This question is best served by looking for lists of "classic games" and developing a success rubric. "Good games" occur at any level of technical sophisticatio

This question is best served by looking for lists of "classic games" and developing a success rubric. "Good games" occur at any level of technical sophistication. What is of primary importance is that the game has a coherent play concept (e.g. "run and jump" or "push blocks") and it expresses and develops this concept well through software features, level design etc. Games with more direct narrative elements and world-building like RPGs tend to be more thematically driven, using game mechanics as an aesthetic mode of engagement, while abstract games like Tetris rest on the play concept itself being the focus of engagement. When the game is good, every feature and asset is going to make sense in developing the whole, and no contradictions will occur given its base assumptions. (AAA deviates heavily from this in pursuing maximalism.) The exercise of defining what a game is, is also philosophically useful, because there are a lot of things called games that most definitions will exclude, and there are types of games that feel less like "video games" specifically and more like "computer-assisted games" or "interactive stories". Nobody has great claims to these definitions and they should be held loosely. Retro game content creators will happily make best-of lists to follow up on - and being an older generation, while they have definite preferences, they also have the depth of knowledge to back it up.