I think I need to stop reading the articles on this site and just stick to the forums.
This is not a list of "most impactful games of the last decade" as the title claims. This is "my favourite games of the last decade". That's fine, and it's interesting to read, but should not be confused with impact.
To be impactful, the game has to have an actual impact on the industry.
Take Red Dead Redemption 2 from your list. It was only released last year, so it's not been out long enough to really have had an impact. Is there a load of new wild west games being developed that I don't know about? What is the actual impact of RDR2?
To flip it around, where are the games that actually did make an impact?
League of Legends, for example. Sure, its a few months outside of the last decade, but its meteroic rise in popularity spawned a ton of new MOBAs and turned a niche sub-genre into something mainstream. That is impactful.
Or PUBG? The game that gave rise to the ton of battle royale games? That had a massive impact on the current landscape of the gaming industry. Fortnite may be the current king of the genre, but it wouldn't exist in its current state without PUBG
How about SWTOR? I hate that game with a passion, it's utter garbage and isn't even an MMO. However, the inclusion of voice acting had a big impact on the MMO genre to the point where voice acting is now an expected feature.
In a similar vein, how about SW: Battlefront 2? Again, I don't like the game, but the impact felt by the industry in relation to lootboxes is still being felt today. This game has directly resulted in new laws being written in various countries around the world and the monetisation of gaming is being discussed by polititions. That is real impact, even if not intentional.
You added Zelda: BOTW to your list. What was the impact of that game exactly? The survival genre had already taken off, zelda was itself impacted by previous games success, but I've yet to see any other games be influenced directly by BOTW. I don't know what survival game first made the genre popular, but zelda should be replaced with it (state of decay maybe?)
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How about SWTOR? I hate that game with a passion, it's utter garbage and isn't even an MMO. However, the inclusion of voice acting had a big impact on the MMO genre to the point where voice acting is now an expected feature.
AoC had the same voice acted, dialogue based NPC interaction 3+ years before SWTOR... minus the occasional camera movement, conversations in AoC are mostly static, with a few exceptions.
No, I don't think SWTOR had any impact with its best elements, and luckily neither with the bad ones: no other game took over the "bright" idea of restricted hotbars, and lock the helmets onto the character's head if they don't subscribe
Class stories were already present (like in the mentioned AoC), and while SWTOR made them the focus and one of the core features of the game, other games didn't follow. Class stories usually "just there".
Dark/Light side wasn't new in the industry either (just within MMORPGs) and I don't see a lot of followers on that idea...
But speaking of the dumb restrictions of its f2p, just occured to me an impact I wanted to add to the list above but missed it - and it even fits into the "decade" just barely:
2009, DDO's f2p switch.
While f2p was already present (mostly in the east), and it was pretty much unavoidable (due to publisher's overall greed), it still needed a pioneer, a trend-setter to kick stuff in motion.
DDO's move and the results, backed up with LotRO's similar profit increase a year later, had the initial and heaviest impact on the trend which has turned the (almost) entire industry towards f2p.
When I think of impactful, I think of a game that the industry had to change to accommodate. It either added something to the world of gaming that was going to be expected in games going forward or it was such a runaway success that other companies quickly followed suit in order to steal some of that success.
My list would look like this, and make no mistake, I'm not even a fan of many of these games, and don't play half of them, but these are the games that I feel changed the industry:
Overwatch
Good lord did this game change the industry. As soon as it was announced, other companies started working on copycats that ranged from the ridiculously absurd like Battleborne to the super hardcore gamer version of Lawbreakers. Both of which completely failed to understand what made Overwatch fun, and missed the target by a country mile, then died horrible quick deaths.
The only one still standing with decent player count other than the king itself is Paladins, which not only fully understood the genre, but honestly, looking at it, it seems entirely possible that Blizzard had some inside scoops and completely stole the entire idea.
PUBG
Love it or hate it, it had a similar impact as Overwatch did on the Hero Shooter genre to the Battle Royale Genre. First it spawned a few copycats, then well established franchises started adding battle royale modes to games that didn't really need them like Call of Duty and Battlefield.
When a franchise like Call of Duty adds a BR mode because the genre is so popular, then that's the very definition of impactful.
SWTOR
I despise this game with every fibre of my being. I've said it before, but there's so much I dislike about this game that I could dedicate a 20 episode series of YouTube video's to all the problems it has and I'd still have bad things to say.
However, personal feelings aside, it brought story and voice acting to the MMO genre that can't go ignored. Woe betide any future MMO that releases without voice acting and stories for characters in them.
No Man's Sky
Don't promise the moon if all you can offer is a golf ball.
The backlash on this game at release was one of the most severe I've ever seen, and it had a near instantaneous effect on the market. It stopped developers from blabbing their big dumb mouths about what their game would offer before it released. For a while after NMS released you can watch tons of gaming interviews where developers and game leads would say "Well, I'm not going to make any promises, but we might have that feature at launch, maybe, possibly, who knows... "
Impactful in a different way, but still had an impact nonetheless.
Pillars of Eternity
Games can be kickstarted, actually get finished, and release to wide praise if the right studio is behind the project. Sure, games were already being crowdfunded prior to PoE, but PoE showed the game developer world how to do it successfully and correctly.
Don't bite off more than you can chew and make sure you have the right team to deliver a quality product on time.
