Initiated
by Janet Murray and Chaim Gingold in spring of 2002, the Georgia Tech Game Morphology
Project analyzes representative games for distinct and common structural elements.
The list of games is derived from asking prominent game designers and game researchers
for the ten games that have been most important to them. The contributors can
offer non-electronic as well as electronic games.
The purpose of this project is to encourage a dialogue about game structure
that involves people from both academia and industry, efforts of scholars and
designers to create a critical vocabulary that will help expand the expressive
power of the medium.
Games
List
1-2-3 al-er-ee (bouncing ball game)
A Boy and His Blob Adventure
Afternoon Alone in the Dark
Assassin
Asteroids
Balance of Power
Battle For Germany
Battles of General MacArthur
Boxing (spectator)
Breitenfeld
Careers
Checkers
Chess Civilization
Collapse
Combat
Command & Conquer
Cosmic Encounter
Creatures
Dance Dance Revolution
Dandy
Dark Castle
Deadline Deus
Ex Diablo
Disney's Aladdin
Dodgeball
Doom
Dragon's Lair
Dune 2
Dungeons and Dragons
Eastern Front (1941)
Eliza
Empire of the Petal Throne
EverQuest
Flight Simulator Football (sport)
Furby
Gamelab
Ghost in the Graveyard
Go
Grand Theft Auto III
Habitat
Hack
Half-Life
Hide 'n' Seek
Hopscotch
Ico
Illuminati
Jacks
Jet Grind Radio
John Madden Football
Johnny Mnemonic
Jotto
Karateka
Kick the Can
King's Quest
Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
Little Computer People
M.U.L.E.
Mafia
Magic
Magic the Gathering
Majestic
Mancala
Mario Mario 64
Mario Party
Masquerade
Mines of Minos
Monopoly
Montessori toys
Mortal Kombat
MUD1
Myst
Napoleon At Waterloo
Pac-Man {1980}
Panzer Blitz
Parappa the Rapper
Parry
Petz
Pickup sticks
Pinball Construction Set
Pokemon
Poker
Pong
Potsy
Prince of Persia
Punchball
Red Light, Green Light
red/green paddles at SIGGRAPH '91
Ringolevio
Russian Civil War
Scrabble
Secret Paths series
Settlers of Cataan
Shenmue
SimCity
Solitaire
Space Invaders
Space Panic
Star Raiders
Star Trek (~1975)
Star Wars Galaxies
StarForce Alpha Centauri
Stargate
Super Mario Bros.
Talisman
Tamagotchi
Tetris
The Elder Scrolls
The Seventh Guest
The Sims
Tigers and Goats
Treasure Hunt (home-made)
Trust & Betrayal
Ultima III
Ultima IV
Ultima Online
Ultima RPG series
Ultima Underworld
War In The East
WarCraft II
Warlords
Wizardy
Woggles
You Don't Know Jack
Zork
Contributors
Amy S. Bruckman
Non-computer:
Dungeons and Dragons
Magic The Gathering
Computer single-player:
Adventure
Tetris
Sim City
Diablo
Networked:
MUD1
Habitat
Ultima Online
Everquest
Both computer and non-computer:
Pokemon (game boy games & card games)
Chris Crawford
See the chapter on some milestone games in Chris Crawford's new book The Art of Interactive Design.
Noah Falstein
Paper:
Cosmic Encounter - a designer's game, one in which the rules change
as the game is played.
SPI boardgames/wargames, particularly "Stargate", for inspiring me
with how complex, detailed, and realistic games and in particular simulations could be.
Magic, The Gathering (in turn heavily influenced by Cosmic Encounter)
because of its amazing balance and also its economic model that helped it become so successful.
Empire of the Petal Throne - a little-known contemporary of Dungeons and Dragons, which, in 1976, awakened me to the potential of roleplaying games. Incredibly detailed, vivid world.
