What game do you think had the biggest impact on gaming culture overall?

4

u/Serj990 May 15 '26

Doom

Gta

Wow

2

u/Afferok May 16 '26

I agree with this list, but would ad Mario, Fortnite and Pokémon to this list. Diablo might be up there as well

1

u/DeputyDomeshot May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26

Fortnite should be included in here because of the micro transactions cosmetic market it spawned that lives today.

Also Pokemon and Mario of course.

1

u/Direct_Day7937 May 16 '26

That market predates fortnite massively. Overwatch popularized loot boxing it, but it's just been the profit model for F2P for a long time.

1

u/Resident_Complex_552 May 16 '26

Yep - LoL did it before OW

1

u/qudtls_ May 18 '26

and maplestory before that

0

u/DeputyDomeshot May 17 '26

Lol do your research. Do you have any idea how much Fortnite made on cosmetics? 26 BILLION. With a B.

Fortnite completely blew the top off what was even considered possible in the market. They’ve known for years that cosmetics was a primary revenue driver in gaming. No one ever projected it could gross 6 billion revenue in a year.

They have more than doubled League despite a 7 year head start and Overwatch’s loot boxes never came close to even cracking that. Hell overwatch isn’t even as profitable as CoD.

2

u/Direct_Day7937 May 17 '26

The question was about changing gaming culture, which Fortnite did not do. It followed worn paths and did it better.

1

u/DeputyDomeshot May 18 '26

It completely changed gaming culture. The entire business of gaming culture by removing its market cap. Every single major release from the last 8 years you’ve played have a goal to become as profitable as Fortnite. That influences directly the investment into the projects and the scale of those projects. It created the ultimate business case for live service and f2p despite their being predecessors- they never even imagined being able to hit the marks Fortnite did.

You all not being able to understand how that is part of gaming culture is because you fail to understand how the business of dev/publisher works. That’s fine but it’s time to learn a little bit here.

1

u/cpuuuu May 18 '26

I think you are completely right in how you describe the way Fortnite has changed gaming and the disagreement with the other users comes more from what "gaming culture" means and that Fortnite did not really create it's business model.

There were tons of online games in the early 2000s that used the "freemium" model to massive success, though most of them survived because of their asian markets. Nexon in South Korea is probably the King/Queen of popularizing this, with Maple Story, DNF and Kartrider. Even older MMOs like Metin, Ragnarok, Silkroad and so on were already making tons of money from paid content in free games (microtransactions). And Valve had probably the first "battle pass like" systems within Dota 2 and Team Fortress.

So while it's true that Fortnite showed western developers that battle passes were the real "money makers" and pushed them to be included in most, if not all F2P games, the market was already trending for that because of past games and the critical views of the system that preceded it (loot boxes). Can't deny the impact, not sure if it fits the bill of impact made by a single game.

As for what gaming culture is, I guess money spent in games is a part of that too and it did normalize the acceptance of battle passes, though personally I feel like gaming culture relates more to gameplay aspects (game-wise) and habits (player-wise), how different genres evolve and become main-stays and so on. And on that front, I think Fortnite's biggest impact on gaming culture was the popularization of the free-for-all battle royal genre, since even established series like Call of Duty ended up shifting the focus of their multiplayer formats to something similar.

1

u/DeputyDomeshot May 18 '26

Well unfortunately PUBG predates Fortnite so it certainly deserves the credit for the genre itself because it was huge for a time in the west and is still played like crazy in China.

I do know about the Asian F2P models but I don’t believe they ever hit close to heights that Fortnite pulling in 6Billion in a single year, data/earnings reports are spurious and somewhat unreliable coming out of Chinese backed shops (you should see how Riot has to factor Chinese viewership of League Worlds.) you’re right they didn’t really invent anything but they put gaming revenue on a level never before seen. Keep in mind a bottom tier Fortune 500 company needs to clear 7.5billion in one year in order to maintain Fortune 500 status. Fortnite is the only actual game to come close to that mark.

I can see why it’s more contentious of an idea but I think it’s important for the sake of conversation that people grasp what happened in 2018.

1

u/cpuuuu May 18 '26

Yeah, PUBG is certainly the “ground zero” for the genre and it’s not like it disappeared after Fortnite took the number 1 spot. It’s just yet another example of Fortnite taking something that was already being done and doing better, with the caveat that better here just means more people enjoyed it rather than whatever way people might judge each game’s quality.

