I've only worked on failed stuff no one has heard on! At least on mod teams, I can't even remember most of it, one project had a little funding and I made beer money on it doing some unit artwork for a command and conquer clone.
The stuff you've heard on I worked on proffessionaly while I was in the industry. I did some water particle work for Days Gone, and a bit of particle stuff for the Magic the Gathering card game. I have no idea how much of my work actually made it in these games though.
I do notice the token particle effect seems to be largely what I made, and I got this crappy wallet asset into BioShock 2. I was one of the many artists that got an email from the guys managing the outsourced art on that game telling us we weren't allowed to claim we worked on that game. Well I prefaced that I did SHITTY artwork for it, assholes! Does that allow me a fraction of your wonderous glory!
Ha, to be fair the art I did for that game was in fact ass, so I gotta behonest, if you liked the art style of that game I can't take any credit to be fair, but it's cool to say I got an art asset into that game! My abilities as a particle artist were a more developed than as an environment artist.
Haven't seen too much from skyblivion, but I'm on the side of any small group of passionate startups outshining these idiot mega corporations run by money grubbbing douche nozzels any day... OBVIOUSLY