Electronic:
Star Trek text-based computer games, circa 1975 - got me hooked on
the potential of computer gaming
Star Raiders on the Atari 800 - first 1st person 3D home game I ever saw, made me feel like I was in space.
Zork (PDP-11 version) my first introduction to adventure games
Civilization - best game of all time. Incredibly deep, addictive,
well-balanced. An exquisite piece of design, showing that graphics
and action are not all that computer games are about. Sid Meier is my
all-time favorite designer.
Warcraft II/Starcraft - Blizzard is an amazing company, and these games redefined strategy play by integrating real-time action and storytelling in some very innovative and deeply satisfying ways. I'm also a huge fan of Diablo/Diablo II, but these are not as groundbreaking.
Anything by Shigeru Miyamoto. I'm not as much a personal enthusiast for his games, but they show a sense of artistry and attention to detail, and
balance (common theme, eh?) that is very difficult to achieve in game
design.
Gonzalo Frasca
I assume most of the lists will share some classics: Pong, Mario, Pacman,
Tetris -which are indeed very important for widely accepted reasons. If I
had to pick just a few, I would go for Sim City, The Sims and GTA3, in
that order - and I am fully aware that the last two are very recent.
The importance of these games is basically because of their gameplay: as Will Wright likes to say, they are closer to toys than to games. In addition to this, The Sims deserves special kudos for being the first mainstream game that deals with human beings in everyday environments. My main
reason for picking these games is that they try to break with the Aristotelian paradigm -even if the authors may insist that they deal with
narratives.
All three are good examples of simulations where the player is more interested in exploring "what-if" scenarios than in actually winning or losing. In different degrees, these 3 games are more about experimentation than about following different steps towards completing a story (GTA3 can be played in a "narrative" mode, but it is open-ended enough to be use as a crime laboratory). Just like the Birth of a Nation broke with the technique of just remediating drama and literature, these three games are -in different degrees- going beyond simply replicating cinema.
Tracy Fullerton
1. Pong: This was my first electronic game There is no adequate way to verbalize the impact this game had on me. It quite simply changed the way I thought about games and media.
2. Super Mario Bros.: This game was filled with character and imagination. Before Mario and Luigi, I never thought much about characters in games. Most of the games I had at home were sports or action-based. Playing this game was like falling into the rabbit hole - only unlike Alice, I didn't want to get home.
3. Balance of Power: I never won this game, and yet I continued to play it for years. It always ended with the world being destroyed in a nuclear war. A frustrating but valid social message -- that was a new idea for me to think about. A game with a message. Hmmmm. Did I mention that I never won this game?
4. Dark Castle: Amazing graphics and sound. This game was completely addictive and, for its time, totally immersive. The first time I saw it I couldn't believe the imagery - like interacting with the images in book of fairytales or a theme park ride. I still remember the sound of the rushing underground river and the funny chirping of the monsters you had to throw rocks at. Honestly, I refuse to throw my MacPlus away just so that I can drag this game out and play from time to time.
5. Hack: This game had no graphics and no sound and yet also was completely addictive and immersive. This game wrote the book on depth of re-playability. The entire dungeon was randomly constructed and every time you played, you faced a completely new environment and omcbination of monsters. Also, there are very cool and funny touches, like the fact that the game always knows what phase the moon is in.
6. Myst: I will admit that I am one of those obsessive-compulsive people who finished this game completely. I still have my "adventurers notebook" complete with notes on how to solve all the puzzles. This game made me feel like I'd stepped into a much larger universe than just the space I was playing in. The eerie atmosphere was something I'd only experienced in movies or theme parks before. I was hooked.
