Debate: 2011 is the best year or not the best year for gaming

The voting for debates should be based on how the people presented their side of the debate, not which side you think is the best opinion

 

I am still behind in votes?

You miss the point. Those are not justgood games, those are all-time classics! Of the games you mentioned only Skyrim will likely reach that. The rest are just good for the present. There is no three games that come close to Diablo, Star Craft and Half-Life. Each of those games has had sequels and countless clones!

 

I think it's hard to argue what the best year for gaming was, because you have so many games out there and people of different zeitgeists will experience things differently, especially when nostalgia plays a role in what they believe. I wouldn't consider 2011 to be the best year at all looking back at the past, because there were a lot of problems back then. And I wouldn't call it the worst year either, but there definitely was a bit of a recession in 2011.

For instance, mobile gaming wasn't that big back then despite smartphones existing at the time. A lot of games required consumers to actually buy the game, and so a lot of games on the App store weren't being played. And Temple Run, though it did release in 2011, didn't really take off in popularity until 2012 since the game was originally $0.99. In fact, free mobile games didn't skyrocket until after 2011.

And on the console side, the 3DS was originally a major flop. Nintendo had to compensate to consumers by releasing the Ambassador program, and you wouldn't see revisions of the console or a larger library of 3DS games until later on.

On the PC side, Flash games, while they were still strong at the time, were starting to experience problems (like major lag and throttling issues) and started to experience decline. And Apple pretty much killed Flash anyway; though Apple's battle against Adobe started in 2010, I think 2011 hit the nail in the coffin since other major companies started to follow Apple's footsteps. HTML5 wouldn't begin until 2014, and other browser game engines wouldn't be developed until later on.

2011 was also the year big publishers would take a hit as indie games started to rise. Very often a Zelda game from a console would top the list of best game of the year, but that didn't happen with The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (and the Wii was quite a popular console as well, so it's a big surprising).

I think the biggest game to thrive in 2011 was Minecraft, though I wouldn't say 2011 necessarily defined the game since it did release close to the holidays. I think 2012 and 2013 were better years for Minecraft just because those years received more updates and it was well before Microsoft's acquisition.

All in all, I would say 2011 was below average for gaming. That year just never made a huge comeback to gaming. I think there are better years out there:

• 1985 (the rise of the NES and recovery from the video game crash of 1983)
• 1991 (peak of 16-bit games with games like The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Sonic the Hedgehog)
• 1996-1998 (rise of 3D games and also handheld games; probably one of the most successful times for Nintendo since those years introduced well-known games like Super Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and Pokémon Red and Blue)
• 2004 (the rise of PC games like World of Warcraft, Far Cry, and Half-Life 2)
• 2015 (perhaps the best year for mobile games and it's also the year browser games started to make a comeback [e.g. Agar.io])
• 2018-2019 (great years for indie games, especially with the popularity of the Nintendo Switch)