As we roll over to ’09 to ’10, getting nostalgic for the advances and updates for the past 10 years is inevitable. 2000 to 2009 was an important decade for gaming, and the landscape for us gamers has changed dramatically. Here, on New Year’s Eve, we look back on our opinion of some of the most important games of the decade. While they are not all necessarily great games in and of themselves, they have made their impact on the gaming industry for many years to come.
Dungeons & Dragons (2000, 2003, 2008)
The flagship tabletop roleplaying game had faced an era of intense competition from the very industry it had helped spawned. Between mismanagement and subsequent buyouts, D&D was struggling to maintain its foothold.
Enter the 3rd edition of D&D, which not only revitalized the game’s rules and incorporated advances that had come in game design, but with it the Open Gaming License that released the core “d20 mechanic” to all- from fan to small business to gaming magnate. The d20/OGL system took over game stores, and D&D firmly reestablished its foothold as the king of RPGs.
Later, the rules would be revised into the so-called “3.5 edition” based on feedback, and then even later form the basis of the 4th edition designed to capture a new audience and bring back lapsed gamers.
Mage Knight (2000)
In a strong example of combining multiple good ideas, WizKids was founded to publish this merging of collectible game and miniatures game. Mage Knight featured a number of new and revolutionary ideas to the miniatures game arena: first, the models were pre-painted, plastic, and had a large variety (made possible by the collectible business model.) Second, the unit’s stats and tracking (of damage) was handled by the “clicky” base built right in. And third, it was a fantasy miniatures skirmish game.
Mage Knight is no longer made, following a not-terribly-successful relaunch. However, it lead to the immensely popular HeroClix game based on comic book super hero licenses, and was an inspiration in the D&D Miniatures line.
Carcasonne (2000)
Settlers of Catan kicked off the explosion of German (and “German-style”) board game imports, changing the way board games were viewed and introducing a generation to games that featured interesting and new game play (instead of being of a tired genre like the “roll and move” or Monopoly clone) with themes that could be played with families. Settlers, however, had a few factors working against it. It wasn’t always the most intuitive of games, supported only 3 or 4 players, and the trading mechanic wasn’t for everyone.
Enter Carcassonne. The game is entirely done with tiles and “meeple” wooden pieces (themselves possibly the most important game piece of the decade.) Gameplay is very easy to teach: draw a tile, play it somewhere it makes sense, place a meeple or not, with only the scoring adding some complexity. While some may negotiate during the game, it is by no way required. And it plays out of the box anywhere from 2 to 5 players.
Now, why does this make it an important game? It opened the door and created a market for other German casual games, leading to other great, best-selling games like Ticket to Ride.
Halo (2001)
When Microsoft bought Bungie, a company that previously had made Mac-only games, a few eyebrows were raised. Together, as the launch title for the new Xbox system, they created Halo. With its next-generation processing power and controls, the result was one of the first and best designed first person shooters for a console (instead of for the PC.) That would be important enough there, but thanks to the system-link feature of the Xbox (and later, through Xbox Live), it also helped create the demand for multiplayer games through consoles.
Grand Theft Auto 3 (2001)
The first two entries in the GTA series had their fans, but other than their mature subject matter, weren’t necessarily the most memorable or unique of games. For the 3rd entry in the franchise, Rockstar decided to make the gameplay more open to increase the “sandbox” style, and turn it into a 3rd person view. This, in and of itself, makes it important from a gameplay standpoint.
However, the designers also decided to increase the amount of mature content (now rendered in an advanced graphics engine to increase the realism factor) leading to the debate being intensifying about censorship in media and about appropriateness of video games… both for children, and for all audience.
