Then as it was, then again it will be

Forgive us for stating the obvious, but ten years is an awfully long time, particularly in an industry that moves so fast as this one. It has only been in putting together this issue that we have truly come to appreciate just how much videogames have changed over the course of the past ten years.

In 2010, we knew nothing of PS4 or Xbox One. Sure, we knew new consoles would arrive, but we had no idea that Microsoft would so spectacularly throw away all its hard-won goodwill, or how Sony would so speedily, savvily capitalise on it. We had no idea of the new genres that would emerge as the decade progressed: the terms ‘Roguelike’, ‘Soulsborne’ or ‘walking simulator’ would have meant nothing to us back then, yet are commonly known shorthand today.

We had not even the faintest inkling that a block-building game a few folk around the office were whispering about would, within a few years, become a billion-dollar phenomenon, nor that the studio behind Gears Of War would make a game so popular it would feature in the World Cup final. We’d never have guessed how big livestreaming would be, how bad monetisation tactics would get, or that we’d lose the likes of Steve Jobs and Satoru Iwata. And if you’d tried to tell us that consumer VR would be a reality, well, we’d simply have laughed you out of the room.

This issue we present our review of the 2010s. Whichever of our 12 special-edition covers you’ve tracked down, we hope you agree it celebrates a game that, in one way or another, helped shape a decade that was by turns fascinating and infuriating, joyful and saddening. Oh, and expensive. So very, very expensive.

We knew none of this would happen back in 2010, and what a decade it’s been. We’re more excited than ever about what’s next.