Video Game Trends

Arcade/8-bit Art Style

  Dating back to the early 1980s, 8-bit games such as Super Mario and Pac Man revolutionised the way we play video games to this day and even though some of the most popular titles involved rich vibrant environments and realistic gameplay, there is just something about retro style that we cannot get enough of. The top best selling video game of all time is Tetris, released 2006, and has sold over 400 copies, while loosely connected to 8-bit, still resembles that of an old arcade game. In the recent years there have been hundreds of indie games released sporting extremely similar art styles to their predecessors these include; Terraria (2011), Fez (2012), Nidhogg (2014) and Broforce (2015). Also one of the top rated indie games in the Xbox marketplace is Candy, Please, an 8-bit style platformer, with 4.5/5.However it is not just PC and consoles that support these kinds of games, there has been a huge increase in 8-bit style games on mobile devices as well. This, of course, includes Flappy Bird which topped US and Chinese app stores and became the most downloaded free iOS app of all time. Other popular titles include Super Mega Worm (2010) which received 4.5/5 on the Google Play store and Crossy Road (2014) with over 50 million downloads after 3 months of its release.

Character Customisation

  Everyone loves a game in which you can customise your character in a variety of wacky ways before you play, a concept that first began in board games such as Dungeons and Dragons but moved swiftly onto the gaming platform. Starting with the giant that is Nintendo and their introduction of Miis on the Wii. Their first game which came with the console, Wii Sports (2006), is the number one best selling Wii game of all time with over 82 million copies sold, down in third place is Wii Sports Resort (2009) selling over 32 million, followed by Wii Play (2007) which sold over 28 million and Wii Fit (2004) which sold over 20 million copies. Xbox also jumped on this bandwagon in 2008 with the introduction of Avatars and Xbox Live, this then lead to hundreds of games being created that involved the players personal avatars. These include Doritos Crash Course (2010), with 1.4 million downloads, Kinect Sports (2010), selling over 3 million units and several best selling indie games such as Avatar Warfare (2013). However it is not just console specific, several titles have in-game characterisation, for example Saints Row IV (2013) which sold over 1 million copies in a week, Dark Souls II (2014) which has sold 2.5 million copies worldwide and Fallout 4 (2015) which has sold 12 million units totalling $750 million dollars. This also includes Grand Theft Auto Online, launched 2 weeks after GTAV's release, a game which became the fastest selling entertainment product in history, earning $1billion in 3 days and selling over 60 million copies.