Name a game that changed your life

[milkanannan]

I’m interested to hear about games that deeply resonated with AGS members and/or provided them with what might be described an almost spiritual or deeply emotional experience. I don’t think this necessarily is the same thing as a ‘favourite game’. I’m more interested to hear about a gaming experience that deeply connected with you in some way, regardless of whether you think the game, as a game, was good or bad.

In my own case, and I’m aware this is a bit cliche, I’d have to say the Minecraft demo, where you essentially have five ‘days’ to build a little shelter and explore/carry out simple errands before the narrator announces you last day as you watch the sunrise. The whole thing opens some sort of emotional connection to the tree fort building days of my childhood, especially when you can do things in the game like build a little shelter and then rest in it and watch the afternoon clouds float by from you window, then swim way out in the water and look back at your shelter as the sun sets.

I also found the plot and character depth of Lisa: The Painful to be something I will never forget. I’m really not crazy about the game, but the way it grapples with the subject of redemption, and the truly tormented, self-loathing protagonist is really unique compared to anything I’ve seen elsewhere.

Finally, I’d list Fez only because I got so invested in the Phil Fish drama long before I ever played the game (the game is excellent, btw). I got to have this very meta experience while playing such a great game which was deeply enjoyable in some weird way I have not encountered with other titles.

How about you? Are there games you would say changed your life?

[KyriakosCH]

Not sure if "changed", but I was utterly fascinated with Another World (by Delphine).
I would keep playing, making sure never to lose 1 life in the entire game, and identified with the protagonist (I was 12 at the time).

[Mandle]

Unreal Tournament.

Not only did I play this game for about two years, almost exclusively, but it was the first time I experienced modding and map-making as it was one of the first major games to be shipped open-source: An absolutely genius move as it's longevity ran way past what the norm for an FPS game was back then.

This was the first time since I was a kid that making my own games did not seem out of reach.

Made some friends that I'm still in contact with to this day also. Good times!

[Olleh19]

Unreal Tournament.

Not only did I play this game for about two years, almost exclusively, but it was the first time I experienced modding and map-making as it was one of the first major games to be shipped open-source: An absolutely genius move as it's longevity ran way past what the norm for an FPS game was back then.

This was the first time since I was a kid that making my own games did not seem out of reach.

Made some friends that I'm still in contact with to this day also. Good times!

I have to go the opposite. Quake1, Omg! When seeing Quake and being used to Doom2 it was like "holy cow!" This is epic!

[Stupot]

Different games have affected me in different ways at different points in my life.

Fantasy World Dizzy was the first game that I got absolutely hooked as a little boy. My whole family did. My mum remembers it as fondly as my sister and I do. It was also the first time I had a notion that these things were made by normal people. There it was on the title screen “the Oliver Twins”. I’m a twin!

I didn’t own a Sega or Nintendo during the first couple of Generations, but friends did. I vaguely remembered half playing something at a friend’s house with blue speech boxes and turn-based battles. It clearly didn’t change my life much. But when FFVII came out on PlayStation and I started her up, I had a flashback and realised This was like those games, only better. Final Fantasy 7 absolutely took over my like for the several months that I played it. The music, the story, the action sequences, the battle animations, the music again, the atmosphere, the freedom, the characters, the humour, the pathos. It was like nothing I’d played before.  I still remember that feeling and it fills me with joy. Ironically, I have never actually finished it. My last did got scratched and then when I bought the platinum version (first time I ever bought a game I already owned) that third disc wouldn’t work again. I’m planning to buy it in Switch when I’m less busy and give it another go (I won’t be buying a PS4 just for the remake).

My old man and I used to play a lot of games together, Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, Silent Hill Etc and they all changed me in different ways too but none had the impact of FF7.

This post is long enough, but I also want to say: “Ocarina of Time. Thank you, Nintendo.”

[Olleh19]

Different games have affected me in different ways at different points in my life.

Fantasy World Dizzy was the first game that I got absolutely hooked as a little boy. My whole family did. My mum remembers it as fondly as my sister and I do. It was also the first time I had a notion that these things were made by normal people. There it was on the title screen “the Oliver Twins”. I’m a twin!

