Beyond the Horizon

Blog of Spencer Magnusson

Video Games that Shaped Me

From Childhood to Now

October 2, 2026 | 6 minutes

Table of Contents ↑

The Categories

The Fandoms

Adrenaline Junkies

A Very Unreal Tangent

Cinematic Immersion

Master Storytellers

Unique, Polished Gameplay

"Just Me With the Boys"

Artistic Inspiration

I’ve been recently brainstorming art styles for future projects. As part of that, I reflected on my inspirations, including videos games I played growing up. Which influenced and shaped me.

To share a little bit more about myself (and find other players who know the games I’ve played), let me share some. And then I’ll bring it back to how they could affect my art style.

The Categories

The Fandoms

Because I loved the existing IP “universe,” I already loved these games. Playing these games was like bringing their familiar worlds to life.

Many of these released along with a movie. What always surprised me was how many were surprisingly good by themselves, even without the associated IP. Revenge of the Sith on Xbox had amazingly fun lightsaber fights for multiplayer.

Some even offered different experiences between consoles (often because they were made by different studios). Take Return of the King. The GameBoy Advance version? A surprisingly hardcore RPG. Trading weapons, modifying them, carefully leveling up your character. The Xbox version, on the other hand, trades RPG elements for a combo slasher adventure. It also has some of my favorite bonus features in a game, including the origin of the “do you wear wigs” meme.

Adrenaline Junkies

These games just pumped my adrenaline. Didn’t stop giving me serotonin until I mastered them.

Hot Pursuit has one of my favorite video game trailers of all time. Brilliantly crafted, minimal, and my favorite: intensely cinematic. It was a big inspiration of my own animated short years ago.

And speaking of Unreal Tournament…

A Very Unreal Tangent

My dad’s workplace would host yearly “bring your kid to work” days. They’d have all these educational classes and labs for kids and teenagers.

One class was called something like “Local Network Competitions.” It was literally just UT2004. And it was a blast.

They switched to Unreal Tournament III once that was released (I believe they got to test it early, since they coordinated with the game studio and necessary hardware requirements). Lots of memories around those games.

Sadly the series is all but gone. You can’t purchase them on Steam. Epic released a free Unreal Tournament sandbox to appease diehard fans, but even that game was removed from their game store. I wonder what my dad’s workplace plays now…

Cinematic Immersion

Realistic graphics, minimal HUDs, and immersive gameplay sucked me in for hours at a time.

I remember first seeing footage of Titanfall and thinking, “Man, that’s so cinematic. The film grain, chromatic aberration, the screens ‘turning on’ inside the titan … wait, this is multiplayer?!”

I wouldn’t call games like Crysis and Wildlands “military sims” in any way. But I love how they drop you into these worlds and simply let you play in a sandbox. It gives plenty of immersion, and they ensure the mechanics don’t take you out of it.

I love how Alan Wake plays out like a TV series. Great lighting. Well-placed camera angles for cutscenes, new enemy spawns, or choice uses of the flare gun.

Master Storytellers

These games had stories that pulled me in, didn’t let go, and often left me thinking differently.

I only recently started appreciating games relying on player choice for their stories. Probably because the first few games I tried were just “choose your ending!” and it was exactly one player choice in the last level. I’m usually not one for huge open-ended RPGs; I just feel a tad too aimless. So games like Dishonored give me a nice sense of structure.

Unique, Polished Gameplay

The gameplay feels so fresh, intricate, polished, and fun — it blew me away when I first played these games. And it often keeps me coming back.

Stealth is one of my favorite game genres. Hence all the stealth in this category. I think part of it is how these games utilize lighting — which also makes or breaks a game’s look. Social stealth is fun too, which Assassin’s Creed takes advantage of.

Some of these games don’t introduce anything unique, but polish what already exists to the point of becoming exquisite fun. Arkham Knight and Assassin’s Creed: Unity fulfill that for me.

“Just Me With the Boys”

These games lived and died (or are still going) on multiplayer. They gave me and my siblings lots of fun hours together.

And when I say Empires: Dawn of the Modern World, I don’t mean Age of Empires. My family never had those games, and it’s surprisingly hard to find anyone who’s even played that game, let alone heard of it. If you have or have played it, please let me know. I may know a couple people you could regularly play with.

I think the dangers of messaging through games and toxic behavior has made communication in casual online multiplayer much more minimal (think Fall Guys or Rocket League). To me, local multiplayer is still king, for fun gameplay while still having a meaningful social element.

Artistic Inspiration

How many of these games did you recognize? Based on them, do you have recommendations that may be right up my alley? Feel free to message me and let me know.

If I could narrow these down to the most compelling visual inspirations, I’d have the list below. Some of these styles have even appeared in past artworks, which is a great sign:

Some of these may seem contradictory, in which case I’ll just choose between projects. But it would be cool to explore getting the best of all the worlds.

Choosing an art medium is another struggle I have. Feature films and shorts fit most of my stories, and it’s my other big source of inspiration. But since I’ve tinkered with developing games in the past, I think about those too.

My mind even went on a limb and thought, “What if I just did them as music videos?” Well, then I have to think of music too, dangit.

The biggest factor is time. I’ve thought about webcomics to appease that, so I’m not spending years on a short film, let alone a feature. It might be a good visual test, at least. But I’d like the final result to be a video, and not just still frames. There’s something about movement and timing for me that I really want to be part of the final product.

Again, more brainstorming. I had a couple epiphanies recently I want to explore, but I’ll save that for another time.