I’m saying pokemon. It’s still a dominant franchise today. It’s inspired countless spin offs and copy cats. It made gaming social and the connector for Gameboys a required accessory. Pokemon Go was a covid time revolution. The series is likely responsible for a sizable growth in the gaming market in the late 90s and early 2000s. People who never played a video game can identify Pikachu, and might even have a plushie. We are closing in on 30 years of pokemon being a dominant franchise.
Minecraft
Doom. Was on more PCs than Windows, defined a genre and is still referenced today.
Continues to have a large following, ported to everything thats powered. This is the answer for me!
Really, anything from the Game Canon is a good choice: Mario, Doom, Tetris, SimCity, Civ I, Warcraft, SpaceWar, Zork, that soccer game I don’t remember, StarRaiders.
I haven’t seen anyone mention Zork yet, and it really ought to be in contention here. Pretty much all video games can trace how their narrative is structured through gameplay back to the foundations laid by Zork, even doom. It drew on Colossus, sure, but it built on it so much that it became revolutionary to both games as a storytelling medium and to natural language processing. Really cool stuff.
I see a lot of downvotes from people. Listen, it’s okay to disagree and we can have discussions about it. None of the comments so far are offensive or anything. Tell these people why you disagree.
Super Mario Brothers is what brought video games into the household.
This one game is why every game system was called “a Nintendo” for decades. Yes, other games came along and changed the landscape dramatically, but SMB1 created that foothold into the home.
Exactly my thinking as well. Super Mario Brothers was the game that made “couch gaming” popular for more than just kids. Adults were getting into it as well. I still have fond memories of my dad trying his best at it and thinking sticking his tongue out in the right direction would somehow help his jumping ability.
Without the NES, the couch-gaming scene as we know it wouldn’t exist. And Super Mario Brothers was the game that brought it to the masses.
I’m going to be a little left-field with this one. Yes you could pick some boring obvious answer like Pong, Doom or Minecraft and that’s perfectly valid. I’m not saying those are incorrect.
I’m going to go with FarmVille though. It’s really hard to overstate the impact it has had on the gaming landscape (for the worst, if it needed spelling out). It popularised an all new approach to monetisation and retention systems in games, it heralded the proliferation of microtransactions, Games-As-A-Service models and manipulative skinner boxes designed to extract the most money and attention out of you. It opened the door - by being a “social game not just for gamers” - to an entirely new market whose wallets were previously unavailable. It created this malicious new insight that the best way to make money is not to just make a good game and sell it - it is to create an addiction through psychologically manipulative means, then slowly leech their users’ wallets over time.
FarmVille really fucked us over.
With the same reasoning, Candy Crush. The single game that killed the entire genre of mobile gaming. It validated the idea that mobile games should be casual and it proved there’s way more money in addictive mechanics than there ever will be in quality games.
Farmville also got a ton of middle-aged women into games at a time when gaming was primary seen as an industry for teenage boys
Which was first farmville, clash of clans or candy crush?
I agree with you that one of those manipulative mobile games deserves to be on the list.
Candy Crush and Clash of Clans were both released in 2012. FarmVille was 2009, years earlier. You could call those two the first wave maybe after the genie was out of the bottle, but FarmVille was the great progenitor.
Most of all time. GTFO.
Doom.
I was there way back in the 8-bit times, and yet I still agree. There is only pre-Doom and post-Doom.
One of the proof points would be how the existence of Doom on x86 was the perhaps single most influential factor in the demise of non-x86 home computers (Atari ST, Amiga). We (myself included) just sold off what we had to get PCs.
I can’t think of anything that really competes overall. It could be argued games like Pong, Pac-Man, Quake, Half-Life, WoW, ect. all were pivotal points in gaming, but I don’t think anything has had as direct and widespread influence as Doom.
I’d say Wolfenstein 3D is right there. Without Wolfenstein there wouldn’t be Doom.
Wolfenstein 3D was an evolutionary stepping stone to Doom sure, but you can say that about any game which came before.
Doom really was a huge step up over and above Wolfenstein. Game play, visuals, realism, mood. I remember as a kid playing doom late at night in the dark and actually feeling a bit scared. Nothing before could ever do that.
Yep doom and pong
Bad rats.
DOOM 1993
BattleBorn, Lawbreakers, Skull&Bones and Concord; the biggest f* to AAA (and “AAAA”) industry. You crash, so the Indie rise.
Tetris brought in the normies.
I’d say everyone knows what Tetris is, so that’s a good argument for it.
can someone help me describe ‘most influential’ for me here?
pardon my english
I suppose it means the game that had the largest impact on the gaming industry and/or society in general. For example, almost all games have red represent health and blue represent mana/magic because diablo was super popular and everyone copied it.
ooo i see.
okay thanks for explained that to me… very appreciated it.
and maybe if i have to answer that question i pick, metal gear for stealth games… just my opinion correct me if im wrong
cheers
That question is so broad it cannot be answered.
There’s a myriad of games which are or have been wildly popular (e.g. Mario, CS, GTA, WoW, Minecraft, Fortnite)
There’s games which pushed the borders to new limits (e.g. Tetris, Doom, WoW, VR Chat)
And there’s games which warped the industry or their players (e.g. mobile games, micro transactions, loot boxes)
Half-Life for me. The moment games really became an interactive storytelling medium.
And it’s not just that. Half-Life also spawned Counter-Strike, one of the foundational pieces of e-sports (if not also the modding scene in general today). Not to mention being a precursor to today’s digital distribution model in the industry.
I also said half life. Doom was a leap forward, but Half life actually set a technological and story telling bar, on a budget, in 1998. Many videogames drew inspiration from its innovations, storytelling or themes.
Of course it’s Half Life. Sad to see that people have forgotten the impact it had
