Influencial Gaming Hall of Fame

 Pages 1 2 NEXT
 

Hey guys,

We've all seen films, and musicians put into hall of fames, showing their distinction of influencing the industries in various ways, but what games would be put in gaming's hall of fame?

LIST EM NOW!

P.S. remember, this is NOT about listing your favourite games. In fact, some of the games listed maybe be games you/ the industry didn't like.

Here's a few:

Gran Turismo - revolutionised and popularised simulation gaming, and was one of a number that cemented console gaming as no longer about simple arcade gaming, but games that require much time, depth and effort.

Mario 64 - set the benchmark for all other 3D platforms.

Halo - took console game FPS to a different direction. Differences in healing, emphasis on co-op, expansive levels (as opposed to isolated corridors in older FPS).

Goldeneye - an FPS which showed the genre was no longer just for PC gamers. Popularised 4 player split screen gaming.

Myst - one of the first games to truly embrace videogaming as an art medium, emphasising logic rather than reflexes of most other games. I also understand one of the first CDrom PC games, and showed graphical capabilities of CD.

Soul Calibur - the game that officially confirmed that consoles were now more important for showing off technical power than arcade machines, and along with the Dreamcast itself, made arcade gaming irrelevant.

Minecraft/ Braid/ Angry Birds(?) - this is one to discuss. Which one of these showed the industry how important and influential indie gaming is in the modern industry? I'm probably gonna go with minecraft, as it's seems more indie than others, which either borrowed a lot of money, or used a team to create.. But admittedly, I don't know much about either 3, so I could be wrong.

Pac-man - an innovative idea for a game that flooded gamers to the arcades. Perhaps gave the arcade its finest hour.

Tomb Raider - Like Mario, showed us the early capabilities of 3D graphics, particularly with consoles. Lara Croft's sexuality almost overnight drew new, more mature audience demographics previously not interesting in video games.

Virtua Fighter - the first majorly commercial 3D game. There were some before on PC and in the arcade, but did not perform to an acceptable standerd or where not made fully with polygons, unlike VF.

Final Fantasy VII - one of the most expansive games of the time, excelling in cinematics, and epic storyline the size not seen before, and single-handedly popularising and bringing JRPGs to the forefront in the west.

Metal Gear Solid - showed videogames could be as cinematic as films and television. However, even more involving. A tightly written, sophisticated story that raised the benchmark for other story driven games. The artificial intelligence with the steal sections also innovative.

Resident Evil - though not the first horror videogame, it popularised and showed the potential of horror. Most other horror games for the next decade to come would use its same structure of survival in their games (including many non-horror games).

Tetris - a simple, yet genius concept that introduced gaming to a whole variety of audiences. A concept that can't be replicated in, say, TV. Also became the killer app for the gameboy, important in expressing how important killer apps are.

Pong - the first videogame ever made. Impossible to not include I guess.

Honorable mentions
Zelda: Ocarina of Time - thought of mentioning, but its pretty much just expanded on Mario 64
Silent Hill 2 - a storytelling masterpiece. Not sure if to add the original SH for taking horror to a different, more psychological level than Resident Evil.

Surely the original Half-Life belongs on here too. While I haven't played it, it's credited with revolutionising game storytelling (among other things)

WoW - game that single-handedly made MMOs mainstream instead of niche market.
StarCraft - competitive multiplayer gaming.

I'd say the two games that pretty much defined what the FPS is were DOOM (in the 90s) and Halo (in the 00s) Then Half Life, Goldeneye, with perhaps Counterstrike and some iteration of CoD in there as well.

In MMOs, well that's easy. It's influenced the genre in good ways and in bad ways, but overall nothing else comes close and to many people it has become the sole definition of what an MMO is - World of Warcraft.

Deus Ex.

Terramax:

Minecraft/ Braid/ Angry Birds(?) - this is one to discuss. Which one of these showed the industry how important and influential indie gaming is in the modern industry?

On that note, Counter Strike showed the industry to pay attention to mod makers, and has been highly influential on the FPS genre.

I demand Baldur's Gate be added.

Thoraxe:
I demand Baldur's Gate be added.

For what reason?

distortedreality:
On that note, Counter Strike showed the industry to pay attention to mod makers, and has been highly influential on the FPS genre.

Quake 1/2/3 did that first.

