hello Internet welcome to game theory
where today it's all about taking a
breath and looking back in this day and
age of Internet discourse everything has
to be hyper relevant all the time you
need that hot take right now you need
your review ready minutes after seeing
the movie or playing the game search
trends rise and fall faster than ever
before and if you're not ready for it
well then too bad my friend the
Internet's moved past you and you've
been left in the dust you ain't getting
those views you ain't getting those
clicks and your pocketbook is gonna
suffer because of it and I don't know
about you but for me at least it takes
time to come to a well-informed opinion
sometimes you just need a few minutes to
stop and gather your thoughts I mean
don't get me wrong there is definite
value in first impressions reacting
authentically in the moment but those
first impressions are always gonna lend
themselves to being more emotional more
extreme everything suddenly feels like
it's either the best or worst thing in
the moment but if you give it an hour a
day a week suddenly you're able to get a
better sense of perspective a world that
is always so focused on the here and now
and the immediate is a scary world
because you never have a chance to look
back and learn from where you've come
from or to truly appreciate just how far
you've grown how far you've come and
especially when you're talking about
big-picture stuff like life decisions or
massive industry trends well those are
made up of complicated webs of
interconnected events like a ball of
bunched up Christmas lights that require
time and patience untangle anyway that's
my long-winded way of saying today's
episode is all about untangling that
ball reflecting for a minute as we cross
over into the 2020s because guess what
we are at the end of a decade guys I
mean that is a huge deal and yes I know
a handful of you in the comments are
gonna be smart buts about it and say
there was no Year Zero matpat so
technically the decade ends next year
and yes you're right I respect your push
for factual accuracy in fact I wish more
of the world cared about the facts to
the level of diligence that you do but
you know what at least for today in this
silly little video that I'm putting
together I and the rest of humanity are
gonna ignore that because we're flawed
creatures just small microscopic ants on
a volcanic spinning ball in the middle
of a massive vacuum chaotically
careening through the galaxy and in our
limited experience full of billions of
variables we cling to the arbitrary
marking of time because a simple digit
team not rolling over in its ceaseless
march forward gives us comfort a
fleeting sense of control a solid place
in the endless existence of time TLDR we
like seeing the numbers flip over to
zero it's easy to overlook just how long
ten years of time is but at the start of
this decade people still cared about the
Jersey Shore for some reason they still
thought the world was gonna end in 2012
Disney had just bought Marvel and was
just starting to figure out what to do
with the surprising success of a little
movie called Iron Man Star Wars forget
about it it was a completely dormant
franchise still two years away from
being picked up by Mickey's little mouse
fingers on YouTube it was the heyday of
the viral video as double rainbow and
Bed Intruder song were some of the most
popular on the platform where videos
were still short enough that you could
actually watch him on the toilet without
causing loved ones to think he had an
intestinal problem and in the world of
gaming well we were nearing the end of
the wii era but motion controls were
still the order of the day with the
kinect and move just starting to hit
store shelves
farmville was crushing it over on
Facebook Angry Birds was crushing it
over on mobile and both of them were
paving the way of casual social gaming
and little did we know it but we were
standing on the brink of an indie gaming
revolution with the release of titles
like Super Meat Boy limbo and braid and
with that little bit of retrospective
context out of the way what I want to
explore now is this what were the most
important games of this last decade
notice that I didn't say the best I'm
sure your feeds are gonna be filled with
the best of the year and best of the
decade lists if they haven't been
already honestly my list of personal
favorites from the last 10 years would
look a lot different from the list the
games that we're covering today would
include things like Witcher 3 Dark Souls
Mass Effect 2 Doki Doki literature club
and beat Sabre all for very different
reasons but what I want to answer today
is if we look at where we started in
2010 and now where we ended up as we
cross into 2020 which games shaped the
world of gaming or heck the world beyond
just gaming which ones had the greatest
impact on this medium by maybe or maybe
not being good games but instead by
reinventing the industry as we knew it
and when I
back into the research - games seem to
really stand out for me in this decade
before we get to those let's first
speedrun our way through the rest of
this decade
and through some quick honorable
mentions that really exemplified the
last 10 years in gaming let's start our
honorable mention list where the last
decade left off like I said by 2009
casual games were all the rage we were
nearing the end of the Wiis lifecycle an
era of gaming defined by easy to pick up
and play experiences suddenly my grandma
who'd never picked up a controller in
her life was dunking on me and we
bowling at the time casual gaming had
started to seep into every phone every
tablet and every no no I will not join
your effin farm I will burn them to ash
before I bother to click on your
rutabagas long story short the
definitions for both game and gamers had
suddenly gotten a lot broader in ways
that truly skilled lifelong players
