By Kieron Gillen on March 4th, 2009 at 11:04 am.
Barnett’s been on about this to me, and has taken it to the wider world in his regular-youtube-talkyisms. He’s been debating the idea of canon – as in games everyone should know about/play – with his peers. And this is causing him all sorts of issues, regarding the nature of those recommendations. And… oh, I’ll let him explain it:
To paraphrase for those who don’t want to watch video… well, his problem with creating a list was that it felt that it could become navel-gazing nonsense a bit too easily. Just obscure references for the sake of showing off – which, I suspect, he’s right, and mine certianly will be. To work his way around the conundrum, he’s made two lists. The first is 10 historicaly significant games. You don’t have to go off and play them, but you should know why they changed everything. Secondly, ten games you should be playing right now. As in, what’s neat and nifty and should be fucked around with this month and totally ripped off – in other words, while some are great, others really should just be experienced to think about. This is a list for designers, remember.
Zelda
Doom
Guitar Hero
Pokemon
The Sims
Resident Evil
Brain Age
Wii Sports
Goldeneye
Starfox
(For this listPaul’s implicitly taking the “If it didn’t actually shake people up, it didn’t change anything position. As in, the first RTS being Herzog Zwei is a lovely answer in a trivia quiz, but it doesn’t matter for something like this. It requires to be influential or popular or both. Herzog Zwei was none of them, so fails. Similarly, Doom over Wolfenstein – sure, Wolfenstein was a success. Doom was WORLD CHANGING.
He’s also taking series as a whole in some cases. Which is madness, frankly. Paul!)
And here’s his list of what he think is worth playing today…
World of Goo
Mirrror’s Edge
Rock Band 2
Metal Gear Solid 4
Street Fighter IV
Gears of War 2
Grand Theft Auto IV
Left 4 Dead
Chrono trigger (On the DS)
Fallout 3
Which he admits has a play-by date of… well, pretty much immediately. That’s the point. This is transistory. The former list is canon. The latter list is pop. Both are important.
And here’s mine. Off the top of my head.
CANON
Little Wars: Yeah, I’m already trying to cheat, but I’d argue this is anti-navel gazing. At no point did Mr Barnett say “videogame”, and re-integrating and re-examining into the bigger picture is important. Little Wars was the first set of wargame rules actually published. They were published by HG Wells. Perhaps in a real way, it’s the beginning of the modern games industry. Look at the full title: “Little Wars: a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys’ games and books.” The implication being, adults can play this shit. And if more designers considered themselves explicitly in a line which starts with someone of HG Wells’ stature, it’ll probably be good for their self-image.
Dungeons & Dragons: I’d personally put aside the whole mechanic/setting/world-building stuff, as clearly influential as it was. What’s important about D&D is that it popularised the idea of a non-competitive game, where one participant wasn’t actually trying to win. Because if it wanted to win, it’d be able to win automatically. The DM and the computer/designer are fundamentally identical in a philosophical basis – they have all the power. They’re trying to do something else than just win – they’re trying to create a matrix of choices which entertain. This was new. And this is what most single-player (and a co-operative) videogames are structured around.
Doom: Yeah, Barnett’s right here. Supercharging the shareware model, and re-inventing the idea of people being able to just code and game and become hyper-rich relatively overnight.
Half-life: I’d disagree with Paul – it invented just as much as Goldeneye, just in different places. Its radical first-person-only-or-death approach was enormously influential. When I was in FEAR 2 presentations, and they were talking about how they decided that going FP-only was the brave new approach for them, it was one of the moments which made me dread playing a game that was fully 10 years behind the cutting edge of thought in the genre. People are *still* catching up with Half-life. It was quite the thing.
Desktop Tower Defence: I was at Develop last year, when the designer and developer of DTD told people how much money he made from doing this. You could see the entire room of work-jaded devs suddenly wonder whether they could make a crack at doing similar. If you want a counter-point
Singstar: I’d go for this over Guitar Hero, just to have a different choice than Paul’s. Seeing why Singstar worked so brilliantly in the UK market compared to previous games of the ilk is something that’s well worth considering. It remains the first social game that actually operated.
World of Warcraft: You don’t even need to like it. I’m tempted to make it a dual one – as “Play EQ and then play WoW” and work out why, despite being so similar games, one is so much more populist. Maybe EQ2 to make it fairer. Shame you can’t re-set it so it was the game they played on launch.
Robotron: Or ROBOMOTHERFUCKINGTRON! as it’s known around my way. To paraphrase Larkin, to some, it says nothing. To others, it leaves nothing to be said.
Planescape: Torment: It changed nothing. Even Chris Avellone in interviews seems to back away from the game, implying that it’s approach was deeply misjudged – even wrong. How can something this right be wrong?
Wii-Sports: You know, back when Edge were starting they used to talk about Killer-apps a lot. Something that sells systems, by force of its own existence. More than any other game in recent times, Wii Sports was one. That it was completely unlike a killer-app most trad-designers would ever think of says much.
POP
Blush: Both for the game, the fact they did it in two months and they plan to do another five. Think about that model. It sounds fun, doesn’t it?
Tabula Rasa: You can’t. Which is a point really worth thinking about.
Bow Street Runner: I hadn’t played this flash-adventure online until recently, because I’m doing some work for the developer… but Christ! It’s the sort of thing which makes you rethink what these sort of flash-games can be, and what part they can play in the future of the medium. (The re-invention of the adventure for a new audience – here and on the Wii – is another trend worth playing around with).
Empire Total War: Some designers think less is more. Sometimes it is. What about when more is more?
Spelunky: Could this approach profit your game? It couldn’t hurt considering it…
Triangle Wizard: And another one.
Halo Wars: Entertaining console-take on the RTS, worth thinking about in terms of design and stuff but – really – the big thing for designers? Play it and realise that no matter how many critically-adored multimillion selling games you make, it may not make a shred of difference.
