On the best games ever

[zen5887]

The gaming show in my country did a "top 100" episode this week. Viewers voted for their top 10 games and the show got in comedians and journalists and other members of the gaming community to count down the list. I had a great time. The presenters were funny and it was fun to remember all the great games that were on the list. I got teary thinking about Final Fantasy 7 and I got pumped up remembering how good Half Life 2 is and the whole time I was thinking "man, I should play that again".

But this thread isn't about how much I enjoyed the damn countdown show. I want to talk about the validity these top lists and how we judge which games are the "best".

Subjectively, obviously.

There were some surprises for me in this show. Fallout 3 came in higher than Fallout: NV and none of the old Fallout games were mentioned. GTA 5 was number 5 and GTA 4 (one of my favourite games) wasn't on the list at all. The biggest twist for me though, and the catalyst for this discussion, was the number one spot that went to Skyrim. Now, I don't think Skyrim is a bad game but number one? Wowie I don't know about that. There have been countless posts, articles, and videos talking about Skyrim's flaws yet here it is, sitting on top of this list.

The people talking about it cited Skyrim's atmosphere and lore (and dragons) and that kind of stuff. Nobody mentioned the combat or the UI or the skill tree, it was all about how stunning it looked and how immersive it felt. And there are a lot of examples of this in other media. The Beatles are overly simple (their early stuff at least), Star Wars has some questionable filmmaking techniques, the later Harry Potter books were rushed, yet all these things are still fantastic and important and probably belong somewhere on some top 100 lists.

So when we look at games, especially in retrospect, are some qualities more important than others? Is there any validity to these top whatever lists or are they diluted by the masses (who might not care about shoddy UI or shallow combat as much as a designer or a journalist)?

 

[Racecarlock]

I like fun and don't really care about story, but I know there are plenty of people that are the opposite.

Yes, we could complain about aggregate lists, but why? What is it other than whining? It just means more people like a different game than you do. It's not worth getting upset about.

 

[MysticSlayer]

Well, if you're going to leave it up to the masses, then you've sort of got to consider how much the gaming audience has grown. Games like Skyrim and GTA5 had the potential to reach a much wider audience than games like Ocarina of Time did, and I consider the fact that games like Ocarina of Time still stand out after all these years and often end up on "Best Games of All Time" lists to be a bigger accomplishment than seeing Skyrim at the top. Still, it is sort of a fun way to kill time while reminiscing about all your favorite games and seeing how high up they can get.

But no, there's no possible way to get an objective list. This is obvious when it is left up to an individual or a very small group of people, but if you leave it up to mass vote, then you've got to take into consideration how different people have different standards (do we judge the game by its time or how it stands up today?), the number of people gaming at the time versus how it does compared to games with a bigger or smaller potential audience, etc. As a result, I'd say just have fun watching these, don't fret too much about the results, enjoy the memories of your favorite games that make the list, and rest assured that at least your favorite games meant a lot to you regardless of where they place.