October 2008

FEATURES

Top Twenty Publishers

By Trevor Wilson

Game Developer's 6th annual Top 20 Publishers article highlights the best and brightest in the publishing business. As the only listing with empirically ranked data from developers, release statistics, and sales rankings, this list truly represents the top players in the industry.

Postmortem - The World Ends With You

By Takeshi Arakawa, Tomohiro Hasegawa, and Tatsuya Kando

The World Ends with You was a departure for Square Enix - a new IP, done in 2D, and set in real-world locations. The game took three creative leads who had never directed a game before, and threw them to the wolves. They learned, as do we all, that it's not as easy as it seems.

Shoot To Thrill

By Tim Hong

In this feature, EmSense uses biometrics to determine what parts of a number of shooting titles were most appealing to players. The findings presented here will be particularly interesting to designers, producers, and directors of these titles, as there is no subjectivity or question and answer period to get in the way. Just heart rate, blood pressure, and perspiration.