TCW 218 - The 100 Games Redux - The Revival

[Intro Music -- Airplane Mode]

Welcome to They Create Worlds. I'm Jeffrey and I'm joined by my co-host Alex.

But, yeah, thank you, thank you very much, it was really cool. It was really cool to have that happen.

One other thing that I do want to address, and this actually goes into the first couple of pieces of feedback we're going to look at as well. This is a somewhat arbitrary decision, but it's a decision that I made, and it's my podcast along with Jeff's, and so, you know, you'll just have to deal with it. And that is that these do have to be actual separate game releases. They don't have to come from a big company. They can be very indie as well, but we're not counting mods, even if they're total conversion mods. As part of this, because even though in a way those are separate games, they are not playable without the game they were built in, so we are not considering those separate games. However, there are games that we did put on the list with a thought to the mods that were created within that game. So a game can be influential because of the mods that it spawned, and it can represent the mods it spawned as well, but we don't give separate entries to mods, which is just a admittedly completely arbitrary decision that we made. Someone else wants to make a list like this and include mods as separate games if they’re total conversion kind of mods, that is 100% valid, and I have no problem with that. So with that said, I want to get into a couple of comments that we got that play into that last point. First of all, from Brandon Ambrose:

“I want to make the argument that Counter-Strike is an important addition to this list. With the proliferation of esports, especially in the last 10 years, to not name one of the foundational games would be to leave out a very influential mark in history. Counter-Strike, even though it was a mod of Half-Life, has endured and exists in essentially the same form 25 years after its release. Along with StarCraft, it is a staple of amateur and professional leagues.”

So Brandon, I mean, I agree with all of what you're saying there, and I imagine you do as well, Jeffrey. You've dabbled a little bit in Counter-Strike, haven't you?

Absolutely. But no, I mean, we agree with everything that you're saying there. It's an incredibly influential game in team shooters, in kind of more realistic approach to first-person shooter multiplayer, with more realistic weapons and kills and all of that kind of thing. The only reason it's not on the list is because it started as a mod, just as I was saying. So when we have Half-Life on the list, which we do, that is also inclusive of the incredible influence of Counter-Strike. Again, this is a bit arbitrary. Obviously, Valve did not create Counter-Strike, though they quickly hired a lot of those people. But we've made the decision that if it's piggybacking off of another game, whether that's a total conversion mod or an official expansion, which also piggybacks off a game, then we're not going to count it individually. It will be inclusive in the game that spawned it. So Half-Life is on our list, and you can consider Counter-Strike to be on the list by virtue of being a total conversion mod for that game. Now, Brandon goes on to say a little bit more:

“If you need to make room on this list, I would consider removing Arma 2.”

Fair.

“It is a very popular game in the modern military simulation genre of shooters. However, I believe this is still a fairly niche genre.”

I would agree with that.

“A lot of the teamwork aspects present in the game are covered by Battlefield 1942.”

Absolutely. Which, of course, is on our list.

“And myself do not see a very clear line between Arma 2 and the tendency towards increased realism that is seen in many modern shooters.”

Yeah. All very fair. But it's our policy combined with your last sentence that kind of gets us back to it.

“You could also take the slant that Arma is more influential for the fact that it was a very moddable base that multiple popular games were built off of. DayZ, PUBG.”

Which is on the list.

“But I'm not sure if that qualifies it for a spot.”

That's fair if we are considering each individual mod as a separate game, which, as I said before, is a totally fair way to approach a total conversion mod. But we are considering DayZ to be inclusive of Arma. But, Brandon, you are not alone out in the world here on this point, because we also got a second email about this, and I will totally butcher the, I'm presuming, Polish name, Matusz Dabrowski, so, so sorry. Who said,

“I feel you should drop Arma 2. The game is more of a battle simulator, just more realistic. A more realistic version of Battlefield.”

Exact same thing that our other friend was saying.

“It's niche and popular with people who are in love with military sims. If I remember correctly, it got on the list because of PUBG--”

Which, yeah, I mean, really, DayZ, which he does go on to say.