7. WarCraft II: This game was not great because it was a new idea; it was great because it took an idea that was not quite new to an emotional level. The days and nights of my obsession with this game are a blur; others, who were moving through the same blur, surrounded me. We staged epic battles that spilt over into real-world rivalries. It was without doubt the most fun I'd ever had with other gamers. To this day, the opening notes of the WarCraft II theme are as recognizable to me and as laden with meaning and portent as, for instance, the original Star Wars theme. It's like a Pavlovian response =8A
8. You Don't Know Jack: Wow. Finally a breakout game for the rest of humanity. And not some pandering non-game of a game either. This game was hard. You had to know both Shakespeare and The Brady
Bunch inside and out - luckily I had studied both with equal enthusiasm at college. The thing about this game that really caught me though, was the responsiveness of the host character - and the fluidity of that responsiveness. His snappy repartee, customized to exactly what was going on in the game, made it feel incredibly real. And the writing was incredible. The first time I'd played a game where the writing was up to television comedy standards.
9. Magic The Gathering: The only non-digital experience on my list. I have a theory that this game could not have been invented in a pre-digital world, however. There are many things to admire about this game, but what always gets to me is the scope of its system. I don't think that a game of this complexity could have existed, or at least been as successful as it has, prior to the advent of the personal computer. We have all learned to deal comfortably with an excess of information by interacting with the computer. Now, we play games with infinite scope and ever-expanding boundaries. But here is just one complaint: Am I the only gamer on the face of the earth that has had enough of elves for God's sake?
10. The Sims: Don't let me near this game. I have to work. I have too much to do. Please make it go away! But if you have a minute, do you want to hear about my Sims? You see, they are really interesting, and we've been through so much together. I would love to talk your ear off about them if you just give me a chance! Seriously, this is by far one of the most incredible games I've ever played. You see, I used to have a dollhouse, but it never "played back" like this one does. This is one of the only games I've played where I felt immediately at "home" (pun very much intended). Finally, a chance to use all those finely honed household
organizational skills to KICK BUTT! My mother would be so proud, but she's busy playing The Sims =8A I love where this type of design is going. I can't wait to play more.
Henry Jenkins
This has been an interesting one to think through. I have never been asked for my ten best list for games and I'm still not sure I've arrived at the right answers. I am leaving off, for example, early games such as Spacewars, Centipede, Breakout, Defender, or Pac-Man, as essential to the development of games as a genre, but not necessarily defining what games look like as a more mature medium. For me, then, the list starts with Shigeru Miyamoto, who revitalized what might have otherwise been a dying industry into something which started to have the trappings of a viable form of popular art. Miyamoto is, for me, the D.W. Griffith of the games industry. Each of the subsequent games on the list, then, represent some guiding creative intelligence which helped push forward the medium.Super Mario Bros - For me, this game was an absolute revelation. It was when I saw Miyamoto's work on Mario Brothers that I had a sense of games not so much as a parlor entertainment than as a medium which
demanded serious academic attention. It stands in here for a range of
other early scroll game titles - Megaman, Zelda, and Sonic the Hedgehog
among them - which were almost as important in shaping my initial sense of what games can do.
Boy and His Blob - This is a totally idiosyncratic choice, an obscure early Nintendo title, which has always struck me as unfairly neglected. It was the first game I played which did not have "hard rails," which represented an expansive universe which could be navigated in a multitude of different ways depending on the choices which the player made.
Tetris - This is probably the game I have spent the most time playing. It suggests that not all great games need to have graphical realism or narrative depth and complexity to be compelling. It looks towards many of my more recent favorites, including Snood and Super Collapse and more loosely, Rez and Frequency.
Secret Paths series - Brenda Laurel deserves more credit than she currently receives for grasping a totally different model for what people want to get out of games and for working tirelessly to expand and diversify the game market.
Myst - Time has shown this was not a great game from the perspective of game play. I see it as important for two reasons - first, it brought some degree of middle class respectability to games, helping to draw people to the medium who would never step foot into an arcade, even getting discussed by Robert Coover in the New York Times Book Review,and second, it made the public more aware of games as an authored medium, thanks in part to the making of video that was bundled with the game, which focused attention on the aesthetics of game design.
