Most Important Games of the Decade: ‘Pokémon Go’

Join us all month as our staff looks back at the most influential games of the past decade. This is not a list of our favourite games but rather a look back at the games that left the biggest impact in the last ten years on an artistic and cultural level. After careful consideration, we narrowed it down to ten games that have most defined, influenced and shaped the industry as we know it.

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Three years and over $3 billion on from its 2016 debut, Pokémon Go is still reigning champion for mobile games downloads and revenue. The world’s highest-grossing media franchise grafted onto a micro-transaction model cascades money? Shocking.

Becoming a behemoth wasn’t always guaranteed, however. Preceding attempts to break into the mobile market like Pokémon: Magikarp Jump or Shuffle had limited success. It was the 2014 April Fools’ Day collaboration between Google, The Pokémon Company, and primary developers Niantic, that proved there was a market for such a game.

Pokémon Go immediately struck a chord with players, and was the biggest boon to the franchise during its twentieth anniversary; Pokémon was popular again in a way it had not been since the late 90s. It was as close a manifestation of childhood dreams of capturing Pokémon in the real world as possible. Arriving a full generation on from those initial Pokémon fans, this was a pocket-sized experience perfect for reliving memories and sharing them with younger generations, even their own children.

But Pokémon Go consumed everyone. Famously, a Taiwanese grandfather had twenty-odd mobile phones simultaneously running the game he cycled around. There’s an argument to be made that Pokémon Go is one of the most constructive games to be released this decade, on the simple strength of how many people were and are encouraged to exercise and interact because of it.

In terms of game design, Pokémon Go actually has a mechanics that would make the franchise frankly better overall. For example, reducing the number of infernal hidden Individual Values that determine the genetic strength is simple but significant change to make the games more approachable, and people more likely to appreciate their imperfect partners. Go has also iterated from the limited state of its initial release, progressively adding more elements. Moreover, the genuine mystery surrounding the Meltan reveal via the application led to the sort of vague playground rumours that internet leaks and accessibility of information previously killed. In events like these, Pokémon Go brought back the social excitement that had long diminished for many people.

Every colossus casts a shadow, however, and Pokémon Go is no exception. In making a fortune, it has significantly redirected The Pokémon Company’s focus towards capitalising on the mobile market audience. Not so much Pokémon Let’s Go Eevee and Pikachu, which despite the initial uproar, are light nostalgic trips through Kanto made with care. Rather, Pokémon Go’s birth led to the death of interesting console spinoff games, which made a fraction of the income. Since Pokémon Go’s domination, the only significant spinoff game has been Pokémon Masters, another mobile game.

This doesn’t tarnish the overall positive impact of Pokémon Go, however, especially as a reflection of ethos of Satoru Iwata, former Nintendo president and chief executive officer, who helped lay the groundwork before he passed away. Satoru’s contributions to gaming in his rise to prominence are legendary, but especially his role in Pokémon: he was personally responsible for compressing Pokémon Gold and Silver’s data by half so that the Kanto region could be added in and singlehandedly implemented the battle system for the 3D Pokémon Stadium in a single week by studying the 2D games’ code.

Pokémon Go continues Iwata’s approach not dividing the gaming market into sects; his belief was that anyone could be a gamer. It’s a fitting sentiment for Pokémon—after all, anyone can become a trainer. With Pokémon Go, every trainer, young or all small, could share in a truly communal experience. They rediscovered the joy of training together.

– Declan Biswas-Hughes

Here is our full list of the most important games of the decade.