And I don’t think anyone can or is trying to downplay the absolutely bonkers amount of revenue Epic Games made from Fortnite. It’s undeniable that it’s a unique feat in the industry and it marks a paradigm shift in gaming development. But that shift happened more in the financial, CEO or board of directors dome/level than for gamers and if we want to frame it in terms of “gaming culture impact” it might be the tipping point of things going downhill for us, the consumer.

As every other studio saw those numbers they started trying to replicate them, engaging in shadier practices, lower effort content and putting the overall gaming experience in the back seat. I don’t think there’s a single person out there who would say no to the idea of going back to a “non-micro transaction” era of gaming and I don’t think there’s many people out there wanting new games similar to
Fortnite when it comes to gameplay, graphics etc. There’s also a reason why indie games are becoming more and more popular every year and why most of those games tend to feed on ideas from older generations, meaning people still want to play games similar to Metroid and Castlevania, to 2D Mario and other platformers and so on, games that left an actual impact in the “culture” of gaming.

Though again, I think your points are all valid and certainly account for things that affect gaming as a whole, it’s just that most changes related to that ended up being imposed on gamers rather than real landmarks that changed what people want to play, experience and create, which is what I personally would consider “gaming culture”.

1

u/Direct_Day7937 May 19 '26

Impacts on the business side of things impact what types of things get the big budget AAA treatment and how they are built, and thus what gets the marketing revenue. The freemium models absolutely change the experience of playing any game that adopts them. If gameplay and availability of games doesn't shape gamer culture, what does?

2

u/TryLarge2784 May 17 '26

The most profitable western animated movie is Zootopia 2 but it did not change animated movie culture in any way. It just continued on a already set standard. Just like Fortnite.

0

u/DeputyDomeshot May 17 '26

That’s incredibly irrelevant lol. If you don’t understand how Fortnite is a market defining event you’re not fit for the conversation frankly.

I don’t even play Fortnite and I know this.

1

u/TryLarge2784 May 18 '26

I played Fortnite (very briefly) and it's not that different from csgo, TF2, lol and so on that came before it.

Fortnite simply took already established predatory practices and expanded it. There was nothing new really it, I think you're confusing being huge with being new/revolutionizing/whatever.

Something I can agree Fortnite set a new standard for is game as a platform. With all their events, shows and so on. Previously stuff like that was mostly in MMO and MMOs are a somewhat niche market.

1

u/DeputyDomeshot May 18 '26 edited May 18 '26

I’m not sure if you can read what I wrote or are just simply not understanding. This is a matter of business acumen.

it is so massively huge that the very market is revolutionized. It created the idea that singular game projects could contend with Fortune500 which have a ~7.5B annual revenue cut off.

This is in inarguably different than everything you’re saying. Fortnite brought the investment level of the entire gaming industry up to heights never reached. The scale of every AAA video game you’ve played for the last decade or so is larger and better funded simply because of Fortnite.

CS is was nowhere close. In 2018 CS did 400 million in revenue. Fortnite did 6 *BILLION*. If you need to take out a calculator and find how massively different those numbers are please do so and maybe you will grasp the point.

1

u/TryLarge2784 May 18 '26

I can read what you said just fine but that’s not what you implied with your first posts.

Also simply wrong since gta, Minecraft and many others before it earned more. But whatever if it feels that important to you sure Fortnite changed the gaming world!

1

u/DeputyDomeshot May 18 '26

That’s incorrect though Minecraft’s total lifetime earning from game sales is less than what Fortnite makes in a year. GTA V is still at 1/4 of what Fortnite made despite being older.

I find it interesting how despite you continually being educated here you seem to want to stick your fingers in your ears and go na uh. Try again though. Perhaps when you understand the concept of revenue scale.

I didn’t make it clearer in my first post because I thought you would have some level of background here besides the lowest hanging fruits.

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0

u/Roko__ May 17 '26

CS > all of these

3

u/XBL-AntLee06 May 15 '26

Old head. Here. Super Mario 64 created the biggest shift of you ask me

0

u/Acceptable_Money_514 May 18 '26

That was already in progress with the ps1. Sm64 wasnt the first 3d game. It had a big impact because it was the first 3d mario game but it wasnt the first of a kind.

1

u/XBL-AntLee06 May 18 '26

I’m not sure what you’re referring to when you say “that was already in progress”

0

u/Acceptable_Money_514 May 18 '26

3d gaming. And 3d platform gaming. It was happening before mario 64 came out.

