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The Video Game Canon’s 2020 Update is Here
The Video Game Canon is a statistical meta-ranking of dozens of “Best Video Games of All Time” lists that began in 2017 with Version 1.0, and the ranking has been updated several times since then. Which game is #1? There’s only one way to find out…
The latest update to the Video Game Canon, Version 4.0, has arrived!
The Video Game Canon now includes a total of 1,232 games, which were pulled from 59 “Best Video Games of All Time” lists published between 1995 and 2020. Each game was ranked against the rest of the field using the C-Score, a formula that takes into account a game’s “Average Ranking” and the complementary percentage of its “Appearance Frequency” across all lists.
Finally, games released after December 31, 2016 were excluded from the ranking because of their newness.
Three brand new lists were added to Version 4.0 of the Video Game Canon, including “The 100 Best Video Games in History” from GQ Spain, a “Top 100 Video Games of All Time” ranking from Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture, and a massive look back at “The Best Video Game the Year You Were Born” from Popular Mechanics. Alongside these new additions, updates to IGN‘s “Top 100 Video Games of All Time,” Popular Mechanics‘s “The 100 Greatest Video Games of All Time,” and Slant Magazine‘s “The 100 Best Video Games of All Time” were also added to the calculation. Thanks to reader CriticalCid for providing research assistance with some of these new lists.
But even with all this new data, there was surprisingly very little movement near the top of the Video Game Canon, and the Top 3 was once again represented by Alexey Pajitnov’s Tetris (#1), Valve’s Half-Life 2, and Capcom’s Resident Evil 4 (#3). There was some slight shuffling in the rest of the Top 10, but no new titles were able to crack the highest tier. Nintendo’s classic quartet of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (#4), Super Mario 64 (#5), The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (#6), and Super Metroid (#10) all hung around, as did Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us (#7), Irrational’s BioShock (#8), and Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption (#9).
Things get more interesting as you move further down the Top 100, especially for the 2015 and 2016 releases that now qualify for inclusion in the Video Game Canon.
Visit VideoGameCanon.com to learn more about this year’s update to the big list and to explore the rest of the Top 1000.
Finalists for the World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2020 have been announced
The finalists for the World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2020 have been announced… and they’re on fire.
This year’s honorees include titles from every era of gaming, though the Star Power of Guitar Hero looms large over the competition. But that’s OK, because there’s a few other firestarters vying for a spot in this year’s class, including Midway’s NBA Jam, Mojang’s Minecraft, and Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros. Melee.
There’s also the groundbreaking GoldenEye 007, the unforgettable Nokia Snake, the edutaining Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, and the addicting Bejeweled. Rounding out this year’s crop of finalists is Naughty Dog’s Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, and a trio of classics from the early 80s (Centipede, Frogger, and King’s Quest).
This isn’t the first opportunity to join the World Video Game Hall of Fame for some of these games, and fans will have the chance to make their voice heard by submitting a Player’s Choice Ballot. The public can vote once per day now through April 2nd, and the three games that receive the most votes will join the 29 other ballots submitted by members of the Hall of Fame’s International Selection Advisory Committee.
The Strong Museum’s International Center for the History of Electronic Games, the entity that oversees the World Video Game Hall of Fame, will announce the inductees from the Class of 2020 at a date to be determined in a special ceremony. For now, you can learn more about this year’s finalists after the break. (more…)
Posted in Mobile, News, PC, PS2, PS3, PS4, Retro, Switch, Vita, Wii, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One
Tagged Bejeweled, Centipede, GoldenEye 007, Guitar Hero, King's Quest, Minecraft, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, World Video Game Hall of Fame
Co-founder Dan Houser will leave Rockstar Games in March
Dan Houser co-founded Rockstar Games in 1998 alongside Terry Donovan, Jamie King, and his brother Sam. Currently serving as Vice President of their Creative division, he has lent his writing talents to almost all of the publisher’s most popular and well-received games, including the Grand Theft Auto franchise, Red Dead Redemption and Red Dead Redemption 2, Max Payne 3, and Bully.