What about Street Fighter 2? Single-handedly popularised the fighting game genre.

************

-Halo: A gaming landmark, and the harbinger of the (near) death of PC gaming.
No, I'm not just being snide here: Halo marks the point where Publishers went from hedging their bets between PCs and Consoles, to more or less backing Consoles with full support wherever they could (certain genres still persisted and thrived in the wake of this migration; especially MMOs, or rather, ONE MMO...but I'm getting to that), and treating PC as second-rate for over a decade.

Less significantly, Halo also homogenized most of the shooter genre with its popularity.
No longer did Publishers need to take risks to make their games sell; Halo provided them the blueprint formula for success, and brought so many new customers into the market that there was no excuse not to copy at least part of the formula.

But all kings must fall eventually, and it fell to a game series so popular and stagnant, that its second derivative utterly trivialized the booming success of Halo: Reach.
(You might call it the.."Fall of Reach")

Call of Duty 4.x ,(a mechanical clone of Halo at its very core) has taken up the throne and continues to thrive in its predecessor's footsteps; polarizing the love/hatred of gamers everywhere today.

************

-Half-Life 2: Launched the entire color-corrected game craze, along with Halo.
For all of its great points, characters and game design, I can't help but notice how so many games were inspired to make use of the "post-industrial", limited color pallet for the "grim-gritty realistic" shooter look.
(In a similar manner a little under 10 years prior, Quake 1 inspired Gothic design for 3D games in their infancy.)

************

-World of Warcraft: Homogenized the AAA MMO market to a frightening degree.
It is everything an MMO game could want: Strong UI design, colorful smooth visuals, good controls, scaling mechanical complexity, and an eloquent display of Skinner-Box inspired "Gameplay".
WoW is the model MMO: Wildly profitable AND addictive. It's the "Hotel California" of gaming, and it's why clones everywhere aspire to some day claim WoW's playerbase.

************

-Starcraft: Launched the eSport genre, and changed the entertainment culture of an economic superpower (South Korea). I don't think much more needs to be said about how this game influenced gaming.

(Personally, I'm glad eSports happened: Because now egotistical asshole wannabes the world over can now get their faces checked against serious competition and real pros. Seriously, is there nothing more annoying than the prattle of self-proclaimed fratwad "pros"?)

************

-Nintendo (not games, but heavily influential):
They swept in and claimed the market for themselves after the infamous crash (itself caused by rampant franchise and licensing abuse), essentially establishing a monopoly that would last for the better part of a decade. While much their business practices at the time could be described as greedy, corrupt, and anti-competitive, Nintendo were still highly influential in making video games trendy in the popular culture in the late 80s and early 90s.

Whether you like them or not today; Nintendo and their "Disney-like company-image-complex" are a huge part of why gaming managed to overcome the demonization it faced in its infancy, and become a part of modern culture.

************

-Farmville: (Zynga "games" in general)
Proving that you don't need actual gameplay in order to sell "games". *rolls eyes*
This is Skinner Box design Incarnate, and a blight upon the hobby of gaming (but a boon for the "gaming industry").

(yes, I'm being snide with Zynga here, and a bit of a rant)

Hazy992:
What about Street Fighter 2? Single-handedly popularised the fighting game genre.

Indeed, I don't know how I forgot that!

Atmos Duality:

-Nintendo (not games, but heavily influential):

No, not only can this not be included as it's not the games, but the fact that all the major games companies are influential. Atari, Sega, Microsoft, Sony.

Terramax:

Hazy992:
What about Street Fighter 2? Single-handedly popularised the fighting game genre.

Indeed, I don't know how I forgot that!

Hang your head in shame! Nah, it's a'ight! :P

distortedreality:
Deus Ex.

Yep. HOW THE FUCK DID THE OP FORGET ABOUT DEUS EX

ALSO DOTA

Pokemon.

So many children got into gaming in general, and most likely myself, because of Pokemon.

I'm still playing it. Heck, I've got Ruby in my lap right now, and I'm teaching Vibrava Fly.

Also, I can mostly sing this:

EDIT:

Also, I can't do a Pokemon post without a picture of my favorite mascot. There's a law against that I think.

distortedreality:
Deus Ex.