“Arma is known for being a very moddable game, and it was famous for spawning a couple of interesting mods around 2010, 2018. The most known was DayZ that led to PUBG, as the game at first started as a mod to a mod.”

Yes.

“DayZ also popularized the whole survival game. The genre, that is not as popular as it once was. I feel this is why Arma 2 landed on the list, because of its historical significance of spawning other genres, not because it itself was very important.”

Yeah, that's very true, and the reason we're being reminded of this is, of course, as I said in our previous episode, we deliberately did not listen to the episode on the old list so that we could come back to the list fresh and not be biased by any preconceived notions we had from the first time around. Of course, Arma 2 was on there because of DayZ. In a brain fart moment when we were recording the episode, I wasn't thinking about that, and I was talking about how it was a tactical shooter and all of this stuff. So I agree with both Matt, if I can call you Matt, and Brandon, that Arma 2 doesn't really do a lot, doesn't cover a lot of new ground that Battlefield 1942 didn't already cover, but it really is in there because of the mod DayZ. So just as Half-Life is inclusive of Counter-Strike, Arma 2 is inclusive of DayZ, which led to this whole survival fad, which led us through a roundabout way to Fortnite, which is, of course, one of the most popular games today. For those reasons, I'm comfortable leaving Arma 2 on the list, though all of those points were very excellent. Thoughts, Jeffrey?

“I really don't think Symphony of the Night should be here, and that's coming from someone who adores Castlevania.”

“The only justification for its inclusion in this video is that it's one of the two games that make up the Metroidvania genre name. But Symphony came out a decade after Metroid 1.”

Absolutely. 87 versus 97.

“So it's not like it really helped co-create the genre. It was definitely influential in some ways, but it wasn't really much of an innovator in its genre.”

I would say that's fair.

“The game design movement that led to Metroidvania was broadly contained within the eight-bit era, so why not go with another eight-bit title? If you really wanted to make it another Castlevania game, you could jam Simon's Quest into that S-O-T-N-shaped hole, given that it's an eight-bit game in the same franchise and broadly in the same style. But I'd probably replace it with Zelda 2 if I had to put another Metroidvania in that slot. I'd rather keep Metroid or replace it with Super Metroids, since in the long tail of the genre's history, those two games had a much greater influence on the form modern Metroidvanias usually take. But during the first wave of Metroidvanias on the NES, I'd argue Zelda 2 was much more immediately influential, and it's not nearly as redundant as Symphony of the Night.”

Great comment there. Thank you for that. Jeffrey's never going to be upset at someone bringing up Simon's Quest, I know that.

This has come from someone who beat the game on his own, figuring out all the little things with no guide, no things, back in the dark ages of the late 80s, early 90s. So many hours.

Yeah, because of course Zelda 2 has, like it has the RPG elements, right?

Indeed. So another thing that I want to address here, and again, there are a couple of comments that went towards this. I'm kind of grouping some of this stuff thematically, is that we were definitely a little too... Dismissive's the wrong word, because we weren't deliberately being snobbish about it, but we definitely hit a blind spot, let's put it that way, towards more casual games on platforms that we personally don't necessarily play games on as much, such as cell phones. And we probably also didn't cover the gamut of indie gaming well enough. I mean, we did cover some indie gaming stuff, because so many indie games are Metroidvanias or Roguelikes, and we have now Super Metroid, previously Metroid, on the list, and we have Rogue on the list, and so that plays a lot into that. But from a spread of indie games perspective, because influence isn't just games or game mechanics. It's also influence on the business, influence on business models, influences on how the industry changed. We really didn't provide a lot there. We got a couple of comments on this. The shorter one came from PhantomHarlock78 on YouTube, who said:

“Two suggestions. Geometry Wars, because gave a great boost in the indie scene in the beginning of Xbox Store, and Unreal Tournament--”

Not an indie game, but I'm mostly doing the comment now for Geometry Wars.

“--because the multiplayer, but especially the engine.”

So that's the first comment that we kind of got on this, and the other comment was from Matt Lewandowski, who went into both indie games and mobile games in some detail. He had this to say about indie games.

