Game Theory is one of my favorite channels on YouTube. Their theories for games almost always have a solid foundation that is hard to argue with and they even manage to grab my interest when covering lore for games I don’t care to play myself, such as Five Nights at Freddy’s. In their latest two videos, MatPat was breaking down the top games of the past decade and left us the ones he found most impactful for a video of their own, which we got yesterday. This video revealed that the competing titles are Minecraft and League of Legends, two very understandable and methodically chosen games for this title, but unfortunately he didn’t actually mention which one took the number one slot.
I feel the reason he didn’t specify which took the top spot for the past decade was that both of them were able to move mountains in the game industry and completely improve or create something that we, as a community, needed. While I agree with his top two options for the reasons he listed, I wanted to provide my response as to which of the two titles belongs as the number one game of the past decade. It is honestly rather easy to say that my choice is:
Minecraft
My reason behind choosing Minecraft over League of Legends is the difference in how the two games impacted the populace. Yes, League is the reason we have eSports today, which is an aspect of the game industry I am a huge fan of and look forward to watching live Smash Tournaments and Rocket League matchups, but how often do you hear League referenced outside of a gamers conversation? The answer is nowhere near as much as Minecraft.
Aside from everything MatPat presented, Minecraft opened the door to an understanding of the time it takes to complete a series of tasks, the general freedom a game session could provide, and the range of simplicity to convoluted a game can be to an audience that doesn’t play games themselves. Parents, jocks, mall rats, teachers, and everybody else that has hobbies based on anything other than the gaming world never understood how games can catch our attention so well or why we have so many different games to choose from before. Thanks to Minecraft, I have personally overheard countless adults reference video games as solace or positive break time for kids and teenagers.
This doesn’t mean that League of Legends doesn’t deserve to be number one though, as they could easily share a spot on the top pedestal with Minecraft for their accomplishments. But if only one game could stand tall, my vote would be on Minecraft.
Which of the two titles do you think should be considered number one? Do you agree with my choice or do you prefer MatPat’s approach of letting both games share the top spot?
