Slashdot Asks: What's the Most Influential Video Game of All Time? 156
The folks at Bafta are running a public survey to identify the most influential video game ever made. When The Guardian asked prominent gaming figures to weigh in, they received a fascinating array of responses with zero overlap. Game designer Mike Bithell picked Metal Gear Solid 2, while Blumhouse's Louise Blain chose the short-lived horror experiment PT. The Guardian's own games editor backed Ocarina of Time for establishing 3D game world standards.
Other notable selections included Tomb Raider (pioneering female protagonists), QWOP (inspiring experimental design), Doom (revolutionizing FPS and modding), Mario Kart (competitive social play), Journey (emotional storytelling), Princess Maker (branching narrative systems), Paperboy (everyday world simulation), and Super Mario Bros (fundamental game design principles). So, Slashdotters, what's your pick for the most influential video game ever created? Which title fundamentally changed how games are designed, played, or experienced? Did it influence you personally, the industry as a whole, or both?
Other notable selections included Tomb Raider (pioneering female protagonists), QWOP (inspiring experimental design), Doom (revolutionizing FPS and modding), Mario Kart (competitive social play), Journey (emotional storytelling), Princess Maker (branching narrative systems), Paperboy (everyday world simulation), and Super Mario Bros (fundamental game design principles). So, Slashdotters, what's your pick for the most influential video game ever created? Which title fundamentally changed how games are designed, played, or experienced? Did it influence you personally, the industry as a whole, or both?
Doom (Score:5, Insightful)
Gotta be.
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Personally, I don't like the genre; but it's impossible to deny that it has been influential.
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Re:Doom (Score:5, Insightful)
You can almost always name a predecessor. Being first isn't the same as influential though.
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Wolfenstein _introduced_ the raycasting technology
Not by a long shot. At the same studio, Wolfenstein was preceded by Catacomb Abyss, Catacomb 3-D and Hovertank 3D. While not an FPS, Datasoft's Alternate Reality: The City used the same technique several years earlier.
Doom _popularized_ it
Maybe, though while Wolfenstein and Doom both use "raycasting", the approaches are so different it seems wrong to equate the two.
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Genre-defining
Technology-defining
Aesthetic-standard
Doom has a lot going for it.
It has a few competitors whose legacies are also clear as day:
1. Minecraft has had more players than Doom, and is also a bit of a genre definer, with a great many survive-craft-build games sharing its dna
2. Mario has the legacy as the series with the most staying power. Not really reinventing itself as much as iterating in a way that never seems to die.
3. Tetris has an unusual place as a genuinely timeless, totally re-playabl
Re: Doom (Score:2)
Minecraft is also a descendant of doom.
Re: Doom (Score:2)
True but not relevant I think, I mean Doom is a descendant of Wolfenstein but it's still it's own game.
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Leonardo Da Vinci probably had artistic influences. It's not transitive.
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Platform defining.
Doom put the PC on the map for high end gaming.
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Oh and I forgot.
Doom also pretty much launched speed running community and pushed modding way into the mainstream.
People are still making levels today. And finding new speed runs.
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hard to argue with that overall for bringing around the FPS genre to the mainstream.
I might put an addendum to it that for todays modern FPS games that Half-Life 1/2 have had a huge influence on the genre in the past 25 years in that it took the formula at the time of individual levels and light narrative and changed all that into something more cohesive we hadn't experienced before which the FPS games today, even the Doom Reboots to some degree really pull from.
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IF (a big if admittedly) you count mods then Half-Life 1 unarguably fits the bill for this article. Almost everything we take for granted today from actual continuous levels, immersive storytelling, ingame server browsers, official SDKs and mod support, even coop, can be traced to HL1 or one of its mods.
Sven Coop obviously introduced large coop to FPS games. Science & Industry had ingame tech trees you could research, as did the later Natural Selection. Natural Selection had mixed FPS/RTS gameplay as we
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True and we also have to take into account HL2 for it's influence on the market as the catalyst for online game shops, a lot of the market got upended as Steam rapidly rose to prominence.
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* Doom made the PC take off in the home, killing the "home computer" platforms. It made people buy PCs mainly to play games, the precursors to the "Gaming PCs" we have now.
