What is the last game you can think of that has the cultural impact of the Halo 3 release?
How many modern games are there on this list?
The most recent game on that list is from 2023, maybe it just takes time before a game end up on that list? Baldurs Gate 3 was beyond mainstream popular at one point, and surely will end up that list sooner or later, but maybe it's still too early?
I would probably say the OP was commenting more on Western gaming, as that's the pattern (see UbiSoft's consecutive string of failures, for example). Games like Elden Ring, Animal Crossing, and Cyberpunk came out of popular non-Western gaming.
The only Western games in that list for the last 6 years are Call of Duty games and Hogwarts Legacy, which was good, although from what I remember vilified by Western media for helping enrich JK Rowling.
I wasn't.
> And how does this relate to unions?
I was replying to the comment above, not a different comment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_The_Elder_Scrol...
This is the turning point where the industry began to change from selling products to selling services. Expansion packs existed before then, but they were sold as complete experiences, essentially mini-sequels sold at a discount because they reused the same engine. The horse armor was something different and controversial at the time.
That itself is fairly damning but what puts it over the top is that there are wayyyy more gamers nowadays than there were 16 years ago.
Modern AAA stuff is just simply pretty bad. Games made on a conveyor belt just don't work, at least beyond a point - and that point, wherever it may be, is well behind us for just about all AAA studios.
>Modern AAA stuff is just simply pretty bad
1. your conclusion doesnt match your premise. what does sales have to do with quality?
2. this whole argument is just a useless tangent. If you want to look for games not on a conveyor belt, don't look at best selling lists. Especially for networked games continually updated for decades vs. hand crafted releases
The reason the reflects on AAA games is because AAA in modern times is much more about budget than depth or quality. AAA games are dumping massive amounts of money on titles with the hope of a quick turn-around, but sales for these games are increasingly meh, because the games are increasingly meh.
Even the same studios do a poor job of rehashing stuff. There are currently something like 10x as many players playing Skyrim as Starfield. It's quite pathetic.
It's hard for a game released in the past year to make it onto a top ten list full of games like GTA5 that have been consistently selling copies for over a decade.
And I see a handful of games released since 2020 on that list.
It also only deals with games that are sold. Whereas games like Genshin Impact have a massive worldwide audience and yet aren't going to show up on that list.
But also, note that many of the games--especially the ones near the top--also double- and triple-count their numbers by doing rereleases and special editions and whatnot that all get to count for the "same" game.
Next, note that already 10% of the list came out since the COVID-19 pandemic started--is that not modern enough for you?
Finally, several of these games are continually being worked on and receiving content updates. Minecraft and The Sims 4 may be over a decade old, but they both received updates within the past several months, and their players fully expect more updates in the next several months. Does that mean they aren't modern?
You had an opinion, it was neiter right nor wrong. I was a teenager and watched Juno, 300, Bay's Transformers, And Pirates of the Carribean 3. I thought it was a renaissance. It's all based on personal experience.
> things are not the same regardless of how much you want to believe that
So how is this related to a union in 2025?
Halo 3 seems to also be very popular only in the U.S., while Baldur's Gate 3 is more recognized internationally.
Closest I can get to an objective answer would be Fortnite (since you aren't really specifying the kind of cultral impact). and that's "only" 7 years old or so.
So it makes perfect sense that contemporary AAA devs would have no idea it even existed.
I guess I'm mostly just amused by the initial comment suggesting Halo 3 of all games as a super incredible cultural impact game. I just can't see it like that at all -- at the time it was just a capstone to what Halo 1 and 2 set up. And in modern times, Halo is so irrelevant that it's probably going to be on Sony's console.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reaXYMihM1Y
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing_of_Halo_3
Halo 3 broke sales records at a time where you needed to buy physical copies.
It had a famous Superbowl ad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKDkKKt9Y7I
Perhaps I'm just missing your argument. Is your argument mostly about the immediate "pop" surrounding the launch, rather than any sort of longer term cultural impact? If so, then sure, I'll grant Halo 3 had one of and perhaps even the largest launch hype of all time from the physical release age. Still it's not like Halo 2 wasn't hugely popular at its launch too, though 3 was probably bigger. And of course the already mentioned Modern Warfare had a big launch, though by MW2 the whole culture of launch hype with midnight releases and camping out and so on was just about dead thanks to digital distribution and such. You had other games later on with crazy marketing too -- how are super bowl ads relevant? Dante's Inferno (2010) is a game I've never played but it also had a super bowl ad I've never seen until now. I'd dare say its impact is far less than Halo's, both at its launch (seems to be a God of War clone) and since.
But if you really are arguing that nothing has had a bigger long-term cultural impact since, the single counterexample of Minecraft is enough to stand against that. Speaking of God of War, there's another franchise that has probably by now out-shined the Halo series for cultural impact. (And maybe worth arguing that it probably contributed to Halo 4's dumb "Press button to beat the Didact" QTE?) I'd even put 2011's Dark Souls higher for birthing a new subgenre term, the "Soulslike", even if it took until Elden Ring for FromSoft themselves to hit the pinnacles of financial success and launch success with the formula. And so many other games.
USS Pillar of Autumn USS Long Night of Solace USS Spirit of Fire
I do not know of any series that has this level of cultural impact
Not quite. MW2 was the largest video game launch on record by pre-orders, revenue and units sold when it was released. Its release broke nearly all of Halo 3's release records. There was no digital release at launch. It also had a massive advertising campaign. There were large ads in every store with an electronics or games sections to an extent that I haven't seen since.