About

From Game Developer Research Institute
Revision as of 12:56, 16 November 2007 by CRV (Talk | contribs) (Guide to reading game lists)

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As mentioned on: Insert Credit

Game Developer Research Institute (GDRI), officially established on August 26, 2006, is dedicated to finding out more information about the companies and the people that developed video games. Our specialty is researching contract developers that worked for larger publishers, but usually weren't given proper credit.

The GDRI story

The beginning. The year was 2005. Future GDRI founder CRV noticed the words "PROGRAMMED BY SIMS CO., LTD." shortly after starting up George Foreman's KO Boxing for the Sega Master System. He posted his findings on SMS Power, jumpstarting a whole investigative thread discovering many other games developed by SIMS. The success of this investigation led to more of them, including ones of Aicom and games published by Pony Canyon, both of which led to some grueling discussion.

As more development companies became uncovered and more people became interested in helping, it no longer seemed practical to post only on message boards. CRV felt there should be one source for all of this information. SIT Developer Table, a Japanese site with listings for a wide array of game companies, provided the inspiration, but he wanted something more dynamic. The solution he found was in the form of a wiki.

CRV asked for web space from Bock, the webmaster of SMS Power, which he was soon given. In August 2006, the wiki software was installed and work began immediately.

Today. With over 50 companies featured (some of which had never been heard of by the general public or mentioned in the press prior to GDRI) and a small, dedicated staff (or "faculty" - see last section for more), we are still learning new things. Since the establishment of GDRI, we have perfected our investigative skills into a series of what we call "Research Methods," tools that have become essential to our work. And it's good we have these at our disposal, because research is truly never-ending.

And while our company research continues, we are also making more of an effort to contact individual game developers. What started out as the occasional attempt at eliciting more information about the companies we cover here at GDRI has become much more than that. We have come to the realization that it's the people that make the games and there are many interesting personal stories of life in the game industry that are going untold. We hope to hear more of them in the future (be sure to keep an eye on our "In Their Words" section).

Guide to reading game lists

Platform

  • Game Name (role) (Publishers)
Other companies involved in development
Black means the company was the primary developer (or co-developer)
Gray means the company provided support development (ex: EIM doing only music/sound on Casino Kid II)
Red means we are unsure of the extent to which the company was involved

GDRI Faculty

At GDRI, we don't have a staff. We have a faculty that makes this whole thing possible.

CRV
Founder, administrator of GDRI.

Dimitri
Performs code comparisons and translates credits.

Idrougge
Contributes to entries and tries to contact Japanese game developers.