Top 10 Most Influential Games of the Decade

In a year marked by uncertainty, Animal Crossing: New Horizons became a sanctuary for millions. Its calming gameplay, wholesome aesthetic, and focus on community and creativity made it one of the most significant social simulation games of the decade.

What made it influential wasn’t just its success—it was how it redefined games as emotional support systems. Players decorated islands, visited friends, and attended virtual weddings and graduations. It became a tool for social connection, creativity, and stress relief during a global crisis.

Its success highlighted the demand for cozy, low-stress, open-ended games that allow for self-expression. Brands, artists, and educators even used the platform to host events and exhibits, turning it into a hybrid of game, gallery, and gathering space.

Animal Crossing’s blend of personalization, gentle pacing, and community-building continues to inspire a wave of feel-good games designed around comfort and expression.

Hades didn’t just excel—it elevated the roguelike genre to new heights. Supergiant Games combined addictive gameplay loops with strong storytelling, stunning art, and dynamic voice acting to create a title that appealed to both casual and hardcore players.

What set Hades apart was its integration of narrative and repetition. Each death became part of the story, rewarding the player not just with upgrades but also character development and world-building. This approach transformed a genre often criticized for its randomness into a story-rich, emotionally engaging experience.

Its gameplay offered tight controls, varied builds, and fast-paced combat. Its procedural design and character-driven upgrades kept each run fresh and rewarding. Voice lines and dialogue never felt repetitive—a rarity in roguelikes.

Hades proved that indie studios could compete on polish and innovation, winning awards and dominating Game of the Year lists. Its success has influenced the design of future roguelikes, pushing for more integrated storytelling, better user experience, and high production values.

Red Dead Redemption 2 took narrative immersion to a new level. As a cinematic open-world Western, it delivered unprecedented depth in terms of storytelling, character development, and environmental realism. Rockstar’s attention to detail redefined expectations for world-building.

Its influence lies in the game’s slow-burn narrative approach and naturalistic pacing. The dynamic interactions between characters, wildlife, and weather systems gave every action a sense of consequence and realism. Players were encouraged to slow down, observe, and immerse themselves fully in Arthur Morgan’s journey.

Technologically, the game set benchmarks for animation, AI systems, and environmental sound design. Developers took note of how Red Dead 2 made even the mundane—shaving, feeding a horse, drinking coffee—feel like meaningful acts in a living world.

It reinforced the idea that video games can be emotionally resonant, richly textured, and artistically significant without sacrificing interactivity. Today, many studios strive to emulate Red Dead’s commitment to emotional storytelling and immersive realism.

Among Us was a quiet release until 2020, when global lockdowns and viral Twitch streams catapulted it into mainstream fame. Its sudden popularity wasn’t a fluke—it was the perfect storm of social deduction, minimal hardware requirements, and comedic tension that made it a household name.

What made Among Us so influential was its accessibility. With simple controls and cross-platform functionality, anyone could play. Its reliance on real-time social interaction, deception, and collaboration made it a favorite for streamers and friend groups alike. In an era where people craved connection, Among Us provided a digital party room.

It revitalized interest in the social deduction genre and opened doors for similar games like Goose Goose Duck and First Class Trouble. More importantly, it showed that small indie developers could dominate the conversation with innovative design and community engagement.

From classrooms to boardrooms, Among Us influenced how games were used for icebreakers, team-building, and entertainment. Its success also sparked new interest in low-cost, high-engagement party games with viral potential.

Grand Theft Auto V isn’t just a successful game—it’s one of the highest-grossing entertainment products of all time. Its sprawling, hyper-detailed depiction of Los Santos offered players a playground of criminal fantasy, satire, and open-world exploration. But its biggest impact came with the evolution of GTA Online.

As a single-player game, GTA V pushed narrative experimentation with its three-protagonist system. As a sandbox title, it showcased just how immersive, dynamic, and chaotic a digital city could feel. The game's real-time events, traffic patterns, and citizen AI systems created an unmatched sense of immersion.

GTA Online, however, introduced a massive, ever-evolving multiplayer world that effectively became a virtual lifestyle simulator. Players could run businesses, perform heists, or simply hang out with friends in their custom vehicles and penthouses. The microtransaction model, though controversial, influenced how future multiplayer games approached long-term monetization.

Its mix of cinematic storytelling, satirical world-building, and endless online content made GTA V a cultural touchstone. Whether through modding, role-playing servers, or social storytelling, its influence continues to ripple through modern game development.

Dark Souls didn’t just launch a franchise—it spawned an entire genre. The term “Soulslike” is now a permanent fixture in the gaming lexicon, denoting games with tight combat mechanics, sparse storytelling, and punishing difficulty. FromSoftware’s design philosophy bucked the trend of overly guided experiences and instead favored player experimentation, consequence, and mystery.

Its influence can be seen in everything from indie roguelikes to AAA action-RPGs. The importance of world interconnectedness, stamina-based combat, and risk-reward gameplay became gospel for developers aiming to capture the same sense of mastery and triumph.