People got network cards at home to play Doom in multiplayer. Microsoft and the PC-industry has gained a lot of money in network effects through the years.
* Doom made the video games industry shift to 3D.
On a personal level, it is what made me want to get a career in video games. I haven't worked at any games studio, but I did become a co
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Doom made the PC take off in the home, killing the "home computer" platforms.
In 1993? The IBM clones had already won. Sure, Commodore was still limping along, but they would file for bankruptcy early in 1994. Doom didn't kill Commodore overnight. Commodore was already dead.
It made people buy PCs mainly to play games
Let's be real: games were ultimately why most people bought a home computer between 1978-1993. Doom didn't create the market for computer games. If you're looking for software that drove PC sales, look no further than Windows 95. Beyond that, it was the internet all the way. When Doom made its debut, the home
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DOOM was the first computer game I was actually excited about, enough so that I payed $160 for four 1MB 30 pin SIMMs so I could play it on my 386DX/40 at the time (and that was at cost since I was a tech at a computer store at the time). Sure, Wolfenstein was cool and gave a glimpse of what was to come but DOOM blew everything away at the time. It was at that point that I knew a game console would never be a thing I purchased again. PC gaming finally became interesting. If you want to go back even further t
Re: Doom (Score:2)
Iâ(TM)ve got to go with Mario. It firmly established so many of the rules of how games (2D or 3D) would work. Yes there were platformers before then, but Mario pretty much defined how everything would work from then on. It even arguable influenced how shooters would work.
Doom I donâ(TM)t buy as particularly influential. If youâ(TM)d said Wolfenstein maybe you would have a point, but even then platformers had already established most of the rules of how theyâ(TM)d work.
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If I had to pick anything else, I'd say that the Ultima ser
Re: Doom (Score:2)
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Doom, but played on a low-cost, retail pregnancy test device.
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Doom, but played on a low-cost, retail pregnancy test device.
I think NetBSD can run on that. :-)
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Nope. Space Invaders. That one started out on mainframes and everything since then is derivative from it.
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Can't believe I had to scroll this far. Maybe it's a generational thing, but I always thought Gen X and Boomers were relatively over-represented on Slashdot, and most of us (Gen X anyway) would immediately answer Space Invaders without hesitation.
Doom is fantastic, and Pong trailblazed, but it was Space Invaders that actually made gamers out of pretty much everyone.
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Wolfenstein 3D
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People who are (or were) computer gamers will say Doom - that's certainly what first came to my mind.
People who are old enough to have played in arcades, back in the 1980s, might say Asteroids or Donkey Kong.
People who preferred consoles would likely say Super Mario Brothers 3.
Re:Doom (Score:4, Interesting)
Can it really compare to games like Space Invaders or Pac-man in terms of influence? Sure, Doom defined the FPS genera, but those defined video games. Tetris was a world-wide phenomenon with significant geopolitical implications that not only defined a genera but elevated video games from something for kids and teens in seedy arcades into something your grandmother wanted to try out.
Doom was certainly influential, but I'm not sure you could really call it the 'most influential'.
Re: Doom (Score:2)
Elite (Score:2)
Pong (Score:4, Insightful)
Computer: "Do. You. Want. To. Play. A. Game?"
User: "How about 'Pong'?"
Computer: "Okay. But I guess I had in mind something more like 'Total Global Thermonuclear War.'"
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I agree, it's pong. First game that really spread to the masses, continually referenced decades later.
If not pong then I'd have to say either Wolfenstein 3d or Descent for introducing FPS and true 3d environments respectively (unless you want to go all the way back to Elite).
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So obviously, the answer is "Doom"
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Pong -> Asteroids -> Space Invaders -> Pacman -> Tetris -> Donkey Kong -> Space Quest (and its siblings like Leisure Suit Larry) -> Sim City -> Civilization -> Wolfenstein 3D -> DOOM. (OK I may have messed up the order a bit)
Every era has had its own game influencing the current set of games.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re:Pong (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly: Pong introduced the very concept of video games.