Yu-Gi-Oh (2002)
Pokemon the trading card game was a phenomenon in North America, taking the collectible card game model and combining it with a hugely popular imported anime franchise. Business try their hardest to recreate such big successes, but usually fail. Not so with Yu-Gi-Oh. Yu-Gi-Oh used the same CCG model and was coupled with an anime/magna property, but where Yu-Gi-Oh excelled was that the game existed in the series itself, and players could (if they were lucky) acquire the same cards the characters used. Yu-Gi-Oh would go on to surpass Pokemon by being declared the top selling trading card game in the world by the Guiness Book of World Records.
World of Warcraft (2004)
Blizzard did not invent the Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game, but some would argue they refined it to near perfection, and none could argue that it became the most popular MMORPG of all time. Building on the success of other MMOs like EverQuest, combined with their very popular Warcraft intellectual property, and creating buzz with a massive free beta test, World of Warcraft was highly anticipated and came onto the scene big, later edging out many other popular MMO titles. Whether it was the gameplay itself that drew in the players, or just the fact that social games are a better experience the more other players are involved, WoW is without a doubt one of the most important games of the decade.
Those are my picks for some of the most important and influential games of the decade. What will the next 10 years bring? Will portable devices continue to be an area of growth? Will things like the Microsoft Surface change the way we play all games around the table? Will one of our readers design the next big thing?
Happy New Year from Critical Hits.
Re: Halo –
Bah! Goldeneye is still the best console FPS! 😛
/me ducks
.-= Graham´s last blog ..Wherein CAB Pretends to be a Professional of Sorts =-.
The Touhou Project are the most important games of the decade for me.
.-= Wyatt´s last blog ..Homebrew Skill Rituals Part 1 =-.
I think Dominion deserves some recognition. And I’m not sure I entirely agree that Carcasonne was so important, though I don’t disagree with anything you said about it.
Eve Online is another one that deserves recognition. Even if you’ve never played it, reading about all the shit that goes on in there is fascinating, due to the mafia-like cartels formed by players and laissez-faire (sp?) attitude of the developers.
Duke Nukem Forever’s from the last decade, but notable in that it lasted for almost this entire decade as well and only just finally died for good.
.-= Asmor´s last blog ..Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3rd Edition =-.
While I can not dispute any of the items on your list, which is very good, I would add Mutants & Masterminds, Final Fantasy X and Heroscape.
M&M may not have sold as many copies as D&D, but I think it had a huge impact on the rpg community. I can’t think of many gamers who don’t claim it is the best of the d20 based games and what the d20 system should have been.
Final Fantasy X because I know quite a few parents that took control of their kids PS2 systems to play this game. Long before the Wii the game caught the attention of a lot of non-gamers. Besides FFVII I think X was probably the best and brightest of the series.
Heroscape brought RPGs, miniature gaming and family game night together better than almost any game I know of. Sure the game pretty much bombed in the mainstream, but I think that it as well as Mage Knight and Heroclix, may have influenced play in 4e. Plus the game was just awesome and you could use the pieces for your next rpg campaign. It was an all purpose gamers game.
.-= Geek Gazette´s last blog ..Hero 5e Sale =-.
Knowing Dave, he didn’t go for the ‘good’ game so much as the ‘decade definers’ in their categories.
For instance, I’d argue that Dominion is The Matrix of board games. It brought together several innovations of the past decade and created something better than the sum of its parts. But did it define a genre or refine it.
WoW, while not the first MMORPG, really blew all others out of the water. Eve Online though also presents a persistent business model. Hell that company bought White Wolf!
Oh and happy new year! Great post BTW.
.-= The Chatty DM´s last blog ..Chatty’s Year 2009 and the Importance of the Tribe =-.
Great List, no arguements from me on any of those. However I think I would add Guitar Hero to my own list. It spawned a whole new extremely popular and profitable genre.
Happy New Year!
What the hell, Dave. Win, Lose, or Banana isn’t one of the most important games of the decade? This is a sham! RIGGED!
Asmor: Carcassonne may be the weakest one on the list, but I do feel like it was emblematic of a lot of games to come.
shadow: Guitar Hero just barely missed making it. Had I been able to do a little more research to do the writeup it would probably be on the list.
