Affective Games
Sunday, 23 November 2008.
Many people like to catalog their “favorite” games. I find this uninteresting, as it is merely a popularity contest, and those who know me also know that I care little for the popularity of concepts, but by far prefer their intrinsic value.
A more useful and interesting metric than “favorite” is “affectivity:” that is, what games most deeply affected the way one views the world. (In aggregate, instead of popularity, you end up with the games that have most modified the culture.) So, as an exercise, I compiled a list of the dozen games that most deeply affected me as a person: most of these were played during my formative years and, I believe, have strongly influenced who I have become. Again, these are not necessarily my favorite games of those that I have played; however, I do look upon all of them with fond memories.
Starting with the most affective:
- Cosmic Osmo and the Worlds Beyond the Mackerel, Cyan Worlds
- Riven, Cyan Worlds
- Zork, Infocom
- Flashback, Delphine Software
- Shadow of the Colossus, Ueda and Team Ico
- Photopia, Adam Cadre
- Jet Set Radio, Smilebit
- Gunstar Heroes, Treasure
- Marathon Infinity, Bungie
- Escape Velocity, Ambrosia Software
- Scarab of RA, Semicolon Software
- The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, Nintendo EAD
You'll note that, of them, 67% can be classified as adventure, 50% as story-heavy or story-driven, 50% as action, 33% as nonlinear or freeform, and 25% as having no graphics to speak of. 25% are over twenty years old, while 75% are over ten. Interestingly (and this surprised me), the top two were made by Cyan.
I suppose the above is roughly indicative of my taste in games, and possible my tastes in general.
