My top ten Steam games released last decade by Steam playtime:
Distance
RimWorld
Massive Chalice
Darkest Dungeon
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
Polygod
Civilization VI
Terraria
Dragon Nest
FTL
So… some games are not on Steam, like Minecraft, and some games I purchased and played for a time on a different platform, like Hyper Light Drifter on PS4… however I have a couple reasons for not otherwise doing a straight transposition from hours played to ‘top ten’:
Sometimes it’s the way in which a game is experienced: Fez made the list in part because it’s among the very first games my son and I enjoyed together; he could barely hold the controller, sometimes upside down, yet it’s a very forgiving game with tons of interactivity including a day/night cycle, and the 2D/3D puzzles are intuitive and engaging.
An even bigger reason for my ordering are the impacts certain games have had on me; CS:GO isn’t a bad game, it’s an enjoyable way to pass some time, but I don’t personally gain any deeper insights into the world. Not that a game has to be this, but certain games really do leave me feeling changed for having played them, even if it’s for a couple hours only. To me, it’s a sign of having encountered a work of art, and I’ll rank a game much higher because of it.
Kairo is a game about exploring architecturally improbable, sometimes geometrically impossible spaces, yet it remains in memory as place that communicates some ineffable aspect of the human condition. Nothing is ever spelled out definitely, but it hints at some terrible aftermath and is at turns incomprehensible and beautiful. It’s Ozymandias, the computer game. I return to it quite frequently in mind compared to other games, although my playtime is short.
Certain games like Massive Chalice have both managed to take up a sizable amount of time, keeping me up past midnight, and also inspire deep, feeling thoughts about my time on Earth, ancestry, what it means to be a ruler, and coming face to face with mortality. It changed me as much as reading Neuromancer.