What game, for better or worse, has had the largest impact on the decade thus far? The most notable game?

Banjo-Kazooie: nuts and bolts really made developers sit up and think "wow, I can make a game a complete letdown and still get away with charging full price."

I'd argue Battlefield over Call of Duty since it started the season pass trend.

I wasn't aware of that, could I say that Battlefield popularized it? And looking back on it, if Call of Duty's negative impact stems from its yearly releases, EA was doing that with sports titles long before.

Now that I'm thinking about it, the industry has been dying for a while now....

Actually it was Rockstar that started that with L.A. Noir.

I wasn't aware of that, could I say that Battlefield popularized it? And looking back on it, if Call of Duty's negative impact stems from its yearly releases, EA was doing that with sports titles long before.

Now that I'm thinking about it, the industry has been dying for a while now....

Quote from: LC on September 21, 2016, 12:57:08 PM

Actually it was Rockstar that started that with L.A. Noir.

You seem really desparate to try and show how much you dislike Battlefield.

Battlefields still going
CoDs probably going to fall a little after this year.

But yeah, I'd say CoD

why do we have two game of the decade threads

I'm not sure if CoD really works as an answer, seeing as it's a franchise and not a specific game. Unless you're putting forth Finest Hour, which wasn't in this decade.

Quote from: Prime Harmony on September 21, 2016, 07:48:08 PM

I'm not sure if CoD really works as an answer, seeing as it's a franchise and not a specific game. Unless you're putting forth Finest Hour, which wasn't in this decade.

it's because you said "century" in the OP, which kinda threw me off

this decade, i'd say mass effect 3

i'd give reasons but i'm busy trying to rip this bison's throat out

Whoops, that's on me.

it would be kind of silly to name a game of the decade for 2010-2020 when this decade still has a little over 3 years left in it still.

"so far" is a pretty simple concept i didn't know you could fuck up

I'd agree with you, I'm still butthurt that it killed StarCraft.

ill cast a vote for literally the most popular game of all time, league of legends

Spoiler

salt incoming?

So yeah, I say Mass Effect 3 mainly because of the whole ending controversy thing. In order to explain why, I think it's necessary to establish the most groundbreaking games of each decade first.

In the 80s, it was clearly Super Mario Bros--the game that's often referenced as the game that saved the entire industry. After the video game crash, people were wondering if gaming was on its way out. The market was being overwrought with a deluge of shitty, homogenized games that offered very little in terms of gameplay. When the NES came along, SMB was its first launch title--and needless to say, its unique and vibrant take on video games sealed its status as smash hit quite early on. There was no deep story, or anything--but there didn't need to be. People weren't looking for that at the time.

By the time the 90s rolled around, though, developers really began to experiment with storytelling with more ambition than ever. Hideo Kojima, as much as I resent the fucker, was a visionary in the sense that he saw the cinematic potential of video games more than any other person in the industry during his time--and that's why I'd call Metal Gear Solid the game of the decade for the 90s. Not only were the developers telling tales of ambition through their games--their audience was avidly following them, and the precedent set by games like Metal Gear led to more games with a cinematic focus to be produced in the 2000s.

Fast forward to the 2010s. Mass Effect 3, one of the most highly anticipated games of the season, comes out. We're at a point where story-driven games are essentially the norm now. A game without a story is hardly a game at all these days. So when a game like Mass Effect 3 comes out, with an ending that produced a wide-scale reaction that could only be described as apoplectic, it was made loud and clear during this decade more than any other that video games are more than just video games at this point. You can't just jerk your audience around and expect them to eat everything up, and at no point was this made more clear than when Mass Effect 3's ending was revealed.

To speak of the game of the decade is to speak of the market, and the demands of the consumer. We went from a dry-spell era where gaming was on its last leg, to a jubilant revival with the NES, and the dozens of experimental directions that followed all throughout the 90s and early 2000s--now, we're at a point where the consumers know exactly what they want, and exactly how they want it. And when we don't get it, we let the world know--and Mass Effect 3 was a harbinger to that end.

Okay, hopefully at least some of that made sense.