Assuming the equipment was also saved so you could still play the games, and every game in existence you don’t mention gets permanently destroyed, and no new games are ever to be made.
Inspired by a video by OutsideXbox from a few years ago, I thought it would be a fun idea to see what this community would choose. You can choose to be selfish and pick games you personally want to always play, or try to figure out what games would be best chosen for humanity to save for whatever reason. I’d also love to hear why you chose your games. Do they have a special meaning to you? I want to hear your stories.
First place has to be Kerbal space program. I can’t think of another game as profoundly educational as this. If you can land a craft on the Mün, then you have a better understanding of orbital mechanics than the average NASA engineer.
Second place goes to Nier: Automata. It’s a selfish pick, but I struggle to think of a more flawless game.
I want at least one multiplayer PVE game and one PVP game, so third and fourth places go to Minecraft (version 1.18) and Team Fortress 2.
Lastly, for fear that it will count as a video game and otherwise be deleted, I save Lichess.org from annihilation
Do I get the mods, too (because, realistically, who plays games only unmodded? Children? Console gamers?)?
So, if yes, half life and half life 2.
If not…
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Minecraft - this feels like a no brainer. Also needs to have some mod packs. I would choose some fat as fuck packs. But if I only was allowed to choose one, I would choose one of the biggest mod packs that has the most mods in it.
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Counter-Strike: Source - has to have all custom maps currently available. There’s nearly an infinite amount of content there. But even without custom content, I still think a core pvp FPS is necessary to this list.
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Some kind of an mmo. One that has instances of large quantity of player content that can be saved. Social games are incredibly important, to at least me. I don’t love WoW. I don’t really play MMOs, either, except for one, and it’s largely because my partner loves it. So, maybe Guild Wars 2.
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A co-op dungeon crawler that can be used for role playing. So, maybe like… Neverwinter Nights? Or maybe Phantasy Star online…2? Diablo…?nahhh… PoE maybe.
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Some kind of very simmy racing game with simulation physics. Beam.Ng?
The “no new games will ever be made” is a hard one, because I instinctually want to save games that could be used as inspirational “seed” games for people to use as ideas to make new games.
My instinct is to treat this as a “all games are dying. What games would you take to restart?” But in reality, this is “what are your favorite games?” There’s a lot of nuance between those two questions, and the lists would be extremely different. So, my list is kind of trying to merge those two concepts.
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- Garry’s Mod (general sandbox)
- Arma
3Reforger (war and life sim sandbox) - GTA V (VI if we buy enough time)
Skyrim (heavily mod-able medieval RPG)Kingdom Come Deliverance 2Luanti (voxel foss sandbox with potential)No Man’s Sky 2025
Edit: The focus here was on replayability and modding. Garry’s Mod, Arma 3 and GTA cover car racing, shooting, partying and roleplaying. KCD is for history and single-player. I can’t wait to play it! No sports games made it into my list. Maybe people can rebuild Wii Sports or something in Garry’s Mod, I don’t know. Last minuted, I switched to No Man’s Sky 2025 over Luanti. Go explore the vast universe y’all! It’s a completely different experience compared to my other picks. I’ve heard it’s good now, so I’ll go for it blindly.
- Factorio - The best logistics game never made
- SimCity 4 - The best city building game ever made
- Mass Effect 2 - The best space RPG ever made
- MGS2 - My favorite Hideo Kojima game
- Tactics Ogre any version - The best tactics game ever made.
If mods are allowed, the first 2 are truly endless games. ME2 is super replayable. MGS2 gives me a shooter with a fun story. Tactics Ogre is seriously the best tactics game ever made. It puts FFT to bed pretty easily.
Superman for the N64, E.T. for Atari, Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties, Desert Bus and Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing
It’s impossible to pick out just five of the most important games ever, but I’d try to pick games that have important historical significance, have some degree of genre diversity, all while still being fun and thought-provoking games you’ll always want to pick back up.
