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What do you think are the most important game franchises?

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Curveball choice Farmville.

Maybe Maple Story if we're digging further back

A lot of the mentions in this thread are, like, if you look exclusively at consoles and only if you look at the biggest budget single player titles. Considering the game industry in 2016 looked like this:
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I'm going to say there's a lot more going on, globally, than "Uncharted" or "TLOU".
 
Going with what really trailblazed genres.

Ultima/Wizardry-RPGs
King's Quest-Adventure games
Doom-FPS
Super Mario Brothers-Platformers
GTA-Sandbox
Street Fighter- Fighting games
 
You say most influencial

hmmh

I guess Super Mario Bros. WoW, League of Legends, Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, Zelda, Quake

This are the only games at the top of my head that started a trend of spawning dozens of games with the same mindshare because they were so sucessfull and/or critical acclaimed = influencial

I mean yes something like pokemon is one of the biggest franchises (but not only because of the games tbh.) but it started not a myriad of "mon" games, at least i dont remember it that way, like the other examples i mentioned.
 
It's undoubtedly 3D Mario for me. It's the one franchise I can turn to over the years and never falter in saying, "You know what? Videogames are great". Perhaps that may change one day, but for me Mario represents the health of gaming in a sense.
 
Not in any particular order

Doom
Ultima
WoW
Starcraft
Civilization
ARMA
Minecraft
Championship Manager/Football Manager
Gran Turismo
Resident Evil
Mario
Street Fighter
Grand Theft Auto
Souls
 
If I were to give up gaming as my main hobby, I think I'd still play the latest mainline Zelda and Mario games.

Even though Zelda is my GOAT franchise, whenever someone utters the words "video games," I can't help but instantly think of Mario jumping around, collecting coins, and stomping on Goombas.
 
Up to the PS3 era, I would have said Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid.
With this generation, I am going with Zelda and Mario as the only franchises I am genuinely looking forward to the next entry.

Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid are so far gone its not worth giving them the time of day. Their current IP holders have absolutely no idea what made those series special in the first place and are chasing popular gaming trends to their own detriment, which is a shame.
 
As long as nobody is allowed to disagree as per the op, I'll go with; Nier, Shinobi, Avernum, Virtua Fighter and Mechwarrior. These are undoubtedly the most important franchises.
 
Halo
Mario
Final Fantasy
Zelda
Metal Gear Solid
Street Fighter
Pokémon
Grand Theft Auto
Resident Evil
Tomb Raider

New Age-

Call of Duty
Uncharted
Gears of War
God of War
Red Dead
Forza
Minecraft
 
Read up on the guys who made these games:

-System Shock
-Deus Ex
-Thief
-Arx Fatalis
-Dark Messiah of Might and Magic
-Bioshock
-The Elder Scrolls
-Fallout
-Dishonored
-Prey
-Baldur's Gate
-KOTOR
-Planescape: Torment

And they'll all list Richard Garriot's Ultima series as a major inspiration on how they approached game design. There's plenty more series that can be named, but we get the point.
 
Doom.

It was massive when it released. It affected peoples productivity at work. It was shareware and it was everywhere.
 
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