Chapter 2. Some Milestone Games

If you want to write novels, you've got to read lots of novels. If you want to make movies, you've got to watch lots of movies. And if you want to design games, you've got to play lots of games. Every game designer must try out a wide and exotic array of games. With about a thousand computer games released every year, it's impossible for any individual to be familiar with everything.

Indeed, any competent game designer is too busy making games to have the time to play many. Nevertheless, it is important to try out a variety of games, and I list here some games that I think would provide a broad education to any budding game designer. My list is far from complete, and it excludes many excellent games. My criterion for selecting a game for inclusion in this list was not the quality or success of the game, but the extent to which it explores interesting design concepts or defines a genre.

For the most part, I have concentrated on older games, not because they are better, but because they are simpler. Most modern games are huge conflations of many different ideas, and so it's difficult to learn the component concepts from these games. Most of the older games had one clear conceptual leap.

Unfortunately, many of these older games are difficult or impossible to find these days. You can find many of the computer games on the Web at retrogame sites, but in many cases, you'll need to obtain emulation software that permits your PC to act like an old computer. The old boardgames, on the other hand, can be found only at auction sites like eBay.