Dawn of War 2 A useful case-study of a developer responding to what they think are the signs of the time. Compare and contrast to the Company of Heroes. Compare and contrast the single to multiplayer – and can you think of a game whose SP and MP are as divorced from one another as they are here.
Far Cry 2: Perhaps you can file this next to DoW2. How much can a sequel alter from a prequel without alienating people? How did the really quite radical approach of Far Cry 2 actually work out? Do you like shooting Zebra?
Space Giraffe: Does the whole SFX-lead approach thing work? Or rather, does it actually matter. Play it on both FULL ON mode and more gentile one to see how that differs. And as a thought-game, what would you change about it?
And… that’ll do for now. If I start thinking too hard, I’ll be here all day. Lists break me, because I don’t really believe in them. They’re just a sampling, y’know?
And you know where this going now: what about you? What do you think should be the canon for designers? And what do you think they SHOULD play?
04/03/2009 at 11:12 ImperialCreed says:
You made reference to Herzog Zwei, but I was really shocked that Barnett didn’t put Dune 2 on his list. It was the first definitive RTS game and was wildly popular. It created the genre for heavens sake and the formula it laid down has been iterated over what must be nearly two decades. In terms of historical significance I’d rate it higher than Starfox, for example.
04/03/2009 at 11:17 Meat Circus says:
I’m disappointingly unsurprised at the pedestrian nature of Mr Barnett’s list.
04/03/2009 at 11:18 Still annoyed says:
“As in, the first RTS being Herzog Zwei” – it wasn’t, though. There were several real-time strategy games before that. But of course, they were mostly made in Britain/Europe, so they don’t count.
04/03/2009 at 11:19 Kieron Gillen says:
Yeah, the pre-history of the RTS is something that interests me too. But when people say “RTS” they’re talking about certain genre conventions – and Herzog had the majority of them, apparently. I’ve tried, and can’t get anything which does.
Not that it takes anything away from them, of course.
KG
04/03/2009 at 11:20 Meat Circus says:
Also, to reiterate, the RPS Forum Hivemind done this first, and we clearly done this better.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/forum/pc/gaming-canon-top-10/
So squish.
04/03/2009 at 11:21 cHeal says:
I think the wii Fit was a far greater killer app than wii sports tbh. It was what finally convinced me to get a wii. It’s one of those pieces of software which just works.
04/03/2009 at 11:21 GibletHead2000 says:
I’m tempted to say Elite of course, but only because it changed *my* expectations for gaming. I don’t think it actually had that much effect on the rest of the population, hardcore enthusiasts aside, as evidenced by the fact that the best game that involves flying a spaceship was released 10 years ago now.
04/03/2009 at 11:31 Heliocentric says:
A canon list of 10 games is never enough, a pop list of as many as 10 has probably too large and not really honest, what do you really play on a daily basis? I have 20 games I’ll never uninstall and will play for a few hours every month. But these games are canon that are simply still playable.
What are the games that you hurry home to play and wonder what to do next time you play?
My pop:
If you are making an RTS the canon is massive, mostly to learn what not to do. Coh teaches you little because it lacks those elements, contrast Coh with the others.
I fear that stealth games will following assassins creed and metal gear solid 4, when splinter cell chaos theory has already got it fight.
For Driving games play Grid, and then add a rewind feature to your game… But make it longer than Grid’s.
For strategic-action play both Natural selection and Project reality, both differ and contrast but together they offer worlds with meaningful choices.
For mmo, play games that are not MMO’s, Lego star wars as a starting point, you can work together with friends, get rapid rewards but all players are equal and no bloody grinding.
For anything, play everything, seriously go download every demo you on filefront. Forget reviews just go play things, reviews tell you how to spend money and time, not how to create art.
04/03/2009 at 11:33 Kieron Gillen says:
“10 has probably too large and not really honest, what do you really play on a daily basis? ”
That’s not what the list is about. It’s not about what you’re playing on a daily basis. It’s what you’re recommending to fellow creative directors that they should play right now. This is a different question.
KG
04/03/2009 at 11:39 Heliocentric says:
If you don’t desire to play it. Then its a false recommendation in my mind. Stuff like that is canon to me, relics no matter the age.
04/03/2009 at 11:40 ImperialCreed says:
I’ll do the obvious thing and suggest Deus Ex.
It’s utterly brilliant, but no developer since has really taken the strong ideas within it and run with them. That’s a big problem for something I’d want to call canon, because at least with other games you could reasonably mention its clear that they’ve been learned from, or copied, or just ripped off. The influence of something like Dune 2 is readily apparent, but it’s hard to see what Deus Ex did outside of itself. No one seems to have learned from it.
Gillen mentions the Fear 2 devs harping on about how committed they were to first person, as if it was the new hip thing. If we’re only now really catching up with Half-Life, how long are we going to have to wait until someone has a proper go at doing another Deus Ex? (The prequel might, who knows.)
04/03/2009 at 11:44 Heliocentric says:
What i mean is, i understand what you are saying, and i disagree. Or maybe its your pop list, to alien to my tastes and thus seeming to educate in a way i don’t agree with.
Unless you are holding these titles to be observed for their failings as much as their success but then… almost anything qualifies.
04/03/2009 at 11:45 Kieron Gillen says:
Helio: Whatabout something I’ve played which I’ve no sedire to play any more? I mean, I haven’t replayed Portal. You haven’t? You should totally play it. Is that a false recommendation?
The latter list is “Stuff you guys should play – I played recently, and think you’d get ideas from it”. The former is “Here are games that you should know about and why they’re important”.
KG
04/03/2009 at 11:53 Cunzy1 1 says:
Starfox seems like a weird choice. Umm that’s it.
