Riot Games
Riot Games, Inc. was founded in 2006 by entrepreneurial gamers, Brandon
Beck and Marc "Tryndamere" Merrill, with the goal of being a
player-focused game development studio. The company launched its debut
title League of Legends in October 2009
On May 1, 2012, Riot Games announced its Season 2 Championship with a $5,000,000 prize pool, the largest in eSports history.
Some of their notable employees include Steve "
Guinsoo" Feak, a former developer of the Warcraft 3 custom map
Defense of the Ancients and Steve "
Pendragon" Mescon, creator of the Defense of the Ancients fan site, DotA-Allstars.com.
Riot Games also employs about a dozen former Blizzard developers, including Tom Cadwell.
In a release published in November 2011, Riot Games noted that League
of Legends had accumulated 32.5 million players, 11.5 million of whom
play monthly, of which 4.2 million play daily.
In March 2012, League of Legends became the #1 title in Korean PC Cafes.
In Taiwan, it is estimated that almost 5% of their entire population
played the game, with almost 1 million players subscribed on the server.
Due to the success of League of Legends Riot Games announced plans to hire "aggressively" in 2011.
According to a count of job postings on Riot Games.com, Riot Games is trying to fill over 150 open positions as of April, 2011.
Valve Coproration
Founded in 1996 by former Microsoft employees Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington, Valve became famous from its critically acclaimed
Half-Life series.
It is also well known for its social-distribution network Steam; and for developing the Source engine, which has been used in every Valve game since its introduction in 2004.
After the success of
Half-Life, the team worked on mods, spin-offs, and sequels, including
Half-Life 2. All current Valve games are built on its Source engine, which owes much of its success to mods and sequels. The company has developed six game series:
Half-Life,
Team Fortress,
Portal,
Counter-Strike,
Left 4 Dead and
Day of Defeat. Valve is noted for its support of its games' modding community: most prominently,
Counter-Strike,
Team Fortress, and
Day of Defeat. Valve has branched out with this tradition to continue developing the
Warcraft III-based mod
Defense of the Ancients with
Dota 2.
Each of these games began as a third-party mod that Valve purchased and
developed into a full game. They also distribute community mods on Steam.
Mikami Shinji
Notable Works: Resident
Evil
Graduated from Doshisha University, where he majored in the
study of merchandise.
Joined Capcom in 1990
-After leaving Capcom he worked with Platinum games.
-He then created his own studio Tango Gameworks.