“Indie games have exploded in the past 10 to 15 years and now have an undeniable influence on console, mobile, and PC gaming. The indie renaissance has changed how games are made, has expanded and amplified diverse voices in games, has brought about new aesthetics, mechanics, storytelling techniques. Has launched entire publishing arms from Adult Swim games to Devolver Digital, and has led to some of the most popular games available across all platforms. I don't think you can tell the history of modern gaming without talking about Stardew Valley or FTL or Braid. As I heard one person put it, 20 years ago every teenager wanted to be in a band, now every teenager wants to make an indie game.”

I think that's a fantastic point right there. Not one that we were deliberately avoiding. I thought we were covering indie gaming by having some of the precursors of indie games, like the Metroidvanias and the Roguelikes and all of that. But I think Matt has pointed out a blind spot in that we were kind of not looking at the business side or the spread of indie gaming as a cultural force so much, because Rogue explains why we have Roguelikes and Metroids explain why we have Metroidvanias, but neither of those games explain where indie gaming came from, how indie gaming itself got kind of big, if that makes sense.

“My vote would be to add 2010's Super Meat Boy to your list. A game that showcased what could be done by a tiny, two-person team, a game that helped pave the way for indies on modern consoles, a game that has, according to estimates, sold millions of copies, a game that has lasting popularity today, a game that was featured in THE, all caps, indie game movie, indie game the movie, and a game that truly embraces the outsider perspective on style and storytelling that in many ways represents what it really means to make an independent game. My vote is to add Super Meat Boy to the list.”

Well, Matt, I love your vote. I'm happy to be a part of it, and I am glad to say...

I never played that one, so I have no idea. I can't really say much about it.

“Let's face it. Mobile games need more love.”

I would agree. That's definitely a blind spot. I do not really play mobile games. I don't know about you, Jeffrey.

[Chuckles]

“On an international level, mobile games are played more than any other platform. They change the way that we think about games and play games. Would, quote, casual games, unquote, even be a term without mobile games?”

Depends on whether... Well, maybe yes, maybe no, but certainly not as widespread.

“Mobile gaming has brought more older gamers, more international gamers, and more female gamers to video games than any other platform.”

I would definitely agree with that.

“I'm on the fence here if the list should include Snake or maybe Flappy Bird, but ultimately, I think 2009's Angry Birds needs to be on the list. It is the mobile game that really defined what a successful mobile game should be. Simple, concise, gameplay, low difficulty, easy replayability, cute graphics, and brought mobile games out of the Nokia dungeon and into the mainstream. On top of that, the Angry Birds series literally has BILLIONS, in all caps, of downloads and has launched movies, toys, animated shows, and theme parks. It is insanely successful in a way. It is the only way that few console or PC games could ever dream of being, and really skyrocketed mobile games to the front of mainstream gaming. So even if it isn't my favorite game, I do think Angry Birds merits inclusion on your list.”

Yeah. So, I'm basically taking, uh, we're basically taking Matt's recommendation here wholesale. Because I agree, I mean, you know, Flappy Bird, it's a meme game. You know, meme games are probably a little important to kind of represent the crazy ways in which mobile games can spread, but at the end of the day, it was a meme game. And I don't want to put a meme game on the list, and nor does Matt, uh, you know, by his email. And Snake was the first mobile game that really got a lot of international attention. Of course, pre-smartphone, but on Nokia devices. But, yeah, as Matt agrees with, I think, mobile gaming on dumb phones was never going to be much of a thing. Because dumb phones with their dumb keypads and their dumb screens. And their lack of ability to do very sophisticated apps on them. That was never going to be a mainstream thing. So you could say, hey, Snake drew attention to mobile gaming. But at the same time, without the smartphone, does mobile gaming even matter, right?