didn't really appreciate there needed to
be some differentiator something that
separated the hard cores from the
casuals enter our first honorable
mention dark souls dark souls whether we
realized it at the time or not was
gaming's collective response to the
social and motion control trends from
the previous decade at a time when
gaming was increasingly becoming a
series of gimmicks Dark Souls emerged as
a truly gamers game it became a rite of
passage to prove your gamer cred with
its mottos of get good and you will die
taking the idea of old-school difficult
and modernizing it for a new generation
Dark Souls showed the gaming industry
that there were still an audience who
wanted to be challenged who wanted a
high skill ceiling in the same way that
Doom basically created the FPS genre and
our concept of what a fighting game
looks like was shaped by Street Fighter
2 Dark Souls had given rise to an
entirely new genre of game couple that
with a beautifully intricate world
design and implicit storytelling and you
have yourself something revolutionary
when every other moderately difficult
game is suddenly labeled a souls like
whether appropriately or not you know
that you've pioneered something special
but that's not to say that casual gaming
was completely out of the picture in
fact there was one game that did the
impossible
gadis gamers out into the sunshine for
some exercise oh and it also managed to
unite both the hardcore and casual gamer
audience and that game was Pokemon go
for
one blissful summer in the middle of the
decade we were all Pokemon trainers
again Pokemon go took the simple concept
of catching cute little monsters and
United gamers and non-gamers alike in a
new way to play a our augmented reality
not only did it show the power of this
new form of game in a new direction for
the relatively stale slate of mobile
games it was the first spark of
Nintendo's Renaissance after the
disappointment of the Wii U era while
also serving as the Gateway for a whole
new group of players to the world of
Pokemon sure the gameplay just involved
us mashing our screens a bunch and we
were forced to sacrifice hundreds of
piggies to the Polka candy grinder but
for the first time in a long time gaming
felt pure and fun again as we were all
once again compelled to catch em all
it's worth noting that Pokemon Go wasn't
just popular it raked in the cash in
fact the huge influx of mobile and
social gaming throughout the 2010s meant
lots of money flowing into the games
market so much so that in 2012 video
games finally became the highest-earning
entertainment industry in the world
topping both the revenues of movies and
music finally US gaming nerds had won
whatever imaginary war we'd been
fighting against ourselves
I guess cuz I don't think the movies or
music industry really cared that much
anyway we were King DAB Anya movies tea
bag on you music we had fought to earn
the respect that our medium deserved and
we have gotten it but with that success
came some of the industry's worst
impulses microtransactions pay2win
strategies loot boxes games engineered
for addiction Kickstarter is delivering
nothing but empty promises heck they
were even expecting us to pay extra for
save files and tight consumer practices
were everywhere throughout the 2010s
probably still into the 2020s and if
there was money to be squeezed out of
players you can bet that there was some
game out there trying to exploit that
since this is a most important list
rather than a best or favorite list I
feel like I have to include Star Wars
Battlefront 2 as an honorable mention
here as well or maybe better put as a
dishonorable mention because it was the
breaking point the straw that broke the
camel's back and got the gaming
community to lash back in a way that it
had never done before I assume we all
know the story so I'll keep it brief
ea publishes a game that is full of
micro transit
actions unlocking new characters as well
as basic character progression were both
tied to egregious pay2win mechanics and
loot boxes at the time it was calculated
that to fully unlock the game you either
had to play over 4,500 hours or you
could short track that by paying $2,100
enough was enough and online community
pushed back hard
prompting ei to change the game and the
global community to start critically
assessing the ethical gray areas that
existed in the industry's business
practices and it's all thanks to
battlefront to battlefront 2 is and will
always be the symbol of gaming's worst
tendencies and a reminder of how bad it
can get if we as consumers get
complacent now it looks like we're back
on a bit of an upswing heck EA even put
out a great Star Wars single-player
adventure earlier this year that is
unmarked row transactions but it was and
will continue to be a hard-fought battle
as US consumers try to force our
industry to hold itself to a higher
standard and fortunately for us there
are alternatives now you see it'd be one
thing if the big triple a game studios
were all we had but for the first time
ever the 2010s introduced competition
into the marketplace in the form of
indie games sure indie titles had always
existed but the 2010s was when indie
development exploded as game development
tools became more accessible an
independent game distribution became
much easier there are so so many iconic
transformative and hugely successful
indie games that I could talk about here
from Fez to phenom shovel knight to
hollow no grade 2 binding of issac but
if I had to point to one that made the
most impact
I'd have to go with probably an
unpopular opinion here but I'm gonna say
it anyway amnesia the Dark Descent to
truly understand why we have to rewind
back to the beginning at that point in
time survival horror was pretty much
dead as a genre but Amnesia's release
changed all that released in mid 2010
Amnesia's launch happened to coincide