But after an illustrious career, Rockstar’s parent company, Take-Two Interactive, has announced that Houser will be leaving the company in March.
This is definitely a huge blow to the creative side of Rockstar Games, which is widely believed to be hard at work on Grand Theft Auto VI. How this news will affect the sequel’s development remains to be seen, but Take-Two said the rest of the development team “remains focused on current and future projects”:
After an extended break beginning in the spring of 2019, Dan Houser, Vice President, Creative at Rockstar Games, will be leaving the company. Dan Houser’s last day will be March 11, 2020. We are extremely grateful for his contributions. Rockstar Games has built some of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful game worlds, a global community of passionate fans and an incredibly talented team, which remains focused on current and future projects.
While it’s a few years old now, the most extensive look back at Houser’s career can be found in David Kushner’s excellent behind-the-scenes investigation into Rockstar Games, Jacked: The Outlaw Story of Grand Theft Auto.
Posted in News, PC, PS2, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One
Tagged Grand Theft Auto V, Red Dead Redemption 2
12 finalists announced for World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2019
The World Video Game Hall of Fame, which is overseen by The Strong Museum of Play, has announced the finalists for this year’s crop of inductees. We’ll have to wait until May to find out which games make the final cut, but we now know that a dozen classic titles will be in the running for the Class of 2019.
This year’s finalists include several games that are taking one more shot at immortality, including Midway’s Mortal Kombat, Cyan Worlds’s Myst, Microsoft’s Windows Solitaire, and Valve’s Half-Life. All four have a strong claim to “Hall of Fame” status, as Myst helped popularize CD-ROMs, Half-Life pushed narrative games to new heights, Mortal Kombat’s controversial violence is still discussed today, and Windows Solitaire may just be the most-played game ever.
But they’ll have to compete against a slate of other titles that includes King’s Candy Crush, Atari’s Centipede, William Crowther’s Colossal Cave Adventure, Konami’s Dance Dance Revolution, Sega’s NBA 2K, Sid Meier’s Civilization, and Nintendo’s Super Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros. Melee.
Gaming fans from around the globe will be able to influence which games will be eligible for induction this year through the Player’s Choice Ballot, which will be open from March 21st through the 28th. The remaining ballots will come from the Hall of Fame’s International Selection Advisory Committee, which is comprised of journalists and scholars who are “familiar with the history of video games.”
The World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2019 will announced on May 2, but you can learn more about this year’s finalists after the break. (more…)
Posted in Mobile, News, PC, PS2, Retro
Tagged Centipede, Half-Life, Super Mario Kart, World Video Game Hall of Fame
The Video Game Canon: Tetris Remains the Best Game of All Time in Version 3.0 Update
The Video Game Canon is a statistical meta-ranking of dozens of “Best Video Games of All Time” lists that began in 2017 with Version 1.0, and the ranking has been updated several times since then. Which game is #1? There’s only one way to find out…
Once again, Alexey Pajitnov’s puzzle masterpiece, Tetris, stands atop the Video Game Canon.
If you’re unfamiliar with the Video Game Canon, it’s a statistical meta-analysis of 53 “Best Video Games of All Time” lists that were published between 1995 and 2018. To qualify for inclusion, each list had to include at least 50 games, as well as some form of editorial oversight in the process (lists made up solely of reader polls or fan voting were excluded), and no restrictions on release dates or platforms.
After feeding each “Best Games” list into the Video Game Canon machine, the games were ranked against each other using the C-Score, a formula that adds together a game’s “Average Ranking” across all lists with the complementary percentage of its “Appearance Frequency.” Combining these two factors allows us to create a list of games that have universal appeal across a long period of time without punishing any game for being too old or too new.
Five new lists were added to the Video Game Canon in the Version 3.0 update, bringing the total number of games to be selected by at least one list up to 1,182. The most expansive new list came from Game Informer, which published The Top 300 Games of All Time in April of last year. Hyper (The 200 Games You Must Play), IGN (Top 100 Video Games of All Time), and Slant Magazine (The 100 Greatest Video Games of All Time) also published new lists in 2018.
