TLDR: My major influences have consistently been games I played 4 years ago or less, how about you?

I saw an interesting discussion elsewhere about how much or little one's childhood affects one's adult artistic creations. So I'd like to know, are any of the games you played as a child or teen still inspirations for your current designs? If you are older than your twenties, are your current designs significantly different from what they were as a young adult?

Me, I started designing games as a hobby when I was about 19 (would have been 1999). At that time my major inspiration was Final Fantasy 7, which I had played the previous year. I was also interested in MMO design, though I'm not sure exactly which MMOs I had played by then. My oldest major inspirations at that point were E.V.O: The Search For Eden (1993) and Myst (1993), even though I had been playing various games since about 1985. A few of those older games were lingering as minor influences, like Invisible Bugs (1989). But mainly when I began designing none of my important influences were more than 6 years old; actually they were probably more like 5 years since I didn't play those two when they were new.

Currently, I'm 34. My oldest major influence on current designwork is probably Disgaea 1 (2003 release but I probably played it in 2006). (Again, I don't know which MMO I played which year, so I should exclude them). But anyway the point is that all of my major influences were replaced, and at no time have I been heavily influenced by a game I played more than 9 years ago; most major influences are games I played 4 years ago or less. How about you all? Is my 'gamer memory' unusually short or are you all mainly influenced by games you've played in the past 4 years also?

The games which influenced my design most, are quite old. Dungeon Keeper(1997), Populous(1986), Dungeon Master(1988), Bard's Tale(1985), Ultima ( ~1985), all games which I have played in my teens (I'm 42 now).

I love playing FPS and I loved playing MMORPGs once, but I never got the intention to create a FPS , and only once to create a MMORPG (well, everyone wants to create his own MMORPG at least once ).

Most games, which influenced me, contains a certain portion of simulation , and I think that simulation games have me hooked on (even in Dungeon Master I loved to harvest worms to fill up my storage somewhere else in the dungeon) and I seem to love games which contain dungeons

Why ? I don't know, but I could think of some factors. For one a nostalgia effect (the good old games), then early games were more about being games and less about being a visual roller coaster experience. Early sandbox games have a much higher simulation part (compare ultima games vs modern RPGs) and early games are easier to be realize by sole developer or small teams.

My current game project is based on an old BBS ASCII based game that I played as a kid. It was developed in the late 80's and I would spend hours hopping from system to system playing the game. During this time frame most communities were fairly small because there was no Internet and most people couldn’t afford the long distance calls.

Overall though I think most of the influences in games for me come from 80’s when it was more about game play, skills, and exploring. Any RPG from the 80's would probably hit the mark on a game that I would like to build into my next project. I think the pinnacle of games for me came when Blizzard released Diablo II, but since then there hasn't been an RPG or game that has captivated my interests for more than a couple minutes.

Don’t get me wrong there has been several really good RPG released in the past few years but nothing that has captivated me like some of the older games. It seems current games are focusing more on mobile devices and monetization of in game purchases.

The game I'm getting started on now was originally inspired by old final fantasy games I used to play. Especially the 2d ones 1987, to 1994. The original final fantasy only had one save, and it was my older brother's, so I could play his save a little, but never stay at the inn which would overwrite the save. It inspired me to make RPG's on paper when I was probably just 6 or so years old. The old final fantasy games and other RPGs of that style aren't quite as fun as I remember though, so I was trying to think of how to make that kind of RPG fun again.

Now I'm getting away from that a bit, considering adding a puzzle element like Puzzle Quest (2007) and/or tactical elements like Final Fantasy Tactics (1997) or Fallout 2 (1998).

I'm also inspired by a board game, Pandemic (2008, but I didn't start playing it until this year). It gives you more challenges than you're able to deal with at once, so you have to choose which crisis to deal with first. However, dealing with these threats won't win you the game, it just stops you from losing for a while as the threat against you ramps up over time. You also have to figure out what risks are worth taking to achieve your goal. I'd like my new RPG to have this kind of feeling, even if none of the mechanics are the same as Pandemic.

