Minecraft
Players are dropped into a procedurally generated world made of cubic blocks and can mine resources, craft tools, build structures of arbitrary complexity, and survive against monsters that emerge at night — all without objectives or instructions. The game runs on any hardware from toasters to supercomputers. A creative mode allows unlimited building without survival constraints, making it effectively a digital LEGO set of infinite scale.
Minecraft is the best-selling game of all time with over 300 million copies sold, and its influence on a generation of players who grew up as its primary audience is comparable to Lego's influence on previous generations. It validated the indie game model and the early-access business strategy, having been sold publicly while still in alpha for years before its official release. Its use in education, architecture, and civic planning made it the first game taken seriously as a creative tool.
Minecraft's rise coincided with the emergence of YouTube gaming culture — LetsPlays and building showcases were among the most-watched content on YouTube in 2012-2015. This synergy between sandbox creativity and shareable video content was entirely new, creating a media ecosystem where the game and its audience co-generated culture.
Ubiquitous broadband internet shifted the medium from solo play to massive persistent social worlds, creating entirely new genres and business models. The MMORPG, the competitive shooter ladder, and eventually the live-service model all emerged from this transformation of games into always-online social spaces.
The iPhone brought gaming to billions of people who had never owned a dedicated gaming device, expanding the industry's addressable market by an order of magnitude. Free-to-play monetization models, originally developed for mobile, eventually transformed the economics of PC and console gaming as well.