04/03/2009 at 11:57 Heliocentric says:
Okay… I’m too focus on the progressive experience(multiplayer sandbox etc). I avoided finishing stalker just so i could get backed into a shed by a pack of wild dogs preying they’d go away.
But… I played portal about 5 times, and map packs (mostly terrible)
I find a beautiful ugliness in the soviet bloc games and other development niches which get so much “wrong” but if they were using world of warcraft, halo or something as a modern contrast they would never have made what they did.
I think that as long as you are saying to the developers “look at these games they are important, but please god… don’t remake it it exists!”
04/03/2009 at 12:00 Anthony Damiani says:
It’s not a terrible list– but it is pretty Nintendo-focused.
Pokemon, WII sports, Starfox, Golden-Eye, Brain Age, Zelda. These were all Nintendo console-exclusives, right?
The Sims and Doom were PC titles. If I’m right, only Guitar Hero and Resident Evil were multiplatform, or available on any of the Playstation or Xbox consoles.
No RPGs. No platformers. No RTS. No fighting games. No arcade titles. Do some genres need representatives in the canon?
Honestly, I would expect at least passing familiarity with Space Invaders, Pong and Pac-Man– but they’re so small, it hardly seems right giving any individual one of them them a list slot.
04/03/2009 at 12:01 phil says:
@Cunzy11
Agreed, Starfox 64 is infinitely better and I seem to recall it was the first home game that vibrated, and by God, few have vibrated better.
Speaking of Nintendo, it’s strange there’s no love for Mario – in terms of lessons for developers he seems a textbook case of leveraging a popular character into a global brand. In fact I think he IS a textbook case, in Japan at least.
04/03/2009 at 12:03 Noc says:
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about DnD lately, and I think it’s also important for a couple other reasons. Namely because the ways people play it illustrate pretty clearly the myriad of directions people approach games from.
You’ve got the casual and the hardcore players, who own between zero and fifty of the sourcebooks and who devote a proportionately similar amount of attention to the rules. As far as I believe, the decision of when and when not to invoke rules is unique to tabletop games, and the extent to which a player chooses to deal with them says a lot about how they’re approaching the game.
You’ve got the sandboxers, the gamers, and metagamers. The sandboxers use the game as an excuse to have fun with the toys they’re given (either in terms of roleplaying an interesting character, or dicking around with the shiny weapons and spells they’re given). The gamers devote their energy to confronting the in-game task at hand; they’re “playing the game,” and trying to succeed at the goals they’ve been given or created for themselves. The meta-gamers, meanwhile, play the numbers game layered over the whole thing; while a sandboxer will pursue a quest because it’s interesting, and a gamer will pursue a quest because it’s a quest, the metagamer pursues the quest because it comes with a loot and XP reward.
You’ve got the immersive and anti-immersive players, who treat the hypothetical world created by the game with varying levels of respect and seriousness.
All of these varying axis of player approach come up all the time in other games, as well; you see a lot of this in discussions over design choices, and achievements and unlockables and whatnot. But the way these approaches differ gets really obvious when the players themselves are in full control of how the game runs.
And that’s just on the player’s end. There’s a whole other side to this, with the Dungeon Mastering and the different philosophies of content creation. The DMs who actively try and kill their players, the ones who tend to let them do what they want, and give them what they’ll have the most fun with; the DMswho build complex, detailed settings and realistically plot how the players’ actions manipulate them, and ones who keep the setting vague and adaptable, and make up on the spot what needs creating to suit the player’s needs. And the DMs who try to craft a heavily narrative, cinematic campaign, versus the ones who let the player’s actions speak for themselves. And on, and on.
There’s not much that’s really different about DnD, as opposed to other games. But the system of pen and paper and a bunch of folks sitting around a table in someone’s basement, munching on cheetoes while they figure out what’s supposed to be happening, means that a lot of the goings-on of game-player-designer interaction are a lot more transparent than they are in other media.
And I think that’s really interesting.
04/03/2009 at 12:03 Nick says:
Yeah.. what did Starfox do exactly that was so great? I’m curious..
Doom was eventually released on multiple platforms as well… even the snes got it.
04/03/2009 at 12:16 Schmung says:
I guess my question is – what did Starfox do better than X-Wing/Tie Fighter? I’ve never played it, so I honestly can’t answer, but I’d be interested to hear what other have to say on the matter.
04/03/2009 at 12:18 Ginger Yellow says:
Another point about Dune II: despite being the first ever modern RTS (shut it, Herzog), it was also eminently playable on console. I spent many, many hours with it on my Megadrive. How did developers forget how to make console RTSes? Not that I really care now I have a PC.
04/03/2009 at 12:20 Gap Gen says:
The question: “What should you give to a non-gamer to play?” was a good question, too – I believe one of the podcasts with Barnett covered that? It’s a fundamentally different question to what the best game is – I love Alpha Centauri, but it’s dense and impenetrable to even someone who’s played Civ. Something like Beyond Good and Evil demonstrates what games *are* and what they *can be* at the same time quite well, while being more accessible than most games. I might be proven wrong, though.
04/03/2009 at 12:35 Noc says:
Schmung: Starfox has absolutely nothing to do with X-Wing/Tie-Fighter, despite the superficial similarity of both involving space ships and lasers.
Starfox is essentially a side/top-scrolling shmup ported into 3-D. The original is . . . a bit unplayable, to modern eyes (I have tried. It’s awful), so I’m not entirely sure how good it was in the days of yore, when its shiny polygons were new. I’m also not sure if it was the first of its kind, or not. But Starfox 64 was pretty good; I played the hell out of it, when I was a kid.
X-Wing/Tie-Fighter/X-Wing vs. Tie-Fighter were really good too. But I don’t really consider them and Starfox to be in the same genre.