There's one other game that I want to put on this list as well in this vein. It's not an indie game, and it's not a smartphone game, or at least it was not originally a smartphone game. But there's another element that goes into these games that I think is perfectly encapsulated by the game Happy Farm. Now, if you have not heard of Happy Farm, that's because you're not Chinese or Russian, because those are the markets where the game started really spreading like crazy after its 2008 release. But that's because a little company called Zynga basically copied it wholesale to create a little Facebook game called Farmville that took over the West. You know, you have the argument over, you know, originator or popularizer. But in this case, Happy Farm really is both, because even though Farmville stole its steam in the West, it was huge in China, and China is a huge market. You know, we can't just define popularity by what was popular in the United States or Europe. So in this case, it makes sense to put Happy Farm, and the thing that Happy Farm and games like it kind of added to this mix is unfortunately part of the business model that I'm not as big a fan of. Same with why we put MapleStory in. Which is we are going to limit the amount of time you can play the game by having built-in timers that are very long. Then we're going to wear down your resistance to giving us money through the impatience of waiting for these timers to cool down, and we are going to give you ways of bypassing those timers that ultimately cost you money.

[Chuckles]

Hrmm... Otherwise, anxiety takes over the whole person?

So there you go. Yes, keeping our emotions balanced. Very important. We learned... We learned that from Pixar.

[Unreal Tournament Anouncer]

UTA: Double Kill!

UTA: Tripple Kill!

UTA: Multi-Kill!

UTA: Flack-Monkey!

Indeed. I'm happy to add Unreal Tournament to the list. I would agree that that is a little bit of an oversight not having it on there. And uh yeah, let it be so. Let it be so. Let it be known. Let it be so. Now, most of the games that we're adding to this list are more modern games. Which kind of makes sense, because as we're trying to figure out what's popular today and what led there, the thing that's going to shift the most is going to be the more modern stuff, because first of all, as new games become popular, the games that influence those suddenly become more important. But also because we learn more about those games, because there haven't been as many interviews done about them. There haven't been as many tell-alls. There haven't been as many books. Since they're newer games, we don't necessarily always realize their importance until studies start to be done. And they haven't been studied to death as the games of the 70s and 80s and early 90s have been.

Indeed.

“I'd love to see Zork added to the most influential list. It wasn't the first, but surely the most influential, and the genre was massive in the 80s.”

Presumably he meant surely not the first text adventure, but most influential, and the genre was massive in the 80s. Then we had our good friend Dale, Quarterpast himself, as he says himself, self-proclaimed secretary treasurer of the They Create Worlds fan club, who also had to write in with, as he said:

“Only one editorial suggestion. Out of all 100 games selected as most influential, if my count is correct.”

Dale's dry sense of humor there.

“There is exactly one text adventure.”

Yes.

“Sure, it's a biggie, granddaddy of them all, Colossal Cave Adventure, but that's it!?”

Dale's even older than us, so, you know, he's going to bring the old school of the old school here.

Definitely.

We'll revisit that in a bit.

“Leaving poor Maniac Mansion to carry the bulk of the text graphic adventure game mantle. Now, I can already hear the counter-argument here.”

It's almost like he listens to the show, Jeffrey.

There are dozens of us! Dozens! Bonus points if you get that reference.

“And it's been nearly 40 years since a text adventure charted on a list of top-selling game software. But considering all of the tendrils of influence--”

Love that.

“--that stretch into video games from Dungeons & Dragons, the countless times it's been said it all goes back to D&D--”

Indeed, we’re about to do a livestream October 12th on how it all goes back to D&D.

“Can we get some of that love for Zork? Born on a mainframe, and very likely the first game to implement a virtual machine, and Zill, which in turn spawned Infocom, who were insane enough to self-publish, how can Zork not be on the list? Without Zork, is there even an Infocom that manages to Trojan horse its way into Activision, allowing Bobby Kotick to wrest it out of Bruce Davis' hands? I'd be willing to wager, even though it would be impossible to disprove, that every single game developer of the 1980s at some point was eaten by a Grue. Zork, and by extension Infocom, kicked the bar up to the ceiling when it came to narrative structure in games to a level that wouldn't be seen again, maybe, until Half-Life. I leave that to your consideration.”

