The 2010s: A Revolutionary Decade in Gaming

“Have you heard of Minecraft?” My little brother asked me as I peered over his shoulder. It was winter 2009, and I honestly had not heard of it before. I gathered from watching him play that it was a peculiar survival-based game, a sim, some sort of creative sandbox-style free-for-all, and I don’t even know what. Yeah, it seemed like a real strange game, but it was intriguing.

By the end of the last decade, most of the video game landscape was dominated by massive, action-packed, AAA titles from the Halo and Zelda franchises, to the massively multiplayer titan that is somehow still kicking, World of Warcraft. Interesting and engaging titles were being released all the time on every conceivable platform, from the fast-paced and visually breathtaking Mirror’s Edge to the quirky and off-kilter Portal, from the atmospheric and occasionally thought-provoking Bioshock to the fantastic and whimsical Super Mario Galaxy. But by and large, most of the PC gaming landscape could be boiled down to hack ‘n’ slash action RPGs like Torchlight, and apart from Nintendo which always did its own thing, console developers had become fixated on multiplayer military shooters like Call of Duty and the gang, and epic RPGs with dialogue trees.

So then along comes this simple sandbox survival game, a humble bit of freeware launched by then-nobody Notch. These two separate concepts were far from new, but together they had spawned a game defined by limitless creativity. Little did anybody know it would kick off an absolutely revolutionary decade in gaming, that saw the medium ascend from a gradually accepted form of mainstream entertainment to one capable of producing art. Minecraft in particular would end up becoming central to the trends in this decade. Most notably, it paved the way for sandbox survival games like Don’t Starve! and Rust, and more horror-oriented entries to the genre like The Forest.

Today, in recognition of the absolutely amazing decade in gaming we have had, I wanted to count through some of the most important games of each year. Maybe we’ll even learn something about the defining trends of the decade along the way.

Here’s how this is going to work: the games on this list didn’t have to be wildly successful or even financially successful at all, but they did have to be well-known. I mean, you can’t have a revolutionary game if it wasn’t influential to the gaming industry at large, right? Remakes and ports of games from the 2000s and 1990s are out – only games that are original to the past decade will do (sorry Halo fans). Also, I am not going to count expansions to World of Warcraft and other games that predated 2010. This is really just an attempt to tell the story of the trends and major releases of the decade.

Strap yourselves in, because this is gonna be a long one.

A Culture of Our Own: On the Democratizing Nature of User-Created Art Platforms

Thanks to online platforms for creating, distributing, and promoting user-created content, and with the arrival of user-driven monetization, independent and amateur creators are in greater control of their work than ever before.

Hello all! None of you expressed any preferences or opinions in last week’s open forum, so I’m just gonna keep doing my own thing.

I want to tell you a story of my teen and pre-teen years. It started with Shakira and 50 Cent, and ended it with Fall Out Boy at their peak and Lady Gaga just beginning to explode.

Despite those groups getting tons of airplay and radio play, from Cry Me a River to Paparazzi, I didn’t know many people who were into that stuff. Mainstream music and radio was a thing that “other” people liked. Throughout middle school, my friends and I were digging Linkin Park, Good Charlotte, Story of the Year, Evanescence, lostprophets, and others.

Something Left Unsaid: The Story of Rare’s Dinosaur Planet

Simple nostalgic yearnings for what we didn’t get are not the only reasons gamers lament the loss of what may have been Rare’s coup de grace of gaming.

Welcome back to Nerd Revolt! I thought this would be kind of timely considering the recent release of Rare’s Sea of Thieves on March 20th.

A New Generation, a New Tomb Raider

Here we go again! In the latest iteration of the archaeology-action romp, Alicia Vikander steps into the role of Lara Croft, on her first expedition much like in the 2013 reboot of the game series. Much like that game, Lara is on a journey to Yamatai, a fictional island in Japan, where the formidable Queen of Yamatai, Himiko, is said to have reigned supreme in ages past. There’s a storm on the way there, the ship wrecks, Lara gets captured and has to escape using her survival skills, you get the idea.

The Indefinable Appeal of Doki Doki Literature Club

Team Salvato went to a lot of effort to convince you to sympathize with Monika, because you may be spending a lot of time with her in the future.

I think it’s time for a change of pace. First of all though, I would just like to thank DeviantArt artist klaeia for graciously giving me permission to use her work for the header art. Click the link above and check out her gallery. Thanks again, klaeia!