we have a long way to go as game critics before we can have a sensible discussion about canonicity, assuming we're talking about video games as an art form and not just listing landmark entertainment titles like that top 10 above. Tetris is indisputable, there's a case for RE4. but until we can at least agree on well-known stuff like The Witness, Jump King, Rain World...what's the point? not even a Dark Souls shout on that list. nonsense
I'm looking forward to the rest of the article but I've just got to step in and say a word for SWOS (Sensible World of Soccer) which was a legendary game on a legendary system.
The Amiga was a beautiful and revolutionary computer in many ways and Sensible Software a very British studio that made uniquely quirky and mechanically interesting games with both humour and depth and a characteristic style (their sprites). The original Sensible Soccer took all of that and turned it into a light and very fun take on football that benefited immensely from being gamey rather than footbally. SWOS took that and then expanded it to have basically *every* club in the world, with all of them playable, every main player from those clubs named and sprited and with different stats that created very different types of players.
On top of that it had editable tactics and inter club transfers. So, basically, FIFA's club manager mode but years and years earlier, but with originality and humour that FIFA has always steered well-clear of. It's a very, very worthy game on that list by virtue of having simultaneously set the bar for every football game since (it's tactics editor has never been bettered from games I've tried, you can literally mould every players position for every zone that the ball can be in) while also being a unique take on a football engine that also somehow manages to retain all the things that made Sensible Software brilliant in general (not least the original music theme). Yeah, safe to say I fucking loved that studio and that game was a real magnum opus. I'd be delighted to play it again today, I suspect I'd sink a weekend into it without even noticing, hahaha.
I tell you what, that's a pretty damn good sales pitch.
It's strange to look back on the last twenty years or so of sports games and to see them trending so sharply toward simulationism at the expense of core gameplay. I guess it's no wonder that SWOS was included in the 2007 Canon — it's an artifact of sports game design that's fallen out of favor but is absolutely worth preserving. Thanks so much for the perspective!
Thanks so much! Weird, isn't it? I'm still not sure what a comprehensive game canon would need, and I certainly don't begrudge RE4 a place in it, but it's definitely not possible to tell the fully story of video gaming without at least one of the earlier titles.
I feel the same way. RE4 really transcended the series and deserves its flowers but I’m sure a very large chunk of Resident Evil fans (and PS1 owners) would expect RE2 or RE3 up there.
A great article, thanks for provoking some interesting thoughts first thing in the morning.
Another interesting point of comparison is how the canon in literature served a pedagogical and cultural seasoning purposes. Any person serious about literature was supposed to have a passing familiarity with the so-called Great Works. When I did my English degree a thousand years ago (aka, the mid-2000s), the idea of the canon was already long out of fashion, but several of my professors who grew up with it did express anxiety about a lack of common texts among students. Since we didn't have a shared group of books we were all familiar with, it could sometimes be difficult to draw comparisons or have any anchor points for a shared critical space.
I think if games are to have a canon, it should be less "the best of all time," which is the criteria the Video Game Canon project is using -- still an interesting goal, mind you -- and more a collection of games that allow us to form a baseline understanding of how they work and have interesting conversations about games. It would be hard to have a good discussion about the third person camera without everyone knowing at least a little bit about Resident Evil 4, for instance.
I'm not going to put the work into assembling such a list, but it's a neat project to consider.
Thanks so much! I think you're right that a hypothetical canon should serve as a historical record of the medium and as a catalyst for its interpretation rather than as a document of subjective quality. RE4 is a great example in that the influence it had is arguably more interesting than the product itself, and that feels like a good heuristic for identifying games that'd be worthy of a canon.
I like the Top 1000 list overall, but I wonder about the value of making a list this large. When someone lists the top 100 movies or the top 500 albums of all time, you know that at least you could imagine having enough time to experience them fully in a lifetime. 1000 games might require a minimum of 20 minutes (for older arcade games) and a maximum of 100+ hours for some of the longer RPGs, making it difficult to experience even 25% of the list in a reasonable amount of time. There are also games on the list that are actually impossible to play unless you manage to score vintage hardware (Rock Band for example) which raises the barrier to entry even further. Many of the online games listed will be impossible to play in any meaningful way once their main servers shut down.