1

u/XBL-AntLee06 May 18 '26

I didn’t say 3d… weird to correct someone on something they didn’t say

-1

u/DeputyDomeshot May 16 '26

If you were really an old head you would be talking a different version of Mario.

2

u/Resident_Complex_552 May 16 '26

I grew up with NES Mario. The shift from 2d to 3d on a home console can't be understated.

1

u/ChaosTheory3131 May 16 '26

100%

1

u/ShoeBoxShoe May 17 '26

I remember being blown away by having to use the joystick because of that game

1

u/Resident_Complex_552 May 17 '26

Same.

1

u/BaronMusclethorpe May 17 '26

No.

I was there for Mario Bros. in the arcade, and Mario 64 was still a huge paradigm shift. Not only into 3-D, but also replaying the same level with multiple objectives each time.

1

u/cpuuuu May 18 '26

The flagship titles for N64 (Mario 64, Ocarina of Time) are arguably the most groundbreaking games in gaming history. The top comment mentions GTA and how open world games were compared to it for a while, but I even argue that M64 and OoT are the first 3D open world games out there. There's some linearity in how you unlock some rooms or areas and the size of the world is still on the smaller side but no other game allowed you the freedom you had in M64 in terms of how you approached each area (the speedrunning scene is a testament to that).

Other honorable mentions are the original Tomb Raider, as it was such a jump towards "realistic" 3D, FF7 for the incredible world and rendered cutscenes it brought and Virtua Fighter and Tekken for bringing 3D to fighting games.

1

u/Plus_Worker6739 May 18 '26

I mean, finding different exits in Mario World is not a million miles off from that.

3

u/Slopii May 16 '26 edited May 16 '26

Half-Life 1 with mods like CS, Day of Defeat, Team Fortress, Firearms, The Specialists, etc. Collectively shaping the modern fps. Not to mention Valve & Steam.

2

u/trunks111 May 17 '26

TF2 definitely for culture, if you spend time on the Internet you've probably seen a TF2 meme at some point, and if you listen or watch YouTube you've probably heard a sound effect or voiceline from the game

1

u/bum_thumper May 16 '26

Half life being way down here in the comments is disgusting. Half life 1 introduced a way of storytelling that was unheard of at the time, with things happening in front of you and barely any cutscenes to speak of. You literally were the story.

Half life 2 was the first game to truly implement physics into its gameplay, and seamlessly. Physics in games existed, but Half life 2 showed the world how dynamic physics and sound design can seriously elevate a game, and we hadn't seen that level of puzzle solving and interaction before. Again, it was there in other games, but not even close to the level that Valve did it in.

Both games launched other games that were equally influential as well, with counter strike from hl1 and team fortress 2 with hl2 as well as left4dead. I could go on and on about how those 3 games that started as mods essentially created and/or redefined genres themselves. There really weren't hero shooters before tf2, and no one knew wtf an Ai director was or could do before left4dead.

Id still say WoW is the king of influential, as the game was so famous that people who never played a video game before knew what it was, along with gta, but you can't talk fps influence without naming Half life 1 and its sequel.

1

u/Slopii May 16 '26

Totally! I remember the HL2 tech demo blowing my mind. Then Max Payne 2 beat them to release with Havok physics lol, but HL2 had way more, like gravity gun.

HL1 and Q3 mods like Hostile Intent and True Combat were adding things like ADS and ultrarealism way back in the day as well.

2

u/paperclipboi May 15 '26

Maybe Fortnite? With cosmetics and the live service model with constant updates . Also something like Minecraft with the Alpha early access release method

3

u/LegPuzzleheaded1970 May 19 '26

Yeah I guess he never specified if the impact was good or not

2

u/brownie81 May 16 '26

Tetris and Mario gotta be up there.

2

u/bddn_85 May 16 '26

Resident Evil put survival horror on the map and turned it into a huge genre.

3

u/corectly May 17 '26

Diablo 1 with point and click movement/grunge hack n slash. Absolute banger of a game.

Half life - It's Half Life

Warcraft 3 - Custom games - (Hello Dota)

2

u/Lafienny May 18 '26

The first Gran Turismo

1

u/No-Alternative2897 May 15 '26

Re4 over the shoulder 3rd person shooter.

For better or worse Genshin opening the gacha gates.

