The decade’s video game recap
The last decade has been an extraordinary time for the progression and capabilities of video games and gaming consoles. Here are some highlights before entering the new decade.
In 2009, the video game that defined our childhood entered the world: Minecraft. The building and creating game shot to the top of the scene, according to IGN, sold 180,000,000 copies. To this day, it remains the number one selling video game in the world.
photo by jeshoots.com from pexels.com
The open world gave players freedom which appealed to many people. It was a change from the MLB/NFL and other sports games that dominated the first decade. Such games did not have many options on gameplay and players were more restricted.
After the dungeon-crawling PC games of the late 90s and the early 2000s such as Doom and WOW, one of the most popular genres came to rise, the first person shooter.
“I think consoles, like Xbox, are an important part of our childhood. They really took off during our childhood,” Cooper Rellis, 11, said.
Early first person shooter games like Halo, a futuristic alien game, and Call of Duty, a modern real life combat game, helped get consoles on their feet. Other games, such as Grand Theft Auto, were classified as first person shooters, but had a much more open world theme. The GTA series excelled in offering players fleshed-out questlines, but also features in the environment which allowed for players to “mess around” in the game.
The trend in recent years is more of an open world-type of game, where players are able to make a wider range of choices. Minecraft was a pioneer there, while other games started to follow. Games such as Red Dead Redemption and Skyrim topped the charts in this genre. Both of these games have large, open worlds with in depth dialogue and choices that affect the ending of the game, how the game progresses is more dependent on how you play than previous genres.
Although there has been a lot of growth in the video game industry, it hasn’t been all positive. Features such as early access and paying more money to get certain features has caused fracturing in the gaming community, an activity which many find greedy and hurts the experience for everyone. Looking at you Electronic Arts, whose games are becoming riddled with more and more repetition and required pay-to-play features. Sometimes people criticize the game content itself, such as the graphics, or the storyline and price.
“Games are getting worse, Fortnite existed,” Morgan Covert, 11, said. Game quality is always subjective to the individual person, and it is something that will always be debated.
An important thing to keep in mind is that companies abusing the pay for play feature could cause issues in the future. Players can easily become frustrated if they feel they are being milked for money with sub-par games.
The future shows potential for positive breakthroughs for video game players. Graphic abilities continue to evolve and the video game market is evolving, but as with any enterprise, the focus can easily turn away from groups of passionate players making games to corporations banking for profit.