Topic: Game of the Decade: Let's get this flame war started.

[pokepal148]

Let's do this. What could possibly go wrong.

We all know that it's Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate anyways.

[broodwars]

I kind of feel like it has to be Witcher 3. Not only is it a fantastic game in its own right as an RPG where every quest is meaningful, but it's the game that proved to game publishers that video game consoles weren't a dying market. As such, it is largely responsible for the successes that occurred since. Without Witcher 3, we probably don't HAVE a console market outside Nintendo.

[pokepal148]

Monster Hunter is my Game of the Decade on a personal level. On an industry wide level though it's definitely Minecraft.

[MagicCow64]

It's a toss up between Stephen's Sausage Roll and Toki Tori 2.

[Khushrenada]

What, no Muscle March?

[ShyGuy]

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

[Shaymin]

Spoilers for the inevitable site list:

Metroid Prime: Federation Force will be #1 as it should be

Star Fox 0 will end up in the top 10 because of John

[ShyGuy]

You call it negativity, he calls it realism

[UncleBob]

 No love for Untitled Goose Game?

[Khushrenada]

Untitled Goose Game will be like Minecraft and dominate the gaming scene for the upcoming decade. It's only just begun.

[Stratos]

Minecraft released in 2009, so isn't that the previous decade, or are we clarifying it by a specific later release version?

Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey are obvious candidates for the short list. I can also see a case for Smash Brothers Ultimate, considering it's celebration of all things gaming.

Star Dew Valley and Animal Crossing also deserve consideration.

Broodwars, that sounds a bit extreme to say there would likely be no console market without Witcher. You mind expanding on that argument a bit more?

I would argue for Skyrim's inclusion as well.

[broodwars]

Minecraft released in 2009, so isn't that the previous decade, or are we clarifying it by a specific later release version?

Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey are obvious candidates for the short list. I can also see a case for Smash Brothers Ultimate, considering it's celebration of all things gaming.

Star Dew Valley and Animal Crossing also deserve consideration.

Broodwars, that sounds a bit extreme to say there would likely be no console market without Witcher. You mind expanding on that argument a bit more?

I would argue for Skyrim's inclusion as well.

Regarding Witcher 3, it's something that I've heard from multiple gaming journalists & pundits, most notably Jim Sterling and Jason Schreier (in his Blood, Sweat, & Pixels book): there was an exceptional amount of pessimism towards console gaming in the early first few years of the PS4 & Xbox One. The previous generation had gone on for so long & mobile gaming had picked up so much that a lot of publishers were holding back projects until they could be sure that the new consoles would be a success. We saw a lot of conservative releases & releases with ports to previous gen consoles as a result.

Then Witcher 3 hit and was a massive success, which (according to these pundits) drove publishers to give the green light to the big projects we've seen ever since, because it was a big, single-player offline 3rd party title that sold extremely well.

[Stratos]

Interesting. I'll chalk my skepticism to being mostly insulated in the Nintendo bubble, as I never noticed this. I've not played Witcher 3 yet, but I have it sitting here unopened waiting for a good weekend to dig into it. Any win for offline single player games is a good win in my book.

[nickmitch]

Is the decade defined as 2010-2019 or 2011-2020?

[Khushrenada]

1997 - 2008

[Order.RSS]

I thought Minecraft was a 2011 release? Definitely one of the biggest games of this decade in any case, and, hot take: probably Microsoft's best investment in the gaming space since creating the Xbox. I should play it sometime.

Other candidates I could see for a title like this, based on impact rather than quality:
2011: Dark Souls
Yes the series technically began earlier with Demon's Souls, but I get the impression it really took off with this one. Now its influence is apparantly creeping into other games too (Hollow Knight, the latest Star Wars). Plus it essentially rocketed FromSoftware from a B-tier studio making Lost Kingdoms and Otogi to an A-lister capable of reliably launching new I.P.s (Sekiro, Bloodborne, the Souls series, presumably the upcoming Elden Ring too).

2012: Candy Crush Saga
Pioneering in the freemium space. People on the bus still play this.

2016: Pokémon GO
To date the most widespread application of Augmented Reality gaming I can think of. Simple, but brilliant concept, and people were so ready for this, they forgave most of its flaws.

2017: PUBG
I don't know if the Battle Royale craze can really sustain itself as a genre. Seems like Fortnite sucked all the air out of that room fast, and even big entries like Call of Duty and Fallout 76 who enter this space aren't guaranteed success.
That said, there's evidently wide appeal here. And even though the main selling point (a map with 100 players) isn't that impressive when Battlefield 2 was putting 64 players on maps in 2005, this style of gaming really connected for a while there.
Maybe it's just the perfect storm of people taking the exact wrong cue from Battle Royale/Hunger Games combined with making good streamer fodder and the less contextual violence (any plot in these games seems fairly subdued at best to an outsider like me; whereas even Quake had a whole backstory, and Battlefield/Call of Duty routinely place conflicts in larger violent contexts).

For what it's worth, I've not played any of this lot (barring Pokémon GO), so I'm clearly old. My personal game of the decade would easily be Breath of the Wild, but I think with that one we're still a few years out from seeing just how influential that one will turn out to be.

[Ian Sane]

The game that hooked me more than anything else in this decade was the Mass Effect Trilogy.  Now I didn't play it until the trilogy set came out which is when the first game was finally made available on the PS3.  As a result I didn't play each game as it came out and waited years in between.  It was literally one big game to me.  I finished one game and then immediately switched to the next like I was swapping discs on a PS1 RPG.  The first game was released last decade but probably the best of the trilogy was Mass Effect 2 which was released in 2010, in January so it barely makes it.  I liked the story for ME1 the best but ME2 has the best gameplay.

I also really liked the Zero Escape series which is also a series where the first game came out last decade but the sequels were this decade.  In that scenario I would pick Virtue's Last Reward as my favourite.  The third game is very much the weakest and, again, I probably prefer the first games story but the second game introduced QoL improvements that made the game a lot more fun to play.  Replaying the game is essential to get the full story and in the first game you had to fast-forward through cutscenes you already saw and replay puzzle sections.  In the sequel they let you go back in a flow chart to where things split so there is virtually no repetition.

Some other favourites are Ghost Trick and Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call.  Yeah, the 3DS was where things were at for me in the 2010s, including playing old DS games I missed.  My Wii U seemed like a wasted purchase at first but in the end was justified by Tokyo Mirage Sessions and Breath of the Wild.

I notice that these picks tend to lean towards the earlier part of the decade and that makes sense because I now tend to pay less attention to the game of the moment and instead read up on older games that build up a reputation and grab the ones that sound really appealing.  In the 2000's I was playing the BIG titles and expanding my gaming palette.  Now I don't care about stuff like that.  I know what I like and try to focus on titles that seem specifically catered to my tastes.  Sometimes, like with Zelda, this ends up being a very mainstream title but it can also be a cult hit.

So my picks are not at all a "best of" in terms of influence or importance.  These are just the 2010's game I dug the most and there are probably other titles released in that window that I haven't played yet but I'll love.

[Shaymin]

Minecraft is technically 2009, but I suppose it would count for console specific websites because of the various release dates (2011 - 2017).