Games of the Decade: Pushing the Boundaries of Innovation

Ten years is a big chunk of time for Technology evolution. During this decade rockets have begun to land vertically on their start point, virtual reality to be more accessible, the cloud-based services to cover pivotal roles in our daily life. Video games as well have been overwhelmed by an impressive amount of transformations showing the incredible potential of the medium.
Innovation takes courage and these ten years were probably some of the most memorable considering how far we arrived thanks to the bravery of some game designer. So let's celebrate their creativity, their vision, their way to intend art and entertainment.

The power of contemplative gaming
One of the most significant trends started in this period sees the slow decline of the hegemony of violent gameplay in favour of kinder mechanics. Games like the acclaimed Journey, created by ThatGameCompany, point out the value of exploration and contemplation, telling people that they can enjoy the experience even without guns and tons of enemies to take down.

Journey, ThatGameCompany (2012)

But most importantly, this kind of title shows that everything can become game mechanic and bring value, even sit down and enjoy the silence of a masterfully crafted landscape. Without the concept of conflict to define narrative rules, developers are now experimenting on new solutions to convey messages: a simple trip, a dream, an unusual encounter... the core of games became more aggregating.

The victory of the rope on the stick as Hideo Kojima celebrates with his last game, Death Stranding. With the slogan "Tomorrow is in your hand" he put the concept of connection at the centre of his new manifesto after 30 years of tactical espionage action. A change of perspective that triggered a silent revolution. Left alone with our thoughts, video games are now more than just a diversion, are complex experiences. Now we have the time to explore deeper themes: mourning, friendship, illness and love, all things that require to take a moment and listen. Contemplative gaming starts to take over frantic gameplay, exploring a new dimension of the medium, now able to tell stories made of silence, walks and little big gestures.

Death Stranding, Kojima Productions (2019)

Most of this bravery comes from productions that are trying to fill the gap between indie creations and gargantuan triple-A blockbusters. In this decade we witnessed an impressive growth of the industry, with revenues that surpass music and cinema combined. But with wellness comes the fear of risks, and conservative choices are spreading. That's why Sean Murray in his last speech at GDC edition of this year says that we desperately need of creatives who don't care about how much polarized this moment of gaming is.
The industry needs to defy marketing logics and let creatives to be free to fail, 'cause the outcome could be absolutely amazing.

Something is changing, actually. We are now more aware of issues behind huge productions as their business model is becoming unsustainable year after year. The reported cases of crunch during development and the consequences of this practice are now of public domain, hype culture is crumbling as players are now more likely to accept a delay in release to support developers' efforts. Definitely an industry less belligerent and more sensitive.

On the brink of the Singularity
A universe of 18 billions of billions of procedural-crafted planets to discover, zipped in a disc, a character with an Artificial Intelligence so realistic that it seems alive, liquid stories influenced by our choices, a game where you can create games, jaw-dropping graphics built by a team of around 20 people. We achieved all these kinds of wonders in a few years. Think about Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice: not only that game defies the taboos by talking about one of the most controversial themes like mental illness, but it shows the impressive visual quality achievable by such a small team like Ninja Theory.

Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice, Ninja Theory (2017)

How it's possible? Development tools are becoming more and more accessible, giving to creatives the chance to resolve limitations due to low budgets and understaffed teams. One of the greatest examples is the upcoming game Dreams by MediaMolecule, released in Early Access last spring and now almost ready for the full launch. The visionary Sony First Party put the base for a revolution in gaming development. Dreams is like a simplified editor where creatives can literally build a video game from scratch. You can model your character, rigged and animated as you wish, sculpt environment according to your level design needs, set gameplay mechanics and compose your music. Camera, collisions, shades, interactions, everything. A work that required at least a dozen of software can be virtually made on the same box by a single person.

Features like these could become the standard in future and open the way to talents with great ideas but blocked until now from the barrier of software knowledge. We also are approaching, with impressive speed, photorealism at its peak. Look at what can run on a Playstation 4 now: Sony's console delivered stunning visual with less than 2 teraflops GPU performance.

Dreams, Media Molecule (2019-2020)

According to the rumours spreading on the web, the next-gen consoles are around ten times more powerful than current-gen consoles. Fumito Ueda to create The Last Guardian waited years to have the right tools and the required power to shape his vision of Trico without compromising the core concept. Aside ambitions maybe too high for that period, what happened with TLG is now something avoidable.
Furthermore, the classic life cycle of consoles got a subtle revolution with this current generation of hardware. The release of PS4 Pro and Xbox One X smoothed the trend of the well-known arms race, helping players and developers during the transition to the next big update of technologies.

So a more creator-friendly environment, where content will be the main protagonist, big changes for the market rules as streaming services provided by new competitors like Google are also taking the field. The new decade we are about to enter seems to have the potential for a substantial revolution for our way to experience and create video games. Incidentally, current-gen is at the end of its life cycle, Microsoft showed the new Xbox Series X at the last The Game Awards edition, while Sony is carefully teasing pieces of information about Playstation 5 since this April. Firsts months of 2020 will show us what great wonders new engines, developers and companies have in mind for us. Future is arriving faster than ever and video games will be, one more time, one of its greatest ambassadors.

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