What makes a great game?
We’re back - sorry for the unexpectedly long summer holiday. Turns out trying to get adjust to the return of the real world, buying a flat, working at an agency and teaching uni students is a lot of work and doesn’t leave much space for writing. I’ve been having a long think about how to revive this newsletter and think i’ve got an idea so watch this space for more. For now, here’s some musings on greatness.
What makes a game great? It’s a conversation that’s taken place across a few of my What’s App chats this week - sparked by The Guardian’s ranking of the greatest games of the 2010s. The list itself is a pretty good starting point, but what interests me more is the criteria they may or may not have used. Greatness isn’t objective - it would have been much easier to do a list of the best selling or best reviewed titles. But, it wouldn’t have got people talking and thinking in the way this article did. Which is what any debate about greatness is really about - a good argument.
Just ask people who the GOAT of any sport is and watch the next 3 hours flash by - from Ronaldo vs Messi to Federer vs Nadal vs Djokovic, we can’t help but get sucked into an attempt to define greatness.
And that’s a relatively easy debate - there’s stats and footage and head to head comparisons to draw on. When you move into the entertainment world, the debate gets a whole lot harder. It’s also when people start to question the very point of subjective lists - why should we attempt to define or rank culture. It’s a fair question, but one which misses the point. We do the rankings to share the things we love and try and gauge their importance/impact on the world and make them relevant. It’s why when a hot new female author comes along they instantly get compared to Sally Rooney - comparisons help us make sense of something’s place in the world.
It’s this last point that is hugely important for gaming. Our industry is still relatively new in the grander scheme of things and our heritage is all too easy to forget. By creating lists like these - however subjective they are, we give people a chance to reflect on what matters to them and give a context for other people to enjoy cultural acts in.
So what does make a game great? It’s going to be different for everyone, but I imagine most of us will draw on the following criteria:
Fun/enjoyment
For most of us this is the category which defines our personal list of great games - how much of a blast did I have playing this? It’s incredibly subjective, but that’s ok - it’s also oddly democratic. Some of us find our fun in becoming masters of a repetitive experience like Mario Kart or FIFA. For others it’s getting to the end of the 150 hours it takes to beat the Mass Effect trilogy and getting the best possible outcome. If I was to rank games from the past few years I’d find it hard to look past the two most recent Spider-Man games. Why? Because they have the slickest, most fun moment to moment gameplay of any AAA title of the last decade. Swinging around as either Peter or Miles feels genuinely amazing - it’s the rare game where moving between objectives and story beats is just as fun as those set piece moments themselves.
Ambition
Some games are great because of their ambition. Red Dead Redemption 2 tried to make the gaming world as immersive as possible and where for some people it succeeded in telling a story unlike any other, for others it failed - the clunky control system and measured, sometimes glacial pace made it a bridge too far. But the ambition and the world they created - we can all agree that’s great. It’s why for me The Last of Us will always make my top five games of all time list - it was the first game which didn’t just tell a good story - it told a great one and used the
Influence on gaming
Certain titles get copied more than others - they hit upon a brilliant new feature or find a new way of bringing life to an old genre that can’t be ignored. That makes them hugely influential, but does it make them great? This is where games developers and more casual fans will probably begin to differ. For the former its these games which create or influence whole genres which will be viewed as the greatest. But they may also be the games the wider public have never heard of - things like Spelunky, Hollow Knight, Slay the Spire and Hades are all absolutely incredible games, but with the possible exception of Hades have never cracked the public consciousness. And that’s ok - they can be great without being household names.
Influence on culture
Influence is so important I’ve included it twice.
The most glaring omission from The Guardian’s list from me was Fortnite - not because it’s necessarily the most fun game I’ve ever played, but because it’s had the most impact on pop culture of any game in my lifetime.
Not only did it become the game of choice for teens and young adults, it also redefined how society saw video games - not just as a hobby, but as a social space where people went to hang out and enjoy a wide range of activities far beyond pressing a button to make a gun shoot out. Well most of society anyway - there will always be some people who refuse to acknowledge games as part of culture, like the author of this depressingly ill informed Bloomberg article…
Games like Minecraft, Fortnite and GTA all belong near the top of any greatest list because they are the games which have transcended our sphere and become household names - reference points which for better and worse non-gamers can use to shape their understanding of our world.
That’s how I’d define greatness - and now to put it into practice - here’s my not at all in order personal top 10 greatest games of the last 10 and a bit years along with which of the four categories I think they score highest in
Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (ambition, fun, influence on gaming
Fortnite (fun, influence on society, influence on gaming, ambition)
Last of Us (ambition and influence on gaming)
Red Dead Redemption 2 (ambition)
FIFA 13 (fun)
Mario Kart 8 (fun)
Hades (fun, ambition, influence on gaming)
Slay the Spire (influence on gaming, fun)
Spider-man: Miles Morales (fun)
Minecraft (influence on society, influence on gaming, ambition)
What would make your list? Let me know on Twitter or by replying to this email.
If you enjoyed the return of Press A to Jump, please consider sharing it - my energy to write is fuelled by cookies, social shares and hugs.