Which games had the most NEGATIVE influence on the industry?

[mbd30]

Here is a list of albums that supposedly ruined music. http://www.spike.com/blog/top-10-albums-that/91538

 

What would you include in an analogous list for video games?

[Cebus Capucinis]

E.T. for 2600!

[Austin]

Nearly any game that popularized the ideas of "realistic" team-based first person shooters, forcing the player through pointless training sessions and annoying pop-up windows, and.. I don't know, my mind just went blank. I know there's another one.

[Koopa64]

FMV

 

Though then again, not all FMV games were bad. They just left a nasty stigma after real 3D hit the market.

[DickNixonArisen]

Honestly, every game has negative and positive influences. A game about, I don't know, something horrible like squirrel-raping might have a menu or targeting system that worked really well and got adapted into successful RPG's. It follows that any game with an overly aggressive, generically angry, hulked up man with a big gun is probably a negative influence in some way. They might be good games and have some other positive influence, but they don't do anything for the culture. We need more diverse protagonists, and I don't mean overly aggressive, generically angry black women with big guns, but rather protagonists (and other characters) with more complex motivations and more natural reactions to the world around them and each other.

 

I'm a dungeon master, and my experience can include long descriptions of hacking and slashing, blood running, and dice rolling, but it also encompasses deep-character building in the world of NPC's. I have to make humans and non-humans that are believable, flawed at times, non-stereotypical, and memorable. I've seen some little charts here and there, not in official product, but in supplements, that help you start this process. Basically they start you off with your basic class and race - Dwarven Warrior! Now, a dwarven warrior would be described with a set of adjectives that are thrown together by fantasy tropes. Tolkien did a lot of it, and D+D itself did a lot more, and everyone else who produced fantasy had a hand in it. Through that, we "know" that a dwarven warrior is Loyal, Short, a drinker, Tenacious and Stoic. Basically, chickybaby with a beard and axe. (Is she short?) DND also uses something called an alignment system, which ranks your morality Good, evil or neutral and your belief in authority/order as Lawful, Neutral or Chaotic. A Chaotic good person is anti-authoritarian, independent, don't box me in, but does the right thing. A Lawful evil person doesn't break the law, rules, or even his word if he can help it, but is a bad person and does evil things Within the context of the law. So you have basically four factors that generate a fantasy character. This one is A Dwarf (certain connotations) a fighter (certain connotations) who is also Chaotic (doesn't listen to orders) and Neutral (is self-centered or follows a code that doesn't deal with traditional morality)

 

So your character can be That. It can be generic, and the dice will still roll, and people won't notice how... samey it is, typically. However, all you really need to do to make the character better is Add or subtract adjectives, and make sure his or her behavior reflects this change and is somewhat self-consistent. Let's say he's also... Gay. How does that fit in with his other traits, does it conflict with them, does it make him have conflict with his society or not? Are there other homo dwarves? Are they hated outright, or accepted covertly while refuted publicly? Perhaps he is also Not tenacious, and this weakness puts him at odds with others like him. Does he hide that? Learn to cope by emphasizing other attributes? Make it into a strength somehow?

 

Anyway, these are very simple questions and while they can be expanded into a memorable, believable character that adds tasty flavor to a world, they can also be summed up in a single paragraph without much work. They're very simple, very powerful rules.

 

 

WHY CAN'T VIDEO GAME WRITERS DO THIS?!?!? WHY ANOTHER SPACE MARINE OR AMNESIAC SAVIOR?

[Herbarius]

Dragon's Lair

[Reaperman]

In my head, the most negative influences are generally good and popular games that spawned generations of worse copycats, steering gaming down bad roads for some time to come.

 

Warcraft makes my list. I played the hell out of this one. There were RTS games before it, but warcraft was a 'mega rts' and immediatly after its release it seemed half the games available on PC were RTS games. Luckily we've mostly pulled through the sea of RTS games, and the few that are coming out now are much more thought through than the lot shoveled out back in the late 90's.

 

GTA III. I've never understood the draw to the game, but the '3d sandbox' and more specifically the '3d crime sandbox' have become major genres. It seems designers are now often relying on sandboxes for replay value more than solid game design or well crafted plot.