I was also able to reach back into the history books a little bit after stumbling upon a list from 2009 by Benchmark.pl, one of Poland’s largest technology blogs. Aside from a handful of titles (most notably, 2015’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt), most of the games created in Eastern Europe or played by Eastern European players aren’t on the radar of your average gamer, so digging through The Top 100 Best Games of the Twentieth Century gave me an interesting window into a population of gamers that I probably don’t think about as often as I should.
Even with these new additions to the dataset, Version 3.0 didn’t signal any huge changes to the Video Game Canon over last year’s Version 2.0 update, but the movement amongst the games in the top ten does bring to mind a round of musical chairs. And after the music stopped, nearly all the titles scrambled to find a new place to sit.
Visit VideoGameCanon.com for all future updates to this project and to explore the complete Top 1000.
The Video Game Canon: Half-Life
Dig deeper into the Video Game Canon with a look at how Half-Life’s opening tram ride changed first person shooters (and may even have created an entirely new genre). Here’s a teaser…
“Good morning and welcome to the Black Mesa Transit System. This automated train is provided for the security and convenience of the Black Mesa Research Facility personnel.”
It’s just another day at work for Gordon Freeman. The well-groomed scientist is running late for an important meeting and he’s forced to board the tram alone as he travels to the secure wing of the Black Mesa Research Facility.
It’s a rather lowkey introduction to one of the most ambitious games ever created, but easing the player into the game’s world was a big part of what made Valve’s Half-Life so ambitious. You’re free to move about the train car as you’re ferried from the facility’s living quarters to the research levels belowground, but for those five minutes, you’re also at the mercy of the developers and how they want you to interact with their game.
Visit VideoGameCanon.com to continue reading this article and to explore the complete Top 1000.
Stan Lee, the legendary co-creator of many of Marvel’s superheroes, has died
From behind his typewriter, Marvel’s Stan Lee used to answer fan mail with that authoritative declaration when he really wanted to drive home a point in his “Stan’s Soapbox” column. But there’s never enough that can be said about the man who helped define pop culture as we know it today.
Along with Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, Lee created many of Marvel’s most famous characters… The Spectacular Spider-Man… The Mighty Thor… The Incredible Hulk… The Fantastic Four… “Stan the Man” had a way with adjectives. Sadly, he passed away this morning at the age of 95.
After shepherding his comic creations towards the silver screen in the 80s and 90s, Lee lent his voice to more than a dozen video game adaptations starring Marvel’s mightiest heroes. Most often playing himself (starting with 2000’s Spider-Man), Lee closed the book on his voiceover career with an appearance in Insomniac’s Spider-Man earlier this year as a Short Order Cook.
Lee was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 2008 for “his groundbreaking work as one of America’s most prolific storytellers.” The National Endowment for the Arts’s advisory committee also recognized Lee’s fight against injustice in his comics, adding, “His complex plots and humane super heroes celebrate courage, honesty, and the importance of helping the less fortunate, reflecting America’s inherent goodness.”
As Lee would say, “Nuff said!”
Viz Media will publish a Dragon Quest Illustrations artbook this December
I think it’s safe to say that the Dragon Quest franchise wouldn’t be quite as popular as it is without Akira Toriyama’s colorful character designs. Going all the way back to the franchise’s debut in 1986, the Dragon Ball creator’s unique style has helped the series stand out in the crowded RPG genre.
Late last week, Viz Media announced an English release of Dragon Quest Illustrations: 30th Anniversary Edition, an artbook that compiles a large number of Toriyama’s sketches and drawings for the series. Writing on Twitter, the publisher said that it’ll be available this December for a retail price of $34.99.
True to its title, Dragon Quest Illustrations will include an archive of Akira Toriyama’s “iconic illustrations and designs” from Dragon Quest titles released from 1986 through 2016.