Sometimes you can spot a video game success a mile away. When games like Halo 3, Mass Effect 2, Elden Ring, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild, or God of War: Ragnarok were coming out, it was a safe bet these titles would be both critical and commercial successes.
On the other hand, it’s not always easy to see a hit coming. In rare instances, a video game will come up out of nowhere and take the industry by storm. Whether or not these games maintain this momentum may vary, but there’s no denying that sometimes a game can emerge out of the blue and become a phenomenon.
10Lethal Company
2023’s Breakout Title
2023’sLethal Companyhighlights the beauty of PC game development. When Lethal Company hit the Steam store, it quickly became one of the year’smost popular games. As Lethal Company continues to get updates, there’s hope it will continue to retain a strong player base.
9Fall Guys
Colorful Chaotic Competition
Generally, when a game goes free-to-play, that’s usually a bad sign. It represents a frantic last ditch effort by the developers to garner a large enough player base to justify the game’s continued existence.
WhenFall Guyscame out at the height of the pandemic, it became the talk of the gaming world. Instead of letting the momentum die, the developers made Fall Guys free-to-play and incorporated cross-play in 2022, ensuring this smash hit would stay hot.
8Batman: Arkham Asylum
A Breakthrough in Superhero Video Games
Believe it or not, the superhero video game genre used to be a realm of destitute and sorrow. Long before Marvel’s Spider-Man, it was an almost a guarantee that whenever a superhero game came out, it would be rubbish. Then in 2009, Batman Arkham Asylum changed everything.
When Arkham Asylum launched, it not only utterly eclipsed expectations, but ended up being one of the years’ best games. Arkham Asylum wasn’t just followed by three additional superb Batman titles, but it reinvigorated the entire superhero genre.
7Rocket League
Adrenaline Pumping Sports Combat
Sometimes it takes multiple tries to get it right, and that applies to game development as well. Even though producing video games is beyond expensive, the potential rewards when it all finally comes together can be truly amazing.
Such is the case forRocket League. Developed by Psyonix, Rocket League is actually a sequel to 2008’s Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars. While its predecessor failed to make an impact, Psynoix struck gold in 2014with Rocket Leagueand by 2018, it reached ten million sales.
6The Sims
Took The Simulation World By Storm
In retrospect, it’s hard to envision a series with multiple games over the course of two decades with thousands of dollars worth of DLC as an unexpected winner. Yet when the firstThe Simsgame launched in 2000, nobody could’ve foreseen what it would become.
Will Wright’s vision of ‘virtual doll house’ took years to get off the ground and, even when it did, Maxis and EA were skeptical about Wright’s idea. Little did anyone know, The Sims would go to suppress Myst as the best-selling PC game.
5Fortnite
Once Zombie Survival Turned Pop Culture Sensation
To even callFortnitea video game feels like an oversimplification of what’s it’s developed into. From virtual concerts to promotional events andevery possible crossoveryou can think of, Fortnite has become intrinsic in the pop culture lexicon.
Amazingly, Fortnite originally was a PVE game with scant hype and little fanfare behind it. Nevertheless, when PUBG popularized battle royale gameplay, Fortnite took that concept and transformed from an obscure project to one of the biggest IPs of the past decade.
4PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds
The Quintessential Battle Royale Game
There’s perhaps no game that rose so unexpectedly as PlayerUnknown’s Battleground. Not only did PUBG make battle royale the new popular trend in gaming, but it also became a cautionary tale of how developers should handle such rapid success.
Regardless of your thoughts on how PUBG was managed, it is undeniable that its rise in popularity came out of nowhere. In a couple of years, PUBG went from unheard-of to the single highest-selling PC of all time at over 40 million copies sold.
3Among Us
The Video Game King Of The Pandemic Era
Technically Among Us didn’t just come out and instantly become a remarkably universal game. In fact, it took over two years for Among Us to spike in popularity. But thanks to streamers and a worldwide Pandemic, Among Us exploded.
The social deduction whodunit game saw a tremendous increase in player count thanks to content creators in South Korea, Brazil, and Mexico. Then in the wake of the Pandemic, Among Us became a go-to game for long distance interaction for isolated gamers.
2Five Nights At Freddy’s
The Internet’s Favorite Horror Game
In 2023, the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie finally dropped. Despite the film being critically blasted for its dreadful writing and uninspired filmmaking, it was a massive box office success. Despite its achievement, it’s easy to forget the series had more humble beginnings.
A large reason for Five Night at Freddy’s success can be attributed to Let’s Play videos posted on YouTube. If it wasn’t for such a strong internet following, Five Nights at Freddy’s might’ve faded away. Instead, it spawned several sequels and millions of dollars.
1Minecraft
A Multi-Billion Dollar Juggernaut
It doesn’t matter how much money you pump into a game, sometimes success just isn’t in the cards. You can have an impressive marketing budget and the backing of a gigantic publisher, but that’s no guarantee of victory.Minecraftproved that the world of mouth can be just as valuable.
Despite having no advertising or publisher behind it, Minecraft was a colossal success. Over a decade later, Minecraft stands as one of the bestselling video games of all time and a multi-billion dollar franchise, a fate that no one could’ve predicted.
