[Since our sister Game Developer magazine already has popular features like Top 20 Publishers, we expanded to also include Top 50 Developers last year, with some interesting results - here's a reputation survey you can fill out to help with this year's countdown.]

Sister magazine Game Developer has opened a public survey for the second Top 50 Developers countdown, used to inform upcoming research on the top developers in the industry.

The successful first chart, saw Nintendo Kyoto and Infinity Ward in the top two spots. Now, this new survey will help the authors determine the worldwide "top 50" developers, based also on statistics like sales charts, number of games released, and average game rating.

The magazine's survey, which can be found online here, allows all game professional readers to first score developers based on perceived reputation, on a scale of 1-10, providing comments along the way.

Second, the survey asks that persons who have worked with developers in a publishing, contract, or full-time basis rank those developers in terms of their overall value, including pay and perks, professionalism and competency, and how likely the respondent would be to work with the company again.

The survey is completely anonymous, and can be completed in full beginning today. It will close at the end of Friday, April 24, 2009.