What are your hallmark games? What games have shaped how you view games?

• Ultima IV: Quest for the Avatar - yes I’m older then dirt but I played my first real video game on an Apple IIe and it was a revelation real puzzles and my first choices with consequences
• Tetris - ok so a great game doesn’t need a story or puzzles or anything but good game play
• Gauntlet: Red Elf needs food badly. My first exposure to cooperative gameplay.
• Pokemon:RBY - I love the mechanics and they were the best turn based combat.
• Halo - Great storyline’s really do help but the gameplay was a real game changer for me I enjoyed how if you wanted to you could get through a level in several different ways.
• The Last of Us - Literary Characters that I came emotionally attached to. There’s a reason the first season of the TV series was so good it was because the writing of the game was just so good. I still remember the finale in the operating room when I (Joel really but I was so invested) found Ellie I was angry I was mad and I shot the nurses because I was so mad. I’ve, to this day, never felt so inside a character in any media as I felt then.
• Spiritfarer - My first cozy game and the only game I’ve ever played that made me stop and think about what just happened. I don’t ever want to spoil the game for anyone so all I’ll say is it’s less then the cost of a Happy Meal on steam and worth more for your soul then you can put a price on.

• Morrowind
• Final Fantasy 7 (the original not the aweful Remake)
• Final Fantasy 9
• Secret of Mana
• Secret of Evermoor
• Planescape Tornment
• MegaMan X
• Gothic
• German trading simulators (Hanse, Fugger 2, Vermeer, etc.)
• all the many games on my C64

Based on how many times I have started the game, but never finished

• Stardew Valley
• Terraria

Based on number of hours played

• Modded Minecraft
• No Mans Sky

Minecraft, Warframe and old school Runescape.

Everything else I’ve loved over the years has fallen out of favour with me, but I’ll happily dive into those 3 for a few hundred hours again

I’ve been playing games since the 80s. I wouldn’t call myself a gamer. Here are a few personal hallmarks…

• Crash ‘n’ the Boys: Street Challenge on NES was the first time I had fun playing multiplayer.
• Metroid II: Return of Samus was the first game I was addicted to. Super Metroid is still my favourite game.
• UMKIII was the first game I actually got pretty good at.
• Starcraft. My brother played this and I loved being a spectator, in hindsight I realized that gaming could be a sport that people would watch at this moment.
• Quake and Descent were the first times I got motion sickness playing games!
• Counter-Strike because everyone played it at university.
• FFVII because I never played it and it is apparently kinda famous…

• TIE Fighter
• GoldenEye 64
• Diablo II
• NetHack
• Doom/Doom II
• Descent/Descent II
• Galactic Battlegrounds
• Super Mario World
• Dark Age of Camelot
• World of Warcraft
• PlanetSide
• Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II (yes, it’s my favorite game in the series, fight me)
• Wing Commander: Privateer
• Torchlight II
• Hammerfight
• Carmageddon 2
• Freelancer
• DoomRL
• N/N++
• FreeSpace
• Katawa Shoujo
• Unreal Tournament
• Minecraft
• Cave Story
• FTL
• Dark Souls
• Slay
• Terraria
• Ender Lilies
• The Binding of Isaac (and Rebirth)
• Chivalry: Medieval Warfare
• Dead Cells
• Hollow Knight
• Kerbal Space Program
• Transformice
• Soldat

Star Control 2

Dungeon master 1 & 2 The Secret of Monkey Island
Indiana Jones Fate of Atlantis / Last Crusade
LOOM
The dig Escape from Tarkov The Division Ultima 7 Wing commander series Strike commander Battletech crescent hawks inception/revenge Mech commander Payday 2

I used to have a hard time ranking my favorite games. Often the order would change based on how I was feeling at that time.

That all changed when I found Satisfactory. I no-lifed that game for months. Never before have I felt as though a game had been made for me.

Now my ranking is

1. Satisfactory
2. (a huge-ass gap)
3. Hades 1&2 4-∞. idk like every other game that is conventionally good?

Super Mario Bros 1, 2 & 3
Super Mario World
Mortal Kombat 1 & 2
Wolfenstein 3D
DOOM
Commander Keen
Starcraft
Diablo 1 / 2
Unreal Tournament 2003/4
Counter-Strike
Half Life
Everquest
World of Warcraft
The Secret of Monkey Island
Indiana Jones Fate of Atlantis / Last Crusade
LOOM
Resident Evil 1 & 2
Legend of Zelda 1
Ocarina of Time
Mario Kart (SNES & 64)
Ogre Battle 64
WCW/NWO Revenge
Portal 1 & 2
Grand Theft Auto 2, 3 and 5

Yeah I’m old. Some modern ones:
Breath of the Wild
Valheim
Outer Wilds

Questions like these always reveal the core audience of millennials and older Gen Z.

Playing Minecraft multiplayer in 2010 blew me off my socks and I will never experience anything as intense as that, video game wise.

The legend of dragoon.

Chrono Cross.

GTA-all of them, (all rockstar games)

Gran Turismo-all of them.

Final Fantasy 7,8,9

Metal Gear Solid-all of them. (Except survival)

Minecraft.

DayZ.

Super Smash Bros — I play better when I play to get better and have fun. Worse when I try to win. Was a great lesson in general.

Hollow Knight & Silk Song — art and music and such tight games

Slay the Spire — hedging bets and long term thinking in a way that’s much more nuanced than standard RPGs

Sekiro — like playing an instrument

Dishonored

This was a pinnacle showcase of how interactive a game could be. The sandbox design not only encouraged your creativity but met it beat for beat. This was also the game that made me understand how much world design and atmosphere matter. Making a world feel believable with environmental story telling is incredibly difficult but so satisfying. To this day, not been dethroned.

Team Fortress 2

Balance, class design, character design, game mode design, and a touch of jank; all in the name of what is the most fun. I see this as the grandfather of Deadlock and The Finals; both games I come back to more often than TF2 but who’s DNA matches closest.

UNBEATABLE

Trusting your audience with regards to story telling and leaving things unsaid. Also importance of a banger soundtrack.

Sekiro

Importance of tactility and flow. Quick, slow; quick, quick; slow. Technically a rythm game too.

Z.A.T.O.

A showcase of how little you need to make a game and still have it feel impactful. Also importance of picking a target audience and nostalgia. Also visual novels rule.

NieR Automata

Do NOT **** android women