04/03/2009 at 12:37 Dick Dastardly says:
Fun fact: seeing the wonderful Doom (which I’d played at a freind’s house) on shelves for a fiver while I was still used to paying upwards of £15 for Atari ST titles was precisely and absolutely what made me decide to switch to PC Gaming. This was the future, thought I, and it was cheap!
04/03/2009 at 12:50 Homunculus says:
I submit Freespace 2 for the panel’s approval, as instruction to future generations regarding how to unwittingly murder an entire genre in style.
04/03/2009 at 13:01 l1ddl3monkey says:
I really don’t like a lot of those games, although I will admit to having played almost everything mentioned.
MGS4 is my biggest NO from either of those lists. I found myself going outside for a cigarette and making tea and toast for most of it as it was about 90% cut scenes – I like to watch movies and play games, I did not enjoy this attempt to hybridise the two formats at all.
MGS on the PS: that I loved.
04/03/2009 at 13:02 Matt says:
I agree on Spelunky. It’s the epoch changing harbinger of the nascent Rougepunk movement. A new wave that everyone either needs to start riding or be left in pitiful game 1.0 obsolescence.
04/03/2009 at 13:05 Kieron Gillen says:
I think Roguepunk is starting to amuse me too much not to use.
KG
04/03/2009 at 13:08 Taillefer says:
I think Thief makes an excellent example of design. Not because I want every game to concentrate on stealth, but it’s one of the best demonstrations on how to design and implement your in-game systems: light, sound, AI, etc. to enhance the choice of gameplay. On top of that, of course, you have the atmosphere, interaction, level design, architecture, in-game fluff, style…
I’ve only played two from each of Paul’s lists, but most of Kieron’s. Therefore, Mr Gillen must have better taste, obviously.
04/03/2009 at 13:11 Malgate says:
@Matt, ahh Spelunky, despite the difficulty I have in getting past a few levels in it I still find it hard to stop playing it. It’s just the combination of short levels, fast play and relentless difficulty that make me so compelled.
Also @Gapgen, I actually know what game to give a non-gamer. Get them Peggle. It’s the exactly right balance of fun, competitiveness, luck and simple controls that make it accessible to almost everyone. You might think World of Goo was also a good choice, I know for a fact that it isn’t. Nor is any kind of FPS, no matter how simple it might seem.
04/03/2009 at 13:14 Tei says:
Re: “He’s been debating the idea of canon – as in games everyone should know about/play”
L4D is one, Planetside other… a TCG/MMORTS game like Saga or another one. A “Strategic FPS” like Tremulous or Natural Selection. BF2 on a 64 players server.Desktop Turret Defense
All the classic… Diablo2, Baldurs2, Doom2, KOTOR,.. IF the guy has not played then before.
I will not chose any console game, because I don’t know that world, other than God of War, Mario Galaxy, Wii Tennis, and some Atari 2600 games. Good stuff but skypable. Maybe “Tanks” and “God of War” less skipable.
04/03/2009 at 13:30 Schmung says:
Noc : cheers for the clarification – I only ever saw it running on demo machines in shops.
Kobzon mentions Tetris which I think really can’t be overlooked. It’s instantly accessible and hugely addictive and serves as an excellent introduction to computer games. Lemmings was brought up in the thread on the forums and with good reason IMO.
I never liked the MGS/Resi games because there always seemed to be this massive obstacle of making the bloke to what you actually wanted him to do. The limitations it places on your interaction with the world always really, really frustrated me and the fact that it made things that should be simple to do very, very fiddly just put me off. I could never quite overcome the prejudice and play them for more than ten minutes, so I may be overlooking something, but to my mind they’re a violation of one of the basics of game design – the controls seem there to hamper your ability to do stuff, not enhance it.
04/03/2009 at 13:31 CdrJameson says:
Settlers of Catan.
04/03/2009 at 13:45 Tei says:
Obviusly M.U.L.E. (that is based on Setttlers of Catan.)
04/03/2009 at 14:15 Dave says:
Singstar over Guitar Hero? Really?
Maybe the UK is a very different place than America, but I know zero people who have played Singstar, or at least who have ever talked about it. Whereas I know only a handful of people who haven’t played either Guitar Hero or Rock Band.
04/03/2009 at 14:19 Kieron Gillen says:
Dave: It is a UK versus US thing. I probably should have stressed that.
KG
04/03/2009 at 14:24 Lu-Tze says:
@Noc: I think what interests me most about DnD as a reference point for gaming is the asymmetry of the experience from each side. The end goal of the player and the DM can be sympathetic or antagonistic, but the mechanics by which they achieve that goal are utterly different.
Savage : Battle for Newerth arguably tried to produce this kind of experience (and in for what I can remember it’s the only game that springs to mind that has). If there was any one reason for the failure it’s because unlike a pen and paper RPG, you weren’t in a room with a group of friends, you were being given orders by a 13 year old with aspirations of being Napoleon. You pretty much had to get along for it to work, and it put a lot of onus for the team’s success on one person.
I think Left4Dead could’ve achieved that if they’d had a further multiplayer mode where someone could be the Director. With some RCON commands, you can kind of get the same effect, but not as much as having a full UI for it would have. Being able to position the Special Infected, deciding when to use your single Tank spawn, where you will stick the witch and so on. A refilling bar for your horde spawns. It could work, and it would be very much a computer game manifestation of the Dungeons and Dragons formula.
There’s plenty of other cases where you could mash together genres to create interesting co-op/competitive experiences. Imagine Nethack meets Splinter Cell, one person knocking out camera feeds, getting door codes and other such computer wizardry whilst their teammate is pulling some stealth action out of the bag, your only connection your radio and the CCTV feed.
I’d say it’s not been done because you are, essentially, making two games for the price of one. It’s far from cost effective, and balancing that kind of experience just sounds horrific.
