FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY’S
WHERE DID IT COME FROM?
Designed by indie developer Scott Cawthon and released in 2014, Five Nights At Freddy’s was a relatively unassuming point and click horror experience for PC. It was a simplified take on the genre, which helped it reach a wider audience than might have been expected.
WHAT DID IT ACHIEVE?
Thanks to the number of jump scares it managed to pack in, Five Nights At Freddy’s has become a Let’s Play favourite for YouTubers and Twitch streamers. As of July 2015 it was estimated it was being downloaded 4,694 times a day. Since its release it has already spawned three direct sequels and two spin-off games.
GUITAR HERO
WHERE DID IT COME FROM?
Developer Harmonix made a name for itself with the superb traditional rhythm action duo of FreQuency and Amplitude, using this moderate success as a platform from which to announce Guitar Hero, a rock-based sequel with a plastic guitar controller.
WHAT DID IT ACHIEVE?
While not the first game with an axe to grind (that would be Konami’s Guitar Freaks), Guitar Hero’s superb soundtrack and engrossing rock star fantasy captured imaginations of players everywhere. The band broke up shortly after – Guitar Hero II was Harmonix’s last gig before Activision put Neversoft on the stage, while the original lineup took its concept to the next level with the Rock Band series.
CANDY CRUSH SAGA
WHERE DID IT COME FROM?
The mobile market is notoriously volatile and hard to predict, so while King’s match-three puzzle game might not be very good, it happened to be in the right place at the right time – namely to catch players as they fell out of love with previous mobile sensation, Angry Birds.
WHAT DID IT ACHIEVE?
It turned social gaming company King into a household name almost overnight – six months after the game’s Facebook launch in early 2012, the mobile version attracted 10 million users in its first month, and King has launched 13 other games since. It must be doing something right – King was bought by Activision earlier this year for almost $6 billion.
FLAPPY BIRD
WHERE DID IT COME FROM?
Quite why Flappy Bird took off some six months after a muted launch remains a mystery, but take off it did – it exploded in January 2014 to be the most downloaded game on the App Store that month, reportedly pulling in $50,000 a day in advertising revenue.
WHAT DID IT ACHIEVE?
The game itself was pulled by its creator the month after its instant success, with the amusing side effect that prices of phones with the game installed saw a brief spike in value. Countless copycats rushed to fill the gap, and the game could also be seen to have popularised the nauseating ‘Verby Noun’ titling convention that all modern mobile games apparently must follow.
ANGRY BIRDS
WHERE DID IT COME FROM?
Building on the simple physics-based action of Flash games like Crush The Castle, Angry Birds hit iOS in late 2009, and while not the overnight success story of some of these examples, it enjoyed a steady rise to power.
WHAT DID IT ACHIEVE?
2010 was the game’s year, with the game spending the majority of it riding high at the top of the iOS charts. It has since spawned 12 sequels, three spinoffs and even a Hollywood movie… which apparently isn’t as awful as you’d imagine. With more than 3 billion total downloads, it’s the most successful freemium series ever.
MINECRAFT
WHERE DID IT COME FROM?
Notch’s simplistic survival game started out fairly innocuously, although it didn’t take long for skilled creators to start showing off their masterpieces. Inspired by these miracles of craftsmanship, the user base snowballed in a matter of months – it broke 1 million users in under a month while it was still in beta.
WHAT DID IT ACHIEVE?
Well, a blocky indie game is now one of the most successful titles in recent memory, with more than 100 million copies sold across 14 platforms. It is even used in schools as an educational tool – kids and adults alike can’t seem to get enough
BRAIN TRAINING
WHERE DID IT COME FROM?
Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training was such a curve ball that Japanese retailers were reportedly quite reluctant in adopting the ‘educational’ game at first. They sure were glad that they did in the end, though.
WHAT DID IT ACHIEVE?
Brain Training was integral in turning the DS from a plaything for children to a device that offers something for players of all ages. With the game selling over 19 million copies, other pseudoscientific games popped up in its wake, as well as a slew of simple and traditional titles designed to appeal to the newly captured older demographic.
JUST DANCE
WHERE DID IT COME FROM?
Following the roaring success of rhythm action games such as Guitar Hero and SingStar, Ubisoft leapt into the fray with its own dancing focused contribution to the genre. It had stiff competition from Harmonix’s Dance Central, however.
WHAT DID IT ACHIEVE?
Aided in large part to branching out as a multi-format game as the years went by, Just Dance went from a fairly poorly received Wii game to being one of the longest-lasting rhythm action games from this period. In fact it’s still alive and dancing today, which given that it only tracks one hand of the player is pretty staggering.
HEARTHSTONE
WHERE DID IT COME FROM?
Digital card games have been around for years, so it’s not as though Hearthstone was particularly original. Making the genre cool and accessible, though? Now that would take some doing on Blizzard’s part.
WHAT DID IT ACHIEVE?
Card gaming is a difficult sector to break into, one that’s been held down by Magic The Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokémon for years. Unfazed, Blizzard waltzed onto the battleground and Pyroblasted the big boys with Hearthstone’s simple
mechanics, popular Warcraft characters and a slick presentation. The game now exceeds 50 million registered players.
DRAW SOMETHING
WHERE DID IT COME FROM?
OMGPop’s mobile Pictionary wannabe Draw Something followed the classic mobile success trajectory – launch, get featured, go viral, burn out, fade away. Still, it was fun while it lasted.
WHAT DID IT ACHIEVE?
Facebook integration was the masterstroke here, making starting new games with distant friends as easy as tapping their picture. The craze didn’t last long at all, but it was enough for the developer to be bought up by Zynga for $180 million. Sequels and updates are still coming out, if you still care.