The Sims - Will Wright ranks alongside Miyamoto as perhaps the most important figure in the history of game design and I see The Sims as his greatest accomplishment to date. To some degree, it stands in on my list for a whole range of simulation games which Simcity helped to inspired, but it also reflects dramatic improvements in AI for games and the continued effort to diversify the game market by expanding our understanding of the kinds of experiences which games can offer, by shifting the way the game industry relates to its consumers, and by
involving more women behind the scenes in the production pipe line.
Deus Ex - This game stands in for a range of titles which in recent years have expanded both the narrative and visual capacity of games, including Thief, Black & White, Grand Theft Auto 3, the Final Fantasy series, and Ico, each of which would have deserved recognition on a somewhat larger list of titles. Deus Ex paves the way for the more expansive, open-ended, highly responsive titles which have made such buzz this past year and at the same time, he creates a compelling atmosphere which shapes the player's emotional experience of the game play.
Gamelab titles - Not sure any one title stands out here, so much as the overall artistic project which Eric Zimmerman has undertook. Gamelab almost single-handedly holds open the idea that games can be an
alternative or avant garde practice as well as a mainstream one. They are consistently more witty, imaginative, and original than any of the museum installation artists who pretend to be interested in games and they each shed some light on what are the core building blocks of games as a medium. Sometimes, they are more fun to think about than to play - but it's a close call, since play mechanics are so central to Zimmerman's project.
Jet Grind Radio - This game creates a distinctive look and feel, constantly aware of both visual and audio aesthetics. So often, game designers act as if there were a single aesthetic which games needed to pursue, an inevitable set of steps towards perfect photorealism. But, this game, like Grim Fandango which I also admire, suggests that as we improve the graphic capacity of the medium, there is room for stylization and abstraction.
Star Wars Galaxies - I feel a little strange about listing a game which I haven't even played yet, but it deserves recognition for helping to put the community building aspects of massively multiplayer games front and center on its agenda. Inspired by Muds and Moos, the team wanted to establish significant buy-in from consumers well before the product shipped and thus they used the fan base of the Star Wars franchise as a
client team helping to shape every aspect of the games design. I am also using it here as a placeholder for the whole category of massively multiplayer game worlds -- Everquest, Ultima Online, Linage, etc.
Honorable Mentions need to go to Dance Dance Revolution, which suggests that games may interact with real world physical spaces, and
Majestic/AI which suggest how games may operate in a transmedia environment. These games represent significant new directions for the future development of games as a medium.
Janet Murray
Mostly games I played (or in the case of boxing, watched with my Dad) in childhood:
Boxing (spectator)
Careers
Checkers
Eliza
Hide 'n Seek
Hopscotch
Jotto
Monopoly
Petz
Pickup sticks
Poker
Potsy
Punchball
Red Light, Green Light
Ringolevio
Scrabble
Solitaire
The Sims
Treasure Hunt (home-made)
Zork
Randy Pausch
Here are my "most influential 10 games," in roughly chronological order:
- football (I wonder if anyone else will list a "game" that involves physical activity?) - this has influenced me as a game designer, but moreover, as a person - I can't say that (yet) about any digital games.
- monopoly - my first introduction to short-term vs. long-term strategy,
and the fact that games could bring out an ugly side (i.e. greed) in people's personalities.
- Pong - first taste of interactivity. Driving to a bowling alley just to
play it is a real statement.
- Pacman - equal appeal to females (and *not* for the reasons all the
"experts" claim, in my humble opinion!)
- MYST - again, equal appeal to females, and a great focus on creation of a place
- DOOM - made us all realize that commodity 3d graphics suddenly made
culture-wide perceptual simulations authorable.
- The "red/green paddles at SIGGRAPH '91 - being part of a thousand people all playing a game together was a truly memorable experience. I've been trying to recapture that in a game/experience design ever since.
- Disney's Aladdin - and DisneyQuest in general (I worked on this, so it
may be cheating to list). I learned about how the *real* public - as
opposed to the public academics envision -- reacts to virtual reality.
