Every videogame story that subverts a player's expectations owes a debt to the ground broken by Metal Gear Solid 2. Nobody actually knows what the hell happened when Raiden went creeping around Big Shell, but Hideo Kojima was right to suggest by extreme example that action games didn't have to just be about a good guy kicking the asses of generic bad guys. This game's winding, twisted narrative was a total mess, but gosh darn it, it stuck its flag in the ground and proclaimed that videogame stories had the right to be twisted messes. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (2001) Whether or not social games are the next big thing, Happy Farm's blend of planting, growing and harvesting crops turned out to be the simple game-design formula that had gigantic repercussions. What the hell is Happy Farm, you ask? Why, it's only the Chinese social network farming game that inspired a dozen Facebook clones – the biggest of which, Farmville, has more than 70 million active users. Portal proved that quality can trump quantity. Valve could have padded out the four hours of gameplay with extraneous cut scenes or boss battles, but instead it let the game be concise (and a bargain at $20). But the space-bending puzzles of Portal will also have an influence on the way games are sold. This senior thesis cum sleeper hit showed that students could hit it big in the games business – not after years of obscurity but immediately.
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