The World Video Game Hall of Fame's ballot this year tells a story about how utterly fractured modern gaming taste has become. Within the same shortlist sit a 1981 arcade game about a frog, a 2009 mobile phenomenon that caused entire workplaces to lose productivity, and a competitive online battle arena that's defined a generation of esports competitors.
The Strong Museum in Rochester received thousands of nominations for the 2026 class, and the finalists are Angry Birds, Dragon Quest, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, FIFA International Soccer, Frogger, Galaga, League of Legends, Mega Man, PaRappa the Rapper, RuneScape, Silent Hill and Tokimeki Memorial.
Some of these games have knocked on the Hall's door before. Angry Birds has been nominated four times without entry, according to industry records, making this another chance for Rovio's bird-flinging physics puzzle to finally break through. The same frustration applies to FIFA International Soccer, though its case is complicated by EA Sports' 2023 split with the FIFA brand.
First-time nominees carry different weight. The horror classic Silent Hill, the platform icon Mega Man, and the ever-popular, multiplayer League of Legends represent three vastly different corners of gaming's ecosystem. The Mega Man franchise has sold 44 million units worldwide, a staggering figure for a series that began on the NES and refused to die. League of Legends transformed from a fan-made mod into what is arguably the most important competitive game ever created. Silent Hill, meanwhile, essentially rewrote how horror games could use technology to unsettle players.
The voting process itself reflects how much democratic participation now shapes cultural institutions. Fans can vote for their favorites from March 5 to March 13 as part of a "Player's Choice" ballot at worldvideogamehalloffame.org. The three games receiving the most public votes will form one ballot and join the other ballots submitted by members of the International Selection Advisory Committee, comprising journalists and scholars from around the world.
Here's where it gets interesting: attendees at the Game Developers Conference will also be able to cast votes, with their collective selections forming an additional ballot in the process. The people making games get a seat at the table alongside players and scholars. That's a thoughtful system that acknowledges three legitimate perspectives on what matters in gaming history.
The case for any of these games is defensible. RuneScape has operated continuously since 2001 with more than 300 million accounts created across 150 countries. Dragon Quest didn't just succeed; it helped pioneer the Japanese RPG genre. Frogger became iconic enough that its name entered the cultural vocabulary. But inclusion in a hall of fame requires more than just success; it requires demonstrating that a game changed what gaming could be, or that it reached so deeply into global culture that ignoring it would distort history.
Final inductees will be announced during a ceremony at 10:30 a.m. on May 7 at the Hall of Fame's new home within the ESL Digital Worlds exhibits at the museum. The decision will reveal what institutions believe matters most about how we play.