 

Mortal Kombat. The 90's were about fighting games (thanks street fighter II). A lot of them were about style and skill, and were pretty fun to play too, but Mortal Kombat was really only about gore. It's not so bad to have a franchise go a bit over the top. But it spawned numerous ripoffs that generally copied its style, but with much worse gameplay.

 

Counter strike. Today we live in a world of semi-realistic, squad-based FPS games, headshots and teabags. I think the current Battlefield and CoD successes can thank FPS fans created by counter strike. Thanks, Counter Strike.

 

Halo. How many 'space marine'-themed games do we need? Thanks to the success of Halo, we've got a whole bunch. "Hello unnamed space marine #4827, we're in trouble, why don't you just go fix it all for us."

 

Dance Dance Revolution. The curse of DDR has spread far and wide. Even worse than just watching my fat rear bouncing around on a pad to music sung by a teenage japanese girl, I think we can blame a whole ton of bad karaoke, guitar and band games on DDR. At least it's over now, right?

Edited June 16, 2010 by Reaperman

[Chickybaby]

Interesting perspective Dick.

 

I'm 5'4, Ukraianin, short enough but not *that* short and I am fairly slender with green eyes. I also am fairly proficient with real weapons. However I would probably be more Elven then a dwarf for the nature, preferring to be solitary away from most humans, animal loving, healing thing.

Now, as to that beard...

 

Basically, chickybaby with a beard and axe. (Is she short?) DND also uses something called an alignment system, which ranks your morality Good, evil or neutral and your belief in authority/order as Lawful, Neutral or Chaotic. A Chaotic good person is anti-authoritarian, independent, don't box me in, but does the right thing. A Lawful evil person doesn't break the law, rules, or even his word if he can help it, but is a bad person and does evil things Within the context of the law. So you have basically four factors that generate a fantasy character. This one is A Dwarf (certain connotations) a fighter (certain connotations) who is also Chaotic (doesn't listen to orders) and Neutral (is self-centered or follows a code that doesn't deal with traditional morality)

[figgler]

Just about everything for Playstation. That's what killed gaming's soul.

[Herbarius]

Warcraft makes my list. I played the hell out of this one. There were RTS games before it, but warcraft was a 'mega rts' and immediatly after its release it seemed half the games available on PC were RTS games.

 

Well, I don't quite agree on that one. I would put Warcraft next to Dune 2, the "almost, but not yet there" generation of RTSs. It was Command&Conquer who really kickstarted the genre (see how many of the early RTS games were C&C clones), and Warcraft II for the warcraft-style gameplay.

[mbd30]

Just about everything for Playstation. That's what killed gaming's soul.

 

If anything wounded gaming's soul it is PC gaming with its glut of generic first person shooters that you play against strangers online and DRM. Now the same annoying aspects of PC gaming have spilled over onto consoles.

[Hatta]

I'm going to say Myst. My favorite genre growing up was adventure games. Real adventure games, with characters, and plots, and puzzles that made sense in the context of a story. Myst changed all that. Myst is more like a logic puzzle book with pretty pictures than interactive fiction. Yet it sold millions. Why? People have no taste I guess.

[carmel_andrews]

Interesting that no one said any 'realistic' pr0n type game for the 2600, even if most of them were simply variants of standard gaming genre's but with sexual/pr0n overtones

 

Not played them though as i've not had the pleasure of a 2600/vcs (am i missing out)

[Chickybaby]

Anyone who is turned on by square non realistic looking pixels arranged on a screen ie 2600 pron games, probably has far worse negative influences in their life then that. I have yet to see a 2600 game that looks exactly like real life - pray tell CA where have you found those? Inquiring minds would probably love to know, lol. Truly, if 2600 pron looks real, you need to get out more instead of trying to get off.

 

Interesting that no one said any 'realistic' pr0n type game for the 2600, even if most of them were simply variants of standard gaming genre's but with sexual/pr0n overtones

 

Not played them though as i've not had the pleasure of a 2600/vcs (am i missing out)

[carmel_andrews]

I was being flippant cb...think about it for a minute, can a 2600 'realistically' portray a pr0n game (or any gaming system for that matter from that period , to the extent (as you put it) for someone to 'get off' on it....And anyone who say's that they got off on strip poker by artworx for the a2/a8 and c64 needs help immediately)

[Reaperman]

Interesting that no one said any 'realistic' pr0n type game for the 2600, even if most of them were simply variants of standard gaming genre's but with sexual/pr0n overtones

 

Not played them though as i've not had the pleasure of a 2600/vcs (am i missing out)

I almost wish there'd be a fairly mainstream adult title with some kind of influence on the game industry. Something to really shake things up a bit.

