Game Innovators Pick Their Favorite Titles

Thanks to Ludology.org for pointing to the Georgia Tech game morphology project, which, although still in development, has asked famous creators and academics for their favorite games of all time. Interesting picks include Warren Spector's kudos for Ultima IV ("Wait, you mean games can be about more than just killing things? Whoa! This game, with its ethical underpinnings, changed my life"), Henry Jenkins' choice of Myst ("not a great game from the perspective of game play... [but influential because] it brought some degree of middle class respectability to games"), and Will Wright's picking of Pinball Construction Set ("[a] heavy influence for me - construction is fun.")

Comments

Re:story counts

[edwdig]

Story can definately hurt a game. Although it doesn't have to be the case, most games with involved stories are much more linear because of it.

Linearity kills replay value. The older Zelda and Metroid games were great because although there was a certain order you were expected to do things in the first time through, you weren't held to that order very tightly. In Zelda 1, it's sometimes easier to do things in different orders. For example, Level 7 is much easier than Level 6, so beating Level 7 first means you can be stronger when you do Level 6. Wind Waker's heavy story eliminated those options, leaving most people with no desire to play the game a second time.

In all the Metroid games, after you beat the game once it will become obvious that there are better paths to take to get upgrades sooner and/or get 100% more efficently. Metroid Fusion had to eliminate most of that due to the heavy story.

Innovation in gaming

[CheeseEatingBulldog]

Innovation in my book is games that did things that were new and fresh, take games like The ancient art of war or the later Dune][, the basis for all C&C/starcraft games of today.
And how can you forget Wolfenstein 3D as a revolution in digital killing...

I gew up playing on a BBC Acorn, but games memories of the original cga Test drive and Paratrooper all made games what they are today...IMHO that is.