Essays 10 August 2020, 21:41

16 Games that Defined 2010s

The most important doesn't mean the best. There are games that we don't necessarily remember as great, but the whole gaming industry remembers them, and even changed under their influence. These are the most important titles of the last decade.

Hearthstone

Release date: 2014

Genre: card game

Platforms: PC Windows, macOS, iOS, Android

What kind of game is this?

World of Warcraft in card game form. Free, but with micropayments. Hearthstone's creators hit the jackpot with rules, visual presentation, cross-play between platforms - all these features have made the game suitable for e-sport providing it with huge success. The game maintains regular support from Blizzard developers in the form of patches and expansions, which – as boldly announced – could last up to twenty years. To date, this card has gained a player base of over 100 million.

What do we owe to Hearthstone?

Hearthstone's success was thanks mainly to a boom for card games. Many game universes have wanted to have their own decks with heroes – with varying results. For example, Valve studio with its Artifact learned that in a painful way, and Witcher's Gwent can only dream of Hearthstone popularity. On the other hand, quite original productions have also appeared, such as Kards, a card game set in the realities of World War II rather than a fantasy setting. Hearthstone was a game that blazed Blizzard's trail in the free-to-play formula. A year after the premiere, Heroes of the Storm MOBA was released, and in 2017, StarCraft 2 was released on the F2P model.