Borderlands 2
Yes, the first one came out in 2009, which is why I can't list it on this list, but to be honest it was an underground hit and much like Witcher 3 didn't form a full head of steam until Borderlands 2.
Tiny Tina. I mean, let's be real here, Tiny Tina sold this game like no other. It was so irreverent, fun, and humorous in a way that landed nearly all of its jokes expertly that it launched into the stratosphere and spawned an entire genre of Looter Shooter titles.
I could probably list another 5-8 games from this decade, but I'm not being paid by the word, so I'll just leave it at this.
Your impactful list loses credibility without Fortnite on it
If we have to use the sales chart to decide which games are the best, then it would be pretty boring and predictable.
Fortnite is nothing special, nothing that hasn’t been done before, it’s just popular.
Probably we should look at the games that inspired Fortnite, they maybe deserve to be on that list.
Are you saying that you dont think that Fortnite has been impactful .... really .... ?
And yes Sales charts are impactful ... very very impactful
Sales charts will move other devs and Pubs to take action and move resources to duplicate success , as was very obvious with Fortnite
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Comments
This is not a list of "most impactful games of the last decade" as the title claims. This is "my favourite games of the last decade". That's fine, and it's interesting to read, but should not be confused with impact.
To be impactful, the game has to have an actual impact on the industry.
Take Red Dead Redemption 2 from your list. It was only released last year, so it's not been out long enough to really have had an impact. Is there a load of new wild west games being developed that I don't know about? What is the actual impact of RDR2?
To flip it around, where are the games that actually did make an impact?
League of Legends, for example. Sure, its a few months outside of the last decade, but its meteroic rise in popularity spawned a ton of new MOBAs and turned a niche sub-genre into something mainstream. That is impactful.
Or PUBG? The game that gave rise to the ton of battle royale games? That had a massive impact on the current landscape of the gaming industry. Fortnite may be the current king of the genre, but it wouldn't exist in its current state without PUBG
How about SWTOR? I hate that game with a passion, it's utter garbage and isn't even an MMO. However, the inclusion of voice acting had a big impact on the MMO genre to the point where voice acting is now an expected feature.
In a similar vein, how about SW: Battlefront 2? Again, I don't like the game, but the impact felt by the industry in relation to lootboxes is still being felt today. This game has directly resulted in new laws being written in various countries around the world and the monetisation of gaming is being discussed by polititions. That is real impact, even if not intentional.
You added Zelda: BOTW to your list. What was the impact of that game exactly? The survival genre had already taken off, zelda was itself impacted by previous games success, but I've yet to see any other games be influenced directly by BOTW. I don't know what survival game first made the genre popular, but zelda should be replaced with it (state of decay maybe?)
My list would look like this, and make no mistake, I'm not even a fan of many of these games, and don't play half of them, but these are the games that I feel changed the industry:
Overwatch
Good lord did this game change the industry. As soon as it was announced, other companies started working on copycats that ranged from the ridiculously absurd like Battleborne to the super hardcore gamer version of Lawbreakers. Both of which completely failed to understand what made Overwatch fun, and missed the target by a country mile, then died horrible quick deaths.
The only one still standing with decent player count other than the king itself is Paladins, which not only fully understood the genre, but honestly, looking at it, it seems entirely possible that Blizzard had some inside scoops and completely stole the entire idea.
PUBG
Love it or hate it, it had a similar impact as Overwatch did on the Hero Shooter genre to the Battle Royale Genre. First it spawned a few copycats, then well established franchises started adding battle royale modes to games that didn't really need them like Call of Duty and Battlefield.
When a franchise like Call of Duty adds a BR mode because the genre is so popular, then that's the very definition of impactful.
SWTOR
I despise this game with every fibre of my being. I've said it before, but there's so much I dislike about this game that I could dedicate a 20 episode series of YouTube video's to all the problems it has and I'd still have bad things to say.
However, personal feelings aside, it brought story and voice acting to the MMO genre that can't go ignored. Woe betide any future MMO that releases without voice acting and stories for characters in them.
No Man's Sky
Don't promise the moon if all you can offer is a golf ball.
The backlash on this game at release was one of the most severe I've ever seen, and it had a near instantaneous effect on the market. It stopped developers from blabbing their big dumb mouths about what their game would offer before it released. For a while after NMS released you can watch tons of gaming interviews where developers and game leads would say "Well, I'm not going to make any promises, but we might have that feature at launch, maybe, possibly, who knows... "
Impactful in a different way, but still had an impact nonetheless.
Pillars of Eternity
Games can be kickstarted, actually get finished, and release to wide praise if the right studio is behind the project. Sure, games were already being crowdfunded prior to PoE, but PoE showed the game developer world how to do it successfully and correctly.
Don't bite off more than you can chew and make sure you have the right team to deliver a quality product on time.
Borderlands 2
Yes, the first one came out in 2009, which is why I can't list it on this list, but to be honest it was an underground hit and much like Witcher 3 didn't form a full head of steam until Borderlands 2.
Tiny Tina. I mean, let's be real here, Tiny Tina sold this game like no other. It was so irreverent, fun, and humorous in a way that landed nearly all of its jokes expertly that it launched into the stratosphere and spawned an entire genre of Looter Shooter titles.
I could probably list another 5-8 games from this decade, but I'm not being paid by the word, so I'll just leave it at this.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon