![]() ![]() ![]() In every medium there are certain things that create such a huge, irreversible impact on their respective industries that the shockwaves can be felt today Citizen Kane, The White Album, and Dwarf Fortress, and all these things also share an unfortunate disposition that most people wouldn’t go out of their way to experience them for the first time now, and who could blame them.ĭwarf Fortress, or Slaves to Armok: God of Blood Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress, is still used to this day in Acedemia for its use of artificial intelligence, and has been cited as influence for Minecraft, Rimworld, and others, as well as being selected among other games to be featured in the Museum of Modern Art to show the history of video gaming in 2012. I think I’ve prefaced this list enough, though, it’s about time we get into it: Finally, Indies had the chance to get their spotlight back, at least to those who would give them their dues. It was a place where you could bypass the publisher and get straight into the hands of the players. Steam was almost immediately a revitalisation of the indie scene. Having every game you could possibly want in one place without having to go to different stores across the internet, it was like the future, now.Īnd that’s where we’re going to pick up, the start of the modern age of gaming. Being able to go on your home computer, purchase and download as many games as you like was absolutely game-changing, no pun intended (well, maybe a little). With steam came a total shift to how everyone saw game distribution. It was bad for the developer, bad for the publisher, bad for the stores and led to rising game prices, making it bad to consumers. In the past you needed to just send out boxes and boxes full of games, for which they’d take a cut, and you’d have to hope they sold so that you get something back from it and don’t just lose all that money. Gabe Newell announced the service at GDC in 2002, and the service revolutionised the entire industry. The first iteration of Steam, that’s right, Valve’s Steam, it didn’t release properly until 2003, but even before that the effects of its existence were felt. The games you’d find in places like this were often simple affairs made in programs like Flash, the days of Indies going toe-to-toe with AAA releases seemed like a distant memory. At the end of the decade a whole new kind of indie game showed up as places on the internet were founded, people like Tom Fulp founded websites like Newgrounds, a play on website hosting space Neocities. Some smaller publishers, often created by the developers themselves, would exist purely to give all, or most of, a game away for free, in the hopes that appreciative players will fork out some money to support the devs and get the full experience.īy the mid-90s, the technology to create and distribute the quality and types of games that players expected just wasn’t available to small developers many single-A studios fell or were absorbed into larger entities during this time. “Dwarf Fortress is a very difficult, edgy game, but it is also an essential experience, a true celebration of the hidden potential of the videogame medium, which you will not find in any other game.” -Multiplayer.Video games exploded into a bustling market in the late 80s, and by the time you got to the early 90s, publishers were unlikely to just give away games for free, or take risks on unproven agents, so people had to find new and different ways of giving people a way to play their games. The depth on hand is stunning-there are dozens of types of soil alone, and the procedurally generated world even includes procedurally generated poetry and music-but so is the learning curve. Widely labeled "inscrutable" by the gaming press (though the new Steam release does, thankfully, include a tutorial), the once-ASCII-styled but now pixel art game is a complex blend of mining and construction simulation, colony management, story generator, and roguelike set in a dwarf-filled fantasy world. In December, DF's indie creators (and brothers) Zach and Tarn Adams finally put an updated Dwarf Fortress on sale for the first time, which could help it reach an audience of adventurous gamers beyond just fellow game developers and seekers of obscure entertainment. (#3) It's unusual when a "new" game is considered widely influential in the industry, but that is indeed the case for our PC exclusive of the year, which has been available as freeware in pre-release form for over 16 years (and in development for even longer) and whose influence can be seen in dozens of games ranging from Minecraft to RimWorld. ![]()
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