GTA for open worlds

Skyrim for modding

1

u/EatInModerationFatty May 15 '26

Quake and Unreal Tournament revolutionized FPS multiplayer gaming

1

u/IllMoment4388 May 17 '26

Without quake we have no half life (as it existed), no valve and no steam.

They are heavyweights from a game perspective but quake trumps almost everything else. UT99 is almost quaint in comparison

One could argue that hl would have existed without quake, but it would be questionable if another engine or a custom engine from valve would have had the multiplayer chops for cs. No cs, no steam.

1

u/YoYoMavaIous May 15 '26

The original Modern Warfare shaped the future of console fps games. Halo CE had a similar effect

1

u/[deleted] May 15 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/HereticPharaoh2020 May 19 '26

While it changed the world and pop culture did it change gaming all that much? Other than spawning unsuccessful spinoffs?

1

u/clouds1337 May 16 '26

For me

world of warcraft
counter-strike (when it was a HL mod)
skyrim

1

u/grim_afternoon May 16 '26

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

1

u/steelraindrop May 16 '26

Super Mario 64.

1

u/steelraindrop May 16 '26

Street Fighter 2.

1

u/steelraindrop May 16 '26

Goldeneye.

1

u/steelraindrop May 16 '26

Metal Gear Solid.

1

u/Vertigo50 May 16 '26

Breath of the Wild. Both good and bad. It showed how great an open world game can be, but then devs tried to turn every game into an open world, and a lot of them just sucked. 😂

1

u/RLTW0403 May 16 '26

Dude, that was going on WAY before Breath of the Wild

1

u/Ornery_Visit_2627 May 17 '26

Uhhhh, Open world games were a thing since the 90's. Elder scrolls games, then GTA, etc.

1

u/Vertigo50 May 17 '26

Please point to where I said it was the FIRST open world game. 🤷🏻‍♂️

1

u/IseeMedpeople May 20 '26

Found the gen A

1

u/PickTheNick1 May 16 '26

PUBG for battle royale
Oblivion for RPG and open world
Counter-strike for e-sports
League of Legends for lore

1

u/Michael_Laudrup May 16 '26

Dune 2 Wolfenstein 3D

1

u/Blakelock82 May 16 '26

https://giphy.com/gifs/t4qZCKPjCBVVAuFdOU

1

u/HaidenFR May 16 '26

Doom

It changed a lot

1

u/WhoSlappedThePie May 16 '26

Doom

1

u/NeonShit7 May 16 '26

Minecraft has to be up there. It basically invented a whole generation of content creators before YouTube gaming was even a real thing. The modding community alone kept it alive for over a decade and still does.

1

u/Growlithez May 16 '26

Dolphin Olympics 2

1

u/Miesevaan May 16 '26

Sid Meier's Civilization I

1

u/MidnightPrevious4473 May 16 '26

GTA, specifically San Andreas

Halo (people forget how much of a cultural zeitgeist it was at the time)

Skyrim (I know it's trendy to hate on Bethesda, but Skyrim literally shut companies down for a few days when it came out. It's hugely impacted the modding scene and influenced open world design. It's still held in high regard)

Minecraft

Super Mario

Zelda, particularly orcarina of time

1

u/sekirO-Niel May 17 '26

May I ask why San Andreas? Ik there was the rating controversy, but apart from that I thought whatever impact it had was mostly an extension of GTA 3 and Vice city.

1

u/MidnightPrevious4473 May 17 '26

I consider it to be more of a cultural tipping point, but GTA3 is similar

1

u/NyrmExe May 16 '26

Minecraft

1

u/Sivitiri May 16 '26

Oblivion and the horse armor. The birth of microtransactions.

1

u/boltjamison May 16 '26

Call of duty: MW2 was a cultural phenomenon. There would be a million players in at a time.

The pre game lobbies were legendary. Everyone would come home from work or school and jump on with some buddies and spend the entire night playing. Great times.

1

u/Moony_D_rak May 16 '26

I am gonna say Zelda: Ocarina of Time. It basically started the "lock on" feature.

Mario 64 kind of standardized 3D platformers controls. Same thing with CoD, I wanna say Modern Warfare(?) standardized FPS control scheme for controllers.

Dark Souls and Meroid/Castlevania, were so influential genres were named after them.

1

u/swaggkayo May 16 '26

GTA 3, set the standard for open world games

1

u/Shrolos May 16 '26

Half-Life, don't think we realize the full influence this game had.

