Good Morning!
The votes have been tabulated and the results are in. First, let me throw some numbers at you, because data and math are cool. We had 105 unique voting members, and given the monumental task being asked here, I think that’s darned impressive. Let me once again say “thanks!” to everyone that took the time to comb through a list of literally thousands of games to pick out the many dozen you all played and enjoyed, to then cull those further down to only ten titles. It was a herculean effort, I know, and to me it’s awesome we had such a turn out.
If you didn’t yet vote, for whatever reason, feel free to post your thoughts here or in the previous thread! Those votes won’t be counted, but they will be read, I’m certain.
We also had over 250(!) unique games on the list! That’s a big spread in variety, and I think it speaks well in general that as a community there is a good bit of variety in what we enjoy and what we want to spend our time playing.
That last bit is important, because while the top 4 through 10 slots in Game of the Decade had a very narrow margin (many of these games could have easily shifted place with just another vote or two, and we even have two ties!), the top 3 were far and away the victors. So let’s count it down from 10, though I suspect given how many votes/points the top 3 had, they will not surprise anyone. Well, one of them might. It surprised me, at any rate!
And without further ado… coming in at number 9… Mass Effect 2 ! Wait, number 9? What happened to 10? Well, we have a tie for 9th place!
With 17 total votes, and 185 points, Mass Effect 2 by one vote edges Crusader Kings II out of the spotlight and becomes the first showcase title. It’s listed in the 10th slot in the spreadsheet, and it had only a single #1 vote (as opposed to the next entry), so I’m starting with it. Still, impressive positioning for the second game in a four-game series! Here are some things you said about Mass Effect 2!
Sorry Armando, that just about killed me so I felt compelled to share it.
And also at number 9, with also 185 points and 16 votes (but 3 number 1 votes) … Minecraft!
I’m not surprised to see this one on the list, given its incredible popularity and explosive rise over the years. There aren’t many people at this point that haven’t at least heard of Minecraft, that’s for sure. Here is a fun fact – I’ve never played it! So let’s see what the community that loves it best had to say.
Wow, going through the votes there were a lot of you that put this as an honorable mention or just brought it up to some degree. It really is an important title in many ways.
And that brings us to number 8 with 190 points… Diablo III !
I put nearly one hundred hours into this while it was in beta, endlessly running the Skeleton King, and when it launched, I really did enjoy it, for a few dozen hours. But thankfully, the developers and fans were not happy enough with that, and the game has since evolved into a fantastic powerhouse action-RPG with endless playability. I have my issues with it, but many of you love it enough to vote for it 17 times, two of you put it on your number 1 slot! Most everyone brought up the console version as the real game-changer here.
For number 6… Europa Universalis IV ! Wait, what happened to 7? Well, it seems we have another tie at 195 points! This time I’m going to list Europa IV first out of the two tied entries for sixth place as once again this is how it appears in the spreadsheet, and also it has fewer overall votes (11) than the next game.
With an astonishing five votes for the number 1 slot, nearly 5% of people that voted for it felt it was the best game of the last decade! Then again, there is a reason for this when you take quotes such as this under consideration:
So what was the other game it tied with? Why, coming in at number 6… Rimworld !
Rimworld, which received 18 votes (as many as our number 3 game!) and 195 points, took the gaming world by storm when it arrived in early access, even I grabbed a copy and played a ton of it even though this is a genre I’ve never had any luck with. It’s an incredible accomplishment and continues to be regarded as one of the finest story generators ever devised.
Some Dwarf Fortress shade there, but I agree.
In any case, let’s keep this party going, we have a lot more ground to cover and my album is nearly over.
Okay, in at number 5 we have… Kerbal Space Program ! 15 votes giving it a total of 215 points!
This is an intense, complex, incredible experience for anyone to dig into and lose themselves in, for sure. Didn’t NASA love this, too? That’s amazing. I have not played this myself but I’ve watched many others try their hand at it (often to hilarious results) and so it’s not surprising to me that a community full of incredibly clever and intelligent folk enjoyed this one enough to break it into top 5 games of the decade.
This was my favorite quote from the community.
That about sums it up, in my book.
And now we are nearing the end. Let’s get on with the show! At number 4… XCOM 2 , the follow-up to the modernization of the X-Com franchise by Firaxis. With 240 points and 26 votes!
This one made my own top 10 list, and with good reason. Smart, sexy, and hard to stop playing. I’m pleased as a peach to find it’s made it to top 4, though that may be thanks to a recent play through that involved nearly every Qt3 community member, now I think of it.
And here we get into territory where no ties would be possible. Because while it received only the fourth most votes at 18, eight of you put Dark Souls as your number one game of the decade, launching it to 330 points and clearing the previous XCOM 2 entry by nearly one hundred points, making it number 3!
Dark Souls is one of the most fun action RPG hack and slash games I’ve ever played, and it’s unique flavor and feel have never been replicated (excepting other titles from the developer, From Software, one supposes). I wrote before that Dark Souls isn’t really hard like people think it’s going to be – you are always making forward progress, you are always learning and growing both as a player and as a character, while the sense of weight and the darkness closing in on you is palpable. Just incredible, and I’m proud that we see it here with so many votes.
I honestly don’t know what that means, but it made me laugh so there it is.
I think Matt nails it, so let’s move onto… number 2, with 520 points and a whopping 37 votes, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim !
I didn’t myself vote for Skyrim, but I was really glad so many of you did because I was really close to putting on my list as well. It holds a special place for me as a game my son and I played in parallel and we would take breaks and show each other the cool stuff we found, enemies we faced, or the crazy situations we got into. My son, at the age of eleven, called me over to show off his level 3 Wood Elf character on release night had charmed a mammoth and was watching it fight a giant, which then catapulted it up into the stratosphere. We laughed so hard I nearly injured myself. Let’s see what you guys had to say.
I agree with tylertoo. Myself, I would have preferred turn-based, isometric combat for Skyrim. There’s probably a mod for that.
And now, onto the big one, the king of kings, the TOP GAME of the DECADE. Weighing in at an astonishing 48 votes and 645 points, the Godzilla of this contest, the one ten people voted for as their top pick… The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt !
This would be my number one pick as well, if I had ranked them. I just played it for the second full time very recently and it’s still just the best RPG out there, from the stories it tells to the imagery it evokes. The crafting system, the dialog and the writing, the … well, I’m trying to sell the car to the guy that owns the lot here, clearly. If anyone is reading this and hasn’t played it yet, do it. If you are intimidated by (or bounced off) the combat or the depth of the systems, put on Story Mode and cakewalk through a series of dozens and dozens of amazing short (and long!) tales told in the form of “quests”.
So, there you have it! Your top 10 games of the last decade! Here is a look at the growth chart.
And here you can see the top 20 games and how they were voted for (or if they were unranked votes).
You can find a tally of all the votes here:
Special thanks of course must go out to @arrendek for pulled all this data together with what I can only assume was sorcery. Take a look at the data for yourself, it’s pretty darned interesting. He worked tirelessly to make sure this not only worked correctly, but he corrected issues behind the scenes from spelling to formatting errors, and even found a way to let folks vote in their preferred style (ranked vs. unranked). Let’s give him all a round of virtual applause!
So now we come to the end. And what have we learned? Well, I’m not sure there is a lesson to take away here, except there was a lot of absolutely amazing gaming to be had from the last ten years, and I hope that we can look forward to even more and better content to absorb and gush about as we start the journey into the next decade of gaming!
Thanks for taking this little journey with us, and if you have any questions please feel free to ask below!