Well, thank you, Dale. You have made a compelling case. The case also got a little bit of a boost. As I was actually researching our D&D panel thing that we did at DragonCon. When I realized, I mean, I had to know this in the deep, dark recesses of my mind somewhere, but when I realized that MUD is called Multi-User Dungeon, specifically--

“Love the show, great work, big fan, et cetera, et cetera. But I have to write in to say I think it was a mistake to cut Baldur's Gate from the list of most influential RPGs. The narrative focus, scope, and beloved writing, plus the real-time with pause mechanic you mentioned, carried on through games like Planescape,--”

Which, by the way, Planescape Torment is, I said this at our panel as well, is my favorite RPG of all time, hands down. So, you are preaching to the choir a little bit here, Zachary.

“--from which we got Disco Elysium.”

Which I also adore because it was so much like Planescape Torment. So, yes!

“Knights of the Old Republic, including two regarded as another of the best RPGs.”

Zachary and I need to be friends because I also adore Knights of the Old Republic 2 and actually prefer it to the first game, other than the fact that it's a half-finished mess at the end. But until that half-finished mess at the end, I love the philosophical examination that they were trying to do around the Force that apparently nobody else likes because ‘The Acolyte’ got cancelled. Anyway.

“Mass Effect, which you just did episodes on, and Dragon Age. Baldur's Gate paved the way not just for the Bioware tradition, but the games that put Obsidian on the map. Pillars of Eternity was a Baldur's Gate homage that helped kickstart the video game crowdfunding craze.”

Very true.

“While Divinity Original Sin 2 may have moved away from real-time with pause, there's certainly a lot of Baldur's Gate in the early stuff, and the brand plus layering clearly found an audience with Baldur's Gate 3.”

Oh yes they did!

“Which will undoubtedly shape the future of the role-playing genre. That's a lot of history that I think gets overlooked by cutting Baldur's Gate, and while there's obviously a lineage, I don't think you automatically get that history from Ultima Wizardry et all. Seems to me too important to leave that out.”

Yes. Yes. Yes to everything.

[Laughs]

That's insane.

“I absolutely love the podcast.”

Thank you.

“I listened to your 100 Games redux. The only disagreement I have is removing Resident Evil. I remember playing this on PS1 when it first came out in 1996 and being blown away with the amazing graphics of the time. It was the first and probably only game that gave me a jump scare when the dog jumped through the window.”

Yeah, that's a big one.

“I also loved the wonderful gameplay. It was the first game that I played that gave you limited ammo resources. Of course, since it was a huge commercial success, many people played it and surely influenced game developers. It came out three years before Silent Hill 1 and surely influenced it.”

For sure.

“Also, Jeff said to replace it with Silent Hill 2, which came out in 2001. I believe Silent Hill would not exist without Resident Evil.”

Yeah, you know, Resident Evil... [Sigh] I mean... Did go back and forth on this one a little bit, and Jeff kind of made a passionate argument for getting it off the list.

Yeah...

Anywho, so... so thanks for that. I'd love to hear more, but we'll go with status quo for now, even though obviously there are... there are strong opinions on both sides. So we'll follow up on that one. Definitely follow up. Another one, this uh... we didn't get a formal uh email written about this, but of course, when I'm not here with Jeffrey on our podcast, I play the role of everybody's favorite co-host, as Karl likes to say, on the Video Game Newsroom Time Machine. So Karl's a good friend of the show as well, and we've done some joint stuff together. He told me that he was particularly disappointed that King's Quest got taken off this list. I know Dale was feeling a little bit of the.. the adventure game doldrums as well, as we said earlier. His argument, which is a kind of good one, is it's like, it was the first game that you really wanted a PC to play. The PC was not a gaming platform. There were games on the PC. Very few PC native, mostly ports from other platforms. King's Quest was made specifically for the PCjr. So it was a PC first kind of game, and even though the PCjr flopped, it became a flagship platform when Tandy released the Tandy 1000, which was the first home PC that really emphasized multimedia capability while maintaining full compatibility with the traditional business software. That was an angle of it that I hadn't fully considered. As Dale said, we did kind of gut the adventure genre a little bit. Even though the adventure genre itself has been a dead end, mostly. I realize there's still adventure games made, but mostly a dead end. There was certainly a lot of pioneering in narrative structure and puzzle solving that happened in adventure games. So we might have been slightly overzealous in the number of adventure games that we cut. Of the ones we did get rid of, it feels like King's Quest is the one that makes the most sense to bring back because of that additional element that it was crucial in the process of turning the PC into a gaming platform. Which it had not been in the early days of the industry, and obviously is just about the only game in town now. Sorry, Mac users. So yeah, I think that little extra bit of context kind of pushes it, nudges it over the edge.

