To say that games have impacted my life in a major way would be the biggest understatement ever.
Discovering video games at a young age helped me find one of my favorite pastimes, led me to become a journalist and helped me interact with gaming & entertainment industry personalities I thought I’d never meet. For this year’s installment of National Video Games Day (a holiday meant to honor the legendary history, evolution and cultural impact of interactive media), I wanted to try something fun that combined my love for gaming and my newfound appreciation for AI.
I came to ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity with a simple request: “Give me your ranking of the 10 most influential video games of all time.” And after cataloging all their results, I came away with two thoughts: all four chatbots recognize the major trendsetters of the video game industry and two of them couldn’t agree on which game deserved to take the No. 1 spot.
Here’s what each chatbot delivered in response to my inquiry and even my own ranking of the 10 most influential video games of all time.
Where these four chatbots agreed and disagreed
All four chatbots wasted little time in proving their video game knowledge is stronger than I expected when they presented me with their personal ranking of the 10 most influential video games ever made:
- ChatGPT: Super Mario Bros., Tetris, Doom, The Legend of Zelda, Grand Theft Auto III, Minecraft, World of Warcraft, Pong, Half-Life, and Wii Sports.
- Gemini: Pong, Super Mario Bros., Tetris, Doom, Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, Super Mario 64, Grand Theft Auto III, World of Warcraft, Minecraft, and Dark Souls.
- Claude: Doom, Super Mario Bros., Tetris, World of Warcraft, Minecraft, The Legend of Zelda, Half-Life, Pong, Street Fighter II, and Grand Theft Auto III.
- Perplexity: Pong, Super Mario Bros., Tetris, Doom, The Legend of Zelda, Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, Super Mario 64, Grand Theft Auto III, World of Warcraft, and Minecraft.
What impressed me about ChatGPT’s acknowledgement of Super Mario Bros. as the most influential video game of all time was the factual reasons it used to back up its choice.
The chatbot noted that it practically revived the home-console gaming market after the crash of 1983, established the traditional conventions for 2D platformers that are still around to this day, produced arguably the most recognizable video game character of all time, helped cement the idea that gaming could deliver deeper experiences at home and showcased a textbook example of level design that teaches players what to do through gameplay.
Claude’s rationale for choosing Doom is as follows: Defined the FPS genre, pioneered shareware distribution, and its modding scene (WAD files) kickstarted the entire user-generated-content movement in gaming.
I also found it pretty wild how ChatGPT and Claude’s No. 1 picks were completely different from each other, while Gemini and Perplexity emerged with the same game for the top spot on their respective lists. Here’s the reasoning Gemini and Perplexity brought up to explain their decision to place Pong in the No. 1 position:
- Gemini: The Breakthrough: Proved commercial viability. Why It’s Essential: While not technically the first video game, Pong was the spark that established video games as a commercial industry. It proved that people would pay real money to play interactive digital games, launching arcade culture and home console gaming simultaneously.
- Perplexity: The essential commercial breakthrough. Pong made the video game legible to a mass public: two controls, one immediate competitive idea, and an arcade format that helped establish games as a viable entertainment business. Its simplicity became a template for accessible design.
Alongside ChatGPT’s ranked selections for its most influential games, it also brought up a bunch of games it deemed “painful omissions” that would make its top 20 list if permitted to do so.
Those 10 other games included Spacewar!, Pac-Man, Street Fighter II, Pokémon Red/Blue, Final Fantasy VII, The Sims, Counter-Strike, Dark Souls, Fortnite and The Last of Us. Claude also had two honorable mentions of its own: Fortnite and EVE Online.
As for my ranking of the 10 most influential video games of all time, I went with Pong (it seems like I agree with Gemini and Perplexity), Pac-Man, Super Mario Bros., Tetris, The Legend of Zelda, Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, Doom, Virtua Fighter, Half-Life and Grand Theft Auto III.
Final thoughts
I have to hand it to all four chatbots: they mentioned a strong selection of games that anyone who’s immersed in the hobby would mention on their list of the most influential titles in the still-thriving entertainment genre. Super Mario Bros., Pong and Doom all earned top billing among all four chatbots — all three games had a major impact on the gaming industry that captured millions of gamers’ attention and inspired plenty of iconic titles in their wake.
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