Quote from drunkguy

@Bafflement: Doom and Quake were games I used to play all the time and it is tough for me to judge which was the most influential to modding. I picked Wolfenstein 3d mostly because it was the grandfather title but I do feel that including a game to mark the rise of mods is needed. Doom and Quake is like comparing C&C and Warcraft for me if Warcraft never lead to WoW. They both are synonymous with the rise of early modding to me. I'm gonna need to see a few more posts before I decide on it.

Virtua Fighter definitely deserves mention though as a turning point from 2d to 3d graphics. For racing though, what do you think of Virtua Racing? I never played it before myself so I wouldn't know.

I would tend to say Quake was a bigger step forward. It really aimed to make modding easy, giving players powerful console commands and providing access to much of the source code. It also emphasized the use of the mouse and was a huge advance graphically.

I don't know the racing game genre all that well, but I tend to feel it's difficult because a lot of the development is in incremental improvements to physics and graphics, as the core gameplay is always much the same. That said, the GT series is certainly notable for its efforts to model hundreds or thousands of real cars.

Baldur's Gate is definitely worth listing. It's not necessarily the best of the RPGs mentioned, but its success really sparked a major revival of D&D RPGs, and led directly to the current generation of RPGs we see today.

There are also notable games in genres that are less popular now. Wing Commander springs to mind, which is iconic of the whole space combat genre, and played a significant role in establishing the PC as a leading platform for high-performance games.

I'm not really looking to finish the list though I'd rather limit what I add since I'm running out of catch phrases. Going through good arguments about which is more important is pretty interesting to me, especially if they involve games I am not familiar with. I especially love getting thoughts from people of a different generation and their perspectives for comparison. It may become messy eventually but it'll be a fun ride while it gets there.

Guess I'll put The Sims back on the list for now. It does seem to have an influence independant of Sim City. I never got into the Sim series so it is tough to guage.

I am wondering about TES though. Morrowind and its CK lead to the most enduring modding community to date that I know of but is it the most important in the series? I have heard a lot about daggerfall and arena but have never played them myself.

Edit: Wow. I completely forgot about Wing Commander. My brother killed three flight sticks playing that series. Not sure if it is the most influential though. Does anyone remember a game called "Elite?" I haven't played or heard of it but according to wiki, it was one of the most important 3D games in history.