Comment on The most influential video game of all time - Bafta

chloyster@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

• dfyx@lemmy.helios42.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  I think that one baffles me the most. They make an argument for Shenmue and even if I don’t agree with it being on one, I can somewhat see why it’s on the list. But KCD2 has no right to be on the list at all. As they state themselves, the game is not even two months old. We can’t even remotely say what its long-term influence on the gaming industry will be. Though my money is on “none at all.”

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  • smeg@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Exactly. How can a brand-new game be influential? What has it had time to influence?

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• Azzu@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  Yep this is extremely weird. Public voting is reaaaally bad at this. I’m sorry, but Minecraft has sold over 300 million times. It’s literally what a whole generation of kids grew up with, what shaped their minds massively.

  Shenmue has sold 1.2 million, I had never even heard of it (which admittedly is not a measure of influence, but it does mean something), and while it apparently was one of the first games with such an extensive open world, open worlds in general were already very desired, Shenmue didn’t influence anything really, it just tried to do it on a more massive scale, and even failed spectacularly economically.

  Probably not a person on the world (that does computer games at all) exists who hasn’t heard of Minecraft.

  It’s quite obvious that Minecraft should be ranked higher than Shenmue, but this questionnaire quite obviously only reached a very old demographic.

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  • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    Zero Punctuation as usual gets to the heart of the matter very effectively: youtu.be/g4Dw0Z2Dsts

    That’s for Shenmue 3. He actually made a separate video reviewing the original, but that one covers more of the history and context. TL;DR It has a devoted cult following of people who basically want a very specific type of gaming experience, but the specific game that was the first to give it to them just objectively is not very good at all as an interactive video game, which is why it has never been all that popular outside that little following. Some people trace to Shenmue the lineage of huge cinematic games that emphasize narrative, which I guess could be valid, but even a super-charitable reading shouldn’t put it anywhere near the coveted number 1 spot.

    Oh, you know what happened? I just realized, I hadn’t even read the introductory material and realized it was from a public survey. It’s a “first past the post” problem. Plenty of people had various lists of games they felt passionate about (and you can tell where the boundary is where “I played this game recently and I love it now so it is my favorite” started to distort the placement of some recent games), but anyone who had Shenmue anywhere on their list put it as the number 1 spot. And so, it won by bad voting algorithm. I can almost guarantee that each respondent was only allowed a single choice for most influential game.

    I actually think the list, with some exceptions, is remarkably accurate. It definitely isn’t perfect. There are also some big omissions, notably in old PC games that had a big influence or fleshed out new genres that have mutated since then, or gone extinct or something. I think they’re just outside of too many people’s memory at this point.

    Off the top of my head:

    • Ultima or Dungeon Master
    • King’s Quest or Monkey Island
    • Civilization
    • Battlefield 1942
    • Halo or Goldeneye
    • Counterstrike
    • Warcraft 2
    • Zelda 1

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    • pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      Thank you. By big question from this list was “WTF is a Shenmue?”

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    • Coelacanth@feddit.nu ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      Oh, you know what happened? I just realized, I hadn’t even read the introductory material and realized it was from a public survey. It’s a “first past the post” problem.

      First past the post is remarkably shit isn’t it. I think your analysis is completely right.

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