Ready to have your mind blown? A decade is 10 years.
Right? Unbelievable. Of course, I say this with the most facetious tone possible because, when it comes to video games, a decade is multiple generations. Console generations, to be exact.
And while 2010 was only 10 short years ago it feels so, so much longer in regards to where gaming has come, gone, and will go in the decade to come.
But the future isn’t now, so instead let's focus our efforts on a larger, more obtuse quandary: What one game properly sums up a decade in which consumers saw two console cycles, a wealth of trends come and go, and the Ouya somehow getting funded on Kickstarter?
I don’t have an answer for you, friends. Neither should anyone else. To ask a single game to be the summation of an entire 10 years and somehow have it be a meaningful choice is one fraught with danger. Take the advice of your friendly, neighborhood games journalist and be wary of any news outlet that tries to make some bold statement about a singular game.
In most cases, a “best,” “most influential,” or “most important” game of the decade piece is less a work of critical theory and more a hot take meant to be a declaration of that writer’s coolness.
Well, I am not Regina George, we do wear sweatpants at this table, and no one game could sum up the 2010’s. To do so is to say that one and only one game is to be the thing that most stands out about the last ten years. To do so is ignoring the amazing achievements in gaming and just how far we’ve all come.
There’s also another issue with making a “best of decade” statement: Bias. We as gamers, despite fighting our hobbyist nature, tend to enshrine the very recent or the most retro in our minds. Take game of the year proceedings as per example.
Every year I joke that by the time December rolls around that I’ve forgotten the games that came out in March, but it isn’t a joke. A lot of video games get released through the year and gaming is very much a “What have you done for me lately” type of business.
Sekiro came out in March. That feels like a figurative lifetime ago. Apply that bias to the entire decade. Fallout: New Vegas came out in 2010, and upon hearing that you might run to Google and immediately look to see if I’m wrong because it just sounds… off.
And yet. In a decade we’ve seen the rise and fall of developers such as Obsidian and publishers like Bethesda. To think about New Vegas being in the last decade is one small example of just how impossible a task it is to pick one game from the literal pile.
The other knee-jerk reaction is to look at trends and popularity as a sign of worthiness for the Thor’s hammer that is game of the decade. Plenty of takes exist out there already saying Fortnite is the most influential piece of gaming software to come out of the 2010s. However, that ignores that the rise of something like Fortnite is an effect of larger things in motion within gaming culture and not necessarily the thing that caused the effect in the first place.
The rise of the Battle Royale genre was a confluence of consumer displeasure, the coming of a new generation of gamers, and a change in monetization trends. To give the crown of “most influential” to the game that made the most money and annoyed the most geriatrics with new dances is of note, but not enough to be the declarative statement of an entire decade.
At this point, you’re probably saying to yourself “okay then, jerkhole, what’s your solution to this?” I’ll be honest in that I don’t have an answer. Perhaps the best solution is to accept that the decade we just passed was one of progress, wonder, failures, and change.
Fortnite took the mantle World of Warcraft used to hold as the mainstream gaming crossover that gamers fear of being asked about at Thanksgiving. The Dark Souls trilogy changed the way we talk about the difficulty in gaming while also making players talk about accessibility critically. First-person shooters advanced war, went back to World War II, opened loot boxes, and everything in between.
This is but a small taste of the depth of tales ready to be told about the decade that was the 2010s. Where do we go from here? I honestly don't know and that in and of itself is the most exciting prospect of all.
And that’s why Mass Effect 3 is my most influential game of the decade. Good night.
Contact William Harrison at DoubleUHarrison@gmail.com or on Twitter @DoubleUHarrison.
First Published November 21, 2019, 1:30 p.m.
