Polygon has spent the last few months of 2019 taking stock of the past 10 years in video games, movies, comics, and more. In addition to highlighting the cream of the crop in those mediums, we’re examining how pop culture and the ways in which we experience it have changed since 2010.

The second decade of the 21st century was marked by seismic shifts in media and entertainment — loot boxes, games as a service, esports, livestreaming, virtual reality, smartphones, streaming services, “binge” watching, cloud computing, corporate consolidation, and a blockbuster takeover of the box office. It’s tempting to dismiss those items as big-picture developments rather than changes that affect us personally. But as we increasingly rely on pop culture as the lens through which we process the world around us — and, as ever, a mirror that reflects that world back at us — it’s important to take a breath every so often to ponder how we got here and what it all means.

Join us as we delve into the decade that was, from 2010 through 2019. —Samit Sarkar, front page editor