...laura
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Bertie the Brain is one of the first games developed in the early history of video games. It was built in Toronto by Josef Kates for the 1950 Canadian National Exhibition. The four meter (13 foot) tall computer allowed exhibition attendees to play a game of tic-tac-toe against an artificial intelligence. The player entered a move on a keypad in the form of a three-by-three grid, and the game played out on a grid of lights overhead. The machine had an adjustable difficulty level. After two weeks on display b
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FarmVille (Score:2)
I think if you're honestly picking a game for its impact, not just picking a game you like, it's gotta be a mobile game because of their effect on the market.
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Super Mario Bros (Score:2)
Atari was cool and one or two of my friends had one when I was young. But Nintendo/Super Mario Bros was what brought gaming to most households because it was included with the NES. I enjoyed other games, but as far as games proliferating gameplay in the home, it's tough to argue.
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This one was my first thought as well, mostly because it made video gaming popular enough to revive the whole thing from the brink of total collapse. Without the NES and Super Mario Bros at the time it happened gaming as a whole would look VERY different today if it ever came to be a thing at all.
Colossal Cave and the early Ultimas (Score:2)
Nothing else matters if you want to understand the origins of all of the other games these unwashed n00bs are talking about.
Maybe Wizardry I.
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That's a good choice, but the early "colossal cave" adventures were text games, not video games. IIRC the first one was "Space Invaders". It started off on a mainframe, before personal computers were a thing, and made the transition to an arcade game in the really early days.
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I had the same idea. Colossal Cave invented the idea that a game could tell a story, and you would advance the plot by solving puzzles. All other games that do that are descended from it.
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Wizardry 1 - Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord should be in the running, basically regardless of what vague criteria anyone is using. Most of the games listed so far - other than Pong, Space War, and Super Mario Brothers - owe a huge debt to Wizardry 1.
Best selling is Tetris (Score:2)
BattleZone (Score:2)
The coin-op game BattleZone gave a glimpse of things to come. It wowed everyone the first time they saw and played it.
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Great game, it got me addicted to the arcade and seriously affected my lack of social development ;~)
EOB (Score:2)
I basically monopolized the family PC (286 12Mhz) to play Eye of the Beholder, and later, Wizardry 7.
Those games defined my childhood and sparked my interest in computers in general.
Goldeneye 007 (Score:2)
Sure, others came before. But all around, this was the game that set our expectations of what a video game should be.
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I think that's probably true for console players, but I had already played Doom and Quake (which came out a year prior) before playing Goldeneye on my cousins' N64, so I already had expectations for first-person shooters, and I remember being frustrated that it was comparatively lacking in some areas, notably the controls. I seem to recall that you had to unlock the ability to use different controller input layouts, which seemed bizarre even then. Being used to mouse + WASD for gameplay made using a contr
The original Rogue game (Score:3)
One of the initial games that helped launch the computer RPG genre.
Grand Theft Auto (Score:2)
Starcraft (Score:2)
I think it's Starcraft.
Pong (Score:3)
Donkey Kong
Pac Man
Tetris
Sim City
Final Fantasy
Super Mario Brothers
Doom
Diablo
WoW
Farmville
Bedazzled
Fortnite
Call of Duty
Wordle
None of those are my favorites but that wasn't the question.
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You forgot Space Quest.
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That's ... a very good list. I'd add Space Invaders, Dragon Quest, and Ultima IV somewhere in the mix.
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Nice list but where are Angry Birds? /s
MMORGS (Score:3)
Depending how you measure the influence either Ultima Online, the game that showed MMORGS were viable, or Everquest, the first MMORG to really go mainstream.
Before MMORGS gaming was either single player or short term multiplayer, MMORGS created tight knit communities inside of games.
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Aren't Ultima and Everquest just an evolution of the old MUDs you got on BBS systems back in the day?
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Totally agree. Nearly unlimited players, and real-time combat in the dial-up days. It was a game changer for sure.
I'd have to reach further back for others: Wolf 3D for real FPS. There were others but Wolf set the standard.
Maybe early Zelda for OG stateful pre-internet RPG.
I remember playing Wolf 3D on my old mac, there was some tiny window in one of the dungeons, a green block for grass and blue for sky.