Narratively, Dark Souls redefined environmental storytelling. Instead of handing players exposition, it scattered lore through item descriptions, cryptic dialogue, and visual design. This required a more attentive, interpretive form of engagement, giving rise to online communities dedicated to unraveling its secrets.

Games like Hollow Knight, Nioh, Elden Ring, and Blasphemous owe their DNA to Dark Souls. Even outside the genre, its commitment to respecting player intelligence and demanding skill has raised the bar for action design industry-wide.

With its haunting atmosphere, uncompromising difficulty, and genre-defining mechanics, Dark Souls left an indelible mark on the last decade of gaming.

Although it technically launched in 2009, Minecraft reached its full cultural saturation during the past decade. It evolved from a niche indie game into a sandbox behemoth that redefined what video games could be used for—education, creativity, collaboration, and even architecture.

Its blocky aesthetic and deceptively simple mechanics masked a deep and versatile platform. Minecraft’s true influence lies in its empowerment of players to build, modify, and share their own worlds. It introduced millions to the concept of procedural generation, modding, and user-driven content. In schools and coding academies, it became a tool for teaching logic, design, and digital literacy.

Minecraft also pioneered many of the community content monetization models seen today. Its vast ecosystem of mods, texture packs, and multiplayer servers offered early glimpses into what user-generated economies could look like within games.

On platforms like YouTube and Twitch, Minecraft content fueled an entire generation of creators, influencers, and educational channels. Few games have been as culturally enduring or as influential across such a broad demographic.

From digital classrooms to streaming milestones, Minecraft's legacy as the ultimate creative platform continues to shape the next wave of interactive experiences.

When it comes to setting the gold standard for narrative-driven RPGs, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt stands as a towering achievement. CD Projekt Red’s masterpiece combined a richly detailed world with morally complex storytelling, giving players decisions that felt both weighty and unpredictable.

The game's influence lies in its commitment to deep character development and branching narrative arcs. Unlike many RPGs of the time, side quests in The Witcher 3 were not throwaway tasks but intricate stories in their own right. This approach elevated expectations for quest design across the genre, forcing other developers to rethink how side content contributes to immersion and world-building.

Its lush environments, dynamic weather systems, and believable NPC behavior contributed to an unparalleled sense of realism. The gritty fantasy tone, bolstered by an exceptional musical score and voice acting, made the Northern Kingdoms feel alive and unforgiving.

Beyond storytelling, The Witcher 3 demonstrated that a single-player, premium-priced game could compete with multiplayer titles in terms of longevity and player retention. Its generous post-launch content, including two massive expansions, showed that consumer goodwill and polish could translate into long-term commercial success.

Today, many developers cite The Witcher 3 as a blueprint for how to balance gameplay, narrative depth, and world design.

Few games have reshaped the gaming landscape as thoroughly as Fortnite. What started as a co-op survival game quickly evolved into a global phenomenon that defined the battle royale genre and set new benchmarks for cross-platform play, live-service content, and digital social spaces.

Fortnite’s biggest contribution was its ability to blend competitive gameplay with social connectivity. With its ever-changing map, seasonal events, and real-time concerts, it transformed the idea of a video game into something closer to a metaverse—a persistent, shared experience where gameplay, culture, and community collide.

Its accessible mechanics, vibrant aesthetic, and free-to-play model attracted players of all ages. The game’s influence even extended beyond gaming into mainstream pop culture. Celebrities, fashion brands, and major franchises all jumped into the Fortnite universe, turning it into a powerful cross-media marketing engine.

Technologically, Fortnite pushed boundaries with its implementation of real-time events and constant content updates. Developers now consider seasonal content cycles and live events as critical features for player engagement. It taught the industry that games could be platforms, not just products.

In terms of shaping industry trends, Fortnite's impact on gaming monetization, community interaction, and game-as-a-service models cannot be overstated.

No game has had a more transformative impact on open-world design than The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. By throwing away the rigid conventions of its predecessors, it introduced a radical form of player freedom that set a new standard for the genre. Its emphasis on exploration, environmental puzzles, and emergent gameplay resonated deeply with players and developers alike.

What made Breath of the Wild so influential was its respect for the player’s curiosity. From climbing any surface to solving shrines in a dozen different ways, it encouraged creative problem-solving without hand-holding. This philosophy found its way into countless other games that followed, from indie titles to AAA blockbusters, all of which adopted its organic exploration systems and physics-driven mechanics.

The minimalist storytelling also deserves praise. Rather than overwhelming players with cutscenes, the game let the world tell its own story through ruins, weather patterns, and non-linear discovery. Even its visual art style, blending cell shading with naturalistic lighting, has inspired a generation of developers looking for timeless aesthetics.

Breath of the Wild’s influence is not confined to Nintendo fans. It fundamentally shifted the expectations of what open-world action-adventure games could be. The sense of wonder it fostered continues to echo across the entire industry.