The Strong Museum of Play has a video game hall of fame that seems to be a good spiritual successor to the 2007 list you mentioned, although it is not government-run. It's been going since at least 2015. It's a fun place to visit, too!
Yeah, 1000 games strikes me as a dauntingly high figure even for a meta-analysis of the VGC's nature. There are totally 1000+ games worth *playing*, but I think it must be possible to condense video gaming history into a more approachable figure. I had a look at the Strong Museum's Hall of Fame — I think its several dozen inductees represent a far more complete picture of gaming than the 2007 Canon, and it's definitely easier to holistically interpret than the VGC Top 1000. There are definitely still some blindspots, so I reckon the sweet spot is somewhere in the middle.
I think a more democratic (and perhaps better way to measure cultural influence) would be something akin to Encyclopedia Metallum, where users write and rate reviews of heavy metal albums.
A similar site for games, with a vote based ranking system, would allow for a “total ordering,” but more relevantly, allow for chronological or attribute tag grouping. Let people advocate for their favorite games and let the crowd decide.
Obviously this will favor popular games, but popular games are the biggest influencers. And I think the audience for reading/writing game reviews of this sort will self select to at least cover some indie darlings and influential classics.
Thai is clearly only half an idea, but not unreasonable to flesh out imo
Good thinking. I like how the democratized nature of the Encyclopaedia Metallum creates an ordered ecosystem that emerges naturally from the collective engagement of dedicated fans, and it's hard to imagine a more comprehensive way to catalogue the works of such a vast artistic movement. And I think you're right that an approach like this would be a great way of properly accounting for culturally impactful games that lack mainstream commercial success.
we have a long way to go as game critics before we can have a sensible discussion about canonicity, assuming we're talking about video games as an art form and not just listing landmark entertainment titles like that top 10 above. Tetris is indisputable, there's a case for RE4. but until we can at least agree on well-known stuff like The Witness, Jump King, Rain World...what's the point? not even a Dark Souls shout on that list. nonsense
I'm looking forward to the rest of the article but I've just got to step in and say a word for SWOS (Sensible World of Soccer) which was a legendary game on a legendary system.
The Amiga was a beautiful and revolutionary computer in many ways and Sensible Software a very British studio that made uniquely quirky and mechanically interesting games with both humour and depth and a characteristic style (their sprites). The original Sensible Soccer took all of that and turned it into a light and very fun take on football that benefited immensely from being gamey rather than footbally. SWOS took that and then expanded it to have basically *every* club in the world, with all of them playable, every main player from those clubs named and sprited and with different stats that created very different types of players.
On top of that it had editable tactics and inter club transfers. So, basically, FIFA's club manager mode but years and years earlier, but with originality and humour that FIFA has always steered well-clear of. It's a very, very worthy game on that list by virtue of having simultaneously set the bar for every football game since (it's tactics editor has never been bettered from games I've tried, you can literally mould every players position for every zone that the ball can be in) while also being a unique take on a football engine that also somehow manages to retain all the things that made Sensible Software brilliant in general (not least the original music theme). Yeah, safe to say I fucking loved that studio and that game was a real magnum opus. I'd be delighted to play it again today, I suspect I'd sink a weekend into it without even noticing, hahaha.
I tell you what, that's a pretty damn good sales pitch.
It's strange to look back on the last twenty years or so of sports games and to see them trending so sharply toward simulationism at the expense of core gameplay. I guess it's no wonder that SWOS was included in the 2007 Canon — it's an artifact of sports game design that's fallen out of favor but is absolutely worth preserving. Thanks so much for the perspective!
A great article, thanks for bringing my awareness to these very necessary and admirable projects.
I'm shaking my fist like the Arthur gif that RE4 is the Resident Evil is in that top ten and not one of the survival-horror entries.
