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?
Related Stories:
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.
Did he do these videos in a room with a running clothes dryer?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
@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.
I didn’t like a single game in that list.
And didn’t like WAR either.
Alpha Centauri, guys. Alpha Centauri.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.)
@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).
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.
I think he means that it may or may not be current.
As for canon for designers I think one of the most important isn’t even a full game. Just a level.
Shalebride Cradle.
@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.
@Hypocee
I think what Mal means is that all videogames use transistors.
I.E., KG missed a typo.
Damnit. That’s supposed to be Mil.
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.
MGS4. I agree it’s a game one should play at least once, however calling Kojima the Kubrick of videogames? :/
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
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!
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!
Not to mention RE4, which you’d be daft not to love!