Without even needing to watch the video, I will tell you what current games will become, by default, "retro classics" in the next 20 years: those rare few games that will somehow still be playable in 20 years, after whatever various and sundry servers go offline during that time frame for whatever reasons, rendering the vast majority of games unplayable, at least in part if not in total.
Now to watch the video.
Dark Souls, for example, has servers. Without those servers, a fair chunk of the gameplay of
Dark Souls straight up will be gone, i.e. anything that involves multiplayer. While that mostly would be great for me, since
I think the multiplayer in Dark Souls sucks infected, rotten asshole, I would still like to see the messages and such left by other players, which would also be gone once the servers are gone.
And Pat makes a good point, in my opinion, about games being re-released in perpetuity. Playing, say, an actual, original PS1 game on an actual, original PS1 console would be retro, sure, but I wouldn't consider playing a HD 4k super duper remake of a PS1 game on a PS4 or what may come after that to be "retro." Normally, I agree with Ian in these videos, but I find myself agreeing way more with Pat this time.
That said, Ian is right at least in that it's not about graphics or what have you. Just because a game is "almost photorealistic" now would not disqualify that game from being "retro" 20 years from now, even if graphics don't noticeably improve much between now and then. (In any case, we'll probably be using fucking holosuites or some shit like that by then, anyway, so doing something so passé as playing video games with a controller in your hands on a viewing device would, itself, be "retro," regardless of the game. And playing some weird holodeck re-release version of
Super Mario Bros. would not be "retro" in regards to playing the original
Super Mario Bros. on an original NES, either.)
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