I hope you'll forgive the self-indulgence, just this week marks my 10 twelvemonth anniversary as a video game journalist, which feels like a significant milestone. And if you'll as well forgive me for existence Captain Obvious, a hell of a lot has inverse over that time.

Thank you to the rapid rate of change in video games, both my task and the industry I cover are practically unrecognisable. This is largely what keeps me interested in video games, this pace of transformation: there is ever something new to cover, and we're e'er trying to notice new means to talk about it.

When I started writing well-nigh video games professionally in 2005, the Japanese games industry was nevertheless nearly the top of its game. People were genuinely talking about whether PC gaming might exist dead. The Xbox 360 had yet to launch and the Wii was nonetheless nether wraps. Independent game evolution wasn't actually a affair; or, well, it was a thing, merely but on PC, or if information technology was funded by a large publisher. Games (and gamers) were still desperately struggling for cultural legitimacy. Smartphones did non exist. YouTube was not a thing (seriously, it launched properly in November 2005).

There have been hundreds of meaning changes, big and small, technological and cultural. The ten things below, for me, are the virtually important.

The games media

EDGE, the world's most respected games magazine - and ane of the few that remain.

In August 2005, I got a job as a staff writer on a print magazine in the UK. One of the first things I was asked to exercise was write a preview of the game Okami, which I had neither seen nor played. "Only read Gamespot'due south preview and piece of work from that," my editor told me. (I'm happy to say the editorial standards at Kotaku U.k. are rather different.)

This is no indictment on that particular magazine. That's just kind of how things were back then; at that place were no gameplay videos, few demos, and in lieu of actually getting invited to see a game at a studio, usually all you had to keep was some screenshots and a printing release. The magazines I used to read as a child were bursting with personality, weird in-jokes and bizarre features, and I now know that'south because they didn't actually have that much to write virtually.

I've written before about how games media has changed, peculiarly in the past five years. When I started out, games journalism was reviews, news and previews and that was nearly it. Anyone doing anything other than these things was considered a fringe operator. At present, though, the games media is no longer just journalism; information technology'south also entertainment, criticism, comedy, video, essayism and all sorts of other far more than interesting things than the reviews and previews that used to fill the pages of the magazine I worked on.

The explosion of the games media has brought its challenges. Information technology'southward harder and harder for outlets to differentiate themselves from the vast numbers of other websites (or YouTubers, or streamers) doing essentially the same thing. Thanks to YouTube and social media, publishers are at present inclined to go directly to "consumers" with their information and screenshots and game trailers – they no longer have to go through the games printing. When I started out, we were the gatekeepers to information about games. Now we take to be something more interesting than that.

I've personally actually enjoyed this challenge. Where earlier, people would dismiss you as a maverick if you ever strayed outside the confines of previews and reviews, at present it'due south essential. In Kotaku UK, I've had the opportunity to experiment with what the games media tin can exist in the modern age. It's been a lot of fun.

The Japanese games industry

Some of the things I loved nigh about video games in 2005 have disappeared, at present. In the midst of the PlayStation 2 era, there were loads of weird low-budget Japanese console games appearing every calendar month. I have a long-time friend whose specialism was finding the strangest and most interesting of these oddities; I was never every bit adept at it every bit he was, but I plant some of my favourite games of all fourth dimension past digging through Japanese releases, occasionally discovering something like Gitaroo Man or Demon's Souls.

I too institute a whole lot of enjoyable strangeness, similar musical robot RPG Steambot Chronicles (brilliantly titled Bumpy Trot in Japanese), or Chulip, a game where you had to work upwardly to kissing the girl of your dreams from kissing gimps in sewers, and a huge range of bonkers and energetic rhythm-action games. I always loved the quirkier side of Japanese development, but at present the Japanese games industry has stratified: the swell bulk of the talent is either working in mobile gaming, or on huge games like Final Fantasy or Monster Hunter. The same has happened beyond the games industry, of grade: the wonderful world of the so-called "B-game" has all but disappeared, leaving room only for very big or very small-scale projects. But it's the Japanese B-games that I miss the almost.