All right, King's Quest, you can come back on the list.

Wait, what?

Finally, you know uh one other person I want to highlight who sent in some stuff is Ethan Johnson, friend of the show, who of course wrote a detailed and thoughtful post on all of this. Some of his stuff we did, some of his stuff we didn't do, but he's always thinking about these things. We definitely got to represent there. So this isn't the end of the episode because we have a few more games to very quickly talk about that didn't get any feedback. But in terms of the feedback portion of this episode, we're going to end with Ethan Johnson. Thanks to everybody who sent feedback. We read most of it on the air. There might've been some that we didn't, that we had to cut for time, but we considered every message that came in. We always appreciate receiving feedback. Feel free to keep leaving those YouTube comments. Feel free to keep sending emails to feedback at theycreateworlds.com. We look at all of it. We appreciate all of it. Its nice when we can include the community. We're not streamers other than our one-year thing. So we don't have as much community interaction as some people do, but we love every opportunity we get for it. So I'm so glad that we did this thing this way for this episode. We didn't plan it as usual, but also as usual, it kind of all worked out in the end. So here now is Ethan.

"'Tis I the Venerated,--"

Hhe puts in quotes.

“--and often invoked Ethan. Many congratulations are in order for reaching year nine of the podcast. Only one more to go before you can say you've done something consistently for a decade, which few of us can say.”

That is, you know, when you put it that way. I mean, yeah, I mean, I understand 10 years is a period of time, but it's like, yeah, a decade. Wow.

“I feel I can shoulder some responsibility for this episode. Out of my ever searching mind, I send Alex a list of games from the top 20 lists that there was a dedicated episode of the podcast breaking down or not. Most have been touched on, if not quite to the depth of episodes like Alone in the Dark and Civilizing Sid Meier. At Gaming Alexandria, we've also done a yearly hall of fame called Video Game Notables, which Alex always votes in.”

I love doing the Video Game Notables. And uh if you have strong opinions on video game preservation, video game history, and what games are worthy of being highlighted as notables, Gaming Alexandria Discord is free to join, free to participate in, and it's a great place. So I encourage everyone to join there. I'm a very solid contributor, Jeff tends to come just when he's summoned, but we're both there and it's a great community.

“Our criteria is different from the top 100 influential games list, so there are things that may belong in one list and not on the other, though there's already been significant overlap in the 30 games we've inducted, plus two non-games in one person. Anyhow, since we're here, I wanted to present a few arguments for inclusion on the top 100 list that I think fit Alex's criteria. Moria, 1976. I think this is a better encapsulation of the early D&D influence from Plato rather than the Dungeon. Though we do not know much about its original incarnation, it created the real template that influenced the wider commercial world. Combining the 3D of Plato flight games, online multiplayer, and adding a social element even greater than the Dungeon's leaderboard through parties. Moria encapsulates much of the primordial side of what Alex wanted to communicate with Neverwinter Nights.”

Um, yeah, I agree with that. Let's do it. Let's do it. Yeah, I wanted something from Plato to represent, and this is a case where I went with the first thing to do something broadly. But I agree that this is not necessarily a place where the first to do it matters so much. And yeah, the Dungeon was a top-down, single-player dungeon crawl, so it did not in every way take advantage of what that computer could do. Whereas Moria did a lot more of that, and is more applicable to what went on to happen with Wizardry and whatnot. So, uh, yeah, let's do that.

“Sokoban. In the vein of Shiriki being on the list purely for the volume of its inspiration, you may consider the block pusher Sokoban as important in the same vein. No, not as many games are pure block-pushing games, but its influence is permeated from puzzle to action games in subtle but monumental ways. From Ocarina of Time to the sliding puzzle challenge of Mobile Classic 3's, Sokoban's deceptively simple setup has permeated modern gaming in a way Tetris wishes it did.”

