Volition

Volition at a Glance

Volition is an American developer based in Champaign, Illinois that has been active since 1998. They have released 19 games as a developer but have never published any titles on their own. Their catalog spans over two decades, starting with two releases in the 1990s and growing to five titles each in the 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s. The studio focuses heavily on adventure games with 17 entries in that category, followed by shooters which appear in 14 of their projects. They also have six racing titles, two simulators, and a single role-playing game. Their work reaches almost every major platform available over the last twenty years. PC is their primary destination with 16 games released there. They also have significant presence on PlayStation 4 with nine titles and Xbox One with eight. Older consoles like PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 2 each hold five or fewer releases, while newer systems like PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and Google Stadia see three to five games each. The overall quality of Volition output is mixed but leans toward the positive side. Their average IGDB rating sits at 72.4 out of 100 across the 14 titles that have received scores. This breaks down into two great games, ten good ones, and two titles rated as mixed. They do not have any poor-rated entries in their history. Their highest praised work comes from earlier decades. Freespace 2 from 1999 holds an 80.5 rating, while Descent: Freespace - The Great War (1998) scores 79.9. The shooter title The Punisher also landed a 79.3 score back in 2004. In more recent years, the studio became defined by the Saints Row franchise. Saints Row: The Third achieved an 81.3 rating in 2011, and its sequel Saints Row 2 scored 77.3 in 2008. However, their modern output has seen a dip in quality. The rebooted Saints Row released in August 2022 received a score of 58.7, which falls into the mixed category. They also released several edition variations of this game and a remaster of Saints Row: The Third in May 2020 that scored 75. While they claim to bring creativity and humor to their projects, the data shows a clear trend where recent releases have struggled to match the high marks set by their titles from the late 1990s and early 2010s.

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