10 Video Games That Ignored The Industry (And Became TIMELESS)

There’s no denying that the video game industry is in a precarious state right now, especially given the devastating number of recent layoffs. 

With belt tightening happening across the industry, publishers and developers are effectively incentivised to make hugely conservative business and creative decisions – that is to say, they’re encouraged to chase the most obvious and lucrative trends in the pursuit of safe success.

But sometimes developers surprise us all by doing the least-obvious thing imaginable – they instead ignore the dominant trends of the time and strike out on their own with an idea that’s wholly unexpected.

There are naturally innumerable horror stories of developers striking out by betting big on themselves, but these games all took the risk and it paid off handsomely.

These games all came out on their own terms, ignored what the industry was telling them to do, and released to critical raves in the very least, if not stonking commercial success too.

It’s clear that each game is destined to be remembered a long time from now – long after all the trends which are currently being doggedly pursued have come and gone. In a word, they’re totally timeless…

There’s been a pretty consistent sentiment in recent years that local couch co-op is dead, and any game hinging itself around in-person multiplayer is probably doomed to fail.

But director Josef Fares refused to accept this premise, and while It Takes Two could be played with a friend or partner online, it had no matchmaking options for playing with randoms. 

Furthermore, the preference was for folks to play it together in one physical space, and given that the narrative revolves around a married couple co-operating to save their daughter, it was also a game designed to be played by couples above all else.

None of this suggested that It Takes Two would be anything but another niche co-op game, much like Fares’ previous efforts Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons and A Way Out.

Yet Fares proved everyone wrong – It Takes Two wasn’t merely a critical success, but went on to sell more than 20 million copies and also won Game of the Year at The Game Awards.

Couch co-op is dead, you say? Not quite.