04/03/2009 at 14:35 Gap Gen says:
Malgate: Yeah, I thought of Peggle, but I think the point is partly to explain why games are important. Peggle is accessible and fun, but it doesn’t really advance the medium much. Then again, it depends on what you want to get out of the exercise.
04/03/2009 at 14:42 AndrewC says:
Games being accessible and fun to non-gamers could be seen as a HUGE advancement in the medium.
04/03/2009 at 14:59 Noc says:
Hmm. At the risk of quibbling, I’m not sure if I agree with the idea of DnD being an asymmetrical game. Specifically, I don’t think the roll of the DM is (necessarily) that of a player. Rather, he’s the designer; he’s the one making the game, for the players to play through.
This sort of asymmetrical game would be really cool, actually. With a group of people getting together to play Baldur’s Gate . . . while the other guy plays Dungeon Keeper. Sort of like Savage, only one team is wholly composed of players, and the commander controls the other side.
The reason I don’t think DnD is this, though, is that the DM isn’t playing a game. He doesn’t have limits to work within, and isn’t trying to defeat the players; if he wanted to, PC’s are really rather fragile things, and can be done away with in a multitude of gruesome and totally unfair ways. He’s not playing a game. . . he’s trying to design one.
Whether he designs the game to be brutally and oppressively difficult or cakewalk easy (or if he tries to find that perfect balance of just-difficult-enough to offer a fulfilling challenge) is his perogative . . . but there’s still a bit of difference between designing a game and playing one.
It’s not out of the question for the DM to give himself a set of rules, and then make a game for himself trying to direct things within them. Or even to give a player the opportunity to do the directing, and play the part of the villain the protagonists efforts are frustrating. The game is open-ended enough that there are tons of ways to fashion interesting asymmetrical gameplay out of it . . . but I don’t quite agree that the DM/player dynamic is that to begin with.
04/03/2009 at 15:02 Gap Gen says:
Well, Spider Solitaire is accessible. It’s not difficult to make simple games accessible. I guess the question is whether or not you view games-as-art as being important or worthy of expounding to non-gamers.
I guess if nothing else, Peggle is a good starting point for simple game mechanics (in the same way that Snakes & Ladders has no skill element at all but teaches children the basics of board games). Once you’ve nailed someone with that, you could move them on to games like Portal or whatever that require more skills than pointing a mouse in the right direction.
Of course, someone might disagree and say that Peggle has as much artistic merit as other games, but that’s a separate debate. And I’d disagree that Peggle has as much to teach us about the human condition as Portal, say.
04/03/2009 at 15:08 Tei says:
“Games being accessible and fun to non-gamers could be seen as a HUGE advancement in the medium.”
Counter-argument:
An putting a Joystick in cars. I can’t drive a car to save my life. Make me a car that as just 1 button and a direcction joystick.
04/03/2009 at 15:10 Tim James says:
I don’t understand why no one ever mentions Quake or QuakeWorld in these stupid lists. It’s like they remember Doom and then all of a sudden millions of gamers are playing competitive deathmatch over the Internet. Gee, what happened in between that might be a little WORLD CHANGING?
I suppose it’s somewhat irrelevant for designers right now since the concept is so ubiquitous, so I’ll give him that.
04/03/2009 at 15:26 Lu-Tze says:
@Noc : His goal might be to deliver a great story, to test the players to their limit, but in general it’s to create an enjoyable memorable experience. Sure, they aren’t a traditional “player” but ultimately they have a goal, some game mechanics by which they can achieve it, and they are there to HAVE FUN. And they do this in real time, feeding off the player (not to mention knowing them, and how they like to play), rather than precreating the experience. To me, it still feels like the kind of activity that is defined by “playing”, it’s just one not represented in video games.
If two people are both “playing” the same game, but their goals and mechanics are separate (even to the point where their measure of success and failure is totally unrelated) then I would say that the game is asymmetric. That said, the examples that I then gave do have completely related success and failure, being antagonistic and sympathetic respectively.
My terminology could be completely up the whoopity here, and I i’m happy to be corrected or given the right words. Regardless, both the type of play I used as examples and the interplay of player and DM in DnD are largely unrepresented in video games.
04/03/2009 at 15:52 Malgate says:
@Gap Gen, I wouldn’t take anyone straight from Peggle to Portal, but now I think I understand what you meant before. You were searching for a game that would demonstrate to a non-gamer exactly what is great and good about gaming, albeit I’m not entirely sure as to what you want to demonstrate as great and good (immersion? involving story? just great fun? unique/precident setting?).
I suggested Peggle mainly because it’s one of the most accessible games I’ve ever played. I’ve introduced staunch non-gamers to it and they loved it, I tried to introduce them to Half-Life and they were either frustrated by the complicated controls, confused by the 3-D environment or just plain bored as they didn’t know what to do. Some of the best titles ever in terms of other achievements are still highly inaccessible to those who have never used WASD, space and ctrl to move around a 3-D virtual world.
04/03/2009 at 15:53 Pags says:
As Meat said, this same question prompted a lot of soul-searching from the Forum Hivemind. Actually, we should really reincarnate that thread.
04/03/2009 at 16:12 alphaxion says:
this post of mine might be of interest to the “history of RTS” tangent http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/forum/pc/history-of-the-rts-genre-a-script-for-vertical-slice/#p9140
:)
04/03/2009 at 16:48 undead dolphin hacker says:
Barnett’s first list smacks of Nintendo wankery. Zelda, sure. Pokemon? Goldeneye? Starfox? Wii Sports?
Pokemon was world-crushingly populist but totally uninfluential — it was a self-contained fad that’s thoroughly burned out by now.