This is one I'm not going to take you up on, but I agree with you totally. There is a question, and it may be a question that we revisit in a later redux, you know, when we approach our second decade of doing the same thing consistently, about games with individual mechanics like this that have become so pervasive. And I think there is an argument that block-pushing is such an incredibly pervasive, just general game mechanic, that you could put Sokoban in here just like you put Donkey Kong in practically just for the fact that it had you jumping. There's a strong argument here. I'm just not sure I have space for it right now at this moment. But what do you think, Jeffrey?

It is, and our listeners may recall that that is the one thing that we preemptively did change in the first episode. It was mostly cuts, but we did preemptively change from Ultima to Ultima 3 in that episode.

“Next, Double Dragon. Renegade really didn't establish the template of the beat-em-up Double Dragon did. Its conceit of fight all enemies before continuing on as a cornerstone of modern games with narrative-based encounters. The co-op, not the first, with Gauntlet and Rampage as important predecessors, was a perfect fit for the dynamics of the arcade, where getting to the end of an experience became ever more important. There's no way that 1989 would have had such a great year for American coin-op had Double Dragon not laid the path.”

100% agree. We haven't officially made that change in the previous episode, but we kinda soft made that change. We said, we're taking Renegade out, and it's most likely we'll put Double Dragon in its place. This is a case where being first is not nearly as important as being the populizer, because Renegade didn't have all the elements, and the main element that it was missing that is very important is the move forward, pause to fight a group of enemies, and move forward again. That famous arrow beckoning you to the next screen once all the enemies were gone, which was repeated by so many beat-em-ups that followed. That's much more important than that. More important than Renegade, which took place in a fixed kind of two-screen stages where you could move back and forth around them while fighting enemies. 100% agreement there.

“Next, Diablo.”

And yeah, we were bad. That was very bad.

“Deferring to our good friend Jimmy Mayer, you can see much of what's in modern gaming in Diablo.”

Like loot drops, and gacha gaming, and all of that kind of stuff.

“Some of it is exploitative. Some of it is just good game design.”

Absolutely. Because it's one of those things where it can be used for evil, but it is not inherently evil.

“It bridged the gap of RPGs and action games to create the modern concept of RPG elements and progression hooks. Whether this or Diablo 2, it really was bad of past Alex to not put one of these in there.”

It was. This is another time where I need to put the knuckles out and get wrapped, because oh my goodness. You could argue between Diablo and Diablo 2 here. Because while Diablo had all of the elements, Diablo 2 is what made it into a fine-tuned machine.

--for any kind of multiplayer game.

--people who go like, I'm giving up on Diablo 3 or Diablo 4, and I'm going back to Diablo 2. If that's not telling, I don't know what is.

[Laughs]

“Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare. Medal of Honor did what it does in single player,--”

Yes.

“--but nothing even comes close to how Modern Warfare defined modern multiplayer.”

Very true.

“In-match and long-term progression has been the hallmark of popular multiplayer action games ever since. Modern Warfare made leaderboards matter to players. Nuff said.”

That's very true. The multiplayer progression, the leveling your character, and the progression of your character was something that was not really in first-person shooters before. Not this type. You had a few team-based, class-based shooters that kind of did that, but nothing like what Call of Duty 4 uh was doing. And yeah, that is incredibly important. That's all we need to say. In the show notes, we will have Ahoy's video, Love Ahoy, one of the best YouTube personalities out there, on how Modern Warfare changed first-person shooters forever. And yeah, if you want more, go there. But absolutely, we're putting Modern Warfare on this list. Finally:

“Demons Souls. Loathe as I am to admit it, I don't think I'm going to be able to I don't like these games.”

I generally don't either.

‘The industry has been radically influenced by the Souls series.”

Absolutely.

“Not simply for its marketed difficulty, but the approach to combat in general, which has emphasized commitment to blows and strategy. Almost every big new action game with Melee has some Souls elements in it, and the indie Souls-like paradigm has become a new favorite. Though Dark Souls sold more units, Demons Souls has basically all the elements, save for a more linear structure.”

