The dawn of a new decade is a great time to reflect back on what the previous ten years were like, and that’s exactly what two dozen publications did over the last few months.
Hundreds of titles (337, to be exact) were selected as part of the Best Games of the 2010s when looking back at lists such as Mashable’s “15 Favorite Games of the Decade,” Paste Magazine’s “The 100 Best Videogames of the 2010s,” Polygon’s “The 100 Best Games of the Decade,” and many others.
Like the original Video Game Canon, this Best Games of the Decade list is a statistical meta-analysis of multiple lists using our C-Score formula. The rank order was compiled by measuring each game’s Average Ranking across every list, as well as the Appearance Frequency of how many lists it was included on.
The lower the C-Score, the higher a game is ranked in the Best Games of the 2010s. But which games were the absolute best? You can find out below.
Publications didn’t seem to have a preference for the first half of the decade (which was ruled by the PS3 and Xbox 360) or the latter half (when the PS4, Xbox One, and Switch took over), but 2017’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild unsurprisingly topped the list. Link’s newest mainline adventure helped sell the public on the Nintendo Switch and the listmakers agreed, putting it on the most lists and giving it the lowest Average Ranking of any game.
Mojang’s Minecraft technically straddled two decades (it was released in Early Access in 2009), but it still earned the #4 spot. Though it makes you wonder if it’s unconventional release might have pushed it down a spot or two. The remainder of the top five was rounded out by From Software’s Dark Souls (#2), Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (#3), and CD Projekt’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (#5).
The full ranking can be found here:
Special Report: The Best Games of the 2010s
C-Score = Average Ranking + (100 – Appearance Frequency)