- SimCity - simulation as a genre
- The Sims simulation again, but this time of social behavior. Emergent phenomena is people rationalizing and creating backstories.
Jesse Schell
You are asking for two very different lists, so that's what I am giving you. It is hard for me to give a list of the ten games that influenced me most... hundreds and hundreds of games have influenced me, and none more than the ones I have designed myself (I will leave those off my list, though).
Ten Games that most influenced me (most influential at top)
----------------------------------
Dungeons and Dragons (Role playing game)
Ultima III (Atari 800)
Ultima Online (PC)
Pokemon (Gameboy)
Mario 64 (N64)
Mines of Minos (Atari 2600)
Talisman (Board game)
Tigers and Goats (Board game)
Mario Party (N64)
Warlords (Atari 2600)
Ten Games that have been important to electronic gaming in general
(chronological)
------------------------------------------------------------------
Pong (First significant Arcade Game)
Adventure / Zork (First Significant Text Adventures)
Super Mario Brothers (Platform)
Prince of Persia (Platform / Puzzle)
Myst (CD Game)
Mortal Kombat (Twitch Combat)
John Madden Football (Mass market sports)
Mario 64 (3D Platform)
Ultima Online / EverQuest (MMP)
The Sims (Mass Market Simulation)
Warren Spector
MOST INDUSTRY INFLUENCE (in no particular order)
Doom
The first game to break out into mass market consciousness. Doom showed up on sitcoms, in congressional hearings... it was everywhere. And it was a great, great game.
Ultima Underworld
The first real-time, 3D, first-person adventure. The first game that
deserves the title "immersive simulation." Far more than a shooter it showed that action, character, story could all be combined in a package that put players in charge.
Ultima IV
See below.
Star Raiders
See below.
Tetris
See below.
Myst
Among the first CD games. The game many (most?) non-gamers played first. Brought higher production values, non-violent interaction and ordinary
people to gaming.
Ultima Online
The power of community was never made more clear.
Dungeons & Dragons
The pen-and-paper game that spawned the entire computer game business. That's a bit of an overstatement but not much. If not for Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson (and Tolkein and Gene Roddenberry) it's unclear to me electronic games would ever have been more than a curiosity. Millions of fantasy rpg geeks populated this business from the beginning and kept it going until the mass market caught up. Frankly, the D&D-ness of gaming is starting to be a problem, preventing us from breaking out and reaching the non-geeks!
Dune 2/Command & Conquer
Real-Time strategy games didn't exist before Dune 2. Command & Conquer was the first hit in the category. Now, they're everywhere.
Super Mario 64
See below.
MY 11 FAVORITE GAMES (not including games I worked on)
Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (SNES) - An absolute jewel of a game
and the most fun I've ever had sitting in front of a game. Exciting,
challenging, perfectly balanced, simple controls, great sound, great
visuals, epic storyline. What more could you want? Miyamoto's finest hour.
Tetris - Come on, how many other 15+ year old games are you still playing? What other game has appeared on every gaming platform ever? Answer? None. Just Tetris.
M.U.L.E. - Single-player, this game was swell. With other people, it was
transcendent. How is it no one has made an online version of M.U.L.E.? EA
should just do it. They wouldn't even have to upgrade the graphics, which
are simple, iconic and fun just the way they are. Heck, even the music was
fun, and I bet everyone who ever played it can STILL hum the title tune
along with me right now!
Ultima IV - Wait, you mean games can be about more than just killing
things? Whoa! This game, with its ethical underpinnings, changed my life.
Diablo - Has there ever been a sound as rewarding as the CHING! of Diablo money hitting the ground or the TING! of a Diablo ring appearing by the corpse of a fallen foe? The skill stuff and other changes in Diablo 2 just gilded the lily. Diablo was the real deal. No game has ever made time pass more quickly for me or cost me more sleep, ever.
