1. Minecraft
Mojang, 2011. Most Platforms. Sandbox
The fact that Minecraft is the best selling video game of all-time is not reason enough for it to top our list of the Top Ten Games of the 2010’s. If it were none of the other games on this list would have made it (none were among the ten best selling games of the decade). Minecraft is lightning caught in a bottle, a small game made by what some regard a mediocre coder, Marcus Persson, who had dabbled in Doom-mod games inspired by Dwarf Fortress and Dungeon Keeper. Much as Will Wright had more fun with the development tools he created for The Raid on Bungleing Bay than playing it, and then went onto develop the crafting game SimCity, “Notch” must have identified that people would have more fun with the creation tools of Minecraft than a directed experience game.
Notch used assets from his prior experiments in game develop to Minecraft, including the now iconic pixelated sword.
SimCity eventually became known as the first form of interactive electronic gaming that was a “toy” rather than a game, somehting that could be picked up for as long as the player wanted and relied on their drive and imagination, more so than a linear game that sets milestones and waits for the player to reach them. Minecraft, like SimCity, does have a “proper campaign” but I’ve never met anyone who has actively engaged in it, eschewing it for the far more meditative process of crafting, minecrafting if you will. The game has added different variants over the years, especially under the patronage of Microsoft, which took over Mojang studio in 2014, after Notch tweeted that he no longer wished to bear the pressure of Minecraft and “move on with his life”.
It seems to have been a good move for both Minecraft and Notch, as Microsoft has enabled the unification of the many platforms the game appears on so players can interact regardless of what device they are using, contrary to the exclusivity many feared when Microsoft bought out Mojang.
As an older gamer, with limited time, I’ve not been able to dedicate myself to a single game like Minecraft, but thinking of myself when I was child who was endlessly pursuing programming and anything related to creativity, I can see why all of the children I know are enraptured with Minecraft. As they have aged and moved onto other games, their interest in creation remains, particularly computer enabled design, and to me that is the legacy that Minecraft can be most proud of.
-Phil Fogg
That’s an enchanting table.
Minecraft is a game I’m convinced I bought when it was extremely cheap to pre-order. This was without me knowing anything about it. Then people started to make blogs on GameSpot about it, and I could find no evidence I had purchased it. Did I imagine I bought it, or did Notch scam me? This can be taken as metaphor for Minecraft itself, a game which so defies description beyond its title (you mine and then you craft using the raw materials you have mined) yet is so ubiquitous, that it may not actually exist.
The fact that a game which no one at any point since its release nine-years ago has been capable of describing has proven to be so popular and been just as, if not more, important to the rise of streaming, YouTube personalities and post-forum online gaming communities than MOBAs, horror games, fascism or feminism (and it is also a horror game thanks to its infamous creepers, not to mention its creator’s fascistic tendencies!), would make it more than worthy of being the game of the decade. But for me, as someone who has never played Minecraft, what I believe to be its most significant achievement is its art direction. It proves that indie developers and idiots with no aesthetic appreciation are wrong: pixellated graphics can be just as successful in 3D games as 2D games. In fact, the highest selling game ever was released in the 21st Century and has graphics as chunky as the SEGA Saturn!
So the next time some philistine is calling the original Metal Gear Solid’s graphics dated rather than noticing how incredible it looks—not to mention the editing and framing in the cutscenes!—just remember how successful Minecraft was and is.
I will admit that the ray tracing shaders for it look pretty good, though.
-Tom Towers
To see our full feature on the Top Ten Games of the 2010’s click here.