I didn’t own a Sega or Nintendo during the first couple of Generations, but friends did. I vaguely remembered half playing something at a friend’s house with blue speech boxes and turn-based battles. It clearly didn’t change my life much. But when FFVII came out on PlayStation and I started her up, I had a flashback and realised This was like those games, only better. Final Fantasy 7 absolutely took over my like for the several months that I played it. The music, the story, the action sequences, the battle animations, the music again, the atmosphere, the freedom, the characters, the humour, the pathos. It was like nothing I’d played before.  I still remember that feeling and it fills me with joy. Ironically, I have never actually finished it. My last did got scratched and then when I bought the platinum version (first time I ever bought a game I already owned) that third disc wouldn’t work again. I’m planning to buy it in Switch when I’m less busy and give it another go (I won’t be buying a PS4 just for the remake).

My old man and I used to play a lot of games together, Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, Silent Hill Etc and they all changed me in different ways too but none had the impact of FF7.

This post is long enough, but I also want to say: “Ocarina of Time. Thank you, Nintendo.”

FF7 was amazing, what an beautiful world to get into. I loved it! 99+ hours on the save files was the norm! . Totally agree. I've yet to have played a game that is at that level of brilliance in the RPG world.
I also forgot about Goldeneye, my funniest memories with multiplayer in a room with other friends, and Resident Evil 2 playing that dark in a room by myself! How afraid i got when the *spoiler* Crocodile or whatever you wanna call it showed up, nearly shit my pants. 

[FormosaFalanster]

Suikoden I and II.

Sorry for point and click lovers, but the two first Suikodens are the ones that changed my life and I still consider them the best narrative games ever made! They are deeper on many levels than any novel I ever read. And that influenced a lot of things for me.

[milkanannan]

Kyriakos - oh yeah, I should have listed that, too. I finished the game as a kid (with the help of a tutorial I found online), and I think there may have been a bit of dust in my eye when they sailed off on the back of that dragon-thing in the end. 

Mandle - I remember the days when you couldn't open a gaming mag without seeing an ad for Unreal. I never played it, but it sounds like it must have been an early mover in the modding world.

Stupot - Alright, I've heard enough about FF7 ~ I got to try this! Looks like it has a Steam version, so maybe I'll finally have the experience for myself. Thanks for the recommendation. Yes, my brother and I played Ocarina of Time, too. Like you said, games will resonate in different ways depending on when you play them, so I think I sort of missed the boat on this one as I was transitioning to university at the time and was having deep and lasting emotional experiences outside of gaming, but I could totally see how this title would end up on someone's shortlist.

Olleh - If I had a dollar for every time someone told me Resident Evil made them 'sh*t their pants', I'd have around, well, maybe 8 bucks or so (but that's seriously high on pants sh*tting scale! ) I've only sat in on friends playing it, so I barely remember anything from the games. Never played them myself.

FormosaFalanstar - I've never heard of those, but my wife is a Mainlander so we're familiar with the Water Margin story (I'm just reading in the Wiki that the game is based on this story). Thanks for sharing ~ I'll check it out.

[FormosaFalanster]

FormosaFalanstar - I've never heard of those, but my wife is a Mainlander so we're familiar with the Water Margin story (I'm just reading in the Wiki that the game is based on this story). Thanks for sharing ~ I'll check it out.

I read Shui Hu Zhuan because of Suikoden  But seriously, these two games have the most emotionally impacting stories I ever saw through videogames. They remained in me for long. Play they, you will not regret it.

[milkanannan]

I will~ thanks very much for the recommendation. Random: are living in Taiwan?

[Hobo]

I always find these type of discussions interesting, because for me it's fascinating to see people pinpointing out exact experiences and games from their past. I don't have anything like that myself, looking back at all the games I've played, I can't really say that any of them had a big impact on my life or resonated very deeply on an emotional level. Collectively yes, I can see how I've learned a little bit from a bunch of them and games as a whole have certainly had an influence. But a single game? No, not really.