After hours of running around Nazi dungeons it was a lovely view :)
Elite - 1984, 3D open world (Score:3, Insightful)
Released in 1984 it was, to my knowledge, the very first 3D open world game. At a time when pacman and frogger were the "standard" it arrived featuring 3D graphics in a procedurally generated open world where you could be a trader, a pirate, a combat pilot, whatever you wished. All of this was done an 8bit machine with 32K of RAM including the OS and the video ram. It was truly revolutionary and an incredible technological feat.
Rogue (Score:5, Insightful)
Invented the very concept of procedural generation.
This was the first major differentiator of computer games vs hardware-designed games. Pong, for instance, offered nothing at the time that was better than pinball machines. It's only novelty was "And it was done on a computer!"
Same thing for Zork - perform your own adventure books were already well known when it was written. It just automated the process of "If you enter the cave, go to page 39".
Rogue, on the other hand, was the first computer game that did things no other media could accomplish. Every game was unique. And even today, people speak of procedurally generated games as "Rogue-likes".
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It just automated the process of "If you enter the cave, go to page 39".
Well, no. It gave you tons of options that you had to explore to even find out they existed
PLUGH
(and why yes, I still play nethack today....)
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> And even today, people speak of procedurally generated games as "Rogue-likes".
Here's my no true Scotsman argument: Roguelike means more than just "procedurally generated game". It has to include permadeath and a top-down view or isometric view to be a "real" roguelike in my book. It's gotta LOOK LIKE ROGUE to be roguelike, for me. Unfortunately nearly everyone disagrees with my position nowadays. I don't care. If it don't look like Rogue, it's not roguelike. I will die on this hill.
Oldies (Score:2)
The song, Pac Man Fever, went to #9 on Billboard and the game was everywhere. Sure, Pong and Space Invaders should be there for other reasons, but Pac Man opened up the market to a much wider audience I think.
Ultima Online? That was the first MMO that, I think, popularized the genre. Probably need to put the whole series in there
Lemonade Stand and/or Oregon Trail - gotta be in there somewhere
Influential (Score:2)
When I think of the word, "influential" I think of things like: people, world events, education, love, etc... but VIDEO games? How COULD a video game influence anyone at all? Sure, video games can have an effect on you, and they can affect you, but influence you??
Influence, verb: the capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of someone or something, or the effect itself.
How does a video game effect the character, development or behavior of a person?
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Of course they can influence people video games can tell stories, like books, and they effect the development of how other games are developed. But I think you have a good point we are discussing how video games influence other games, but the other side is how have they influenced people. I would say World of Warcraft would be on that list, a lot of people played it to excess, maybe mobile games for the same reason, the influence does not have to be good.
No votes for Civilization? (Score:2)
Depending on what you call influential, the only game that really made me think and learn about something was Civilization (the first one of course). ;)
I even lifted some bits of Civilopedia for a school paper once. There was no Wikipedia back then
Here are some things I am tempted to reflect upon:
- In Civilization nobody honors a peace treaty with you for very long. Today we discuss the same issue about Vladimir Putin or Russian history in general.
- Technology can revolutionize war (see the quick rise of ad
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In Civilization 1, peace treaties only need to last 5 seconds. Simply overpower the opponent, accept their surrender (where they give you all techs and all money), then attack them again. Absolutely no penalty.
In contrast, Civilization 2 requires players to be spotless in order for their word to have any weight. In contrast, AI players can break treaties whenever they want.
Great but not Astounding (Score:2)
In Civilization nobody honors a peace treaty with you for very long. Today we discuss the same issue about Vladimir Putin or Russian history in general.
Yes, but in civilization it was not Putin who threatens you with nukes but Gandhi!
Civilization was a great game but so was Railroad Tycoon before it. However, neither were "astounding" in the same way that something like Doom, or my personal winner Elite, were.
C'mon Slashdot (Score:2)
This one needs to the max some funny.
Space Invaders (Score:2)
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I'll upvote Space Invaders. It was everywhere for a long time and was one of the first truly mainstream games.