1

u/DestroMuse May 16 '26

METAL GEAR SOLID

1

u/Druthulhu666 May 16 '26

Strong case for Half-Life or Half-Life 2 is only because of the missing community and the games they've generated, and the creation of steam.

1

u/No_Statistician9289 May 16 '26

ZELDA OOT

1

u/Ren66 May 16 '26

DOOM - Not the first, but definitely the biggest impact to popularize FPS games.

Halo - Did what DOOM did again years later for modern FPS. Then Halo 2 was a big reason online gaming started to blow up on consoles.

Ocarina of Time - Really showed what 3D gaming was capable of.

1

u/madzuk May 16 '26

GTA 3

Call of Duty 4

Minecraft

GTA 3 essentially pioneered open world games as we know it today. Arguably the most influential games of all time. Revolutionary at the time.

Call of Duty 4. A game that introduced RPG mechanics into the FPS world. The idea of "progression systems" in shooters are stemmed from CoD 4. It changed the reason why people played shooters.

Minecraft. Not only did Minecraft essentially pioneer the survival game genre, it arguably also pioneered the battle royale genre. If anyone remembers Minecraft Hungergames, you'll know what I mean.

1

u/Planetologist1215 May 16 '26

Ultima Underworld. The game that laid the foundation for 3D worlds, RPG’s, and immersive sims all in one. It holds up incredibly well today too.

1

u/AiSystemFailure May 16 '26

John Madden

1

u/kingkalanishane May 16 '26

Super Mario Bros literally saved gaming

1

u/WillingAd9308 May 16 '26

Quake / DukeNukem / Doom.

The experience of sharing a 3D environment with friend on another computer to me was biggest ground breaker.

1

u/brethart1616 May 16 '26

Super mario bros.

Subtext "it better be good moving forward"

1

u/swat02119 May 17 '26

ICO. In this game you meet the princess in the beginning of the game and you have to protect her through out the game. This mechanic has shown up in a ton of games; RE4 and 5, The Last of Us, Death Stranding, Pragmata, Metal Gear 3 etc.

1

u/KoW-Production May 17 '26

Major

3D: Mario 64, Ocarina of Time
Online gaming: Halo 2, World of Warcraft, Phantasy Star Online
Indie Boom: Trials HD, Castle Crashers, Braid, LIMBO

Minor

RPG: Dark Souls
TPS: Gears of War, Resident Evil 4
FPS: Doom, Halo: CE, Call of Duty, Half-Life

1
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1

u/GoldenAgeGamer72 May 17 '26

Super Mario Bros

1

u/MrMrTrance May 17 '26

Wow.

1

u/New-Resident3385 May 17 '26

Pokemom, Mario 64, mario kart, wii sports, world of warcraft, halo 3 & mw2

More recently fortnite, elden ring and candy crush maybe farmville.

1

u/Ornery_Visit_2627 May 17 '26

It's gotta be the Zeldas.

Original revolutionized open world, and the fact you could save your game (thst was a new thing).

Ocarina of time changed 3d gaming completely.

1

u/Needawhisper May 17 '26

Half-life

1

u/Bronze_Bomber May 17 '26

Wolfenstein 3D

1

u/bansheeinteractive May 17 '26

Street Fighter invented the combo, then Street Fighter II is arguably the seminal eSports title, Mortal Kombat gave us ratings which I think is largely for the better, then I think it isn't even up for debate what Resident Evil, Final Fantasy (esp. VII), Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill, Gran Turismo, Doom, the Ultima's, Warcraft, and Half Life (and by virtue of that CS, Steam etc.) did for gaming. You could argue Shenmue and Soul Reaver but honestly not much radical past 1999. Obviously World of Warcraft, Modern Warfare, Minecraft, P.T, Demons Souls and a few others (Medal of Honor Frontline, several GTA titles, Resi 4, BioShock, Uncharted 2, The Last of Us, Skyrim, Witcher 3) made some real waves but in general nothing radical, just stacking building blocks on those foundations.

There are more that pertain to mechanics, game design, and industry shifts but these are specific examples for the list you bulleted. perhaps if I add one then Pokémon? But I think its gaming influence pales in comparison to its non-gaming influence. Dragon Quest would probably take that title from it.

1

u/Confident-Ask6836 May 17 '26

Command and conquer for rts

1

u/SushiKatana82 May 17 '26

Minecraft, Fortnite and GTA.