DX is interesting, because right after it came out, Immersive Sims pretty much up-and-died. It's certainly had a lot of influence in terms of the gaming tastes of a particular demographic of gamers (which is, unfortunately, a lot smaller than all the people bred on Nintendo's rubbish games), but I'd say it's been almost embarrassingly non-influential on game designers. (The embarrassment being on the designers for not taking up the design philosophies of DX.) You occasionally see it here and there to varying degrees, but nothing more than that really.

Terramax:

Thoraxe:
I demand Baldur's Gate be added.

For what reason?

Probably for the incredible story/depth of writing plus challenging but rewarding game play. But mostly the writing. There are other games that could take this spot that I know of, like Planescape Torment and such. Also I am not very familiar with gaming history so I don't know if it really deserves a place as a "game changing game" (heh). But the writing should at least give it an honorable mention, because it's frickin awesome.

Perhaps it deserves a place because it's the same basic template that Bioware used/uses for Mass Effect and Dragon Age, which are huge gameing franchises. And this template may be influencing the industry for a long time to come.

Maybe. *laughs*

Edit: Again, not very familiar with gaming history, but does the Civ series deserve a place? Civ 2 is considered to be one of those gods of strategic gaming and whatnot...

Also, perhaps Portal (Or Half Life 2 I suppose but I havent managed to play that one yet). Though again, it does seem like not nearly enough people are taking the intelligent hints from Valve, so perhaps it's impact is too small to warrant a place, at least for the moment.

Unreal Tournament: Quake may have been the first, but I think UT deserves a mention due to the way that it really popularized and swept the Multiplayer FPS market by storm. Not to mention the extensive Modding and the ability for people to create their own games using the Unreal Engine.

Gears of War: Served as the catalyst for popularizing 3rd person cover-based gameplay.

Dune 2. Way back in 1993. The grand-daddy of all Real Time Stategy games.

"Some key elements that first appeared in this game, but would later appear in many other RTS games, include:

A world map from which the next mission is chosen
Resource-gathering to fund unit construction
Simple base and unit construction
Building construction dependencies (technology tree)
Mobile units that can be deployed as buildings
Different sides/factions (the Houses), each with unique unit-types and super weapons
A context-sensitive mouse cursor to issue commands (introduced in the Mega Drive/Genesis version)" (From Wikipedia)

Those innovations are crucial to virtually every RTS created after Dune 2, it's influence in the genre can't really be understated. This game directly led to the Command and Conquer series, and was the main influence for Total Annihilation, another solid RTS that in turn inspired many other RTS games.

And it looked like this:
image

Bungie's Marathon series. Despite the fact that it never got the reception it deserved due to being a Mac exclusive (in the beginning), it had many firsts (at least to the FPS world) that were incredibly important. This is, I may as well add, in addition to a frankly ridiculously in-depth story that would, without any trouble, give Mass Effect a run for its money (if not, in my opinion, simply make it go cry in the corner altogether).

The first game introduced mouse-look (free look, if you'd like) to first person shooters on computers. It was supposed to feature several more game-modes (such as King of the Hill, Kill the man with the Ball, Tag, etc.) except the small team ended up spending a hilariously large amount of time playing their own game while in development, causing their game's release to be pushed back to December 21st, 1994, and they ended up cutting out all multiplayer modes except for Death Match.

The game also introduced real-time voice chat and dual-wielding to shooters.

Additionally, and this is just a guess on my part, based on the timing and the way it's described: Marathon Infinity's shipping with Forge and Anvil, a map editor/creator and Physics/Shapes/Sounds/Etc. editor that Bungie themselves had used for the later Marathon games, was - similar to the WADs with Doom - likely the beginning of the large-scale modding scene. People could create Total conversions - inserting their own monsters, sounds, weapons, physics, and stories - using the in-game Terminal method of story-telling.

Anyway, just my 2 cents. Please, correct anything I have spoken that is incorrect - I don't wish to spread falsities. But from what I understand, it's all pretty accurate, aside from the vagueness regarding the modding scene.

Pong
Mario
Zelda
Metroid
Starcraft
Quake

While there are games I prefer, I feel these are the one's that made gaming what it is today.

Metal Gear. To my knowledge the first game to say "hay lets not kill everyone in our way."

ThePenguinKnight:
Pong
Mario
Zelda
Metroid

Needs to be more specific than that. There are lots of mario games.

You forgot Doom. <.<
If I need to explain why this game needs to be on the list then shame on you.