SKYLANDERS
WHERE DID IT COME FROM?
The PlayStation trilogy cemented Spyro as one of the great video game heroes of the generation, although this legacy was besmirched by the slew of mediocre sequels that followed on later platforms and it looked like the dragon was extinct.
WHAT DID IT ACHIEVE?
In one of the most inventive comebacks in gaming history, Spyro was reinvented to be the frontman of new toys-to-life brand Skylanders. Few could have predicted the monster this formula would spawn, with over 250 million toys sold to date, the series racking up over $3 billion in sales and major players like Disney and Lego jumping on the hugely successful model.
STREET FIGHTER II
WHERE DID IT COME FROM?
In 1987, Capcom released an unknown fighting game with awkward special moves and pressure-sensitive buttons that determined hit power. It was pretty bad. Then, a sequel came along in 1991… and it was sort of the best thing ever.
WHAT DID IT ACHIEVE?
Street Fighter II basically established the template for the modern fighting game, in the process becoming one of Capcom’s most successful titles and one of the most iconic arcade games of all time. Play the original today and it’s difficult to believe that the two are even related
NINTENDOGS
WHERE DID IT COME FROM?
Any game being codeveloped by Earthbound designer Shigesato Itoi, Pokémon designer Tsunekazu Ishihara and Shigeru Miyamoto was likely to draw attention, but a dog-focused pet simulator? Originally conceived for N64 and even migrated to GameCube, it finally landed on the Nintendo DS in 2005.
WHAT DID IT ACHIEVE?
While the real-time clock of the home consoles had originally helped make this sim tick in development (similar to Animal Crossing), it was the touch interface of the Nintendo DS that turned Nintendogs into a world beater. Casual players couldn’t get enough of the cute puppies they could play with.
THE SIMS
WHERE DID IT COME FROM?
If you ever zoomed all the way in during a game of Sim City and wondered what the residents of your expertly run metropolis were doing in their homes, The Sims was a game designed with you in mind.
WHAT DID IT ACHIEVE?
Sim games always had their own niche but by pulling right in on a customisable family and making everything much more personal, Maxis was able to break out of that box and reach a wider player base than EA ever could have expected. The series smashed records, though, now sitting at over 175 million copies sold.
THE SOULS SERIES
WHERE DID IT COME FROM?
FromSoftware used to be one of the most erratic developers in the business, veering wildly from the solid mech shooting action of Armored Core to awful RPGs like Enchanted Arms. Then, a single game changed the firm’s fortunes.
WHAT DID IT ACHIEVE?
Demon’s Souls released to an incredible response, with follow-up Dark Souls honing the hardcore actionRPG formula and going multiplatform to reach a wider audience. There’s no question mark hanging over From’s abilities any more, and that’s all because of the Souls games.
TETRIS
WHERE DID IT COME FROM?
Bundling a simple puzzle game with the Game Boy was a smart move, giving buyers something to play without having to pick up additional software. But whether through chance or design, that puzzle game happened to be one of the greatest of all time.
WHAT DID IT ACHIEVE?
Game Boy and Tetris was a symbiotic relationship, the system inherently boosting sales of the pack-in game and the game boosting sales of the hardware. Given the success of the handheld, it should come as no surprise that Tetris did 35 million on Game Boy alone, rising to a staggering 500 million when you factor in every different version over the years.
WII SPORTS
WHERE DID IT COME FROM?
A pack-in game should highlight the strengths of the system it comes with, and few have done this better than Wii Sports. Many Wii consoles were sold purely on the strength of this accessible motion-controlled sports compilation, and its impact was felt on a much wider scale.
WHAT DID IT ACHIEVE?
Wii’s universal appeal made it a huge success (the console, while less powerful than the competition, shifted 100 million units) and everyone from consumers to rivals wanted a piece of the action… hence Sony’s Move controller and Microsoft’s Kinect targeting the same broad market.
THE MOBA GENRE
WHERE DID IT COME FROM?
In 2003, a Warcraft III player by the name of Eul created a mod for the game where multiple heroes do battle on a single map. Others built upon and expanded the concept over time, as it steadily grew in popularity.
WHAT DID IT ACHIEVE?
Seeing the potential in the mod, Riot Games created a game of its own in the same vein – League Of Legends launched in 2009, quickly building a gigantic player base while Valve picked up the Dota name to create its own sequel. LoL and Dota 2 are today two of the biggest games around, with over 100 million monthly players between them and tournament prize pools regularly exceeding $1 million.
COUNTER-STRIKE
WHERE DID IT COME FROM?
Originally developed as a mod of Half-Life by two fans of the game, Minh Le and Jess Cliffe, the IP for the project was bought by Valve itself and turned into an official release for the FPS. It turned the sci-fi shooter into a gritty, counter-terrorist FPS experience.
WHAT DID IT ACHIEVE?
In an age where mods of triple-A shooters are more likely to be met by cease and desist orders than job offers it’s hard to imagine a game like this emerging from a popular FPS to spin out into its own franchise. Counter-Strike in its modern iteration is consistently one of the most-played titles in its genre.
FARMVILLE
WHERE DID IT COME FROM?
Facebook games were just hitting their stride in 2009 when Zynga’s FarmVille arrived on the scene, and it promptly held the top spot in mostplayed FB games for a solid two years.
WHAT DID IT ACHIEVE?
Its design straddled the ingenious and the obnoxious, slowing progress to a crawl unless you pay real money or invite friends to come help you, effectively advertising the game for the team while filling inboxes with annoying requests. FarmVille’s popularity isn’t what it used to be (even the sequel didn’t really win back lapsed Facebook farmers), but its template and legacy live on regardless.
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