As the official magazine of the British Film Institute, the editors at Sight & Sound regularly poll hundreds of critics and directors to aggregate a list of the Greatest Films of All Time. This once-a-decade undertaking was last compiled in 2022 and uses a simple premise: each voter is able to select ten films and the final list is ranked based on which films were mentioned most often.
The methodology for British GQ’s “The 100 Greatest Video Games of All Time, Ranked by Experts” is slightly different, but the recent list is probably the closest analogue the video game industry has to Sight & Sound’s poll.
Like Sight & Sound, British GQ asked critics and developers to submit a personally ranked top ten list of games… without including any guidance as to what “The Greatest” meant. But that “personally ranked” bit means that the methodology of this list differs slightly from the Sight & Sound poll. Each voter’s top title received ten points, second place was given nine, third place picked up eight points, and so on down to a single point for the game in the tenth position. From there, the final list was ranked according to the total number of points each game received.
Sam White, British GQ’s resident Games Columnist, sent out 300 invitations to partake in the poll and received 239 responses. A total of 652 games received at least one vote and the game in the top spot not only accrued the most points, but also the most #1 placements among all voters as well.
So which game came out on top amongst this expansive panel of experts? Drumroll please…
Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has had a stranglehold on the gaming community since its launch a little more than five years ago, so it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that it earned the top spot in British GQ’s poll.
But I’d go so far as to say that there aren’t really any surprises in the entire Top 100. Each game is one that’s been talked about for five years… or ten (The Last of Us at #2) or twenty (Morrowind at #44) or thirty (Doom at #19) or even forty (Tetris at #3). It’s a solid collection of titles and you should absolutely read the entire article to see what made the cut.
However, the real fun in a list like this is digging into the more than 80 individual ballots I was able to find. It’s a fascinating snapshot into the minds of a wide swath of critics and developers and I hope more come forward with their lists (my inbox is waiting).
British GQ
The 100 Greatest Video Games of All Time – Individual Lists (Expand)
I’m also fascinated by the logistics behind the list, as Sam White shared a completely wild list of games that only received one vote, but each was a #1 rank. It’s here that you’ll find left-of-center picks like Robotron 2084, Ghost Trick, Spacewar!, and Dwarf Fortress.
White later added that he considers British GQ’s “100 Greatest Video Games of All Time” list as “an undiluted, criteria free look at people’s favourites” and directly compared it to the Sight & Sound poll, stating “Every 10 years you get a look at where the culture is, what’s currently revered, what’s not, and get to see reappraisal over time.”
I hope he sticks to that (and I hope we don’t need to wait ten years).
British GQ’s “The 100 Greatest Video Games of All Time, Ranked by Experts” will be added to the Video Game Canon’s next update later this year.