28 Dec, 2009
So long, 2000s! You were bittersweet when it came to gaming. My beloved Metal Gear series ended with Solid Snake, and little nuggets of brilliant (and often mediocre) games came into my possession. Whether it was Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, Beyond Good and Evil, or the mystery-noir of Indigo Prophecy, I made sure to spend time with as many weird and little known titles as possible. However, that diamond in the rough when it comes to games wouldn’t have been there without a bigger title there to serve as some kind of Indian spirit guide.
Wired.com has compiled an extensive list of The 15 Influential Games Of The Decade. Basically any big title you can think of is there, but some surprises as well.
The ’00s will be remembered as the decade when the videogame industry got flipped on its head.
Going into the year 2000, the general feeling was that the game industry was ready to put away childish things. The era of Nintendo and kiddie entertainment was over, and the videogames of the future were about multimillion-dollar budgets, mind-blowing photorealism and “digital actors” playing out their parts with human realism thanks to “emotion engines,” etc.
Instead, it went down like this: A whole bunch of companies dumped a whole lot of money down the next-gen sinkhole, and the number of publishers that could be counted on to deliver bleeding-edge entertainment without going broke in the process dwindled to just a few.
Meanwhile, many more publishers came to the belated realization that all those simple, accessible games from days gone by weren’t obsolete; in fact, there were untold millions of people playing Solitaire on their computers, just waiting for something better to come out.
Our list of the most influential games of the past decade includes, therefore, many games that made big leaps and defined what would come to be traditional aspects of the big-budget grand adventure, and others that pushed the reset button on game design.
Source: Wired.com
This list comes as somewhat of a disappointment. I’d be even more disappointed if Silent Hill 2 and Metal Gear Solid 2 hadn’t been included on the list.
I can understand why GTA was on the list. After all, it pushed the envelope AND brought sandbox gaming to more gamers. Personally, I don’t like the series at all – playing as a bad guy doesn’t feel right – but it definitely belongs on the list. I also agree with The Sims and Half-Life 2 (probably the only FPS I’d want to play) being on the list.
The rest are games I either don’t really know or games that I don’t really think deserve to be on the list. Portal? Maybe. Halo? Um…why? It’s not really even “combat evolved”. It’s an FPS, and in the 21 years that I’ve spent playing games I can tell you that the FPS genre has barely evolved. Multi-player does not equal innovation in my book. It’s sad that it’s considered influential, because it didn’t really influence other companies to clone it (that reward goes to Doom).
All in all, I’m glad it says “influential” as opposed to “greatest”, because maybe half of the games on the list deserve to be called great games.
I think Portal deserves it’s spot there. Granted, it copied the same engine made famous by Steam, but it also raised the bar on innovation and interaction with the environment that a lot of games lacked.
I agree with your sentiments about Halo, but how can an FPS seriously evolve? It’s point, and shoot, and capture the flag, and co-op with teammates. If anything, Gears of War should have better accolades but GoW just innovated on the FPS genre, not exactly changed it. The thing about Halo is that it also came as a flag runner for Xbox, cementing the system and earning a mass following. I really don’t think Doom and Duke Nukem can say the same, especially when I talk to gamers and they think of those two titles as ‘cult classics’.
I think Wired would step on too many toes by saying ‘greatest’ and then listing said games, or if THEY did make a list like that, I’m sure a lot of people would be like ho-hum at the conclusions, because you often have to go middle of the road to appeal to masses.
Portal I can agree with. However, Quake did everything that Halo did, if I recall correctly (it’s been a while). I’m sure they could’ve come up with something else. What about Devil May Cry? It totally raised the bar for action games, and other companies have tried emulating the same sort of action. While the second game was pretty forgettable, the first and especially the third games were amazing.
I know that the FPS genre can’t really get any better, but they could have picked something else. If they wanted to desperately choose an FPS, they could have easily gone with Deus Ex, which is an amazing game.
I just wanted to say that Portal was developed and released by Valve, and it used the Source engine, which was also created by Valve. So Portal actually didn’t copy anything. The developers used their own engine in their own game.
Also, I want to point out that game engines are created in order to be used. So if a game developer uses an engine that was created by a different developer, then it’s not necessarily copying. It’s just using a resource that was created in order to make game development easier.
To go with the topic of the post, though, I was glad to see Silent Hill 2 on the list! The SH games are being overlooked on many of the “best of the decade” lists I’ve seen, which is a shame.
I actually thought that the reasoning behind the selection was interesting. I think MGS (1) should’ve pipped MGS2 – after all, MGS was the first in the series to bring us a full cinematic masterpiece – but otherwise whilst I don’t wholly agree, I can certainly see where they’re coming from.
Question: does 2009 mark the end of the decade or is it ended at the close of 2010? DISCUSS!
I think 2009 should mark the end. I dunno how else to discuss this and I can’t think of anything to distract you so… hrm.
Oh, I know. I thought your MGS comment was spot-on in its sentiment, but MGS came out in 1998.
Well, duh. Now I feel silly … !
I agree with Sarah; December 31, 2009 should be the end of the decade. I can’t really explain why, but I’ve always just had that sort of reasoning (i.e. 2000 was the start of a new decade, which means that 1999 was the end of the last decade).
I too agree that MGS should be up there if they were simply talking about the most influential games of all time. Though I didn’t like it as much as I liked MGS 2 and MGS 3.
I agree about it ending in 2009, too. It’s just that every other person I’ve said this too seems to disagree. Hmmm …