Destructoid’s staff combined forces this week to deliver “The Games that Defined the Decade,” a series of essays that looked back at some of the highlights of the last ten years.
Author: VGC | John
John Scalzo has been writing about video games since 2001, and he co-founded Warp Zoned in 2011. Growing out of his interest in game history, the launch of Video Game Canon followed in 2017.
“The 20 Best Games of the Decade” as Chosen by The Hollywood Reporter
When it came time to choose the best games of the previous decade, League of Legends of Minecraft definitely threw a wrench into the works. Most publications ultimately gave the two titles their due, but others were hung up on the fact that both originally launched in “Early Access” in 2009.
While compiling their list of “The 20 Best Games of the Decade,” the editors and contributors at The Hollywood Reporter went with the latter option and barred both League of Legends and Minecraft from contention.
But don’t worry, the games they did pick as the “most influential, impactful, and memorable” of the decade certainly deserve it.
Untitled Goose Game is Popular Mechanics’s “Best Video Game the Year You Were Born” for 2019
Popular Mechanics has has added a handful of titles from 2019 to their ongoing collection, “The Best Video Game the Year You Were Born.”
House House’s Untitled Goose Game was picked by Popular Mechanics’s editors as the best game of 2019, both for its “havoc-causing” stealth elements and its “wholesomeness”:
There were lots and lots of great games for 2019, but none had quite the reaction (and the wholesomeness) of Untitled Goose Game. The objective to be the most havoc-causing goose in existence, and it generates so much joy its almost hard to fathom. It just goes to show that sometimes a year’s best game doesn’t need giant budgets and super crisp graphics. It just needs a goose with a bad temper.
From Software’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Kojima Productions’s Death Stranding, and Electronic Arts’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order were all given “Honorable Mention” status, along with a pair of Nintendo-produced titles for the Switch (Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Pokemon Sword and Shield).
Popular Mechanics’s “The Best Video Game the Year You Were Born” will be added to the Video Game Canon in the Version 4.0 update, which should be ready to go in 2020.
The “Extraordinary Diversification” of Video Games is on Display in Eurogamer’s “Games of the Decade”
Deciding what criteria to use when selecting the best games of the 2010s is often just as difficult as picking the games themselves. So far this Fall, many outlets have focused on the ways gaming changed and grew during the decade when making their lists, and Eurogamer appears to be no exception.
The long-running site (they celebrated their 20th anniversary this year), specifically sought out games that highlight the “extraordinary diversification” of the industry when filling out their “Games of the Decade” list.
Staff of DualShockers Selected Their “50 Best Video Games of the Decade”
The parade of publications picking the best games of the decade continues to roll on this week as DualShockers got their turn in front of the microphone with “The 50 Best Video Games of the Decade (2010-2019).”
DualShockers focused their list on “games that had significant impact on a cultural, artistic, or development level across both the landscape of video games and larger mainstream culture,” while also trying to encompass the rise of live service games, the return of single-player adventures, and nearly a dozen different platforms.
Boss Fight Books Will Republish “Pilgrim in the Microworld” in 2020
David Sudnow’s Pilgrim in the Microworld sought to examine the inner workings of Atari’s Breakout (and the people who obsessively played it) when it was first published in 1983. Out of print for decades, Sudnow’s quest to unlock “the essence of video skill” will finally be republished in 2020 by Boss Fight Books.
The indie publisher has turned to Kickstarter to help fund this new printing of Pilgrim in the Microworld (now titled Breakout: Pilgrim in the Microworld), and they’ve already smashed their campaign goal, receiving pledges from more than 150 backers as of this writing:
Originally released under the title Pilgrim in the Microworld, Sudnow’s groundbreaking longform criticism of a single game predates the rise of game studies by decades. While its earliest critics often scorned the idea of a serious book about an object of play, the book’s modern readers remain fascinated by an obsessive, brilliant, and often hilarious quest to learn to play Breakout just as one would learn the piano.
Featuring a new foreword and freshly edited text, Breakout makes a perfect addition to Boss Fight’s lineup of critical, historical, and personal looks at single video games. We’re proud to restore this classic to print and share with new audiences Sudnow’s wild pilgrimage into the limitless microworld of play.
Pilgrim in the Microworld was one of the first books to focus on a single game, and it’ll be released in a “sleek new paperback” edition and as a DRM-free ebook in January 2020.
Bite-Sized Game History: Obscure Sales Ranking Charts from NPD’s Mat Piscatella
Last year around this time, The NPD Group’s Mat Piscatella shared some historical sales charts of the “Best-Selling Games in the US” from a wide variety of modern and classic platforms (including the Saturn, PlayStation, Nintendo 64, Dreamcast, and more).
Perhaps this means it’ll become a regular thing, as Piscatella popped up earlier today with another batch of charts, this time slicing the data from a few “obscure” corners of the industry.
Anyone have an obscure sales ranking chart they'd like to see?
— Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) November 25, 2019
[Tweet Removed – View at Internet Archive]
Taking requests from his Twitter followers, Piscatella’s research pointed him towards Nokia’s ill-fated N-Gage handheld, as well as popular third-party games on Nintendo platforms, and RPGs on the PlayStation. Finally, one person wanted to see the sales chart from the (sort of) uneventful February 1996.
All four charts offered plenty of surprises, which you can see for yourself in this edition of Bite-Sized Game History…
Halo 2, Half-Life 2, and the Month That Changed Gaming Forever
Halo 2 burst onto the scene exactly 15 years ago and changed the way we look at online multiplayer, but it might be just as well known for the weird and wild “I Love Bees” ARG (alternate reality game) that preceded its launch. While Master Chief has faded a bit from the forefront of gaming’s most popular characters (along with the Halo franchise as a whole), this milestone anniversary still gives us a great excuse to talk more about another one of the most influential games of all time.
And believe it or not, it wasn’t even the biggest blockbuster to emerge from amongst the new releases of 2004’s penultimate month.
Edge Honors the “Games of the Decade” in Their Christmas 2019 Issue
The venerable and prestigious Edge Magazine is jumping on the “Games of the Decade” discussion with their Christmas 2019 issue (“E339”), selecting a dozen different games that shaped the “ten industry-changing years” of the 2010s.
As seen on Twitter, each selection has been given its own variant cover, and collectors will even be able to purchase all the variants in a special boxset.
Edge – Games of the Decade
- Amnesia: The Dark Descent
- Broken Age
- Dark Souls
- Destiny
- Dota 2
- Fortnite
- Gone Home
- Grand Theft Auto V / Grand Theft Auto Online
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
- Minecraft
- Spelunky
- The Walking Dead
Like many of their peers, the editors at Edge selected Derek Yu’s Spelunky, Mojang’s Minecraft, and Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild as three of the decade’s best. The outlet also chose to highlight Telltale’s The Walking Dead, Double Fine’s Broken Age, Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto V, Frictional’s Amnesia: The Dark Descent, From Software’s Dark Souls, Bungie’s Destiny, Fulbright’s Gone Home, Epic’s Fortnite, and Valve’s Dota 2.
Edge’s “Games of the Decade” boxset and single issues are on sale now.
Polygon is Closing Out the 2010s With a Look Back at “The 100 Best Games of the Decade”
While there’s still almost two months to go before the calendar flips over to 2020, several outlets have already begun looking back at the decade that was to shine a spotlight on some of the best games of the 2010s.
Back in 2017, Polygon went the extra mile and counted down the “500 Best Games of All Time,” so it’s only fitting that for their decade debrief, they’ve decided to focus on an expansive list of titles that they consider “The 100 Best Games of the Decade.”