Most of us play games, they’re a great way to have fun, unwind, and spend time with our friends. There are also many other benefits that you can get from gaming too, including the fact that playing some titles can help to improve your cognitive abilities, your hand-eye coordination, and even your reaction times.
Like movies, some games become smash hits that are enjoyed by millions of people and generate billions in revenue for their developers. Most of these are meticulously planned with huge teams of coders, designers, and animators and, when complete, are promoted using a huge marketing budget.
However, not all games are created this way. Of course, all developers want their titles to be successful, but some achieve it entirely by accident. Here are some of the greatest examples.
Grand Theft Auto
Grand Theft Auto is one of the most successful video game franchises of all time. The most recent release, Grand Theft Auto V first went on sale back in late 2013 and has now been released on three different generations of console. Other titles in the series have even featured famous names like the late Ray Liotta and Samuel L. Jackson.
But things didn’t start this way. The first two GTA titles were in the 1990s for the original PlayStation and PC. Due to technical limitations of hardware at the time, the developers, DMA Design, had to create a 2D top-down perspective that was quite limiting.
Despite this, Grand Theft Auto and GTA 2 were hugely successful, thanks to the pioneering open-world format and wide range of exciting features.
However, this wasn’t the game that the developers originally set out to create. Instead, they had designed a title called “Race’n’Chase” that was a more traditional cops and robbers style format.
During testing, a bug was discovered that made the police cars overly aggressive, but testers found this more fun than when the game ran properly. This encouraged DMA Design to change its plans and led to the creation of Grand Theft Auto.
Roulette
Roulette is one of the most popular casino games in the world. No matter where you want to play, be it online or in a land-based casino, you will almost certainly find at least one roulette variant.
Though it is more likely you’ll find several different options to choose from as casinos often create multiple variants to cater for every type of player. Popular options include American and High Roller Roulette which have slightly different rules and limits when compared to the standard European version.
However, the creation of roulette was a complete accident. In the 17th century, a French inventor by the name of Blaise Pascal was trying to invent a perpetual motion machine. Of course, as we know today, perpetual motion is not possible, but Pascal’s quest did lead to the creation of roulette.
In the years that followed, roulette evolved into the game we know today with slightly different rules forming. However, with every change, Pascal’s original wheel concept remained, more or less, the same.
Counter-Strike
Counter-Strike is another successful video game franchise. Today, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is one of the most popular video games and esports. It is around a decade old but continues to be a big hit among fans.
However, it was created due to a problem with another game, Half-Life.
Half-Life was first released in 1998 at around the time that video games were starting to get online multiplayer modes. However, unlike some other titles of the time, Half-Life’s online gameplay was distinctively boring.
Wanting more from their game, two players, Minh Le and Jess Cliffe, created a mod that spiced it up. This mod was named Counter-Strike and proved incredibly popular among the Half-Life community.
It was so successful that Valve decided to buy the rights to Counter-Strike to build on the work of Le and Cliffe. This has resulted in there being a total of six main games and four spin-offs that have featured the name of the mod for the original Half-Life title.
