I saw this Lemmy post, but a huge list of games with no discussion isn’t very interesting! Let’s talk about why the games that influenced us had such a big impact - how they affected us as people.
For me, it was the PC game Creatures. It’s a life simulation game featuring cute little beings called ‘Norns’ which you raise and teach.
You can almost think of it like a much cuter predecessor to The Sims, but which claimed to actually “simulate” their brains.
As a thirteen-year-old it was the first game that made me want to go online and seek out more info. What I discovered was a community of similar-interest nerds hanging out on IRC chat, and it felt like for the first time in my life I had “found my people” - others who weren’t just friends, but whom I really resonated with.
I learned web development (PHP at the time!) so I could make a site for the game, which became the foundation for my job in software engineering.
And through that group I also discovered the Furry community, which was a wild ride in itself.
So yeah, Creatures. Without that game, I think I’d have become quite a different person.
Star Control II & Secret of Mana
They both set my expectations for how much fun a game can be.
Secret of Mana as a template for what kind of world I want to live in (minus the monsters and whatnot)
and Star Control II as a template for how to write a fun adventure.Many games cemented my love for video games. Jak and Daxter, Ratchet and Clank, Prince of Persia… God of War, parents didn’t give a fux back then, the pixels weren’t that realistic.
Seeing Sonic the Hedgehog as an eyecatcher on a tv in a tv store.
Mario ofcourse. Super Mario World 3 on a cracked playstation.
I would say Age of Empires 2 which was where I first used the name that I still have on here, over 25 years later. Its amazing editor also resonated with my urge to create my own games without requiring programming knowledge that I just didn’t have at 11 years old. I went on to create custom content for Warcraft III, Neverwinter Nights and Morrowind, eventually studied computer science and joined some indie gamedev communities where I made a lot of friends, some of whom I still meet in person once or twice a year. I never became a full time game developer but I worked on some stuff part time in the mid 2000s and still do it as a hobby.
I remember I rapidly advanced my typing skills at one point as a kid purely from trying to enter cheat codes quick enough in AO2 over and over again lol.
Competence through necessity! :)
I remember making custom maps for the Star Trek: Armada RTS with the in-game editor, and I tried my hand at making some Half Life maps, too. For me that didn’t turn into any big community like your experience did, but it definitely helped me to believe I could be a creator of things, and looking back that was probably important :)
Not as a kid, but when I was an adult, working my first job, RDR was really influential.
Influential how? :)
Robin’ dem banks n trains
John Marston before RDR was a terrible person and he was trying run away from his past. He was, eventually, forced to confront his past, specifically to save his family. Of course, he was killed regardless. Despite wanting to redeem himself and living peacefully with his family, he met a violent end. Almost as if the world saying that there is no redemption for him. This story really made me appreciate stories in general and flawed protagonists like John Marston. Perhaps, the story taught me how pointless ‘regret’ is. John had very little control over his life and his death. He couldn’t change his past, nor control his future, which hurt me really deeply. But this is true for everyone of us. And I have learnt not to regret the past. “World might not forgive you for your past mistakes, but you still can forgive yourself.” is my goto mantra.
E.V.O. Search for Eden on the Super Nintendo. It sparked my interest in evolution and honestly a fascination about the origins of “things”.
I only found out about E.V.O. way later, probably around 2005 when a friend made a web game that combined its evolution theme with gameplay similar to Legend of the Green Dragon. I still wonder why E.V.O. wasn’t more popular. It’s an amazing game, I still occasionally play it on my Analogue Pocket.
This bad boy!! Boy did I put some time into this!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_Motion
As for why, it just felt so fluid and fast and exciting gameplay wise at the time. Plus cars with guns!!! Pew pew
Halo 1-3
They are some of the best games ever, playing halo 1 for the first time after getting an xbox for christmas hit me like a freight train and to this day my love of fps games is in large part to the endlessly interesting tactics in halo multiplayer and how much fun I had/have learning them.
Playing a big team battle halo infinite match seems like replaying a memory I never actually had in the best way.
Still to this day even if I haven’t played halo in years, I will kick your butt.
I peaked hard on Halo. I wish I had the gear/inclination to start a YouTube channel for it. Back in those days YouTube wasn’t the high-paying career it is today, and i was convinced it would be a waste of money to get the gear required to start one.
I’ve properly grown up since then though, and now im nowhere near the best at any video game. I often wonder how different life would be if I’d managed to just sit at home playing games every day and be a near millionaire from it.
Mafia 1. Not only is it still one of the best single player storylines, it’s also how I “met” my best friend. My family had just moved between cities and I had to change schools. I obviously didn’t know anybody yet and joining a class with existing social circles can be hard. The first common ground I found with someone was this game, as we both had played it and struggled with the same mission (“The Race” iykyk). We hung out after school trying to beat this game together. This is essentially how our 15+ year long friendship began.