- Ultima IV.
spoiler
The first RPG that wasn’t a giant dungeon-crawling grindfest where you slay a wizard at the end. It has a big open world, fun NPC interactions, and fun tactical RPG gameplay for the time. Has a really good philosophical storyline that is integrated with the game mechanics, and it shows how creativity can form under constraints. Another good option would have skipped to the SNES era with Final Fantasy VI, which is slightly less retro but is more approachable and has an equally compelling story with stronger replay value and tons of mods/romhacks.
- Resident Evil 2.
spoiler
One of the problems with choosing only five of the most important games is that the horror genre and the point-and-click adventure genre both are important in the history of gaming, but there isn’t room for both. Resident Evil 2 blends both genres exquisitely in a really compelling, but also endearing B-movie story with lovable characters. The Walking Dead would have been another option, but it doesn’t really have gameplay and it strays far enough away from the adventure genre that it doesn’t serve as a good example.
- Flower.
spoiler
The Indie Revolution was an important era of gaming history, and motion controls were really big back then. Beautiful, subtle story about overcoming depression. Roger Ebert was wrong and video games could be art. Any indie game during the Indie Revolution golden era (August 2008-September 2015) would fit here, but I picked Flower because, at the time, it challenged what people’s expectations of what a video game was supposed to be. Games don’t have to be challenging or about fighting to be legitimate. Doesn’t have a ton of replay value, but it’s the sort of game you’ll always come back to during hard times. Barely beat out Stardew Valley, which is longer and has more replay value but isn’t an “art game,” which was very much the zeitgeist of the era, and Celeste which, in addition to having a beautiful ludonarrative story like Flower, would have also been a good mascot for speedrunning communities, but was created post-indiepocalypse and therefore isn’t a good example of the era.
- Nier Automata.
spoiler
A really engaging action-focused game with a good story and tons of replay value. Bloodborne and Bayonetta would have also been good choices, but I ultimately went this one because you’ll spend more time on it, and there’s a co-op mod. It does make this list RPG-heavy, but it’s hard to find a pure action game with as much replay value and attention to the plot. It’s still a skills-based game and none of the RPG mechanics will save you on the hardest difficulty.
- Baldur’s Gate III.
spoiler
I would put an open-world, choice-based game here. Even though BG3 is not a true open-world game, it has many the sandbox features open-world players like short of a fun physics system. It’s the third entry in the series, but the game doesn’t expect you to have played the first two games. Great mod support. I didn’t choose other popular open-world/open-zone games because many have paper-thin quests that lack player agency (Daggerfall, half of Oblivion, Skyrim, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Breath of the Wild), don’t work as a standalone experience (any of the Mass Effect Trilogy, the Witcher 3), are amazing but too small in scale to be good representatives (KOTOR, Dragon Age: Origins, Deus Ex), are too controversial (Grand Theft Auto, which railroads you into being a bad guy) or have a strong open world and player choices but terrible gameplay (Morrowind). I gave BG3 the edge over Cyberpunk and Fallout: New Vegas due to built-in co-op and endless replay value that would last a lifetime.
If this were a top 10 list, I would add Fallout: New Vegas (for a purer open-world sandbox experience), Super Mario Galaxy (a 3D platformer in a well-known franchise with a strong story), Celeste(the pinnacle of 2D platformers and speedrunners love it), Minecraft(an important social game with constructive cooperative mechanics), and Stardew Valley (best cozy game representative).
Minecraft
Terraria
The game i am working on that will definitely release
Maybe celeste?
Maybe vivid/stasis? I play like 6 games in totalRoblox, Fifa 19, Chinese malware mobile game, Fifa 23, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600.
Too many fans of Roblox would be happy with this. Replace Roblox with Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days and the list is perfect
Pure evil in human form
Selfishly?
Golden Sun 2: One of my favorite game series’s growing up, and the first time I experienced a “good” plot twist.
