Video games have been a part of childhood since the early 1970's thanks to the early inventions of engineers and inventors like Nolan Bushnell (of Atari fame) and Ralph Baer (of the early Magnavox Odyssey, first homebound video console). As consoles like the Odyssey and Atari made their way into American homes nearly 40 years ago, this alternative to Cowboys & Indians, Lassie and Flipper reruns, and parenting opened children's imaginations to worlds of fantasy, science fiction, and adventure.

Forty years is a long time past now, and gaming has stuck with us ever since, becoming a large industry providing careers and advancing with technology over the years. But even today, many of the developers of games today seem to be stuck in a rut, and falling behind the competition as they produce the same platform, the same stories, and they really don't improve on their last product or idea. Some developers consistently take the step forward, push the envelope, and go beyond expectations, and their games show it. This article is a collection of those companies, the people behind them, and what they're doing that is just working with gamers of today and tomorrow:

Rockstar Games, Houser Brothers & Company:
Rockstar Games, the well-known parent company of the Grand Theft Auto series, has advanced gaming into much more adult-themed situations, scenarios, and gameplay. With the last four major-installments (GTA III, GTA Vice City, GTA San Andreas, and GTA IV), their games have included themes from graphic gore, prostitution, gang and mob violence, pornography, and tons more explicit material (hot coffee, anyone?) that I can't begin to describe, and us gamers of a younger generation ate it up. This is the kind of game that makes games like Custer's Revenge for the Atari 2600 look safe for kids in comparison. Some other products, like Bully, briefly raised attention to homosexuality in gaming.
The free roaming gameplay that the GTA series is known for allowed gamers to fully experience a whole world as they saw fit for them. Do you want to live the life of a mobster taking out goons when ordered? Go for it. How about a time-beating taxi driver on the run from city to city? Grab a cab and go. Or a ruthless stand-alone individual with a 'me-or-them' mentality? Rockstar Games essentially said: the world is yours.
It was the combination of this freedom in gameplay and numerous mature themes that gamers of my generation appreciated out of Rockstar Games' work, and who knows where else they'll raise the bar next.

Bethesda Softworks, Robert Altman & Todd Howard:
I added Bethesda Softworks here as a nod to their work for free-roaming RPG gameplay, immersive fantasy worlds, and complex story lines that develop with the character as the game progresses, all found within the The Elder Scrolls series of games, the last two being TES III: Morrowind, and TES IV: Oblivion.
Bethesda Softworks have been praised for raising standards in the RPG genre with their main installments starting with the third TES, Morrowind, but the drive to create games that allow you to build and be your own individual has been there since day one of TES I: Arena, and has stayed with the team ever since, with their first critical and popular success being with Morrowind, released in 2002.
In addition to what I've already said, it's important to consider what TES have done with allowing and maintaining a healthy “modding” community, where fans of the game can build their own devices, cities, improvements, quests, and story lines then share and integrate them into TES environment with fellow gamers. This has been extending the life of the game beyond the competition: technically the development of this game began sometime in the mid-late '90s, it was released in 2002, and it is still being developed for by fans for nearly 10 years, adding more gameplay, content, and adventure to the experience. The fourth installment, Oblivion, was released in 2006 with critical praise, and is expected to continue the modding tradition into future generations of gamers.

Valve Corporation, Gabe Newell & Mike Harrington:
If I was forced to just choose one company to write about for staying ahead of the competition, I'd have no problem in picking Valve Corp., for they deserve the acknowledgment more than the past two.
Valve is the founding company of the online digital distribution and social community system called 'Steam', which allows players access to high-profile PC gaming titles, and a collection of classic titles that many retro gamers appreciate. Steam is in some way a 'lesser evil' of DRM control, which has a favorable reputation for PC gamers that often are upset at the experimentation of newly restrictive forms of DRM (for example: Spore, read more here). For the large majority of games available on Steam, once your account is authorized with said games, you can download and install on any number of computers any number of times, as long as you are logged into your Steam account; and this has been a very liberating experience for gamers that often feel cheated and taken advantage of by limited installs and other restrictions.
Gabe Newell, founder of Valve, recently spoke on this issue of piracy as the keynote speaker for D.I.C.E. Summit 2009 (a regular convention of game developers), in which he said that software pirates are ahead of the industry, and referring to them more as customers than criminals, and addressing the greatest issue in gaming is pricing and backing up that theory with his incredible sales records through Steam; and those sales records have been great. At a recent sale, he cut the price of one popular game down by 50%, and saw a 3,000% increase in sales that weekend! This guy knows the game, he knows how to play it, and nobody is calling “hacks” or “cheat”, because he's doing it right.
Take Steam', add in their incredible library of games (starting with Half-Life in 1998, to Left 4 Dead in 2008) which hasn't missed a beat in the hearts of gamers since day one, stir, and you have one helluva company that can stand proudly among the competition of the gaming industry.