That actually applies to all types of entertainment I've consumed in my life, I've never been a die-hard fan of anything or obsessed with a particular piece of media, never been a part of a fandom, never had a single poster on my wall, never bought any related merchandise. Currently I'm trying to keep my eye on the new console launches out of professional interest and it's very weird to see how much passion some have for these things and how engaged they are. All that hype and excitement, as well as the negativity and toxic behavior, is kind of unfathomable to me. Or like how some people are playing one game for thousands of hours or replaying their old favorite for a tenth time already, can't ever imagine doing the same myself.

[Olleh19]

on when you play them, so I think I sort of missed the boat on this one as I was transitioning to university at the time and was having deep and lasting emotional experiences outside of gaming, but I could totally see how this title would end up on someone's shortlist.

Olleh - If I had a dollar for every time someone told me Resident Evil made them 'sh*t their pants', I'd have around, well, maybe 8 bucks or so (but that's seriously high on pants sh*tting scale! ) I've only sat in on friends playing it, so I barely remember anything from the games. Never played them myself.

There is that classic scene also that is taken from a horror movie, i do not recall the name right now. "Dawn on the dead" perhaps, i don't know. Where you walk into a room and hands grab you, omg that was so scary!!!

[KyriakosCH]

Kyriakos - oh yeah, I should have listed that, too. I finished the game as a kid (with the help of a tutorial I found online), and I think there may have been a bit of dust in my eye when they sailed off on the back of that dragon-thing in the end. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xqz5nfocLrA

[FormosaFalanster]

Kyriakos - oh yeah, I should have listed that, too. I finished the game as a kid (with the help of a tutorial I found online), and I think there may have been a bit of dust in my eye when they sailed off on the back of that dragon-thing in the end. 

((ending video of Another World))

What a game... and to think Eric Chahi did that all by himself. The timing in this game is fantastic and the narrative is entirely driven by the gameplay with not one line of dialogue. This is very inspirational.

I have this theory that a narrative game should add the rule "play don't tell" to the rule "show don't tell". You have to communicate through the gameplay itself, primarily. Text and images should only come second to this. It's extremely hard to acheive and I have huge respect for those who maximises this rule.

[heltenjon]

I guess I have a few.

The Golden Baton: This was my first adventure game experience, IIRC. So then, my first time drawing a map and learning how to think in the terms of those games, always with a dictionary at hand, learning lots of English in the process. This process continued in other games, so it was more the game type that made an impression than that particular game.

The Pawn: This was the first time I remember spending a lot of time on the easter eggs. (I didn't know the term back then.) There was this wise man or monk in the game, and my friend and I would sit the entire evening coming up with subjects we could ask him about, just to see if they were implemented in the game.

Elite: I played this space game on a Commodore 64 with a cassette tape deck. I remember sitting up late in the summer nights, waiting for my ship to approach some planet or being attacked. I would have something to read in the meantime - there really was a lot of waiting while flying through space. I imagined this was how it would probably be to sit in that cockpit, too. A lot of waiting.

Frankie Goes to Hollywood: When a kid, I would make up stories that connected all my games in some sort of conspiracy that I could unravel only by playing the games. One of the games that had the leader of the bad guys (in my head) was Frankie Goes to Hollywood (I guess it was the Soviet President I thought about - the game really lacks a villain). My friends and I were stuck at 98% for so long before we discovered the last task by accident.

Wing Commander: I remember skipping some university classes in order to play and beat one of these games. Afterwards, I thought that that behaviour wasn't productive - I had stayed away from other people for a couple of days just to blow up an imaginary space station, and I hadn't been doing any studying either. So I decided to quit studying and get a job.

Diablo: I'm not sure if this was game 1 or 2, but I spent 10-12 hours playing, neglecting to eat or sleep. The next day, I decided that this wasn't healthy, and I couldn't keep up with work if I started doing this. So I quit the game. Never touched it again. I try not to get involved in any games that I suspect will be time thieves and have stayed away from a lot of Internet gaming for this reason.

Angry Birds - I think this was the first game I played that had bonuses if the player checked in regularly. This is commonplace nowadays, of course. Identifying this as a pattern behaviour was useful - I've never cared for having a snap streak, but I understand how that mechanism works.

WordFeud - The game that got me into some sort of social gaming (through WF League of Honour) at an acceptable pace for a family man.