Knights of the Old Republic: Talk about good plot twists, I rented this game from blockbuster once and spent years thinking it was a fever dream.
Pokemon Emerald: Pokemon Crystal is the first game that let me play as a girl, but ruby/sapphire is really my generation.
Baldur’s Gate 3: Met my gf playing this, 1000 hours in, all coop with her.
Monster Hunter World: Met my best friend here, 2000 hours in, and basically infinitely replayable in a way that Elden Ring isn’t
factorio, noita, some random tower defense game, city of heroes, and Minecraft…
Skewed towards my taste in gaming, but still trying to think about humanity:
- UNDERTALE. My favorite videogame OAT, amazing storytelling, characters and soundtrack. This is my least replayable pick, but one that I would not want to lose
- The Binding of Isaac. Contender for the best Rougelike ever made, with an absurd level of replayability and great modding community
- Minecraft. Even though i don’t care about Minecraft that much, the things that this game has accomplished is crazy. I would not want to lose Redstone or the amazing modding community it has. Tons of ways to play and, it’s the most purchased game in history, I think it’s worth perserving.
- Geometry Dash. I would not want to leave the “rithym game” (debatable) community with nothing. GD is also a game I’m super in love with. The community is great and at this point it’s close to being its own gaming engine, so I think it fits here.
- Skyrim. This game I haven’t played ever, but I know what it means to a lot of people. Considering the rest of my cartoony and slightly niche picks, I think having one, extremely moddable medieval single player helps to have variety.
Id pick 5 games that have infinite replayability like dwarf fortress or other roguelikes
Dwarf Fortress is my desert island game.
Its made with superior dwarf craftsmanship afterall
I’d probably go for historic impact if there’s no more games I’d want a good selection of what people considered major titles of video game history. Maybe one classic, one old console, one arcade fighter, one modern PC, and one online shooter.
Pong
The legend of Zelda
Tekken 3
World of Warcraft classic
Team fortress 2
Burnout Revenge- Its my comfort game. I love it.
Left 4 Dead 2- Favorite multiplayer game
Witcher 3
Diablo 2
Ages of Empires 2
Burnout Revenge was the ultimate party game. Anyone could jump right in and cause chaos without needing to be an experienced gamer. The soundtrack was colossal too.
The Burnout games are underrated!
I just downloaded Burnout Paradise again and it holds up pretty well.
TitanFall 2: Its the Portal 2 engine, but better. Also runs on almost anything these days, looks good, could easily be a basis for a ton of different kind of multiplayer shooters via modding. You could basically rebuild any Source game/mod between 2000 and 2015 ish in it.
Deus Ex (the original): Lower fidelity but that means it can run on more things, is also highly moddable, also has a working multiplayer framework that it’s had since almost day one that I guess everyone forgot about, could also be modded into nearly anything, including lower fidelity than TF|2 multiplayer games of basically any kind.
VintageStory: Minecraft, but better. Also highly moddable. Also networkable.
Fallout Online (2/3): Assuming the likely near apocalyptic setting accompanying this hypothetical, we’re gonna want a 2.5D turn based tactics platform, FOnline is highly detailed and highly moddable, and is networked. You could also basically rebuild nearly any 2D JRPG in this, yes, even Pokemon, if you can handle 2.5D isometric sprites.
(I was originally going to say either Xenonauts 1 or 2, but then realized you could basically build X1 or X2 in Fallout Online, and FOnline is already networked.)
No Mans Sky: Beyond being essentially the most advanced procedural generation game that I am aware of, in breadth and depth, you’re going to want to have all that code to be able to decompile parts of it and thus be able to rebuild other or new digital worlds with it.
I reject the concept that no new games will ever be built.
I’ve been using and making mods since the 90s.
There will be new games, apocalypse be damned.
Also, as much as I love some Bethesda games, their engine is a heap of broken garbage.
Rebuild FONV or Skyrim in TF|2 or Deus Ex instead.
They are entirely capable of being modded into that.