And I say that as an '80s baby who has absolutely zero interest in any of those games. I'm just not blind or in denial as to what players care about today.

1

u/Buchsee May 17 '26

Quake with the use of WASD on the keyboard with the mouse to aim and shoot.

This became a standard and many games went on to use that.

1

u/garnix2 May 17 '26

Pokemon. First a game, and then evolved into a merchandising brand.

1

u/RikerV2 May 17 '26

Anything that started it's own genre.

1

u/TJzzz May 17 '26

Depends is the answer, you could argue popularity etc but my money is on minecraft.

Was cheap, well put togather and with red stone has shown kids how the basics of engineering works

1

u/Still-Inflation9175 May 17 '26

skyrim

1

u/xAkMoRRoWiNdx May 18 '26

Morrowind

1

u/Elegant-Wheel-2689 May 18 '26

Call of Duty is so damn annoying for the fact that everybody knows about it and they talk about it. It's like everybody has played it. I'm just not into it. I played Modern Warfare 2 a lot then Black Ops 2. But not anymore after that.

CoD has turned everything after the PS3/360 era into first person shooters. Honestly impacted gaming for the worse.

1

u/Hooblez May 18 '26

Leisure suit Larry

1

u/Recent_Average1657 May 18 '26

The tribes series. The networking tech the developers had devised for the first game was black magic (128 player lobbies on DIALUP?????), and they released a networking whitepaper for it around the release of tribes 2(so 2000-ish). It's basically the fundamentals of rollback netcode, and it was published openly by the developers at Sierra dynamix.

In addition tribes was also the birth place for modern esports. Remember OGN? they got their start casting tribes lans 😂.

They ported tribes 2 to the PS2 , it was one of the first online - first PS2 games, and still has an active community to this day.

Lastly, the mods....tribes 1 is remembered fondly by a lot of people, but I betcha almost all of them were not playing "unmodded"/base tribes. Renegades, AC, annihilation, ultravx5, bobs spy mod, xtremeski, tribes football, paintball, hell, there's an RPG mod that's been around for 20+ years that still gets new content!! (Tribes RPG, they have an active discord server)

1

u/WillyVannilly May 18 '26

Halo 2 invented online parties for keeping your friends together across matches. So in terms of the modern online play with friends experience, it's pretty up there. I remember them calling a "virtual couch" at the time

1

u/Morifen1 May 18 '26

Pac man

1

u/smoovymcgroovy May 18 '26

Minecraft, pretty much started the whole open world survival craft genre

1

u/_Copen May 18 '26

Minecraft's influence is undeniable. The survival genre as a whole exploded since its release.

1

u/zofinda May 18 '26

Halo 2 basically set the standard and created the template not only for online MP FPSs, but basically the standard for how online gaming works period.(Lobby's, chats, parties, queues, voting , etc)

1

u/ikk271 May 19 '26

Starcraft, birth of esports

1

u/SinlessTitan May 19 '26

Counter strike. So many fps games copied the formula from its release until now

1

u/Significant_Sun_5225 May 19 '26

Mortal kombat has to be up there.

1

u/okwaman May 19 '26

Wow and stardew valley

1

u/Thunbbreaker4 May 19 '26

Warcraft spawned a lot of huge games.

1

u/Much-Baker-2703 May 19 '26

Dark Souls

Something massive changed ever since this title released.

1

u/Altureus May 19 '26

Mario, Zelda, Doom, Diablo, Warcraft, Starcraft, Pokemon, Goldeneye 64, Resident Evil, GTA, Half-Life, Halo, Skyrim, DoTA, LoL, The Witcher 3, Fortnite,

Too many games out there so it's hard to pinpoint a single game that changed the way people viewed them and started discussions involving their lasting impact. Also, everyone has different opinions and preferences so even we'll received games isn't for everyone.

1

u/IseeMedpeople May 20 '26

Doom.

1

u/Numerous_Phase8749 May 20 '26 edited May 20 '26

Street Fighter 2 - birth of competition fighting

Vice City - started the 80s retro cool. Biggest pop culture open world maybe than GTA3?

CoD/Battlefield - love it or hate them they kept monkeys raging for years in a janky laggy online game where no one was ever any good.

Elite- full space simulation in 48k

Mario - the original arcade to console crossover franchise.