I also really got into classic cars because of the game and my future hobbies and career would most likely have been very different had I not played it.
ZZT!
This is the game that got Tim Sweeney the cash he needed to develop Jill of the Jungle and then go off of that success to bring Epic (Epic Megagames at the time) into the successful company it became. But I don’t care about that because I never played Unreal or Fortnite.
ZZT came with its own editing software. Not just so you could place pieces around the board and make mazes or whatever, it contained a fairly robust scripting language you could use to make all sorts of things way beyond the scope of the original game the editor came with. Whole online communities grew up around creating and sharing these homemade games, first on BBSes and then on AoL fora and eventually on a dedicated website that’s still around. Because the game/editor were distributed as shareware, there was almost no barrier to entry, and we were all just churning with ideas about how to break the engine and push the bounds of the software, of gameplay, and if narrative convention.
It was one of the most creative and community-focused times of my life, and fostered my lifelong passion for game design, something I still do as a hobby.
I’d never heard of that game or the associated editor, but it seems fascinating.
I just had a poke around on the site, and it gives me some very good and happy vibes of how websites used to be, and the cosy communities that they hosted where all the regulars knew each other by name. Or by handle rather, since nobody ever uses their real name on the Internet, right? ;) Good times.
That would be games like Space Quest, Kings Quest and the like. I’m not a native English speaker. And my dad gave me two dictionaries to look up words.
Learning English at a young age opened a world of possibilities. Playing more games of course like Monkey Island and whatever adventure or rpg game that came out.
But I quickly started to read in English and had no problems communicating with other English speaking folk.
Pretty influential, most of the things I read/listen are in English still. Go there on vacation and whatnot.
Probably Sonic Mega Collection because it really got me into platformers and made me into a Sonic fan. Kinda solidified my taste in games a little as I’ll gladly take a family friendly platformer like Sonic or other titles like Ty the Tasmanian Tiger or Yooka-Laylee over an online PVP game like any call of duty because Sonic taught me to love platformers more, even to this day.
Also kinda solidified the fact that I’d rather casually play through a lot of games and not be that guy who tries to be perfect at a game. That caused me to get where I am today where I’ll play co-op in a game but avoid full-on PVP with a random group of people because I know they’ll mop the floor with me and I’d just end up quitting before giving the game a fair shot.
Zack McKracken
It wasn’t my first RPG, but playing through Final Fantasy 6 (3 in the US) in middle school made me fall in love with music.
I ended up asking my parents for a digital piano and acoustic guitar which eventually spiraled into download ModPlug Tracker to sequent music. I didn’t have a powerful computer back then so I’d record one-shot samples from my digital piano and spent a few hours each day trying to create my own music.
I stopped recording around 2012 because I got really sick and music didn’t pay the bills. I’m a father now with a 5 year old son and I’m looking forward to sharing my love of music with him.
If anyone is interested, I can share one of my very early tracks and one of my last recordings to listen to. It’s one of my favorite things to do, sharing the culmination of my work.
Feel free to share. Would love to check your music.
I replied to the OP in an adjacent post but I’ll paste it here as well.
My very first track (1996) Anteros Beat
My personal favorite track (2011) Starbortorium
And my last track that I never got to finish because I got really sick (2012) I’m Not A Bargain
I was never formally trained in music but I absolutely fell in love with everything about it. I ended up writing poetry and lyrics a lot towards the end up my recording journey. I’m hoping to get back into it once my son is a bit older but I’d need to purchase a lot of gear I sold haha.
Thank you for listening. It means the world to me.
It’s great that you can trace your love of music back to that specific game. Go ahead and share! I’m not really a musical person myself and only just started learning piano as my first ever instrument. That’s one childhood regret I’m working on fixing :)
My very first track (1996) Anteros Beat
My personal favorite track (2011) Starbortorium
And my last track that I never got to finish because I got really sick (2012) I’m Not A Bargain
I was never formally trained in music but I absolutely fell in love with everything about it. I ended up writing poetry and lyrics a lot towards the end up my recording journey. I’m hoping to get back into it once my son is a bit older but I’d need to purchase a lot of gear I sold haha.
Thank you for listening. It means the world to me.
DOOM. It blew my mind when i played it. I learned a new genere, how fast paced a game can be and how clever map design makes a good game. I also learned about shareware which lead to a broader interest in the internet as a whole. Later i got a computer with a soundcard and when i fired up DOOM with music for the first time, it felt like a revelation.
I think Warcraft III, it built a certain mixture of gameplay and lore that one way of another shaped all the games I regrettably sunk way too many hours into:
- World of Warcraft
- League of Legends
- Dota
I would say Shufflepack which made me into a kid that wanted to played videogames all the time, but I feel that has not “influenced” me much, and any other title would have had the same effect.