Super Mario 64 - It's not possible to squeeze this much gameplay into a
single game. Mario has, like, ten things he can do and yet there's never a
moment where you feel constrained in any way. No game has done a better job of showing goals before they can be attained, allowing players to make a plan and execute on it. And the way tha game allows players to explore the same spaces several times while revealing something new each time is a revelation. Any developer who wouldn't kill to have made this game is nuts.
Warcraft 2 - I can't remember another game that had me laughing and
sweating, terrified and amused at the same time (and always, always utterly engrossed). The gameplay was rock solid, the artwork terrific and there's more personality in the units at your disposal in Warcraft than in most roleplaying games. Name another RTS you can say THAT about! Zug zug!
Star Raiders - The first game that made me feel I was "there." The first
time I felt as if games were going to change the world. I mean, I arrived at a friend's house for a party only to find 20 people sitting in the dark, lit
only by the phospher dots of a 20" television. One of my friends was playing Star Raiders, a first-person perspective space combat sim. And we were all hooked. There was no party that night -- just a bunch of 20-somethings playing a game that made each of us feel like the pilot of a starfighter for a while. Powerful, powerful moment...
Half Life - Look, I know id got there first, shooter-wise, but for me, the
story's the thing and Half-Life had me hooked from the get go. And, has
there ever been a more finely tuned, professionally presented product in the history of gaming? Okay, there was the little misstep at the end when the Best Shooter Ever turns into a jumping puzzle game, but THIS WAS VALVE'S FIRST GAME! Cut 'em some slack and be afraid of what they'll accomplish in the future.
Sim City - If I'd proposed this game to a publisher I would have been
laughed at and then unceremoniously escorted off the premises. Will Wright's ability to make seemingly unfun things fun (or to recognize the fun in seemingly unfun things) is incredible. Sim City is one of the finest
examples of open-ended, player-expressive gameplay around. The fact that people are still playing it, or some variant of it, says everything you need to know about the strength of Sim City's core concept and the quality of its implementation.
Ico - I usually hate this kind of cinematic puzzle game. I loved Ico. It
wasn't perfect but its good qualities FAR outweighed its bad qualities. The
puzzles are exceptionally well-designed. The environments are breathtaking. The cinematic camerawork is, well, cinematic but so much more. The camera moves in ways and to places no sane film director would emulate (moving a LITTLE too far or a little too long or a little too high...) but it moves where and how it does for a reason -- to reveal puzzle elements. Once I figured out WHY the camera worked the way it did I was blown away. And then there are the characters and story. At first blush, the story seems totally trite -- a young outcast boy has to save a princess from menacing shadow creatures. Yawn. And yet the animations are so marvelous and the interactions between your character -- the boy -- and the princess are so well done, so tightly woven into the gameplay, the effect is incredible. The whole game is about protecting the princess, dragging her along with you even though she slows you down and prevents you from doing things you can easily accomplish. You have to call to her and wait for her to come. You take her hand and drag her along, since she's slower than you are. She's always being hauled halfway across a location before you realize what's happening. But then you take her hand... And all's right with the world. The power of that touch was a revelation to me. You end up really caring about the safety and well-being of this virtual girl. (And when she reveals that she has a power that can help you out, early on in the game, and especially when things turn around in one critical second and she saves YOU, well, I got chills.) Beautiful, well-crafted, similar enough to other games not to be daunting but different enough to stand as a unique work of art. No other way to put it.
