Who do you think is the best run Developer team in the gaming industry?

Asking this question as im curious and want to support good developers

I'm asking best "run" as in giving staff breaks and healthy hours to work. Sick pay and lengthy vacations

A good sized team not too many not too little and all have a similar direction in terms of vision when it comes to creating the final product.

Versatile - a team who can take critism but not bend over and ruin their vision.

a creative enviroment to inspire developers with new ideas.

A publisher that gives the devs time to work on the game until their game is created. Not silly deadlines.

Colleagues that respect each other and there isnt as such an imposed hierachy. As in managers still feel part of the team

Asking this because the company I use to give my respect to was Blizzard. Ever since activsion shared a partnership with them alot of the trusted employees are leaving because of the creative freedom being undermined. Also the deadlines to incentivise short term gains in comparison to long term gains. Blizzard built the trust of alot of customers for their actions and with this partnership they are a shadow of themselves.

Also side note - do you think if a company gets alot of success eventually they will end up like Blizzard in which a company larger than them either buys them out of shares a partnership with them and goes against the companies orginal idea?

Supergiant Games is probably the safest pick these days.

It's really hard to know without knowing the struggles a team is going through, be it financial or technical, or the amount of dirty laundry being kept behind closed doors.
Supergiant is a good shout, a smaller team with achievable goals, i might suggest Kojima Productions, SURELY they've set up a better operation after going through the Konami experience but the ambition and publicity is dangerous, Bluepoint started humble but grew thanks to solid and polished production, that probably comes from a healthy work environment, Code Mystics are putting extra care into their ports, the likes of which you only get from a team that knows what they're doing, also they're in Canada so... probably a nice environment to be in.

Experiment 101 seemed to be taking a good approach, shame about biomutant not being well received.

Ten years ago it was Insomniac, though I can't tell you if that's true or not in 2021.

I don't see enough behind the curtain to judge. Valve might be awesome or it could be a valley built on failed experiments and broken dreams. Or both. Or none.

In order to make such an assessment one would need to have worked for many studios?

Media Molecule have a good reputation for treating their staff right & being flexible around childcare. Hideo Kojima mentioned them as an inspiration for Kojima Productions in 2016, noting the high number of female staff.

Gamesindustry.biz gave them a 'Best Place To Work' award, the Diversity Award, and studio director Siobhan Reddy was awarded the UK's Best Boss, all in 2019.

i bet the folks at Supergiant, drink box, young horses, and motion twin have pretty good structures in place.

Probably some obscure middleware maintainer that you've never heard of.

@facelessvixen: first company I thought of when I saw the thread title.

I would bet on System Era, developers of Astroneer. Watch Noclip doc from Danny and see yourself. After that doc i tried the game almost scared in a sense of "i hope i don't dislike the game from such a great people" but nope, i felt in love with it.

We all can only speculate here, i get that. But i swear in some games you can just feel the heart poured into it. I was just thinking about this as i'm currently playing through Desperados 3 and boy let me tell you that is a brilliance melt with love from Mimimi devs. Once in a blue moon i discover game like these two and fall in love with games all over again.

I think it is impossible to know. We as gamers only know the games and a few stories that are leaked rarely to teh media. We do not how good or how bad the working conditions are at any developers in any way we can weigh. We can say 'this game' was good or 'this games' was bad, yet the very happiest workers with the best management MIGHT BE at a developers who makes "medocare" games.

We might as well ask, "Who is the best boyfriend", R Kelly or Roman Polanski? Where is the best warehouse job, Amazon or WalMart Online?? Which is best cheese shop? Is it the one with the most or the least cheese?

Yeah, Supergiant definitely sprung to mind. Also I don’t know if it’s true anymore since they’ve grown a lot and been acquired since I last heard this, but I had it on pretty good authority around 2014 or so that Bethesda Game Studios was a very good place to work.

how would I frickin' know?