Same thing with Wii Sports: fad, plain and simple. It didn’t hold any weight on its own. Wii Sports was bundled with the console, and the console is what sold. Why? Because it was small and Nintendo, which locked down Japan, and it was simultaneously white, shiny, and hard to find which locked down the Western world (lol Tickle-me-ipod).
Goldeneye? Great game, sure, but like Kieron said, Half-Life trumps it so badly it’s almost embarrassing.
Star Fox? Again, great game, but what influence has it had on the industry? I mean when someone says “I want a game like Star Fox,” what is there to recommend? Panzer Dragoon and… Lair? I really don’t know. (Rogue Squadron doesn’t count since it wasn’t on rails like Starfox).
Here, let me just come out and say it — where is the Mario series? Amazingly popular AND either created, perfected, or legitimized (depending on your level of navel-gazing) both the 2D AND the 3D platformer.
The revisionist casual bullshit makes me sick. It’s like putting Clive Cussler or Sue Grafton before, oh I don’t know, Joyce or Milton. Yes, hoi polloi read Clive Cussler and Sue Grafton. Yes, Joyce and Milton are Hard and — oh boy, better brace for this one — Not Fun and Immediately Accessible. (Yes, I know this is a predominantly UK site — how is the public school system’s quality over there in jolly old England?)
But Joyce and Milton carry historical significance, influence, and emotional weight. Do
The Sims and Wii SportsClive Cussler and Sue Grafton do the same?Also, Robotron? What? That game’s awful.
04/03/2009 at 16:50 undead dolphin hacker says:
Goddamn lack of edit. Ignore “(Yes, I know this is a predominantly UK site — how is the public school system’s quality over there in jolly old England?),” that was supposed to come after a dig at the American public school system that got edited out.
04/03/2009 at 17:14 Quirk says:
I never quite got on with Paradise Lost. I have sympathies with Pococurante’s take on it in Candide. However, I remember enjoying Samson Agonistes in my late teens, so I’ll give Milton a pass.
I think you’ve got a great metaphor going though. It’s not just the Joyces that are missing from that list though, it’s the Orwells and Hemingways. It’s a largely modern and faddish list with a heavy dose of gimmickry. (Brain Trainer? Pokemon? Come on!) Were it just a list of great games of the past, it would be a failure. To have it carry the added burden of historical significance turns it into some form of twisted joke.
04/03/2009 at 17:25 Fumarole says:
Did he do these videos in a room with a running clothes dryer?
04/03/2009 at 17:38 Helm says:
I disagree with that Kojima is doing anything with the video game format that draws parallels to what Kubric was doing with his movies, but it’s okay and slightly besides the point as Paul Barnett isn’t an expert in cinema. I think ‘Out of this World’ would more be like the videogame Kubric would have made. Speaking of which, I’d definitely put it in my core 10 games, along with Tetris.
04/03/2009 at 18:49 Butler` says:
I don’t know why people are moaning about Paul’s list being Nintendo focused. If that’s how he rolled for years then that’s what his list is going to look like, subjective and intrinsically experience-based as they are ;p
I’m sure mine would bore/confuse someone who was brought up on Nintendo and Sega when I suggest triumphant early 90s MS-DOS games like Little Big Adventure.
04/03/2009 at 19:03 Hunam says:
KG, what did you mean by the Planescape: Torment comment about Avellone backing away from it? Shirley he must now that it has a fierce following. Still the best game ever made in my opinion.
04/03/2009 at 19:09 Pags says:
Butler: people are moaning because the list was intended as being canonical of the most influential games both within the industry and within the public eye. At least, that’s what I thought it was supposed to be.
Undead Dolphin Hacker is pretty spot on with most of his points, except the dig at Robotron; also I think Wii Sports is more important than he gives it credit for, though we’ve yet to really see what kind of effect it’s had on the industry as a whole so far except in the short term. It’s difficult really to gauge the importance of recent games though, so I will forgive Paul for taking a risk with suggesting it.
04/03/2009 at 19:20 Butler` says:
Hm, in that case I’d argue that Wii Sports and Brainage are far too similar to both deserve a slot in a list of only 10, and the addition of Starfox is just plain curious.
04/03/2009 at 19:25 Monkeybreadman says:
Dune 2, Deus Ex, Elite, Street Fighter, CS, Starcraft ?
Not that i dont think the games he’s listed aren’t important, as they most definately are. As someone said 10 isnt quite big enough.
Has no-one mentioned Jet Set Willy, or Chuckie Egg?
04/03/2009 at 19:52 Simon says:
Starfox is Nintendo’s Sonic.
2 good games, excellent games, then the core gameplay everybody loved and played the games for got pushed aside or buried, the characters got more into the fore and the cast exploded and then the furries arrived.
The parallels are uncanny.
04/03/2009 at 20:25 undead dolphin hacker says:
I’m only trolling Kieron with my Robotron dig, Pags. While I don’t think Robotron holds up all that well, it paved the way for some of my favorite games.
Casual games do have a place on the list, and so do Nintendo games of course. Filling your list with four of one and six of the other and calling it “gaming canon” is intellectually dishonest, however.
Want a canonical casual game? Pac-Man. Wildly popular and basically birthed the casual market. But please god don’t put one-trick “ohmygod it’s not hardcore and sold alot of copies” ponies like Brain Age (which isn’t even a game, arguably — can’t believe I missed this on my first readthrough) in there.
Really the only things I can at least accept as possible on his list are Zelda, Doom, and MAYBE Guitar Hero for successfully popularizing/legitimizing the rhythm genre. I mean, I’m fond of Resident Evil, but wtf is it on there for? And The Sims? Seriously? It’s a virtual dollhouse. Nothing wrong with that, but it was neither innovative nor influential. And of the millions of players it brought to the market, very few strayed beyond The Sims.