Andrew Stern
eliza and parry - quintessential examples of how far you can get in achieving an illusion of life using interaction design techniques vs. "real AI"
little computer people - an early experiment in non-goal-oriented play with persistent virtual characters
woggles - pioneering research in creating expressive believable agents
myst - found a sweet spot in the constraint-based design space of 'multimedia'
afternoon - an important early work demonstrating the literary potential of hypertext fiction
tamagotchi and furby - powerful examples of bringing persistent virtual characters off the computer screen and into the real world
petz - the first directly interactive, expressive, emotional, personality-rich virtual characters that you can form an emotional relationship over time
creatures - demonstrates the power and limitations of using a-life techniques to motivate behavior of virtual characters
parappa the rapper - clever design and application of 3d technology to make a highly original character-based game
alone in the dark - pioneering blend of cinematic techniques and gameplay
johnny mnemonic - an object lesson in the difficulty in trying to make a story from videoclips
mario64 - took 3D immersive worlds to the next level
halflife - at the time, the most successful blend of game and narrative
shenmue - pioneering combination of adventure game with an richly immersive 3D virtual world
the sims - the first game to bring an amazing breadth of "real life" contexts, objects and issues into the realm of gameplay, albeit from a god's perspective
Christopher Weaver
1 Tetris
2 Pac-Man
Both of these titles opened gaming to new audiences, and crossed
over all genres and demographics. You see one of these breakthrough titles once every 10 years. The press now tout games as having reached new sales levels, but if you look back you will see that Pac-Man shipped 12
million copies on day one for the Atari 2600, and Tetris sold 45 million
copies on Gameboy. History does repeat itself and corrected for users, we
still have a ways to go to equal where we were twenty years ago.
3. The Sims. This one looks to be the breakthrough title for the
current decade. Crosses all ages and demographics. Used in schools, city
planning and teaching.
4. Doom. Technology, action, and multiplayer. It started the trend
of online games.
5. Diablo. Brought RPGs to the masses--simple concept, executed
excellently.
6. John Madden Football. Based heavily upon Gridiron for the Amiga
and Atari, (which effectively invented physics-based sports games),
Madden has come to define a well-honed sports game--and demonstrate the longevity that such a game can have within a genre. Nothing except perhaps Microsoft Flight Simulator has rivaled Madden's longevity.
7. Civilization. The quintessential strategy game by Sid Meier,
copied but never equaled.
8. The Ultima RPG series. Pioneer of computer RPGs. The early ones
were the most ground-breaking.
9. Everquest. Based in part upon The Elder Scrolls:Daggerfall, Everquest has opened the gate to online multiplayer game playing.
10. The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind. A ground-breaking RPG that has demonstrated how close a computer game can come to achieve the open-
ended depth of a pen and paper role-playing game.
Will Wright
Go (board game) - the ultimate in emergence and elegance of game
design
Montessori Toys (especially the mathmatical ones) - I attended
Montessori school till 5th grade, the rest of my formal education was downhill from there
Panzer Blitz (board game) - perhaps the best known of the elaborate,
tactical wargames.
Pinball Construction Set - heavy influence for me, construction is fun
Flight Simulator - a toy world to explore and do whatever you feel like
Doom - visceral immersion
Myst - game+art (the art is of the world design nature)
Eric Zimmerman
1) Innovative digital games
The most important digital games for my own thinking about game design are those that have genuinely innovated in the field - those that have managed to invent or introduce new forms of interactivity, new kinds of game structures, new aesthetic languages, new narrative content, etc. Many of these games have also been commercially successful. In this category, I would include games like Asteroids, Pac-Man, Myst, Sim City, Doom, Tetris, Parappa the Rapper, and Grand Theft Auto III.
2) Elegant non-digital games
I am also inspired by board games, card games, sports, etc. that demonstrate elegant and innovative game mechanics, social play design, relationship to cultural environment, etc. This list could contain hundreds of games, but perhaps some of my favorites might include Go, Chess, Settlers of Cataan, Mafia, Assassin, Mancala, Magic: The Gathering, etc.
3) Personally meaningful games
Lastly, there are many games that have had a profound influence on
my thinking about games because of my own life experience. While
this category overlaps with the other two, there are many games for
which the chief importance is primarily personal. These would include outdoor games that I played as kid, such as Kick the Can, Ghost in the Graveyard, and Dodgeball; role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons and the LARP game Masquerade; early computer games like the Ultima Series and Karateka (Apple II) or early console games like Adventure and Combat (Atari 2600).