> I think it's tough to say what games will be long-term culturally significant when they've only been out a year or two, though. I think it's easier to look back in that 5-15 year range and see what stood up.
This is exactly what I was thinking when writing this list, along with noting that OP mentioned games from the late 90's at the latest - my timeline for "recent" was pretty wide.
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"Culturally Relevant" to me means one of two things:
* So many people played the damn thing that it entered the public consciousness outside of gaming focused communities, and stayed there for a decent amount of time.
* It had a significant and fairly enduring influence on the design of later titles made by other studios.
You can tell within a few months whether a game is in the former category (Elden Ring, Palworld, Minecraft, Among Us, BG3 etc), but it takes years to know whether a game is in the second category (Dark Souls, also Minecraft to an extent, Path of Exile, Witcher 3, Tarkov etc).
This is exactly what I was thinking when writing this list, along with noting that OP mentioned games from the late 90's at the latest - my timeline for "recent" was pretty wide.
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"Culturally Relevant" to me means one of two things:
* So many people played the damn thing that it entered the public consciousness outside of gaming focused communities, and stayed there for a decent amount of time.
* It had a significant and fairly enduring influence on the design of later titles made by other studios.
You can tell within a few months whether a game is in the former category (Elden Ring, Palworld, Minecraft, Among Us, BG3 etc), but it takes years to know whether a game is in the second category (Dark Souls, also Minecraft to an extent, Path of Exile, Witcher 3, Tarkov etc).