 

Heck Dreamweb, my personal favorite game, had a couple risqué bits in it that were handled very well. Though outside of me, it's had no influence on anything.

Edited June 16, 2010 by Reaperman

[Nukey Shay]

Pretty much any system is capable of FMV (including the 2600). Resources are as plentiful as the programmer makes them.

 

Didn't Andrew once post a 2600 rom that generated a "Wifey" clip before?

[Emehr]

Doom. The game industry has a bad case of diarrhea. And that diarrhea is the first-person shooter.

 

Both consoles and computers were inundated with clones upon clones of Doom-style games. And when that space marine shit started getting old, the party shifted to WWII (now we get space marines in 3rd person shooters! Yay!). So now we have Call of Honor Duty to Clancy Medal Warfare 2 I Think I'm Gonna Throw Up Now.

 

First-Person Perspective games with some substance (e.g. Metroid Prime trilogy) == good

 

First-Person Perspective games featuring sumguy with a big weapon where the goal is to find bigger weapons and shoot the shit out of everything that moves == can we move on already?

 

I bought Doom for the Mac a year ago at a thrift shop for its historic value but to play it would feel about as pointless as Farmville.

[CGQuarterly]

As much as I hate to say it, I agree about Doom. The first person shooter took over a huge part of the market after that, and other genres seemed to die off because of it. Most gamers are not "hardcore" gamers, and they chose to spend most of their time and money on FPSes. Not much has changed since then. The biggest sellers are Halo, Gears of War, Call of Duty, etc. After Doom caught on, adventure games and American-style RPGs died a slow death.

 

My other vote goes to EverQuest.

 

Depending on how Kinect and Move go in the next few years, the Wii might have to get lumped in as well.

 

Of course none of this matters to me because I don't play anything but retro games.

 

Chris

[Rik]

According to Nolan Bushnell, Grand Theft Auto,all of 'em, but more of a bad influence to kids.

Edited June 16, 2010 by Rik

[kool kitty89]

E.T. for 2600!

Yep, Pac Man may have hurt too, but it sold well at least (though the overproduction meant Atari still took a big hit personally). There are far worse games than ET, but it was tied to a very popular film, heavily promoted, and cost Warner a ton to do... (in all fairness it was Warner's fault and not Atari, Atari Inc had already attempted to get rights to the game for a reasonable price, but Universal didn't go for it, but Warner then made a deal with Spielberg for a ton of money -several million iirc- and agreed tot he condition of releasing the game by that Christmas -the high production being he minimum amout Warner calculated could be sold for a profit at the license cost)

 

 

 

 

Nearly any game that popularized the ideas of "realistic" team-based first person shooters, forcing the player through pointless training sessions and annoying pop-up windows, and.. I don't know, my mind just went blank. I know there's another one.

 

Hmm, forced tutorials and realistic/simulation type games don't go hand in hand... that's just a more recent trend in general.

 

Realistic type games have been popular from pretty much the beginning, especially with Flight Sims (and combat Flight Sims) on the PC and other home computers, followed by simulation style racers appearing int he early 90s. (as graphics improved realism did likewise)

 

First person, on foot action games emphasizing realism are more recent, but still in the same vein to some extent, especially compared to combat flight sims. (but there still aren't FPS games that focus on the level of realism and detail as the most hardcore combat flight sims AFIK)

 

FMV

 

Though then again, not all FMV games were bad. They just left a nasty stigma after real 3D hit the market.

Yeah, but is that more of a stigma after the fact, or actual negative impact on the industry during the height of popularity of that genre. (and what FMV actually refers to is a bit vague -interactive movie type games in general? only interactive movie type games using live action? any games using a high percentage of live action clips interspersed with gameplay?)