04/03/2009 at 20:35 Gap Gen says:
In terms of influence, I’d argue that Command & Conquer is probably a good way above other RTSs. Dune II doesn’t quite have the same aura, I’d say, and beyond C&C few games have genuinely revolutionised the genre to the point where other developers really took notice. Starcraft has a huge following, but I’d argue that it’s not that significant in terms of game design (other than perhaps the concept of balancing three radically different sides, but then again the sides in C&C were quite different, too).
04/03/2009 at 20:41 Tarn says:
Hmm. Fallout 3? Curious to find that on a ‘important to play now’ list. What does it contribute towards game design?
I suppose it does perfectly illustrate the importance of good writers, artists and animators by their bizarre absence, but you could say that of a lot of mediocre games.
Barnett’s rationale that it’s a great achievement in taking good bits and dumping bad bits from previous games is fair enough, but it’s hardly a glowing endorsement. It’s essentially “how to copy effectively” – which may be good for selling stuff, but it’s hardly advancing game design, surely?
Rest of his list was spot on, though. :)
I’m rather tempted to self-indulgently do a response to this article on my blog, I have to say.
04/03/2009 at 21:33 clovus says:
I agree that going from Peggle to Portal is too much. I tried that with my wife and it failed miserably. I don’t have the slightest idea how to go from casual to FP at all. I even tried going from casual “match 3″ games to Puzzle Quest. FAIL again. The hole RPG aspect caused nothing but frustration. It doesn’t help that Puzzle Quests story is basically retarded.
I keep thinking that Adventure Games should be a good transition point. They show that games can have interesting graphics, a good story, and gameplay that doesn’t involve mass homicide. Then you just go from a 2D (Sam and Max) to a good 3D/First Person Adventure Game. I’m not sure what would fall into that category though. OTH, I have seen non-gamers really get into GTA (though they are often shocked and confused that there are missions and a story).
Hey wait, on topic here, has no one mentoned GTAIII yet?!? That is insanely popular and defined the “sandbox” style gameplay.
Or (back on converting non-gamers) we could listen to Molyneax and just go straight for Fable II.
FAIL.
04/03/2009 at 21:47 Pags says:
@undead dolphin hacker: probably should’ve guessed that, heh.
A good point on The Sims too. While I wouldn’t simply dismiss it as a virtual dollhouse (though, technically, I suppose you’d be right), it really hasn’t had much impact on the games industry at large. Whereas, say, WoW is both popular and influential – Western MMORPGs typically tend to either adhere to the template it set or attempt to differentiate themselves by pointing out what they do differently to WoW – The Sims is really a singular entity. Any concepts that might have carried on into other games are usually ones that already have precedence in other management sims. Then again, maybe it’s worth inclusion simply because it’s managed to achieve such an enormous audience despite being an entirely original games concept.
04/03/2009 at 21:58 shiznit says:
I didn’t like a single game in that list.
And didn’t like WAR either.
04/03/2009 at 22:24 Elliott says:
Alpha Centauri, guys. Alpha Centauri.
04/03/2009 at 22:25 whizzedoutwoz says:
Damn the top 10 list you should play now made me so sad, fair it’s Mr Barnett’s opinion, but OMG can he of been more mainstream, really that top 10 list you should play now made me almost vomit, no offense Mr Barnett but your choice was depressing.
04/03/2009 at 22:33 Bob Bobson says:
Quoting Malgate “You might think World of Goo was also a good choice, I know for a fact that it isn’t.”
I found World of Goo to be a hit with my dad who is definitely a non-gamer, to the point where he can’t see the point in Wii Sports and hadn’t liked a game since Chuckie Egg.
I reckon he’d enjoy a good Peggle, but World of Goo shows him a lot more – and with an interface so intuitive that he didn’t need any info on how to play once the level selection screen was navigated.
I think that Paul Barnett’s original canon list should have included one of the MMORGS, probably World of Warcraft. Time will show that the impact of these games will be as big as any other style of gaming, not only on each other but on single and (smallish) multi player games.
04/03/2009 at 22:34 Mil says:
Which he admits has a play-by date of… well, pretty much immediately. That’s the point. This is transistory.
I’m sure there’s a good pun there, but I’m terrible at them. Come on, someone.
04/03/2009 at 23:15 Rudolfo says:
X-Wing, Wing Commander influencing all of the C&C crap video sequences.
Monkey Island is still too high a standard to be measured against (alternative DotT)
04/03/2009 at 23:39 malkav11 says:
I think to really get into things both EQs should be played and contrasted to WoW. EQ1 was the gold standard for MMOs of its time in terms of popularity and playerbase. WoW blew right past it. Why? (Because EQ1 hates you and WoW doesn’t, is the simple answer. But that’s me talking.) EQ2 is much more of the same design school as WoW and launched at about the same time with the proven heritage of EQ1 behind it. Today it shares most of WoW’s positive characteristics and has some good ideas of its own (although it also has some missteps WoW doesn’t). If any fantasy MMO of that model of design ought to be competitive with WoW, it’s EQII. Yet it isn’t. Why not?
(What I mean by that is that newly launching games like WAR and LOTRO and such have to contend with an enormous amount of WoW-related inertia and WoW’s having years worth of content over them. EQII is a contemporary and has accumulated just as much if not more content over the years.)
05/03/2009 at 00:02 undead dolphin hacker says:
@Pags:
I don’t mean to dismiss The Sims when I say it’s a virtual dollhouse. It’s a brilliant product. It’s a game in a primal, archetypal way, like, say, Legos could be considered a “game.”
The dichotomy of The Sims and Boom Blox is really quite interesting, because in many ways they had very similar design intentions in the way they attempted to recreate these archetypal experiences. Boom Blox tapped into the primal construction/destruction archetype, which is very close to Legos’ design (Legos was more about building, Boom Blox about destroying).
