50 Fun Facts About 2010s Video Games

Which company bought Minecraft developer Mojang in 2014 in a deal worth $2.5 billion?

Microsoft announced the deal in September 2014, and Minecraft went on to become the best-selling video game of all time.

Which fictional city, modelled on the real home of Hollywood, do players roam in Grand Theft Auto V?

Los Santos sits in the fictional state of San Andreas, which is based on Southern California and adds open countryside beyond the city limits.

Which studio, also the maker of the Unreal Engine, developed and released the online hit Fortnite?

Epic Games released Fortnite in 2017, and its Battle Royale mode drew more than 125 million players in less than a year.

Which studio, founded as a startup inside Google, originally developed the 2016 mobile hit Pokémon Go?

Niantic had already built the location game Ingress, and many of Pokémon Go's real-world stops were adapted from places mapped for Ingress.

The Last of Us imagines a pandemic caused by a mutated form of which real genus of fungus?

Cordyceps is the fungus behind the outbreak, which has ravaged the United States for twenty years by the time Joel escorts the immune teenager Ellie across the country.

Which 2011 Bethesda game casts the player as the Last Dragonborn, destined to defeat the dragon Alduin?

Skyrim's Dragonborn learns magical shouts by absorbing the souls of dead dragons, a gift the story credits to the god Akatosh.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was developed by CD Projekt Red, a studio based in which European country?

Poland's CD Projekt Red started out in 1994 by translating major foreign games into Polish, years before it built a hit of its own.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was a 2017 launch game for which new console?

Nintendo Switch buyers could play it on day one, yet the same game also arrived that day as the final Nintendo-published Wii U release.

Which Star Wars actor voiced the Joker in the 2011 superhero game Batman: Arkham City?

Mark Hamill won a BAFTA for the performance, having said beforehand that Arkham City would be his last outing as the Joker.

Flappy Bird's creator, who pulled the hit mobile game from app stores in 2014, came from which country?

Vietnam's Dong Nguyen removed Flappy Bird in February 2014, saying he felt guilty about how addictive the game had become.

Which green Minecraft monster, created by a botched pig model, sneaks up on players and explodes?

The Creeper exists because Markus Persson accidentally swapped the length and height of the pig model, then chose to keep the error as a new monster.

Which outlaw of the Van der Linde gang do players control for most of Red Dead Redemption 2?

Arthur Morgan is the gang's veteran enforcer in 1899, and only in the epilogue does control pass to John Marston, hero of the first game.

Which 2016 Blizzard hero shooter set two teams of six against each other, with characters such as Tracer?

Overwatch was named Game of the Year at The Game Awards in 2016, and Blizzard celebrated its first anniversary with a Game of the Year edition.

Which 2011 Valve puzzle game introduced the talkative robot Wheatley, voiced by Stephen Merchant?

Portal 2 also added a cooperative campaign, in which two players solve test chambers together as the robots Atlas and P-Body.

Pokémon X and Y introduced which new type, the first added since Pokémon Gold and Silver?

Fairy was handed to old Pokémon as well as new ones, and arrived alongside Mega Evolution and the main series' first fully polygonal 3D graphics.

Which studio, already known for Crash Bandicoot and Uncharted, released The Last of Us in 2013?

Naughty Dog made The Last of Us with a secondary team inside the studio, and unveiled it at the 2011 Spike Video Game Awards.

Which Japanese studio made Dark Souls, the 2011 game by Hidetaka Miyazaki that inspired the term Soulslike?

FromSoftware turned Dark Souls into a trilogy, and its director Hidetaka Miyazaki rose to become the company's president in 2014.

In 2018's God of War, which son of Kratos helps in combat as the pair carry his mother's ashes?

Atreus spends much of the story unaware that he is a demigod, because Kratos keeps his own past a secret from the boy.

Which 2015 game from Psyonix has jet-boosted cars knock an oversized ball into goals like indoor soccer?

Rocket League is the sequel to 2008's Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars, a far less famous game with a far longer name.

Which puzzle game, launched by King on Facebook in 2012, earned almost $1 million a day at its peak?

Candy Crush Saga can be finished without paying, so King's income came from players buying special actions to clear its harder boards.

Which 2015 role-playing game by Toby Fox lets players spare every monster instead of killing them?

Undertale was close to a one-person project: Fox wrote the script and the music himself, and paid for development through Kickstarter.

Which 2017 run and gun game copied the hand-drawn rubber hose look of 1930s cartoons?

Cuphead was made by Studio MDHR, a Canadian indie studio founded by the brothers Chad and Jared Moldenhauer.

Which 2019 indie hit from Australian studio House House turns the player loose to pester an English village?

Untitled Goose Game grew out of a stock photograph of a goose that one House House employee posted in the studio's internal chat.

Blizzard's 2014 digital card game Hearthstone is set within which older game universe?

Warcraft was in the card game's original subtitle, Heroes of Warcraft, and Hearthstone reuses the older series' characters and relics.

In 2014's Five Nights at Freddy's, the player works which job at a pizzeria full of homicidal animatronics?

Security guard Mike Schmidt survives each shift by watching the cameras and locking a pair of steel doors against the animatronics.

Which young huntress is the hero of Horizon Zero Dawn, set in a land ruled by robotic machines?