 

 

GTA III. I've never understood the draw to the game, but the '3d sandbox' and more specifically the '3d crime sandbox' have become major genres. It seems designers are now often relying on sandboxes for replay value more than solid game design or well crafted plot.

San Andreas is the best of the series, pretty much went stale after that... Never owned any of the series, but played a lot with friends.

 

Mortal Kombat. The 90's were about fighting games (thanks street fighter II). A lot of them were about style and skill, and were pretty fun to play too, but Mortal Kombat was really only about gore. It's not so bad to have a franchise go a bit over the top. But it spawned numerous ripoffs that generally copied its style, but with much worse gameplay.

Have you seen Eternal Champions? (talk about gore... MK looks like mostly blood by comparison to some of those finishing moves, and that came only a year after MK1)

 

Halo. How many 'space marine'-themed games do we need? Thanks to the success of Halo, we've got a whole bunch. "Hello unnamed space marine #4827, we're in trouble, why don't you just go fix it all for us."

Umm, ever heard of Doom? How about Quake? Quake 2? Unreal perhaps?

Yeah, Halo was really the first to start the whole space marine thing... (hell Quake II and Unreal even introduced Female player characters)

Edited June 17, 2010 by kool kitty89

[Chuck D. Head]

According to Nolan Bushnell, Grand Theft Auto,all of 'em, but more of a bad influence to kids.

I tend to agree about GTA in general, but in this case the craze for 3D crime sandbox games actually inspired a great game in Simpson's Hit and Run, which is easily the best Simpsons game and one of my favorites. It also spawned smelly turds like 50 Cent Bulletproof. Pew. Morgan

[DickNixonArisen]

While it's undeniable that anyone working in a medium is directly inspired by previous works, there's another factor at work. It's not quite collective consciousness, but more like the simple fact that people are a lot more like each other than we like to think we are. It's the same reason the same jokes are created in different places all across the world. What this means for games is that some types of games and some game content was inevitable. If GTA was never made, a similar game would have been created eventually. True originality is a phantom.

 

This doesn't mean that the game that would have been GTA would have been the same, or that there's no point in trying to influence anything for better or worse - it simply means that individual games probably don't have the impact that we attribute to them. Hitler wasn't the whole of Nazism, nor would it have failed to exist without him.

[DickNixonArisen]

easily the best Simpsons game

 

 

Like that's hard...

[xg4bx]

In my head, the most negative influences are generally good and popular games that spawned generations of worse copycats, steering gaming down bad roads for some time to come.

 

Warcraft makes my list. I played the hell out of this one. There were RTS games before it, but warcraft was a 'mega rts' and immediatly after its release it seemed half the games available on PC were RTS games. Luckily we've mostly pulled through the sea of RTS games, and the few that are coming out now are much more thought through than the lot shoveled out back in the late 90's.

 

GTA III. I've never understood the draw to the game, but the '3d sandbox' and more specifically the '3d crime sandbox' have become major genres. It seems designers are now often relying on sandboxes for replay value more than solid game design or well crafted plot.

 

Mortal Kombat. The 90's were about fighting games (thanks street fighter II). A lot of them were about style and skill, and were pretty fun to play too, but Mortal Kombat was really only about gore. It's not so bad to have a franchise go a bit over the top. But it spawned numerous ripoffs that generally copied its style, but with much worse gameplay.

 

Counter strike. Today we live in a world of semi-realistic, squad-based FPS games, headshots and teabags. I think the current Battlefield and CoD successes can thank FPS fans created by counter strike. Thanks, Counter Strike.

 

Halo. How many 'space marine'-themed games do we need? Thanks to the success of Halo, we've got a whole bunch. "Hello unnamed space marine #4827, we're in trouble, why don't you just go fix it all for us."

 

Dance Dance Revolution. The curse of DDR has spread far and wide. Even worse than just watching my fat rear bouncing around on a pad to music sung by a teenage japanese girl, I think we can blame a whole ton of bad karaoke, guitar and band games on DDR. At least it's over now, right?

 

 

i think you nailed it .

 

 

i think sandbox games have potential but they're all based around the gta "mission" mindset. unfortunately i don't know how you break away from that though.

 

 

i think you have to pin the current fps craze directly on halo. stuff like counterstrike, doom and unreal were really only popular among pc gamers. halo took it totally mainstream.