It’s my opinion that Boom Blox would have been immensely successful (perhaps on a Sims scale) in the market had it been released on a system that people actually bought (non-Nintendo) games for. Its downfall was that it had it be released on the Wii — a traditional controller couldn’t provide the same tactile sense that made (makes?) Legos so fun to play with.
As for WoW, I’m not convinced it isn’t a dead end, at very least for the Diku sub-genre. In the thick of the Pokemon nonsense, there were games that took the catch ‘em all aspects and tried to apply them in other settings (don’t ask me to name any of them, they all pretty much failed). Same thing in the thick of The Sims — there was The Movies, Singles, and a few others I don’t recall. These actually fared better than the Pokemon knockoffs… there was one that I actually enjoyed called Space Colony, for what it’s worth.
Anyway, we’re seeing something awfully similar with WoW right now. WoW’s influence isn’t really bleeding outside the MMORPG genre aside from “Gee whiz, eleventy billion subscribers.” It is influencing (improving/coloring/infecting/corrupting as you prefer) pretty much every MMORPG, however — and I’d argue that’s because of the dynamic, ever-changing nature of these games: they let you rapidly adapt to fads. Attempting to respond to a fad on a regular devcycle almost ensures that you won’t have your game out the door before the fad is over, or worse, deeply entrenched in its roots (see: Pokemon).
05/03/2009 at 03:05 Hypocee says:
Wait wait – you can play MGS4?
That’s actually a good point, Phil – not so much for the business brand phenomenon, I’d say, but for the introduction of exploration/secrets/setting to the platformer. Essentially Super Mario Brothers instantly demoted what had previously been ‘platformers’ to what modern eyes would call ‘puzzle games’, leaving a genre which still thrives today.
05/03/2009 at 03:10 Hypocee says:
I think he means that it may or may not be current.
05/03/2009 at 10:42 Jim says:
As for canon for designers I think one of the most important isn’t even a full game. Just a level.
Shalebride Cradle.
05/03/2009 at 15:51 Malagate says:
@Bob Bobson, hah, that’s great that your father got into it so easily, I was hoping for the same thing with my girlfriend, her sister and her brother. I did make that statement a bit too strong though, as it obviously doesn’t apply to everyone, but WoG is certainly not 100% effective at bringing in non-gamers. What your father enjoyed just caused some bored looks and some mild frustration with my gf’s sister, although the gf does love the cuteness of it, albeit her mouse skills aren’t necessarily practised enough to solve the puzzles well.
I’m quite interested at a perceived dismissal of pokemon by u.d.h., I’d say it is a game that developers should know about if only to see how such a series became one of the most popular video game franchises ever. Is it burned out? They’re still releasing pokemon games, I’ve no idea about the other collect-em-ups either though. Is it not worth being looked at by developers? I’m not so sure.
06/03/2009 at 05:14 mister slim says:
@Hypocee
I think what Mal means is that all videogames use transistors.
I.E., KG missed a typo.
06/03/2009 at 05:16 mister slim says:
Damnit. That’s supposed to be Mil.
06/03/2009 at 12:28 Hmm-Hmm. says:
I don’t care for such lists, generally, if only because the don’t tend to list games which were important to me. Alas, such is the fact for the mac gamer. That isn’t to say they were hugely influential; the non-mac PC has a far greater audience and games on it can more easily have a greater impact.
What to say of Marathon and Escape Velocity? What to say of games which did appear on the PC as well (earlier or near-simultaneously than the mac version), such as Fallout and X-Wing? The Curse of Monkey Island? All of these shaped the way I see games, and the potential of games (not to mention the fact that Marathon beats Doom, any day of the week. :P). I could mention a couple rather obscure titles (perhaps even among older mac gamers), but I feel my point has been made sufficiently.
Games which have an impact on gamers can be very different from those which impact designers, I assume, so I don’t fault Paul and his obviously subjective list (and you and yours, Kieron, as well) as all such lists are.
09/03/2009 at 19:29 Paul says:
MGS4. I agree it’s a game one should play at least once, however calling Kojima the Kubrick of videogames? :/
10/03/2009 at 10:23 AdrianWerner says:
The first game that can withou any doubt be called RTS (so not only real-time combat, but also resource managment and unit building) is Nether Earth, released on ZX Spectrum two years before Herzog Zwei. Somebody even made a freeware 3D remake so you can check it out
13/03/2009 at 15:48 Will says:
These lists confuse me because they seldom include the class of games that I, as a PC gamer of a certain era, found super-influential: Star Control 2, Ultima Underworld, Alone in the Dark, X-Com
I feel like there was a brief period when everyone talked about Star Control when talking about historically significant games, and that this period has passed. I’m just not sure why.
w/r/t mac gaming: Dark Castle!
20/06/2009 at 07:34 feighnt says:
this is obviously an old topic which nobody’s talking about anymore, but in case someone looks down here –
someone mentioned that RE doesnt deserve to be on the list. while i disagree with a lot of the choices on those lists, RE *clearly* should be there. the simple fact of the matter is that RE almost single-handedly invented the survival horror genre. sure, i recognize that there were other horror games previously, like from the Clock Tower series, or, perhaps more relevantly (due to closer gameplay) the original Alone in the Dark – but the influence of RE is akin to the effect of Doom. sure, there was Wolfenstein (etc) before, but Doom is the one which really revolutionalized things, and is remembered. same with Resident Evil. after that game, there was a decently-lived boom in horror gaming (not to mention that RE invented the term “survival horror”), most of which were similar enough to RE to be considered as RE clones (including the, arguably, superior Silent Hill series). there were even a few non-horror games which were RE clones, such as the Dino Crisis series – so, the influence of RE is hardly negligible!
20/06/2009 at 08:10 Psychopomp says:
Not to mention RE4, which you’d be daft not to love!