest and second largest development house within SCE's European stable of developers, and became best known for franchises such as Lemmings, Wipeout, Formula One, and Colony Wars.
Rolling is a 2003 extreme sports video game developed by Rage Software and published by SCi for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox. The game is a simulation of aggressive inline skating in which players skate as one of twenty professional skaters and complete various goals across fourteen levels. Described by the publisher as "the world's most realistic in-line skating game", the game was developed with a realistic design approach, using the input of professional skaters and basing several levels on international skate parks. Production of Rolling was troubled, with the game's release endangered following the financial troubles and collapse of developer Rage Software. SCi acquired and published the game in Europe, with plans for a Game Boy Advance and GameCube release abandoned. Upon release, Rolling received mixed reviews, with several reviewers critiquing the game's linear and dated design compared to the innovations in more recent extreme sports titles, including the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series.
David Scott Jones is a Scottish video game programmer and entrepreneur who co-founded video game developers DMA Design in 1987, Realtime Worlds in 2002, and Cloudgine in 2012. Jones created Lemmings and Grand Theft Auto, which both spawned many successful sequels. He also created the Crackdown franchise for the Xbox 360 and Xbox One consoles, and the open-ended massively multiplayer online game, APB: All Points Bulletin.
Realtime Worlds Ltd. was a British video game developer based in Dundee. The studio was formed in February 2000 when Rage Software hired David Jones to lead its Scottish operations. In March 2002, a financially stricken Rage Software sold the studio to Jones, who renamed it Real Time Worlds. After developing Crackdown (2007) and APB: All Points Bulletin (2009), Realtime Worlds filed for administration in August 2010.
Rockstar Dundee Limited is a British video game developer and a studio of Rockstar Games based in Dundee. The studio is best known for developing Crackdown 2.
Menace is a horizontally scrolling shooter developed by DMA Design and published by Psygnosis. It was released for the Amiga and Atari ST in 1988, and for the Commodore 64 and MS-DOS in 1989. The game is set on the planet of Draconia, where players are tasked with destroying the planet's defence mechanisms in order to kill the harmful creatures.
Atari SA is a French video game holding company headquartered in Paris. Once one of the largest video game companies in the world through an acquisition policy under Infogrames, Atari SA dealt with continuing pressures and difficulty finding investors which led to the company seeking bankruptcy protection under French law in January 2013 while subsidiaries in the United States sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as well. Since 2020, the company has seen a turnaround with a new focus on dealing with re-releases of older titles and the acquisition of companies that deal with the re-release of mainly abandonware video games.
Attack of the Mutant Penguins is a action-strategy video game developed by Sunrise Games and published by Atari Corporation for the Atari Jaguar in Europe on December 1995, and North America on March 15, 1996. A port titled Mutant Penguins was released in 1996 by GameTek for MS-DOS. The plot follows Bernard and Rodney, intergalactic heroes defending earth against alien invaders disguised as penguins. The player must dispatch the alien penguins before they reach a doomsday weapon, in the form of a weighing scale. Earth also has real penguins, who help the player by fighting the aliens and counteracting their weight on the scale.
Prism Leisure Corporation Plc was a distribution and publishing company that primarily focused on reissues and compilations, often at low prices. The company was located in Enfield, Middlesex, United Kingdom until it was placed into administration in June 2007.
Team17 Group plc is a British video game developer and publisher based in Wakefield, England. The venture was created in December 1990 through the merger of British publisher 17-Bit Software and Swedish developer Team 7. At the time, the two companies consisted of and were led by Michael Robinson, Martyn Brown and Debbie Bestwick, and Andreas Tadic, Rico Holmes and Peter Tuleby, respectively. Bestwick later became Team17's chief executive officer until 1 January 2024. After their first game, Full Contact (1991) for the Amiga, the studio followed up with multiple number-one releases on that platform and saw major success with Andy Davidson's Worms in 1995, the resulting franchise of which still remains as the company's primary development output, having developed over 20 entries in it.
In New Zealand, 67% of the population plays video games, 46% of video game players are female and the average age of a video game player is 34. New Zealanders spend an average of 88 minutes a day playing video games.
Mastertronic Group Limited was a software publisher formed as a result of a merger between The Producers and Sold Out Sales & Marketing in 2004. Frank Herman, one of the founders of the original Mastertronic and former chairman of Sega Europe, was involved in negotiations to buy back the name from Sega in 2003. Frank Herman died in 2009 and the company was run by MD Andy Payne and Garry Williams.
