A canon of significant games

Some time ago the Danish minister of culture initiated an effort to establish a series of cultural “canons”, listing the most important works in a range of genre/media.
This initiative, of course, spurred on all kinds of ignored forms of expression to publish their own lists. And so, along with colleagues from the Danish game researcher network spilforskning.dk and at the suggestion of Multimedieforeningen (the Danish game business association), I have been involved in picking out the 20-something most important videogames ever. In our humble opinion, of course.

And the listed are… (with links to descriptions in Danish):

• Adventure
• Civilization-serien
• Computer Space
• Death Race
• Donkey Kong
• Doom
• Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty
• Elite
• Final Fantasy-serien
• Gauntlet
• Grand Theft Auto-serien
• Madden
• Maze War
• Microsoft Flight Simulator
• MUD1
• M.U.L.E.
• Myst
• Neverwinter Nights
• Pac-Man
• SimCity
• Soul Calibur
• Spacewar
• StarCraft
• Tetris
• The Elder Scrolls-serien
• The Sims
• Ultima Online
• World of Warcraft

Our initiative has recieved some attention. For instance:

• Berlingske Tidende: Computerspil får ny kanon
• Computerworld: De mest betydningsfulde computerspil i verden
• TV2 Nyhederne (2/1-2007): Kanon for computerspil og De mest betydningsfulde spil

Dette indlæg ligner…
There’s a new journal in town (11/04/2005)

Muchos seran los llamados… (29/11/2004)

Talk on games+film at ITU (07/03/2006)

New essay on games in culture (21/08/2007)

First European symposium on Computer Games and Emotions (23/11/2006)