Curated playlist

Spike Video Game Award winners

GameSpotGameSpot's editorial director was fired in 2007 after a 6 out of 10 review.
Game InformerGame Informer began as a store newsletter meant to sell games. By 2011 it was clearing 8 million copies.
Joker (character)The Joker was nearly killed off in his second comic appearance. An editor saved him with a hastily drawn panel.
WiiNintendo's Wii ended up in hospitals and nursing homes. It was built as a console for everyone, even grandparents.
Call of Duty 4: Modern WarfareCall of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is the game in which a famous military shooter series walked out of World War II and into the present day. Infinity Ward developed it, Activision published it, and it was the fourth main installment in the…
The Last of Us (video game)The Last of Us, a 2013 action-adventure game from Naughty Dog, ends with a man swearing to a girl that his story is true. It is not. Joel gives the oath because Ellie insists on it. Everything before that moment is a long walk toward it.…
Rock BandHarmonix reportedly sold for just $50 after Rock Band's market collapsed.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 sold 6.5 million copies in the United States and United Kingdom within its first 24 hours. Those sales brought in $400 million. At the time, that made it the largest entertainment launch ever recorded. The…
BioShock InfiniteBioShock Infinite sends its hero to a city that floats among the clouds above America in 1912. Irrational Games developed it and 2K published it in 2013, and it is a first-person shooter that leans hard on story. The hero is Booker DeWitt,…
Assassin's Creed IV: Black FlagAssassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, the sixth major installment in its series, hands the player a stolen ship and a Welsh pirate named Edward Kenway. Early in the story, Edward captures a brig called the Jackdaw from a Spanish fleet and makes…
Nintendo DSNintendo called its own Nintendo DS an experimental "third pillar" before launch. It went on to sell 154 million units.
Fallout 3Fallout 3 is a 2008 action role-playing game from Bethesda Game Studios, and it begins with a 19-year-old leaving the shelter where they grew up. Vault 101 is a high-tech fallout shelter, built for survivors of a nuclear war fought 200…
Assassin's Creed IIAssassin's Creed II is a 2009 action-adventure game developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. It is the sequel to the 2007 game Assassin's Creed. Its hero is Ezio Auditore da Firenze, a young man in Renaissance Italy. His…
Half-Life 2Half-Life 2 is a 2004 first-person shooter from Valve Corporation, and it cost 40 million US dollars to make. Development lasted five years. By 2011 it had sold 12 million copies worldwide. In November 2024, twenty years after its release,…
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 reached stores on the 10th of November 2009, and within 24 hours it had sold roughly 4.7 million copies in the United States and the United Kingdom. Those sales brought in $310 million. At the time, that made…
Dragon Age: OriginsDragon Age: Origins got its title before it had any dragons. A random name generator produced the name first.
Naughty DogNaughty Dog, the Santa Monica, California studio behind Crash Bandicoot, Jak and Daxter, Uncharted and The Last of Us, began under a different name. In 1984 it was JAM Software, and JAM stood for Jason, Andy and Mike. One of those three…
Telltale GamesTelltale Games was an American studio based in San Rafael, California, and on the 21st of September 2018 it lost almost everything in a single day. Melissa Hutchison, the voice actor behind Clementine in The Walking Dead games, was in the…
Portal (video game)Portal, a 2007 puzzle-platform game from Valve, begins with an artificial intelligence promising a silent woman named Chell a reward of cake. The reward is for surviving a long run of laboratory tests. Players soon learn to distrust that…
Kratos (God of War)Kratos, the scarred, ash-white Spartan at the center of Santa Monica Studio's God of War series, began as a set of rough drawings on restaurant napkins. Charlie Wen had forgotten his sketchbook, so he drew on whatever the table offered.…
MinecraftMinecraft, the 2011 sandbox game from the Swedish company Mojang Studios, tells its only story through a poem of roughly 1,500 words. The End Poem was written by the Irish novelist Julian Gough. It scrolls past in about nine minutes when a…
Halo: Combat EvolvedHalo: Combat Evolved reached shops on the 15th of November 2001, the same day as Microsoft's first game console, the Xbox. Bungie built it, and Microsoft Game Studios published it. A reviewer at Edge magazine called it "the most important…
Final Fantasy XIIn 2025, so many new players joined Final Fantasy XI that the server Asura closed to new characters.
Media MoleculeMedia Molecule wanted to stay under thirty employees. By 2023, the studio had grown to 135 people.
Blizzard EntertainmentBlizzard Entertainment got its name after a trademark threat forced a rename.
Super Mario GalaxySuper Mario Galaxy is a Nintendo platform game in which Mario runs around tiny worlds shaped like ice cream and apples. It appeared on the Wii, and the people building it were not all sure the idea would work. Some feared the technology…