Banana: Clearly, “Win, Lose, or Banana” is just flat out the most important game of all time, period.
Every time I see a list and they don’t even MENTION Half-Life 2… I just laugh. How out of touch can someone actually be?
Oh well, at least he got WoW right.
If someone wants to see a truely good list that makes sense, visit Destructoid. Best list I’ve seen yet. Those guys take off their fanboi glasses and look at what titles did for their genre and the industry as a whole (and even pop culture).
Get a clue “The Game”.
Here I go feeding the troll.
The original Half-Life came out in 1998, and so was beyond the scope of this article. While Half-Life 2 was a great game, it did not have the importance of the original, which is what this article is about. In fact, the Destructoid list you praise has this to say:
Emphasis mine- while HL2 was great, it was HL that was the important game.
As for your always entertaining use of the term “fanboi”, I don’t like all the games on this list. I’ve never even played Yu-Gi-Oh. Perhaps you’re confusing “Most Important” with “Best” or “My Favorite” despite it being in the article title.
And while I’m sure the Destructoid list is fine, this article is about games in general, not just video games. That means the scope is wider, and so isn’t as comprehensive about every category of game.
If this was a list of TheGame’s Favorite Games of the Decade, we’d definitely have seen:
– Dominion
– Rock Band
– Are You The Traitor?
– Drinking Fluxx (ok, it’s not released, but we’ve playtested it a lot!)
Oh, and the ever popular game of:
– Get the cat off my lap so I can type on my laptop without a hairy ass backing up into my face.
.-= E. Foley – Geek’s Dream Girl´s last blog ..Why I’m Not Seeing Avatar =-.
@ E. Foley –
That’s not so much a game as a sport.
.-= Graham´s last blog ..Wherein CAB Pretends to be a Professional of Sorts =-.
Actually, Halo was supposed to be the golden child of the PC platform.
It was supposed to herald in a new era in engine and graphics technology.
Poor Bungie will never get to compete with iD, Epic, and Crytek thanks to Microsoft.
And don’t go trying to run any non-Direct-X (OpenGL) games on any Xboxes, or any Halo Engines on any more modern AMD systems than were available at the time (1.2 TBirds/GForce3’s VS. my Athlon64 2.2 and Radeon X1600 Pro 512).
And you can thank Microsoft for nothing; it was all Bungie.
I’m surprised to see Yu-Gi-Oh on that list… but it does make sense…
(now to get the guy who got me into Magic to play Yu-Gi-Oh)
.-= Lunatyk´s last blog ..Settings =-.
RTS of the decade: Company of Heroes
This thread made me realize how sad PC gaming had become in the past decade. So many great games in the 90’s, ones that are so good that nothing in the 2000-2009 actually surpassed: games like Baldur’s Gate, Fallout, HL1, Doom, Quake, UT, Tribes, Deus Ex, Thief etc.
2000-2009 had been:
-blind, sad push on graphics
-dumbing down of game mechanics
-rise of console gaming (which contributes to the above stated dumbing down of games)
-appearance of DLC (which also has to do with console gaming)
This is the decade when console gaming killed PC gaming.
I agree. It hadn’t quite sunken in fully though until I read what you typed about all those games.
This stuff reminds me of movies and how lame all the new action ones are to me.
My additions to your list would be:
Guitar Hero – launched at least two huge franchises of cooperative party games
Sorcerer – vanguard of the indie RPG movement, which has influenced every RPG since (including D&D4e)
Lord of the Rings – neither the first nor best co-operative board game, but led to a trend that continues a decade later
Wii Sports – a runner-up maybe, but this is the game even my mother-in-law plays, and that makes it pretty significant
.-= James´s last blog ..Open Game Table =-.
James- excellent picks. Guitar Hero and Wii Sports both crossed my mind. The other two I hadn’t thought about but would completely agree.