In the distant future (about 1000 years) what video games do you think will be most recognizable when historians look back at our video game accomplishments? I predict they will have access to almost everything that's been created thanks to the super internet MK IV, but certain accomplishments should stand out more than others.
Will the Mario franchise be the most revered series due to its incredibly long presence and booming industry?
Will doom guy be acknowledged for making 3D games popular, or will we just be known as the Tennis for Two generation for creating arguably the first game?
From what has only been created until now I'd wager that Mario will be the most iconic character when we're looked back upon. I would have possibly said Call of Duty as well, but that series will still be spewing out sequels until then.
Mario games have numerous copies laying around on hardware, and if we're talking a millennia, i have more trust in hardware then software, so i 'd (also) expect mario to be around for archeologists to dig up, and something like LoL which is mostly server-hosted will be hard for them to find back completely.
If they don't find any tetris games someone will reinvent it no doubt.
Mario and Zelda because of staying power and the creators of those IPs have pretty much perfected game design and gameplay of those games.
Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Halo, Call of Duty, Halo, Grand Theft Auto, Tomb Raider, Mega Man, Sonic, Final Fantasy, Tetris. will also be remembered in my opinion.
As far as particular games: SMB3, MK1, SF2, Halo 1, GTA III, Tomb Raider (PS1), Mega Man X, Sonic 2, FF7, Zelda: Link to the Past. I don't play CoD so I couldn't tell you.
I don't think history is going to work the same way it has in the past. In an era of globalization, there's no Library of Alexandria to burn. Countries will rise and fall, but media has pretty much surpassed that scope. People will just forget about the less important stuff, but even that sort of thing will lie around in archives somewhere.
...Unless some kind of global catastrophe happens, but that's a pretty radical thing to assume.
Theoretical games, rather than implementations, will likely survive for an millennium.
Consider that our present collection of 1000 year old games are all the symbolic ones, easily played and easily taught. We might similarly have one or two genres survive generally. But in 3014 they won't be playing Final Fantasy 12 for its replay value.
Call of Duty isn't exactly iconic though. I wouldn't know the difference between it or any other FPS. The only FPS I probably would recognize (with the exception of N64 games such as Turok or Golden Eye) is Halo.
Isn't a machine running dwarf fortress already in a museum or was it temporary ? If so it may have a slight chance of survival through 1.000 years.
I'd say tic-tac-toe because new programmers will still be trying to figure it out
Many of you don't seem to take the time-frame into account, 1000 years, is a lot of generations. Your grand grand grand children will be long gone and with them the stories of crazy grand dad talking about how FF7 "summons" were the most amazing thing ever. I don't think we'll remember any game from the past specifically. Apart, maybe, Mario because it sort of launched the home console market so it may have a place in some book about primitive technology next to tetris and pacman. And also maybe whatever will be the first VR game.
edit : or alternatively Internet Mk12 will emulate whatever game system you want and run any game in public domain (A technology brought to you by the Google Mars Headquarters), hard to tell.
What games from 1014 are you familiar with? According to wikipedia, Chess as we know it today only dates back to the 1400's, so even that hasn't lasted a thousand years just yet. The classic Super Mario Bros is roughly 30 years old and is almost completely unknown to the younger generations (despite Nintendo's numerous, overpriced ports).
In a thousand years, I'd hope that technology will have advanced to the point that we'll all be pseudo-immortal robots colonizing space, or at least able to spend our free time in Matrix-style virtual worlds. Either way, I think we'd see 2014's entertainment about the same way we see 1014's today--we either won't know about it, won't care, or we'll think it was all hilariously crude.
