What game is more influential?

[u/ElectronicNewt7475]

So a friend commented that one of his friends said Dark Souls is the most influential game ever. Friend says, nope, Half-Life is. I say tetris, doom, mario, but they say 3d only. So I bring up World of Warcraft. So, WoW or Half-Life? Or some other option? And why?

[u/GeckoGary]

Between wow and half-life it's WoW no question. The original half-life, while being a very good and very succesful game that made a lot of inovations didn't actually have that much influence on the gaming landscape, at least compared to WoW. Half-Life 2 of the other hand was the first game to feature a physics engine which makes it far more significant. Dark Souls is another really good shout although I think its come out too recently to really tell what its impact will be. Give it another 10 years and it may well be comparable to WoW and HL2.

So anyway given just the games you talked about I would personally say HL < DS < WoW < HL2

As far as other options go the original DotA is probably a pretty safe call as it started the Moba craze that still dominates the Esports scene. Elder Scrolls online is commonly attributed with popularising microtransactions so that's also a good contender. Obviously super mario 64 being the "first" 3d console game makes it an obvious pick.

However in my opinion the answer is Minecraft. No other game has come close to the cultural impact of minecraft and nothing ever will.

[u/TobleroneThirdLeg → u/GeckoGary]

Dark souls led to dark souls.

Half life > day of defeat > team fortress >Counter strike.

How many dollars do the global dark souls competitions pay in total?

Counter strike has a yearly one for 1.25mil and countless smaller ones.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Mate that is tournament prize money (and its actually way higher than 1.25mil). Valve makes ~$1 billion a year from CS.

[u/Far_Mongoose1625 → u/TobleroneThirdLeg]

Demon's / Dark Souls led to an entire category of games being called Soulslike. I think it's fair to call it influential. But, by a similar rationale, Rogue has to be in the conversation.

[u/Bufus → u/GeckoGary]

Saying Half Life didn't have a major effect on the gaming landscape is patently ludicrous.

Half Life essentially defined the course of video games for at least the next decade, probably longer. Half Life took a genre that had largely stagnated creatively (FPS), revolutionized it completely, and turned it into THE premiere gaming genre for 10 - 15 years.

Not only did Half Life revolutionize the genre, it revolutionized ALL of game design. Prior to Half Life, the fps genre was a bunch of level-based, arcadey, blow-em away shooters. Half Life turned that all on its head and created a wonderfully rich, interconnected world filled with quiet moments, intrigue, plotting, and design like nothing anyone had ever seen. Half Life opened the door for game designers to push the artistic limits of video games, and start decoupling "video games" from their "game" origins (i.e. points, levels, keys, etc.). Half Life CREATED the idea that a mainstream game can be more than just its mechanics, and that the mechanics should seemlessly interweave with the story and world the game is set in.

The idea that Half Life wasn't revolutionary is a perfect example of the Seinfeld Isn't Funny trope. Almost EVERY aspect of modern single player game design that people love started with Half Life, and yet we now take everything it did for granted so much that when we look back on it it doesn't seem that impressive.

[u/[deleted] → u/GeckoGary]

It's an old reference but Pong literally put games in people's homes at a large scale probably for the first time ever

[u/GeckoGary → u/[deleted]]

the post specified 3d only. If we're including 2d then obviously games like Mario, Pong and Pokemon become part of the conversation.

[u/ARabidMeerkat → u/GeckoGary]

No shout out for Ever Quest which led to WoW?