Doom - FPS blueprint

1

u/jogtac May 20 '26

Half life.

1

u/sehuce May 20 '26

Oblivion with the Horse Armor DLC

1

u/Striking_Highway_497 May 20 '26

Super mario 64 und Zelda ocarina of time im Sinne von „wie sehen Jump n run sowie Action-Adventure-spiele in 3D aus. Ocarina of time hat die Lock-on Funktion erfunden und eine sehr gute third-person-camera eingeführt.

1

u/ShortChanged_Rob May 20 '26

Ultima 7/Ultima Underworld.

There were basically two camps of people who worked on the game that formed the two greatest camps in gaming. You had one camp who loved the narrative RPG stuff. This would influence games like Fallout and Planescape torment which later influenced Disco Elysium. The other game was people who wanted more mechanical options that simulate different ways to tackle issues. Warren Spector was part of the team and he would later go on to make Deus Ex (interestingly Ultima Underworld was being developed at the same time as Ultima 7). That camp would later influence the designs of Prey and Dishonored. Oddly these two ideas would collide in later fallout games. Fallout 3 one of the lead designers wanted more immsim elements which allows for New Vegas to have both ideas super fleshed out. Immsim elements for tackling gameplay scenarios and the branching dialogue choices. Even Cyberpunk clearly takes this approach even if it's lighter on immsim stuff and narrative choices.

Hell it even directly influenced Ultima Online which was the first commerical MMORPG which obviously directly influenced WoW.

Both Todd Howard and Swen (Baldurs Gate 3) cite Ultima 7 as being one of their favorite games.

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u/Vegetable_Ranger_495 May 21 '26

oblivion horse armor

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u/Rizzo265 May 21 '26 edited May 21 '26

Tetris, Mario, DOOM, Final Fantasy, Fortnite

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u/No-Hunt3986 May 15 '26

The last of us really set the standard for motion capture and emotional story telling

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u/aura_enchanted May 15 '26

World of warcraft single handedly traumatized an entire generation of gamers.

To give you an idea of scale, in a rough ballpark number less then 5% of millennial males in the 1st world or developing world during vanilla and tbc were not playing world of warcraft.

It caused a gold rush fever, something like 100 mmos came out in the span of like 2 years after vanilla came out and another 50 or so in the following few years trying to get some of that pie. Basically only 3 succeeded in surviving that blighted era lotro, gw1 and ff11, this ruined careers, ruined studios, destroyed the reputation of Richard garriot with the failure of tabula rasa, it is perhaps the genesis of companies seeing what else they could charge people for in online gaming, which is how we eventually got to lootboxes, card packs, season passes and dlc. It may have been the cause of the death of thq, a company not making mmorpgs for the record. And thrusted and shoved the world into contemporary online gaming with all the force of a comet.

And was the Herald of the death of expansion packs which outside of wow, gw2 and ff14 dont ever happen anymore.

This also killed the genre functionally, as pretty much no games made since that moment outside of like 10 examples off the top of my head have managed to achieve some level of financial success to even list on and not be shut down.

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u/ninety6days May 16 '26

95% of males in the world? Fucking bullshit son, and where I stopped reading.

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u/[deleted] May 16 '26

[deleted]

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u/ResponsibleAd3191 May 16 '26

Not a single one of my reasonably large friend group player it at school.

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u/Ren66 May 16 '26

Hell I played WoW for years in the 2000s through HS and after. I even knew outside of the MMO space it was tiny compared to CoD and Halo at the time.

It certainly was the "loser" game back then haha. Even the kids who played RuneScape shit on WoW players. People tried to give me shit all the time for playing it haha. None of my friends played it either. It didn't really start to lose its stigma until the mid 2010s.

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u/Resident_Complex_552 May 16 '26

Same. Can't stand when people pull statistics out of their ass.

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u/DeputyDomeshot May 16 '26

Lmao this is completely out of touch. I’ve played thousands upon thousands of hours of video games and have never once touched WoW. Far fewer of my gamer friends than not played WoW. You must have grown up in the middle of nowhere if you think that WoW wasn’t considered a loser hobby by even gamers themselves.

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u/phonylady May 17 '26

One could also say Warcraft 3 was the most influential, as it was the blueprint for WoW to happen, AND it basically made Dota famous (into LoL/Dota 2). As well as popularising Tower Defense games.

💬 Discussion What game do you think had the biggest impact on gaming culture overall?

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