13 developers share the video games that helped them fall in love with gaming
Do you remember what the video game was that helped you fall in love with gaming? The question is more difficult to answer than it should be. I know that there are countless titles that I could point to and identify as having played a key role in my enduring love of interactive entertainment. Perhaps I’d cite SOCOM 2 U.S. Navy SEALs for making me believe in the promise of online play, or Boktai: The Sun Is In Your Hands as making me realize that sometimes it’s fun to take your console outside; maybe I’d be boring and say Tetris, even though I remember playing a hell of a lot of it as a kid. There’s a lot of memories to sift through here, and it’s just far too difficult – which is why I took the question to some of GamesRadar+’s favorite game developers.
We have a tendency to always look forward when thinking about video games – what’s new, and what’s next? But it’s all too easy to forget that the developers who are striving to break boundaries today are often driven by experiences from their past – video games that left an indelible mark. So keep on reading to learn what video games helped these 14 developers fall in love with gaming, and help inspire them to create the sort of experiences that they do to this day.
“Graduating from my Game Art course in 2014 I wasn’t exactly disillusioned, but I was distant from the medium I’d gone to university to study. I had lost a bit of joyful games enthusiasm, until deep into my post-university malaise a beacon appeared: Dragon Age: Inquisition. My first Bioware game (don’t ask me how I missed the others, I don’t know), I had no idea what the Chantry or Templars were, but a combination of stubbornness and hype pushed me forward.”
“Two things made me fall back in love with games again. The first: community. Playing Dragon Age: Inquisition alongside others, and having that sense of parallel discovery, let me share my obsessions joyfully – and fall into a glorious pit of fandom on Tumblr. The tarot cards were a huge artistic inspiration for a generation of artists, and we shared our own versions featuring our player characters relentlessly.”
“The second: actual romance. Inquisition was my first experience with a game that had legitimate smooching in it, and I realized there was a hugely underexplored area of games that we’d barely scratched the surface of. The potential! The drama!! And yes, I was basic, but my emotional support Cullen kept me going until I got my first industry job.”