Yatzy World - The game that made me start designing rules and tournaments. Through the Yatzy League of the mentioned WFLOH, there was an established base of players who were already interested in playing Yatzy cups/tournaments through their mobile app. And then I started making new rules, some times introducing the new concepts gradually, one in each tournament, before arriving at the complicated design I had had in mind without scaring off the potential participants.

Oh my. Sorry for writing a whole essay. I'll go start a blog now.   

[JackPutter]

The game that truly changed my life is a game that is almost universally agreed to be a "bad" game, and that's Driver 3... Or Driv3r if we're to go by the way it's spelled on the box. I was a really big fan of the first game on PS1 and I spent many hours of my childhood smashing into cop cars, ramping over bridges, and sliding sideways around corners.

I was never able to afford brand-new games growing up, I always had to buy them pre-owned, but when I heard that there was a third instalment of Driver coming out, I knew I had to have it. So I saved up, pinched every penny, and I got it pretty much on the day of release. I remember in those days my parents limited me to one hour of PlayStation a day, and I foolishly used up my hour BEFORE going to the store and buying my new game! I have a vivid memory of sitting on the curb outside my house, reading the instruction manual cover to cover, over and over. I doubt I slept at all that night, I was so excited to play my new game!

When I finally got to play it, I was so impressed. The cutscenes and story were just SO COOL! The graphics looked amazing! You could steal ANY car you saw! The cities were so detailed! You could SHOOT GUNS! I blasted through the story and spent day after day exploring the three maps in the "Take a Ride" mode. I perfected each course of the minigames section, I memorised the perfect route for each of the story missions. Name a secret car, easter egg, or gameplay exploit and I would have been able to tell you exactly where it was or how to trigger it. I was so infatuated I even bought the soundtrack on CD, which is actually a real hidden gem. (It's presented like a radio station with Iggy Pop as the DJ!)

None of the things I've mentioned are reasons why this game "changed my life" though. The life changing moment came when I first opened the "Film Director" mode. Basically, in Driv3r, after you finish a mission you get the option to view a replay of what you just did, with the view cutting from angle to angle like a movie. This was amazing to my little brain, but my mind was truly blown when I selected the "Film Director" option. In this mode, you got to pick the camera angles. At any time, you could pause the action and place the camera angle anywhere you wanted. It allowed you to decide when to cut from shot to shot, zoom in and out, add slow motion... I'll never forget the first time I paused the replay while my car was doing a jump, and I got to fly the camera around in 3D space. Seeing the car hovering there, sparks and broken glass floating, while I could freely move all around and examine it from every angle... that was almost a transcendental experience. When I later saw The Matrix, that's what I imagined "seeing the code" felt like.

I started creating my own little mini-movies with the "Film Director" tools. I would attach stories to them, despite there being no in-game dialogue. I had always loved action movies but I could never make one myself, not when my only resources were my reluctant friends and my family's budget-price camcorder. This game allowed me to make all the spectacular action movies I wanted though. I used to drag my parents away from whatever they were doing so I could show them my latest car chase, excitedly narrating the story to them as it went along. I filled up memory cards with save files of these replay movies.

After a while I started making my own short films in real life, and eventually decided to study the subject in college. I'm not saying I wouldn't still have a degree in Film & Television Production right now if it weren't for the hours I spent with Driv3r, but it definitely fueled my passion in a big way.

[Mouth for war]

All of 'em. When you sometimes think "Walk to cupboard" "Open cupboard" "Pick up glass" you just know those games made a huge difference in your life

[Mandle]

JackPutter... Your story there was very inspiring in and of itself, and very well written too!

[milkanannan]

Yeah, awesome story, Jack. Is there somewhere we can see some of the movies you made?

[JackPutter]

Mandle and Milkanannan, that's very nice of you to say! I probably still have some of the memory cards with those Driv3r replays on them, I have no idea how I would transfer them to a computer to be able to show them though! There are a few of my IRL movies from that era that have survived, but since my name/face and other such information is contained in most of them, I'd rather not share at the moment. I'm a little more self conscious these days than I was when I was a kid!