I moved to Nippon in 2008, just in time to catch the tail cease of arcade culture in that location. I've been back every twelvemonth since and now most of the game centres I used to frequent are gone, leaving only the biggest or the nigh specialised. Gaming culture is still very much alive and well in Japan, with the nation's gaming heritage proudly on brandish in the form of NES, SNES, PlayStation and Dreamcast games still on auction in most game stores y'all might step into, simply it'due south not what information technology used to be. The Japanese games industry is actually worth more than now that information technology was back and then thanks to the explosion of mobile, simply information technology's piece of cake to admit that many of the big names in Japanese publishing (like Konami) are shadows of their former selves.

Games are no longer in thrall to movie theater

For a large function of the '00s, games were obsessed with trying to be films, desperate to ape the activeness and emotional impact of movie house through the non-interactive techniques of picture palace: cut-scenes, dialogue, visual realism. Fifty-fifty as the games industry started generating more money than Hollywood, games themselves couldn't seem to exit it backside. Hollywood script-writers and voice actors were hired for everything. Linear narratives involving big explosions became the norm. Ofttimes it felt similar nothing y'all did had whatever bodily impact on what you lot were playing; you were simply being led past the hand through pre-determined events.

There'south nonetheless some of this going around, only information technology feels to me like games accept reclaimed themselves lately. They no longer feel the need to apologise to anybody for being games, or apply labels to themselves like "interactive cinematic experiences". I could proper noun you xxx well-written games from the by 5 years or so that were not trying to be films. Games have adult (or reclaimed) their ain techniques for thrilling, edifying, or provoking an emotional response in players.

It took a while for big business concern gaming to realise the games could be more than commercially and creatively successful by being themselves than they ever could by pretending to exist films. Information technology'southward been proven past the enormous and unexpected success of the Souls series, Spelunky, Minecraft and countless others. Cinematic gaming still exists in the form of things like Uncharted and (still) the Call of Duty series, but it's no longer dominating theme of the games manufacture.

A lot of this, I think, is a event of liberating developers from the technological arms race. Instead of badly striving for more and more impressive photorealistic graphics, similar they were in the mid-'00s, developers are experimenting more. Games have emerged from an identity crunch.

The opposite of this is David Cage'south games, which are conspicuously drastic to be films and every bit a event now feel rather outdated. Beyond: Two Souls, especially, feels like an anachronism.

Games actually tell good stories at present

Ane of the first big games I always reviewed was Shadow of the Colossus, which at the time had storytelling ambitions far beyond what anything else was doing. Since then we've seen plenty more games that are but equally impressive, and near of them don't rely on cutting-scenes. To proper name a few off the top of my head: Telltale'south The Walking Dead. Journeying. The Stanley Parable. The Last of Usa. Deus Ex: Homo Revolution. The Witcher series. Gone Domicile. Papers, Please.

At that place used to be a lot of restrictions placed upon games, both by wider culture and past publishers. Games can't deal with emotions. They had to exist action-packed. Y'all had to be shooting something. Games that prioritise story don't sell. Games are inherently frivolous. Even every bit gamers, we had low expectations for sophistication in these areas.

At present those expectations are higher and, in truth, some developers are struggling with that. You tin't get away with B-movie writing, ho-hum characters and gender stereotyping whatsoever more than. But these higher expectations are pushing people to create stories in our medium that are and then much more interesting than what I grew up playing.

The resurgence of indie development and the waning ability of publishers

Effectually 2009-ten was not the best time for games: I was worried that the financial crisis might eventually reduce gaming to Angry Birds, Farmville and Call of Duty, with zero in between. But instead, the resurgence of contained development since 2022 has completely changed video games; or, sometimes, it's returned them to what they used to be back in the '80s and early '90s, when people commonly made games in their bedrooms or garages.