Thanks so much! Weird, isn't it? I'm still not sure what a comprehensive game canon would need, and I certainly don't begrudge RE4 a place in it, but it's definitely not possible to tell the fully story of video gaming without at least one of the earlier titles.
I feel the same way. RE4 really transcended the series and deserves its flowers but I’m sure a very large chunk of Resident Evil fans (and PS1 owners) would expect RE2 or RE3 up there.
A great article, thanks for provoking some interesting thoughts first thing in the morning.
Another interesting point of comparison is how the canon in literature served a pedagogical and cultural seasoning purposes. Any person serious about literature was supposed to have a passing familiarity with the so-called Great Works. When I did my English degree a thousand years ago (aka, the mid-2000s), the idea of the canon was already long out of fashion, but several of my professors who grew up with it did express anxiety about a lack of common texts among students. Since we didn't have a shared group of books we were all familiar with, it could sometimes be difficult to draw comparisons or have any anchor points for a shared critical space.
I think if games are to have a canon, it should be less "the best of all time," which is the criteria the Video Game Canon project is using -- still an interesting goal, mind you -- and more a collection of games that allow us to form a baseline understanding of how they work and have interesting conversations about games. It would be hard to have a good discussion about the third person camera without everyone knowing at least a little bit about Resident Evil 4, for instance.
I'm not going to put the work into assembling such a list, but it's a neat project to consider.
Thanks so much! I think you're right that a hypothetical canon should serve as a historical record of the medium and as a catalyst for its interpretation rather than as a document of subjective quality. RE4 is a great example in that the influence it had is arguably more interesting than the product itself, and that feels like a good heuristic for identifying games that'd be worthy of a canon.
I like the Top 1000 list overall, but I wonder about the value of making a list this large. When someone lists the top 100 movies or the top 500 albums of all time, you know that at least you could imagine having enough time to experience them fully in a lifetime. 1000 games might require a minimum of 20 minutes (for older arcade games) and a maximum of 100+ hours for some of the longer RPGs, making it difficult to experience even 25% of the list in a reasonable amount of time. There are also games on the list that are actually impossible to play unless you manage to score vintage hardware (Rock Band for example) which raises the barrier to entry even further. Many of the online games listed will be impossible to play in any meaningful way once their main servers shut down.
The Strong Museum of Play has a video game hall of fame that seems to be a good spiritual successor to the 2007 list you mentioned, although it is not government-run. It's been going since at least 2015. It's a fun place to visit, too!
Yeah, 1000 games strikes me as a dauntingly high figure even for a meta-analysis of the VGC's nature. There are totally 1000+ games worth *playing*, but I think it must be possible to condense video gaming history into a more approachable figure. I had a look at the Strong Museum's Hall of Fame — I think its several dozen inductees represent a far more complete picture of gaming than the 2007 Canon, and it's definitely easier to holistically interpret than the VGC Top 1000. There are definitely still some blindspots, so I reckon the sweet spot is somewhere in the middle.
Thanks so much for reading!
Excellent write up!
I think a more democratic (and perhaps better way to measure cultural influence) would be something akin to Encyclopedia Metallum, where users write and rate reviews of heavy metal albums.
A similar site for games, with a vote based ranking system, would allow for a “total ordering,” but more relevantly, allow for chronological or attribute tag grouping. Let people advocate for their favorite games and let the crowd decide.
Obviously this will favor popular games, but popular games are the biggest influencers. And I think the audience for reading/writing game reviews of this sort will self select to at least cover some indie darlings and influential classics.
Thai is clearly only half an idea, but not unreasonable to flesh out imo
Good thinking. I like how the democratized nature of the Encyclopaedia Metallum creates an ordered ecosystem that emerges naturally from the collective engagement of dedicated fans, and it's hard to imagine a more comprehensive way to catalogue the works of such a vast artistic movement. And I think you're right that an approach like this would be a great way of properly accounting for culturally impactful games that lack mainstream commercial success.
Thanks so much for reading!