This is the best open-source image our crack team of artists could find with a rudimentary image search before lunch.
When we first started putting together our top 10 games of the decade, our first reaction was to question whether there even were 10 notable games that truly deserved to be considered the greatest of their decade? But as we began to put together the list, we started to realise that there have been a number of fascinating changes for better and worse in the games industry over the last 10 years, from the rejection of motion controls (as well as the acceptance of them for VR) to the transition of flash games from browsers to mobile phones, best exemplified by the life-ruining success of Flappy Birds.
The indie games scene over the past ten years has solidified itself as the new mid-tier level of development (but instead of most mid-tier games being action adventures as they were in the past, now they’re all procedurally-generated rogue-likes or Metroidvanias) both in terms of its influence in the ecosystem of the industry, as well as the size of independent budgets! More interesting than the continued rise of e-Sports has been the dystopian phenomenon of games streaming, where gamers film themselves playing games while begging for donations from people who believe they are friends of the streamer. I’m not sure friends is really the right term, because I don’t know about you, but I don’t give my friends copious amounts of money when I’m watching them play a game. But maybe I’m just a bad friend.
Phil fogg (Left) and Tom Towers (Right) playing Rockband Country released in 2011 to see if it would qualify as one of the top ten games of the 2010’s (Spoiler Alert: It didn’t).
With the indie scene cementing itself as the new mid-tier, triple-a development has been creatively reinvigorated—building on the creative achievements of indie devs and a couple of bigger budget titles (read our top ten to find out which ones!) that proved you can be a huge commercial success even if your game is actually a game. Unfortunately it also developed a fixation for open-world games and RPG elements (probably just an excuse to avoid level and progression design) and a schizophrenic approach to player reinforcement, integrating the structure of achievements into an endless stream of busywork for the player to do to earn experience.
Games criticism itself was also afforded greater freedom by YouTube. The video essay format allowed games critics to get away with standards of writing (and creativity) that no one would accept if they were reading the script as an article, rather than listening to it being narrated over video clips. From comedy to academic-style discussion, thanks to the video format, there has never been a wider variety of criticism available to gamers. It’s just a shame nearly all of it is still crap…
The games we have chosen as being worthy of immortalising as our top 10 games of the decade, aren’t necessarily the “best” games of the decade—or even the most influential,—but they are the most important; each epitomising an important development in the games industry.
Phil Fogg (Left) and Tom Towers (Right) seen leaving the deliberation room after a heated confrontation on the final selection of games for the Top Ten Games of the 2010’s.
N.B. League of Legends is obviously a top three game of the decade, but unfortunately it came out in 2009, so pedantry has disqualified it.
- Tom Towers and Phil Fogg