Leave it to The Guardian to leave out the 1st. (Score:2)
First computer game ever.
SNIPES!! (Score:2)
Wall street (Score:2)
ELITE (Score:2)
It was also the first game to come with a novella [clara.net], b
So many options (Score:3)
I see a lot of mention of things that matter today, or things that matter in the PC world, but to me the two biggest games of all time when it comes to overall impact will always be:
Pong: I still remember Dad bringing home the Intellivision, and me having zero clue WTF that thing was. He heard of it first, and at the time was a big tech head. We spent so many nights play each other head to head with Pong. SO MANY NIGHTS. And up to them I and most of my friends had no idea you could have games on the television.
Pac Man: It made video games a household name. Yes, it started the arcade craze where there were tons of other games, but you'd see Pac Man and its variants everywhere. Gas stations, grocery stores (leave the kids at the Pac Man machine while you shop!), department stores, they were everywhere. It took years before any other game started to see that type of penetration outside the arcade itself. And anybody that grew up in that era can still hear, "PAC MAN FEVER! IT'S DRIVIN' ME CRAZY" reverberating in their heads when they close their eyes at night.
Pac Man (Score:3)
Wolfenstein 3D (Score:3)
Wolfenstein 3D, obviously.
Sinistar (Score:2)
Not really, but it was an awesome game!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
The precursors. (Score:2)
The Secret of Monkey Island(TM) (Score:2)
It's not the first graphic adventure, but it IS the best game in the world.
Because I enjoyed it so much. Because it brings me fond memories of my childhood. Because I would love to be a kid again to play it for the first time.
Others might be considering technical reasons, but these are the real ones.
Quake III Arena (Score:2)
It defined the entire online tournament scene and dominated LAN parties worldwide, a lot of kids bacame games as a result of Q3A.
Leisure Suit Larry of course (Score:2)
there are no other contenders
take it off babe ...
Doom (Score:2)
NBA Jam introduced boomshakalaka (Score:2)
to the basketball scene.
can only be Pong (Score:2)
Older is more likely (Score:2)
No game released after 2000 comes close. The actual answer certainly came out before 1990, such as:
Another vote for Doom (Score:2)
Another vote for Doom. The game which made the PC mainstream, made "3D" popular, started the computer arms race (Before you did not need a powerful computer to run eye of the beholder). Finished the home computers in Europe. Made sound cards compulsory. And popularised the FPS genre.
Not the game which makes ME the most nostalgic, though.
As a programmer: Quake (Score:2)
Full disclosure: I was somewhat involved with the Quake development, helped Mike Abrash a little bit to optimize the asm code that actually made a pure SW 3D rasterizer fast enough to be playable.
The Castle Wolfenstein - Doom - Quake progression might seem from the outside to be a fairly linear upgrade path, but in reality Quake was at least an order of magnitude harder to achieve.
Just the number of amazing ideas John Carmack managed to come up with in order to make a real 3D game possible will forever give
Doom (Score:2)
Certainly there are arguments to be made for others - Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Tetris, Super Mario Brothers. I'd even be willing to let Diablo, Half-Life, and WoW enter the discussion.
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Spacewar! was the first, 1962 vs Pong's 1972.
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Rogue was 1980, Hack 1982, and NetHack 1987.
Computer graphics existed already, but maybe that's not what you meant by "before computer graphics were a thing."
NetHack is still probably my favorite game, though 3.6 seems a lot harder than 3.4--I have yet to ascend in 3.6.
Zork isn't exactly great, but as a whole text adventures rock. Planetfall was probably my favorite.
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One is Nethack, defining what a top-down dungeon crawler should be... before computer graphics were a thing.
Nethack was first released in 1987. It's a fork of Hack (1982) which was a clone of Rogue (1980?). I can assure you that computer graphics were a thing in 1987, 1982, and even 1980.
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This
without this one, all other would not exist!
For the people saying Doom, i rise and say Wolfenstein 3D! Doom was a improvement for wolfenstein and avoiding the nazi theme, that caused problems in some places... Of course, MazeWar is the root for Wolfenstein
But my hearth goes to rogue and nethack, this last one is still one of the best games out there, with many players