2 Developer Pedigree

The people who create videogames have ranged from lone individuals toiling away in their bedroom to teams of dozens or hundreds of developers who design and build games in AAA studios around the world. That diversity of approach has grown over time as accessible tools to make games proliferate and platforms on which to find games mushroom. In 1982, the US arcade industry newsletter Arcade Express reported on well-established companies such as Atari, Intellivision, Bally Midway, and Parker Brothers that were making arcade and console videogames. At the same time, as Graeme Kirkpatrick explains in a history of UK gaming magazines, "The majority of games for home computers prior to 1984 were made by very small, independent firms and individual hobbyists." In addition to creating games, those developers and publishers were creating a history for games, a "back catalogue" that inevitably led newer games to invite "comparisons with other [older] games."
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While at first those comparisons might only have been between games that tackled similar subject matter or genres (such as racing games or baseball games), eventually they also led to game developers themselves cultivating reputations for their games, particularly as they began to specialize in certain genres or franchises.