A vast component of this change is the waning power of publishers. In the PS2 era, if a publisher did not fund your game, it did not get made, certainly non on a panel. Now, in the PS4 era, at that place are a great many independent games on the PSN storefront, hardly whatever of them publisher funded. More recently, Kickstarter has given players themselves the power to decide whether or non a game gets made. That's come with its ain problems, merely it has transformed the market for smaller games.

I take always been a console gamer, so this change has been especially apparent to me. It was Xbox Live Arcade that first brought downloadable, smaller games to a panel audition and its early on indie mega-successes like Braid, Limbo and Super Meat Male child ready the scene for a whole new kind of game on console. Losing focus on Xbox Live Arcade was i of Microsoft's biggest mistakes during the Xbox 360 era. It could accept dominated this market place.

The resurgence of independent development has brought with it a creative energy that was sorely lacking in the games of the belatedly '00s. It's fabricated video games so much more interesting, specially on console. Meanwhile, publishers at present take and so much less ability than they used to. The most successful ones are adapting to this new reality.

The people who play games

In that location was a headline stat a little while back that women now brand up pretty much half of game players worldwide. People rushed to counter this, defending the mantle of "gamer" from this horde of "casual" interlopers. But the data continually bears out that gaming's audience is diversifying, whatever people might say to counter it. 'Oh, but women are all playing on smartphones and Facebook!' Then how come the preferred genres for men and women players are practically identical, and xl per cent of the audience that self-identifies as "core" gamers are women or girls? We must accept the information. We should be celebrating the data.

I could not exist happier virtually this. I went to an all-girls schoolhouse, and playing games was "not for girls" back and so. Never listen the fact that most of my schoolhouse friends played games with me; they would never take chosen themselves gamers. In that location was a stigma, and although life still isn't like shooting fish in a barrel for women who are visible in the video games inudstry, I sincerely hope that if I ever have daughters, they will exist able to grow upwardly with controllers in their hands without having to deal with any of the bullshit that I had to deal with.

Information technology's not but the gender carve up either. As the first generation of gamers reaches its 40s and 50s, we're getting to the indicate where almost anybody plays video games. Nearly ninety per cent of kids in the UK play games. Older people play games. Families play games together. Ten years ago, there was some truth to the stereotype that video games were for children or adolescent boys. At present at that place is none.

Nintendo's Wii and DS can take a lot of credit for this in the console world, I think. Speaking of which...

Games are at present role of mainstream culture

A few years agone, I was at the BBC'due south offices in Tokyo, existence interviewed about the launch of One thousand Theft Auto V. The interviewer (an older human being) did non have much time for Grand Theft Car, or indeed for me. After I had been patiently trying to explain the appeal of video games for several minutes, he suddenly said "when I talk to people like y'all, I just recall, why don't you read a volume?". I told him I had a Masters degree in comparative literature, which tends to involve quite a lot of books. That close him upwardly.

This chat sticks in my memory because it felt then unusual at the time. It used to be thatevery conversation I had nigh video games went like this. There could be no discussing video games without starting time justifying the entire concept of a video game. I'm not delusional; I know there's still a fashion to go. But games are more a part of mainstream civilization now than they have been e'er earlier.

The very idea of "working" in video games was ludicrous to my family when I left dwelling house at sixteen years onetime. I was the butt of every joke at family gatherings. I remember the moment that my dad started paying attention to video games: it was when Nintendo started appearing in his Fiscal Times. For my mum, it was when I showed her Shadow of the Colossus – you know, that scene with Agro.

Speaking of which, another extremely boring conversation that we used to take ten years ago was, "Are games art?" Thank God we don't take to talk most that 1 any more. It has become self-evident that games tin be art. They tin be annihilation they want to be.

