What 4 Games Are Still Holding Everyone’s Attention?

Gaming is a huge industry—the blockbuster releases of franchise staples are media events that can be seen in public spaces, with adverts on billboards or buses, online and on TV. This is just the biggest titles, too. Smaller games have incredibly passionate audiences, and games that you might never even hear about make incredible amounts of money through their live service nature or microtransactions that are implemented into the gaming loop.

Throughout all of these new releases and money-makers, which games are people still playing? It’s not as simple as audiences simply moving onto new releases—games can forge connections with players that make them treasured classics that still keep them alive years later.

Here are four games that are successful enough to still be holding people’s attention.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

The sheer fame of Skyrim as a game and the cultural impact that it’s had as a whole can lead people to forget that it actually is part of a greater series at all. The prior entry in the series, Oblivion, is also popular and still attracts a lot of attention due to its presence in meme culture, but Skyrim is different. Skyrim has been technically re-released 17 times, though some of these variations are minor, and a large part of that is because people keep buying it. The modding culture around it might help in some communities, but many players simply seem to be unable to get enough of spending time in its world.

Casino Games

With the onset of online casinos, the dusty old fruit machine in the corner of a pub or bar can feel irrelevant, but that’s only because there’s a newer, more convenient way to play. Outlets such as JackpotCityCasino.com have brought a huge variety of casino games more in line with other video games: accessed the same way as mobile games, offering the same visual language and flavor, even coming in themes based on your own interests, including titles like The Dark Knight or WWE Legends or Vinnie Jones Roulette. This variety and having a secure and convenient way to pay keeps players coming back to these kinds of games.

Dark Souls

To hold everyone’s attention, do people still need to be actively playing the game? People are still very much playing the original Dark Souls, with its tight and revolutionary-level design and genre-defining world-building. However, what arguably keeps Dark Souls so relevant in the modern discussion around gaming is how it’s defined the medium going forward. Within developer FromSoftware’s catalog, Bloodborne, Sekiro, and Elden Ring have taken the formula to continued acclaim. Outside of that, though, “Souls” is now a whole genre that sees new entries every year.

Fallout: New Vegas

Obsidian’s beloved role-playing game took the original West Coast storyline of Fallouts 1 and 2 and offered both a continuation and a potential conclusion. This took everything that people loved about the original titles (the world-building and the ability to customize your own role within that role) and combined it with the modernized mode of play established by Bethesda’s Fallout 3. The result is an entry in the franchise that is often regarded as a high point, continuing to exist both in terms of active engagement and discussion.