[game_preservation] Best game of all time?

[Devin Monnens]

The latest IGDA newsletter (yeah, sent a few weeks ago, but GDC makes
everyone busy!) mentioned a contest to pick the most influential game of all
time. I personally don't think more than a fraction of the games on the list
here are worth mentioning as influential, and some (Wolfenstein and Doom)
seem to be the exact same thing.

http://www.focalpress.com/giveaway.aspx?ekfrm=6770

Anyway, I find it odd that IGDA mentions this but nothing with game
preservation. This is clearly going to be more a popularity contest than
anything academic, but I'm kind of interested in what people on this list
think. I've got half a mind to just say 'Spacewar!' and be done with it -
after all, Spacewar! influenced Nolan Bushnell to get into games. Other than
that, I'd say Ralph Baer's Pong game (though the videogames would have come
around later if Baer and Bushnell hadn't gotten there first).

In terms of widespread influence though, Super Mario Bros. might be a better
pick because it sort of distills a lot of ideas about design and inspires
game players to become game makers. A game that is influential should do two
things in my mind: inspire someone to create his or her own videogames and
to influence the design of other games by allowing other designers to learn
from it. It's kind of hard to track both of these, and it's ridiculous to
suppose that one single game can be responsible for everything. Of course, a
third option is games that create meaning or that act as art, but these have
been so recent (Ico and Super Columbine Massacre RPG) that they haven't yet
had a chance to influence the industry. So this is more historical than
anything else.

Anyway, that's probably too much analysis into what ultimately ammounts to
just a popularity contest :)

-Devin Monnens

-- 
The sleep of Reason produces monsters.

"Until next time..."
Captain Commando
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/game_preservation/attachments/20090402/d411c138/attachment.html>