perfectly with a massive surge of gaming
content that was happening near on
youtube it was a match made in heaven
and history was made audiences poured in
to watch their favorite online gamers
get scared careers were made overnight
and suddenly and independently
game was getting tens of millions of
views and hundreds of thousands of sales
with massive amounts of notoriety
amnesia not only showed the gaming
industry that horror wasn't dead but it
encouraged a generation of budding
developers to follow in its footsteps
and consider how a game gets washed just
as much as how a game gets played Plus
amnesia completely changed the face of
YouTube not only didn't push gaming to
the forefront it also supercharged the
channels of familiar faces that continue
to dominate the platform to this very
day but also may have paved the way for
a certain game franchise that's been
particularly important for this channel
so you know YouTube's a core theme of
the 2010s was that everyone can be a
creator pick up your phone you film
yourself doing something you put up a
video you make a tweet you throw up some
photos boom suddenly you're a content
creator without even realizing it and
the next honorable mention mario maker
was the perfect embodiment of that idea
in the gaming space sure fan made mods
were nothing new and yes the idea of
giving players access to your games
toolset had definitely existed before
but it was never as a user-friendly
official release by the developer why
make the games yourself and you can have
the players make them for you Mario
maker embodied the ethos of the 2000
teams it give fans the control so
everyone can hyper personalize the
experience for themselves and the way
they most wanna play Nintendo did it
YouTube's revine tried to do it and if
companies are smart Megaman and Sonic
should do it in the early 2020s which
then brings us to the end of the decade
and the last of our honorable mentions
for tonight
love it or hate it you gotta at least
respect what this game is done sure it
earns money hand-over-fist and yes it's
helped propel the success of live
streaming platforms and ways that few
other games have but more than anything
else for tonight helped legitimize
gaming for the masses when traditional
celebrities are on ironically playing a
video game in massive public forums just
to be seen as one of the cool kids
that's a big deal when a games top
streamer is helping to host New Year's
Eve broadcasts on traditional TV Cringer
no okay definitely cringy but still that
is a really big deal when you're a big
enough game to prompt yet another round
of mainstream media asking the question
of do video games cause violence that my
friends is a big
ye'll it's the game that taught the
world the importance of flossing the
game that crossed over with a nose is
part of the biggest collaboration in
film history the one that got a gamer
under the cover of ESPN magazine and the
one that got Hillary Clinton to say oh
c'mon go to the polls okay that was a
different game on this list but still
you get my point this was a decade where
gaming memes were no longer just gaming
memes but mainstream memes and nothing
was able to cross over or exemplify that
better than fortnight what it does as it
starts to wane in popularity remains to
be seen but it was a game that dominated
the industry for a solid two years and
for that at least it deserves an
honorable mention and with that Wow this
wound up being way longer than I
anticipated
so much for speedrunning my way through
this list anyway that's the first six
games that I truly feel made a massive
impact on or at least perfectly defined
the gaming landscape throughout the 20
teens which leaves us with my final two
and these final two games let's just say
I separated them out for a reason
because they really really were
impactful I mean sure a game like Dark
Souls may have spawned its own genre or
Mario maker may have exemplified a core
trend at the decade but these final two
games moved mountains they
single-handedly gave rise to media
giants they changed the way that we
consume content heck they changed the
face of entertainment as we know it
spawning multiple billion-dollar
businesses outside of themselves so what
are they subscribe so you can find out
next week I know I know I honestly hate
myself for having to leave it on a
cliffhanger to but like I said this
script got really long and I need to
wrap things up here so the editors can
actually have a break during the holiday
week plus diving into the impact of
these two games isn't something that I
want to rush through at the end of
another long script so tagging them here
at the end would have just been
disrespectful for the legacy that these
two games are gonna have anyway in the
meantime I want to know what are your
choices for the most important games of
the decade what should I have included
in my list that I might have missed what
do you think my final two games might be
let me know down in the comments below
have yourself a great holiday and I'll
see you all next week for our final
episode of the year and our final
episode of the Dickie
meantime remember that's just a theory
Oh game theory thanks for watching and
as a final disclaimer it really is truly
a theory a game theory try not to get
mad about either these two episodes try
to be as fair as possible but I
guarantee that my list isn't the
definitive one sorry if I missed your
favorite or one that you think is even
more impactful who knows maybe we'll be
in next week's top two now if you excuse
me I need to run and go get Stephanie
some Christmas presents because I have
not had time to do that and Christmas is
less than a week away and neither of us
have any presents right now so just
another reason that we need to cut this
episode a little bit shorter than I
would've liked it to be anyway thank you
all so much for watching bye
you