The Difficulty Of Lists

Creating lists – the top games of a generation or a year – is something I've been asked to do many times over the years. While throwing together a list might seem easy – or arbitrary – it's an interesting exercise, forcing you to consider what elements make up the concept of "quality" and what aspects of games are more important to you.

In order to talk about this, I'm going to reveal two games that will be on my personal 2014 Top 10: Sirvo's mobile puzzle game Threes! and Naughty Dog's The Last of Us: Left Behind DLC. I selected these two examples because they represent the core of what I'm talking about. I don't think you could find two games more different in concept, purpose, and execution.

Threes! is a simple, number matching slide-puzzle game – extremely polished and very addictive. It's a game I played nearly every day of the year and I'm still not tired of it. The Last of Us: Left Behind is a brief, poignant character study that fleshes out some of the story and characters of my favorite game of 2013. I was skeptical about the idea of The Last of Us DLC, and I'm happy to say that Left Behind managed to add to the story in a meaningful and important way – while providing some pulse-pounding gameplay and even adding new dynamics in the enemy AI.

Both games, in their own way, are remarkably accomplished. However, it's incredibly difficult to say which one is better. Each game has radically different goals. Threes! offers no story, no characters, and extremely repetitive (and addictive) mechanics. Left Behind is rich in narrative and strategic stealth action.

Things get even harder when you're doing a historical list, like attempting to rank the best games of all time. Now, not only do you have games that are extremely different in design, you're dealing with games that were made in different eras and on a whole range of different platforms and technology. Pac-Man's graphics are primitive compared to Mass Effect's, but the game was limited by the technology of its time – and actually looked good in comparison to other games of its ilk.

You also have to balance issues of importance, influence, and lasting appeal. Some games are influential (Atari's Adventure) but not so much fun to play today. Others are still fun but not especially influential (Galaga, for example) in modern gaming. The best have influenced the games that followed them while still retaining a timeless appeal – here we have all time classics like Super Mario Bros.

As much as we'd all like lists and reviews to be a scientific process, there's no algorithm that can tell whether Threes! is better or worse than Left Behind – or whether Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 should rank higher or lower than Final Fantasy VII on an all-time list.

The impact a game had on you is, ultimately, personal. I try to judge games on their own merits, and then weigh how well they accomplished what they set out to do. But, like everyone else, I have my own aesthetics and gameplay preferences, and these preferences shape how I view the games and their historical value. Hopefully, with my own personal lists, I manage to weigh all these different factors and come up with an order that reflects the overall impact each game had on me.

With a list that represents the magazine, it's more of a process. Suddenly, it's not one person's views, but a roomful of differing opinions. Here again, the process is more organic than scientific. We talk...a lot. We argue. We (hopefully) listen. We each advocate for the games we feel were the most important over the course of the last year, or the entire history of games. I won't lie – there are usually some bad feelings along the way, but I think we usually arrive at a result that best reflects our opinion as a staff.

You may agree with the result, or you may think we blew it – and that's fine. At the end of the day, lists are about generating conversation, and getting us all to think about games and what they mean to us.