CDPR, 2002. Larian, 1996. Valve, 1996. Remedy, 1995. Nintendo 1989. FromSoftware, 1986. Capcom, 1979. That said, before the details, I agree and resonate with your sense of frustration. Every shop you mentioned is one I not just admired for their games, but loved for their games.

I imagine there are others that might pass a bar (seriously, a good exercise to stress the thinking is to argue Rockstar out rather than in). But what's interesting is they're all on a good arc at the moment.

CDPR have 'dug up' for the last few years and Cyberpunk 20077 is now not just a fine game, it's a great game. Their redemption arc will someday be a great documentary or movie. It would not have been hard to see them collapse as an entity, but credit to their grit.

Larian are arguably going to be this breakout AAA, and could imo be a Rockstar/Blizzard level company in terms of gamer attention and production. BG3 is as much a moment as a game. It feels a bit like Doom, or Half-Life, or GTA3, or Halo, or Skyrim. I suspect they have steadily and quietly built out the best game character primitive engine and production setup in the industry by some distance, in the sense the way to compete is year on year capex investment that might pay off in 5-10 years. You might compare Larian to early Pixar or ILM. Even if you were willing to stake, you don't have anything like the network of mo/vo cap talent they do.

Valve is the House of Gabe, it's difficult to quibble with the quality they've put into the new Steam Deck. Looks like a a fine device and worth getting. I get there are criticisms of Valve/Steam but every time I use steam I feel like it was built by gamers. I can't really explain it other than to say Valve has serious, brand authenticity—Your-most-respected-brand-here—for gamers. Sony could be all that but can't be all that because of a broken divisional model. Xbox might well get there. Nintendo are already there.

Were Remedy in cinema or the golden age of tv, we'd be talking auteur level work. It's easy to imagine Alan Wake crossing over in television, and possibly film.

Nintendo are their own category, doing their own thing.

FromSoftware have become like Larian are becoming, this other level company. Elden Ring and Armored Core 6 indicate a serious breadth in ability. They are the biggest surprise to me in the sense of being founded the earliest other than Capcom. I would have said 1990s until I checked for this thread.

Capcom it seems are on a tear, and are just steadily releasing solid game after game after game. They in particular, but all these shops in general, feel deeply understudied in terms of game software production. Especially given the attention on AAA development cycles and cost structures that's driving plenty of the shops mentioned into spirals around live service, e-sports, in game payment that seem more like black holes than flywheels.

It's easy to put the challenges driving these companies at feet of the great god greed. And while that might be a component, I suspect a lot of game studios, backers and publishers are struggling with fundamentals of development and production and delivery at scale. Don't just think about the cost basis of ~250 vo/mo cap actors on BG3 [1], think about what you need to to make that work across the engineers and designers and writers and the actors, and, and, and. That's just extremely difficult to emulate without serious conviction and commitment on the long term. Larian did it, and the question everyone else has to answer, do we have the stomach to follow to create games with a payoff quite reasonably not in this decade or a console generation out? Especially bearing in mind, it's way cheaper to build infrastructure out when it's not obvious the value exists. Followers have all the benefits of knowing the path to take with all the negatives that every step is now priced in at a premium.

Games are now the biggest entertainment medium by some distance, dwarfing film, music, radio and books. It's reasonable to want to bring in adult management at that scale (plus games like GTA5, Minecraft and Fortnite are bordering on being their own categories and not simply, games). How Bungie goes from Halo being an era defining game to Destiny 2 being a burning platform is just extraordinary. And it makes me wonder as an example if the guidance given by them to the team working on TLOU service game, which resulted in a reset, was the best cautionary or worst possible advisory.

We haven't really touched on mobile games. In this space, I feel like King, the K in the ABK acquired by Uncle Phil and Microsoft are highly understudied. Candy Crush is also kind of its own category. So many people get enjoyment from their games while the company seems to avoid the worst forms and excesses of whale/gacha capture that plagues mobile gaming.

----
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/1639t1n/baldurs_g...