IGN's Top 10 Most Influential Games

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Originally Posted by MarkRyan

Wha?

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This goes back to a review written by Frog where they basically altered and added in some paragraphs, as well as made I think it was the ending give off a completely different message.

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No more than other publications.

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I'm not trying to just put IGN on the cross here, it is all of them, but IGN is the one I regard as the biggest and the trend setter in the crowd.

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That's how advertising works.

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Doesn't make it any less shit. I mean it's ok to have Ads I understand that but things like the cover the whole site in McDonalds leaves a bad taste in my mouth.[/quote]

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I've never seen this thing, sounds epic.

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Well IGN gets previews some companies don't because they're bigger, more influence, bigger financial penis.

but a giant financial penis does sound epic.

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Originally Posted by Yoshi

That same logic applies with Wolfenstein 3D over Doom. The bottom line here is that it doesn't matter what parameters or logic were used, because IGN's collective industry knowledge is so limited that they cannot possibly get it right, no matter what rules they play by.

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Wolfenstein over Doom was the correct choice. As soon as Wolfenstein came out the industry exploded with clones. Doom was merely a logical evolution and by the time it came out, just a year after Wolf, Wolf clones were already a genre.


Half Life has no fucking business on this list. Period. And I love Half Life as much as the next guy, but it was really just a matter of presentation.

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Originally Posted by Thief Silver

This goes back to a review written by Frog where they basically altered and added in some paragraphs, as well as made I think it was the ending give off a completely different message.

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Well editing and rewrites are common practice and if I were to make a generalization I'd say IGN doesn't edit enough. It's not the fact that they did it that bothered me so much as the edits themselves being in poor taste.

Fair enough, I mean they were certainly very different edits too, aimed at completely changing how your review sounded for the game. I mean editing is fine, as long as you keep the tone the writer was going for, I always thought that was a key rule in editing.

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Originally Posted by Frogacuda

Half Life has no fucking business on this list. Period. And I love Half Life as much as the next guy, but it was really just a matter of presentation.

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People have been talking about how revolutionary and influential Half Life was since the day it came out and I just don't see it either. I loved the game but I don't really see how it was a major industry influence. It was an FPS with a more cinematic presentation than any FPS before it; the entire industry was already moving towards more cinematic games in general.

An influential games list without Street Fighter 2. Let that sink in for a moment everybody. It's a list of the most influential games. The game that defined our generation is not on it.

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Originally Posted by Thief Silver

This goes back to a review written by Frog where they basically altered and added in some paragraphs, as well as made I think it was the ending give off a completely different message.

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Part of an editor's job is to edit copy, especially stuff that comes in from freelance. I didn't play the game Frog reviewed so I can't at all say that the edits were logical or not, but my understanding is that Frog's original text was published in full for the PC version of the game and edited for the 360 version, which the channel editors feel is considerably worse.

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Doesn't make it any less shit. I mean it's ok to have Ads I understand that but things like the cover the whole site in McDonalds leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

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This I can't agree with. Ads are how free publications (and cheap mag subscriptions) survive. Selling ad space, even in the ugly cases of McGriddles, is fine by me as long as it doesn't influence editorial (and it doesn't).

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Well IGN gets previews some companies don't because they're bigger, more influence, bigger financial penis.

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It doesn't have anything to do with a financial penis, just having more readers. I don't think you can expect it to be any different.

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but a giant financial penis does sound epic.

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We agree here.

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Originally Posted by NeoZeedeater

I know mainstream stuff is bound to be included on a purely influential list which is why I rarely complain about the picks on them. However, the top 100 factored in influence/popularity pretty heavily it seems and included most of these games already which is why it's kind of stupid to do an influential list so soon afterwards.

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I think the lists are pretty different in both scope and make-up, though I wouldn't disagree that the timing is odd.

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Originally Posted by Frogacuda

Half Life has no fucking business on this list. Period. And I love Half Life as much as the next guy, but it was really just a matter of presentation.

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I am not real familiar with PC-originated genres to begin with, but didn't Half-Life sort of popularize the notion of doing more than just shooting with a first person shooter? It worked puzzles, platforming and story telling into the genre in a way that's still mimicked (in almost every FPS) today.

I just dare to dream of unbiased media.

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Originally Posted by MarkRyan

Part of an editor's job is to edit copy, especially stuff that comes in from freelance. I didn't play the game Frog reviewed so I can't at all say that the edits were logical or not, but my understanding is that Frog's original text was published in full for the PC version of the game and edited for the 360 version, which the channel editors feel is considerably worse.

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Yeah, it was the tone of it that bugged me not the principle. It took a "fuck this game and fuck anyone who likes it" attitude for a game that does have a following. Reviews aren't to tell people not to like things that they do like.

That was my complaint, not the fact that they edited it. They just weren't respectful to the tone of the review, nor to the readers. I don't like when reviews sound like they have more of a right to their opinion than the readers, and I like it less when my name is attached to it.

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Originally Posted by MarkRyan

I am not real familiar with PC-originated genres to begin with, but didn't Half-Life sort of popularize the notion of doing more than just shooting with a first person shooter? It worked puzzles, platforming and story telling into the genre in a way that's still mimicked (in almost every FPS) today.

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Duke Nukem 3D had plenty of platforming and puzzles in it. That was nothing new. Unreal also had those elements going plus a seamless world and a story. Quake 2 kind of had the seamless world going as well, but it still felt like levels.

Half Life didn't really do anything new, it just did it better and with an immersive presentation. I don't know that there are any "Half Life clones" out there, so I wouldn't call it especially influential at all.

This influential list seems to be a little schizophrenic. Half the games seem to be the first of the genre and half seem to be the popular breakout title of the genre. There are also some important genres entirely absent. Do Half-Life and Wolfenstein 3D both need to be on there when there are no simulation games listed?

Karate Champ was basically the first fighter (excepting stuff like Warrior) while Street Fighter 2 was what every game since then has used as a template.

Similarly, the original Grand Theft Auto was earlier and did most of the things that GTA3 did. Elite could arguably be a sandbox title as well. I defended the importance of GTA3 in the thread about GTA4, but that all depends on how you approach importance - first or most widely referenced?

If by first, here's my list:

• Spacewar!
• Colossal Cave
• Baseball
• Dungeon
• Space Invaders
• Battlezone
• Space Panic
• Utopia
• Karate Champ
• Alpha Waves

If by most influential on later games:

• Baseball
• Night Driver
• Adventure
• Galaga
• Super Mario Bros.
• Tetris
• SimCity
• Street Fighter II
• Doom
• Grand Theft Auto III

The problem is IGN wants to use games they know their readers will have heard of, so they can get a hard-on over "Yeah that game was fantastic."

What they should be doing is going back far and picking out older games some people won't have heard of so that people can go look it up. But we all know people are lazy, and IGN is catering to that.