If there's one game that has any sort of influence on the design of my current project it might be Inindo: Way of the Ninja (1991). Currently my project doesn't seem likely to have any ninja or warring states but I do want to have these various nations or regions where once a month the status of a region is resolved based on the population work output and then that might impact what jobs or opportunities might be available to the player and a few select special NPCs.

There may be other assorted games where I might see a particular element and I think that it'd be cool to have in my game but I don't really feel much desire to try to compete against them. What always stuck with me with Inindo was that there's these other characters that you just kinda run into that are off doing there own jobs which tend to have an impact on the military capabilities of the nation they're done in. So for quite some time I wanted to do something where you can see the effect you might have on a nation and have these other characters whose interests can either follow or be in opposition to your own (probably with more a focus on trade and economy than on war).

I have no idea if I'll actually end up with anything like that but I think the game has been an influencing factor.

I think that the influence is quite straight forward. Everyone has interest in things and it is naturally to like games which satisfy these interests. Playing these games creates a foundation for your knowledge in a certain field of interest and once you start developing, you will most likely try to develop a game you are most interest in. In the same way books and movies will influence our game design, thought more in the direction of the setting and not regarding game mechanism.

A result of this would be, that we don't evaluate new game mechanism, we stick to the foundation we know and try to optimize it, but we don't try to invent new game mechanism. This has already been discussed (local maxima vs new fields of game mechanism) and it might be a reason, that computer games in the 80th/90th felt so innovative, and modern games feel so repetitive (we reached local maxima).

If computers were a catalyzer for a new era of games, then this could be true for something new too, maybe VR...

I saw an interesting discussion elsewhere about how much or little one's childhood affects one's adult artistic creations. So I'd like to know, are any of the games you played as a child or teen still inspirations for your current designs? If you are older than your twenties, are your current designs significantly different from what they were as a young adult?

Very different! In my late teens and twenties my inspirations were the games and genres I had played recently. In my thirties, the influence of my late childhood and early teens is much more evident. (Actually, I get significant inspiration from before that, too -- early childhood non-game play like coloring books, paint-by-numbers, toys and puzzles, etc.)

Part of the difference is that in my twenties, I pretty much liked the overall state of games (except I wanted more of them), and so when I thought "What games should exist?" the answer was "More of this, please!" Now, I find myself with a big backlog of games that I'm not super enthused about, and find myself wishing for different sorts of games altogether. I sometimes picture them as games from a parallel universe that branched off of ours 20 years ago, where we took the games and ideas from my late childhood and early teens and just went off in a different direction. Still improving, still honing the craft of game design, just going different places with it. (That's in general outlook, though; specifically there are lots of games and ideas, old and new, that are inspirations.)

During my gamer "career" starting with Rambo III at Commodore 64, I am always fascinated by simulation games; most notable ones are Transport Tycoon, Civilization I, Capitalism Plus and SimX (City,Tower,Farm) games.

It also shapes what you want to work on, imo. I have never been big fan of RPGs, first one I played was KoToR then Oblivion and Skyrim. Because of that I am not interested in games like WoW, UO etc and wouldn't want to develop one RPG/MMORPG either.

I may get some trouble for saying this, but I don't get inspired. Golden Sun, a game from 12 years ago, inspires me but I don't make my games at all like it because of the amount of effort involved. But every time I write fiction, expect a Golden Sun influence.

Right now I am making an outer space game, and dare I say, nothing inspired me really.

Concepts I work with recently are either derived from DOS-era games (using modern UX improvements) or somewhat recent indie titles (which are generally rooted in very old games themselves).

I like the concept of reinventing something old with modern value. A lot of defunct game concepts were fun but hard to handle. Tweaking input/flow can truly change the "game" sometimes.