sierra ❤️

also bill pogue

Westwood studios. Command and conquer tiberian sun was my very first computer game, which I loved dearly (and still have on my computer since it’s freeware now and has been fan patched for modern systems)

Well and then came EA.

Lucas Arts

Electronic Arts :(

Sierra On-Line

King's Quest is still one of my favorite series ever and the one they put out a few years ago was a great retelling. I cried at the end.

Maxis was the one that came to mind for me, too! I played everything of theirs that I could get my hands on. Still playing The Sims after all these years!

Valve.

Not new management, but they definitely changed direction. From Portal 2 to Half-Life Alyx was a dark age of live service titles and hardware. Fortunately, it seems like they're finally getting back to their old selves?

Alyx was supposedly their re-entry into releasing games (hopeful that HLX is good), the Steam Deck caused them to go back and fix several of their titles (plus do the huge Half-Life update we just got), and while they're not exactly making their games as open as they used to, they're letting the community handle things like TF2 events and L4D2 patches.

So, I dunno, cautiously optimistic for their future. At least as long as Gabe is running the company.

Sierra entertainment! I was a big fan of the kings quest games, and Sierra online was my first experience with online gaming.

Microprose. Silent Service II and Special Forces were so good

Infocom.

Zork, Hitchhiker's Guide, Leather Goddesses of Phobos.

You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here.
>

Interplay, Microprobe, Sierra On-Line, Bullfrog, Dynamix, Origin, all long gone.

Activision is still around, but it's something completely different. Same with Atari (although theres a nostalgia brand now, so maybe back).

Of them all, I think is have to say I'm most nostalgic for Sierra On-Line, although Origin gives them a run for most nostalgic.

Westwood I had fun with Red Alert 1 & 2 for a long time. Super casual player though.

Origin "We create worlds". They definitely did with the Wing Commander series. Played a lot of WC 3, 4 as well as Privateer.

I don't think anyone mentioned Lionhead Studios. Black and White was fun. Sadly it's in copyright limbo if I'm not mistaken.

Also played a lot of Civilization 1 from Microprose back in the day.

Squaresoft, Bioware, and Bethesda are three companies whose logos I once considered a seal of quality. None of the three really exist anymore, although there are new much larger companies using their names.

Westwood Studios, Sierra Online

Blizzard, boy was I fucking wrong.

Hard to pick but early to mid 90s era Maxis, Bullfrog, Bungie (Pathways/Marathon/Myth era), Blizzard, and SEGA all come to mind. All either gone or changed.

Apogee Software for Rise of the Triad, Blue Sky Productions for Última Underworld and Bullfrog Productions for Syndicate.

Psygnosis, later known as Studio Liverpool.

Sony shut them down a few years ago. Man seeing that old owl logo hits me hard in the nostalgia bone.

As soon as I saw the title, I was gonna say Maxis, too. I like how they called their games “software toys”.

Rainbow Arts (Turrican on Amiga), Maxis (SimCity) and Digital Illusions (because of their pinball games)

All of them gone except Digital Illusions which became DICE.

Neversoft, Rareware, Sega, Activision, EA, and Bethesda created a lot of great memories from my childhood. Neversoft is defunct, Sega still makes some decent stuff but nowhere near what they did in the 90s, EA is EA, and the rest are now owned by Microsoft... so...

Bullfrog for Populous and Dungeon Keeper (ruined by EA).

Troika for Arcanum and Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines (ruined by Activision).

Humongous entertainment

How has no on said this yet.

B U N G I E

Booting Halo was my go-to for like 10 years as the first three games came out. Literally 10s of thousands of hours.

The 3 Bs, baby. Blizzard, Bioware, and Bethesda.

Blizzards dead to me, Bioware fell off after dragon age 1, and Bethesda refuses to take its limiters off anymore (no drugs)

Blizzard. Without Activision.

Maxis, Bullfrog, Westwood, Origin... basically any studio that EA bought and destroyed.

Apogee!

Interplay's Black Isle Studios, now Obsidian.

Frontier for Elite
Psygnosis for Lemmings and a bunch of other fun games on the Amiga.

MicroProse and Sierra Online were my faves

Infocom hands down. Pure escapism

Novalogic - Loved the earlier Delta Force games, and Tachyon: The Fringe

Dice with the OG Battlefield 2 on PC. That's what I mostly played. Now I haven't touched a BF game in years. None have lived up to that game yet.

Looking Glass Studios.

Aspyr! I was a Mac user in an era that was 95% Windows, and Aspyr brought quality games over to our side of the pond. I remember they ported Alpha Centauri in particular, but there were lots of other ones too.

Also Bungie back in that era—they were Mac-exclusive and putting out the amazing Marathon series. I was heartbroken when I saw the trailer for the new “Marathon” game that looks nothing like the originals.