Terramax:

ThePenguinKnight:
Pong
Mario
Zelda
Metroid

Needs to be more specific than that. There are lots of mario games.

I mean the character in general, Mario is the face of gaming and one of the most recognizable faces on the planet. More people living in the US could identify Mario and tell you who he is than the majority of the US presidents.

If I had to be specific, Super Mario Bros.

Metal Gear- The first actual stealth based game!

i don't think that deus ex actually had that big of an influence,great game though it was i can only think of one game that ripped i of and that was VTM:B.
However shock2's exclusion is criminal .bioshock ,dead space,deus ex and portal all took "inspiration" from it and they all spawned sequels.that is one hell of a lot of game inspired by system shock2.

The Sims 1? A real life simulator, creating the architects of tomorrow!

AdamxD:
The Sims 1? A real life simulator, creating the architects of tomorrow!

Yes, I guess that would be an influential game. Popularised the sim game for a broader audience, and paved the way for the kinds of sim games you find on facebook and the rest of the web.

TES:Morrowind -The first massive single player game of its size with hand crafted game environments and architecture.A tradition Bethesda still continues today

Dance Dance Revolution. Admittedly, it's popularity has waned somewhat recently, but you can't ignore it's effect on gaming:

First off, it popularized the idea of "gaming as exercise", an idea that lives on in with motion gaming.

Not only that, but it's popularity was tied into it's controller, the dance mat. The success of the dance mat cleared the way for other rhythm-based controllers, specifically, the Guitar Hero and Rock Band setups.

OhJohnNo:
Half-Life...
...While I haven't played it...

You, go, now. No, don't argue, just Steam, now. Ten bucks, you'll thank me later. Hell, fifteen will net you its expansions and Team Fortress Classic. Or forty will- No, damn you Valve, you crafty bastards!

But yeah, seriously, go play it.

Terramax:

Pong - the first videogame ever made. Impossible to not include I guess.

Pong was not the first video game ever made but I believe it was the first commercially successful video game and led to the start of the videogame industry. The first videogame ever is debatable you could say it was the cathode ray amusement device or not until later with william higinbothams tennis for two.

You should probably include Super Mario Bros it was much more influential and important than Mario 64 as it led to a huge slew of platform games being developed and was the game that single handedly revived the industry after the north american crash of 1983.

There is also a load of the original MUD games that established MMO games so these should also be included in fact you missed out a load of old games that pretty much established the various genres such as Adventure which obviously established the adventure game.

I am too tired to list more but a quick search should show you a fair few.

Myst is always on this list, and for good reason. I've been a long time fan of the series (which has run its course by now) but it really did present video games in a new light as a serious art form.

I never did understand what Doom ever did for video games other than to present very rudimentary 3D graphics.

The Sims/Sim City should be on such a list for innovating a new way to play that isn't so much a game as it is a toy.

Ocarina of Time established many action/adventure elements and mechanics (such as lock on targeting) that still exist in video games today. Mario64 would be another contender.

Ultima Online or Everquest would both be good influential video games.

Zork/Adventure (Colossal Cave) were among the first pieces of interactive entertainment and set the mold for adventure game/interactive storytelling today.

At one point I considered Mass Effect as the most innovative, progressive and influential video game series in the last ten years. Much to everyone's distress, however, after Biowaste completely trashed their artistic integrity it can no longer be considered as such.

Then of course there's the great grandaddy of all video games, Tennis for Two.

TLS14:

OhJohnNo:
Half-Life...
...While I haven't played it...

You, go, now. No, don't argue, just Steam, now. Ten bucks, you'll thank me later. Hell, fifteen will net you its expansions and Team Fortress Classic. Or forty will- No, damn you Valve, you crafty bastards!

But yeah, seriously, go play it.

I'm waiting for Black Mesa Source.

No Dune 2 and no DOOM on that list, so it's completely invalid.
That 2 of the biggest genres not represented.

Also sorely missing and not mentioned yet: civilization for the 4X strategy genre.

 Pages 1 2 NEXT

Reply to Thread

Log in or Register to Comment
Have an account? Login below:
With Facebook:Login With Facebook
or
Username:  
Password:  
  
Not registered? To sign up for an account with The Escapist:
Register With Facebook
Register With Facebook
or
Registered for a free account here