The Souls genre was basically invented whole cloth, in Demons Souls, I agree. Then he says again:

“Again happy anniversary, hope DragonCon was good, and I look forward to annoying you both further into the future.”

Likewise!

“Ethan Johnson, Friend of the Show”

Yeah, you know, obviously when we had... when we had done this uh five years ago, Elden Ring hadn't come out yet. Now, there, there's way more influence that the Souls games have had besides just Elden Ring being so popular. As he said, the idea of having to run through sequences and time your shots, know what bosses are going to do, and time your shots for the moment to be most effective and get out of the way when they're doing their most damaging blows, that has permeated more and more in games altogether. But this is definitely an example of Souls games were on my radar when we did the first list. But... even though it was influential then, I mean, it could have gone on the list then. I think this is a good example of how in the subsequent five years, that influence has just exploded exponentially. Elden Ring is... is a great example of that. Just how insanely popular that game was and how it drew in so many people that had never played Souls games before that are to a degree a niche genre, though they are a very profitable and successful niche genre. So yeah, Demon's Souls, absolutely. Let's get that in there.

Yes. So the whole tower defense genre and the MOBA genre really get their start primarily through the modding scene of Warcraft III, but not just the modding scene for Warcraft III. The very fact that there was this emphasis on hero units within an RTS is what really made a lot of that possible. Uh yeah, Warcraft III for that reason. Again, as much for the modding as anything else. Speaking of mods, we already have Quake on the list, and Quake, therefore, is inclusive of the classic Team Fortress mod, which was kind of the beginning of class-based shooters. But Team Fortress 2, which was its own separate release, took the class-based shooter thing and took it in the hero shooter direction by not only having different classes, but starting this idea of having different personalities. Who can forget the classic spy YouTube video?

[Laughs]

I know I can't.

Jeffry

Why?

I’ll find this for the short notes.

Yesh...

So on and so forth.

So there it is. Those are all of the new entries. Obviously, we'll put a complete list in the show notes. We'll reform the entire top 100 there in the show notes so you can see it more easily. Obviously, we could easily take this to 110, 150 games and put so many more titles on here. There's definitely still titles we left out. We're happy to hear further feedback on all of this. I would say we'll probably address any further feedback we get as part of our live stream, because it'll be fun. It won't necessarily change the list at that point. But if you have more feedback on the new entries, on the old entries, keep sending us emails, keep posting on YouTube. We do read those, and we'll probably engage with that some on the live stream on the side as we're doing our uh three-episode recordings.

Looking forward to seeing all of you then. But we do still have a couple of episodes that need to go out before that time. I think for our next one, I've been inspired by our revisit of this list to right some wrongs even further and do an in-depth look at Diablo and Diablo 2. Which we'll probably do as a two-parter. We've covered them, of course, because we've covered Blizzard some, but we haven't done an episode just dedicated to those games, and there's enough information out there, especially with the fine work of David Craddock and his ‘Stay and While and Listen’ series on the creation of the first two games, that we can definitely get a lot of good in-depth info, and since we were so bad in leaving it off this list, I want to continue the redemption tour by going into even more depth on how important this game is.

Check out our show notes at podcast.theycreateworlds.com, where we have links to some of the things that we discuss in this and other episodes. You can check out Alex's video game history blog at videogamehistorian.wordpress.com. Alex's book, They Create Worlds, the story of the people and companies that shaped the video game industry, volume one, can now be ordered through CRC Press and at major online retailers. Email us at feedback at theycreateworlds.com. Please consider supporting us on Patreon at patreon.com/theycreateworlds, but don't use the iOS app. Please help get the word out by leaving a review on your favorite podcasting service. It does help us. We also now have the podcast on YouTube. Hello, YouTube. Intro music is Airplane, by Josh Woodward, found at joshwoodward.com/song /airplane mode, used under a Creative Commons attribution license. Outro music is Bacterial Love, by Roland Music, found at freemusicarchive.org, used under a Creative Commons attribution license.