Aloy fronts the first open-world game by Guerrilla Games, which was also the studio's first new series since Killzone in 2004.

Assassin's Creed Odyssey, released by Ubisoft in 2018, has players exploring an open world set in which ancient land?

Greece is shown during the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, and the player is a Spartan mercenary who fights on both sides.

Which Call of Duty game, released by Treyarch in 2010, follows CIA operative Alex Mason during the Cold War?

Black Ops sold more than 5.6 million copies within 24 hours of going on sale, breaking the record held by Modern Warfare 2.

In Telltale's 2012 game The Walking Dead, which young girl does convicted criminal Lee Everett protect?

Clementine and Lee's bond drew widespread praise, and the player's choices carry their consequences across all five episodes.

Which creator of Metal Gear directed Death Stranding, the 2019 debut of a studio newly split from Konami?

Hideo Kojima cast the actor Norman Reedus as Sam Porter Bridges, a courier who hauls supplies between isolated colonies.

Which 2012 Thatgamecompany adventure sends a cloaked figure across a vast desert toward a distant mountain?

Journey pairs players with anonymous strangers who cannot speak or type to each other, and shows their names only after the credits.

Which 2018 indie platformer follows Madeline, a young woman with anxiety, as she climbs a mountain?

Celeste began as a tiny PICO-8 game that Maddy Thorson and Noel Berry put together over a single weekend in 2015.

Eric Barone spent years making Stardew Valley alone as his answer to which older farming series?

Harvest Moon, since renamed Story of Seasons, inspired Barone so heavily that he set out to fix what he saw as its shortcomings.

Which 2017 Metroidvania by Australia's Team Cherry sends an insectoid warrior through the fallen kingdom of Hallownest?

Hollow Knight came from a studio in Adelaide that was founded by an artist, Ari Gibson, and a web designer, William Pellen.

Which 2015 PlayStation 4 game sends a Hunter through Yharnam, a Gothic city afflicted by a mysterious disease?

Bloodborne drew on the horror writing of H. P. Lovecraft and Bram Stoker, and on real architecture in Romania and the Czech Republic.

Which stealth frigate serves as Commander Shepard's base of operations throughout BioWare's Mass Effect trilogy?

The Normandy is destroyed during the trilogy, and a larger replacement, the SR-2, is then built in great secrecy by the Cerberus group.

BioShock Infinite is set in 1912 aboard which floating city, named for the female personification of America?

Columbia was paid for by the US government as a floating world's fair, an idea drawn from the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition.

Which studio, creator of the Halo series, launched the online shooter Destiny in 2014 with Activision?

Bungie made Destiny as its first new console franchise since Halo, and as the opening game of a ten-year agreement with Activision.

The impossible architecture of the 2014 mobile puzzle game Monument Valley was inspired by which Dutch artist?

M. C. Escher's style shaped the very first piece of concept art, and the finished game, starring the princess Ida, barely strayed from it.

Dishonored (2012) follows royal protector Corvo Attano through which fictional industrial city, ravaged by plague?

Dunwall can be crossed without bloodshed: Arkane Studios made it possible to eliminate every one of Corvo's targets in a non-lethal way.

Fallout 4's Sole Survivor leaves Vault 111 to explore the nuclear ruins of which American city?

Boston and the surrounding Massachusetts countryside are known in the game as the Commonwealth, explored 210 years after a nuclear war.

Which card game, a side activity within The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, was later expanded into a standalone release?

Gwent beat several rival minigame ideas for the role, including a drinking game, knife throwing and ice skating.

Which Valve game has The International as its premier tournament, with crowdfunded prize pools worth tens of millions?

Dota 2 grew out of a fan-made mod, and Valve hired that mod's lead designer, known as IceFrog, to build the standalone version.

Apex Legends, released by Respawn Entertainment in 2019, is set in the universe of which earlier shooter series?

Titanfall's Pilots and their mech-style Titans came first, and a number of its characters reappear in Apex as minor characters or playable Legends.

Which 2019 game about Wolf, a shinobi with a prosthetic arm, won Game of the Year at The Game Awards?

Sekiro was Hidetaka Miyazaki's deliberate break from Dark Souls: he wanted a new Japanese-themed game built around shinobi and ninja.

In Nintendo's 2015 shooter Splatoon, which creatures do players control?

Inklings shoot ink in their humanoid form and swim through it as squid, and their look was inspired by the mannerisms of skateboarders.

Which studio, known for Spyro the Dragon and Ratchet & Clank, developed 2018's Marvel's Spider-Man?

Insomniac Games had never made a licensed game in its 22-year history, and Sony bought the studio the year after Spider-Man came out.

In Borderlands 2, the Vault Hunters fight the tyrannical Handsome Jack for control of which planet?

Pandora is rich in a valuable mineral called Eridium, and Jack rules its people with an iron fist from his space station, Helios.

Which game journalist created The Game Awards in 2014 after a decade working on the Spike Video Game Awards?

Geoff Keighley produces and hosts the ceremony himself, and has declined several offers from television networks to air it.

In Lucas Pope's 2013 game Papers, Please, the player inspects immigrants at the border of which fictional country?

Arstotzka has only just ended a six-year war with its neighbour Kolechia when the inspector starts work at the checkpoint in 1982.