For me, what proved gaming's archway into mainstream culture once and for all was G Theft Motorcar Five. It was everywhere: on TV, on the radio, on buses, in tube stations. It sold in its millions and millions. Information technology was a bona fide huge-scale cultural miracle. There was some media handwringing about its violence, but most of the conversation was near its cultural value. This represented a massive alter in how people look at video games.

We no longer take idiots like Jack Thompson trying to ban video games altogether. In America, they are now protected under the First Amendment, a conclusion that was made in 2022. It is generally accepted that video games are non ruining children's minds. All of this is progress.

Mobile gaming changed everything

Honestly, I have played very few mobile games over the past five years. The explosion of mobile gaming has not had much of an consequence on my personal gaming habits. Merely it has had an enormous impact on the business of video games.

Wait at the schedule for any game development conference in the unabridged world right now and you lot'll find endless talks and panels on mobile game pattern and monetisation. The whole concern is preoccupied with it, and for skilful reason: pop mobile games make an cool amount of coin. The unfortunate thing is that that money is largely generated past just a few breakout games, with everybody else left fighting over scraps. Micro-transactions and gratuitous-to-play might be dirty words to a lot of the states, but they are immensely successful business models, and they take made their fashion into all types of game in the past five years.

In 2005, information technology was MMOs that were attracting all the investor attending, thanks to the enormous success of World of Warcraft. That burned out pretty apace, as did Facebook gaming, which was going to be the next big thing for all of about xviii months. Mobile gaming may yet fire out as well, just I don't think it's a fad. Phones and tablets define the gaming habits of millions of people. That genie won't go dorsum in the bottle. I think it would be difficult to debate that mobile gaming was the new frontier for culturally interesting games, but it'southward defined the business of video games more than than anything else in the terminal decade.

Steam transformed PC gaming

In 2005, people were genuinely talking about whether PC gaming might exist dead, because boxed PC games weren't selling any more than. It was an irritatingly persistent chat, despite the fact that the PC is and always has been the globe'due south virtually widespread and popular gaming platform.

What fixed this was digital distribution, and specifically Steam. Valve began to dominate the entire PC gaming market in what seemed similar an extraordinarily brusque infinite of time. The lack of retail focus on PC gaming simply didn't affair anymore.

What launched in 2003 as a storefront for Valve'southward games gradually became the world'due south gateway to the entirety of PC gaming and completely revitalised the market in the procedure. We still don't know how much money Steam generates, how many units individual games sell through the service, because Valve keeps that data clutched tightly to its chest. Simply at that place is no doubt it is astronomical.

Valve and Steam have changed gaming in significant ways several times over the final decade, more recently with Early on Access and Steam Greenlight. Its paradigm, once infallible, is beginning to slip; yous only need to wait at the reaction to the introduction of paid mods earlier this year for proof of that. But it has already achieved an extraordinary corporeality.

The gap between players, developers and publishers has narrowed

I've touched on this before, simply really this is at the eye of all the changes that have happened in games over the last ten years. If I could sum all of it up in 1 point, it would be this.

The cyberspace and social media have put players in directly contact with the people who make the games they honey. Information technology's also put them in contact with each other. We've created different communities effectually games, to a much greater extent than we could when I was growing upwardly. Kickstarter has gone as far as turning players into investors.

Someone who wants to brand a game and sell it to you no longer has to discover someone to publish information technology, a shop to put it in a box, and a magazine to tell people about information technology. Theoretically they can now do all of that themselves. The power in video games has shifted abroad from the publishers, the money-men and the market place and towards players and creators. With this has come an explosion in both the volume and creativity of games. It is fantastic. Games tin exist anything the want to be, and tin discover their audition. Many of united states have believed this all along, simply now the creators working in this medium have proven information technology.

In this creative surroundings, and with heady technological developments like VR around the corner, I feel like the next decade is going to be simply as interesting as the concluding. It'south been a great 10 years in video games. I hope I'1000 still here in some other 10.

This story originally appeared on Kotaku UK. Republished with permission.
Masthead paradigm, modification of Pop Chart Lab gaming evolution poster.