Games that, for better or worse, changed the landscape of gaming, invented new genres, had major influences on other games etc.

My shortlist (in no particular order)

  1. Super Mario 64, basically invented 3D platformers, I mean, Nintendo designed the damn controller around that game

  2. Resident Evil 4, all 3rd person action games owe a debt to RE4, and for worse probably, set the stage for brown color palate shooters that dominated the subsequent generation

  3. Doom, the Charlemagne of FPS games, basically every FPS is descended from it

  4. Fortnite, killed the "loot box" style of predatory monetization in favor of the battle pass model that a ton of other games have switched over to, and was a genuine cultural phenomenon

  5. Minecraft, the tsunami of survival crafting games of the 2010s all basically emerged from the shadow Minecraft's popularity

  6. Dune 2, godfather of the RTS genre, no Command and Conquer or Starcraft if Dune 2 isn't a huge success

  7. World of Warcraft, probably the most influential and well known MMORPG of all time, so many imitators tried to take its crown and failed, and was/is a cultural phenomenon

  8. Dark Souls, invented the Soulslike genre, launched the career of Hidetaka Miyazaki, and its considered one of the greatest games ever made

  9. Pokemon Red/Blue, Pokemon is the most profitable media franchise of all time, and Pokemon long served as the flagship of handheld gaming

  10. Breath of the Wild, I kind of wanted to slot Elden Ring in here because I think ER's influence on the open world genre will be felt for years to come but I think its too early to tell. But BOTW was a genre defining open world game, is on the shortlist for one of the greatest games ever made, and even influenced Elden Ring

  • DictatrshipOfTheseus [comrade/them, any]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I was just thinking about M.U.L.E. the other day and reminiscing about playing it as a little kid and how it likely even informed some of my understanding of economics later on (that's not to say I understand it very well). Groundbreaking game for sure. It was also created by a very talented and pioneering game developer Danielle Bunten Berry who also happened to be a trans woman working in a heavily male dominated industry of 1980s-1990's US.

    Edit: Some more tidbits from Berry's wikipedia article:

    Berry was a strong advocate of multi-player online games, observing that, "No one ever said on their deathbed, 'Gee, I wish I had spent more time alone with my computer.'"[9]

    A port of M.U.L.E. to the Mega Drive/Genesis was cancelled after Berry refused to put guns and bombs in the game, feeling it would alter the game too much from its original concept.[10] In 1997, Berry shifted focus to multiplayer games over the Internet with Warsport, a remake of Modem Wars that debuted on the MPlayer-com game network.

    Less than a year after the release of Warsport, Berry was diagnosed with lung cancer presumably related to years of heavy smoking.[11] She died on July 3, 1998. At the time, she was working on the design of an Internet version of M.U.L.E..[5]