alyaza

Under Vincke, Larian has been pushing hard on generative AI, although the CEO says the technology hasn’t led to big gains in efficiency. He says there won’t be any AI-generated content in Divinity — “everything is human actors; we’re writing everything ourselves” — but the creators often use AI tools to explore...

Last year, I suggested that Xbox could have a big year ahead in 2025, but that it would once again come at a cost, including layoffs, price increases, and other nasty bits of news. And that is more or less what happened this year. We got a lot of games, but that was about the only good news for Xbox in 2025....

I watched (in a second screen sort of way as I tended to some work) the Game Awards last night. I’m not interested in talking about what the ceremony means—it’s an obviously vapid affair—but the powerful sweeping of awards by Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was interesting to see. it also left me feeling a bit… odd....

Postal: Bullet Paradise developers Goonswarm have fiercely denied the accusations that they used generative AI to create elements of the game… and announced that they are closing down....

On Friday, the Hard Fork team published our interview with Roblox CEO David Baszucki. In the days since, it has become the most-discussed interview we’ve done in three years on the show. Listeners who wrote in to us said they were shocked to hear the leader of a platform with 151.5 million monthly users, most of them minors,...

Some days, I think I’d rather gouge my eyes out than read another email about a new roguelike or roguelite. This confuses me, because many of favourite games are roguelikes or roguelites, including Dead Cells, Balatro, FTL: Faster Than Light, and the recent Morsels, a reeking procedural dumpsite that speaks to the...

We recently reported on a strange little toy called the Barcode Battler that came out in 1990, after a time of handheld gaming dominated by the Game Boy and the Sega Game Gear. The Barcode Battler allowed players to scan the bar code on their cereal, cleaning supplies, and so on, and then use that bar code to create a character...

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“Friction is nice. Makes things more meaningful.” So says Lady Love Dies, the protagonist of Kaizen Game Works’ cult indie-hit Paradise Killer, to an inquisitive AI-bot of a vending machine. This quote has coiled into my thinking regarding game design that apes early net art and user interfaces. How faithful should one be...

Original Saints Row design director Chris Stockman is talking to the hellgods at Embracer Group about making a prequel open world game, possibly set in 1977 and containing absolutely no dildo bats. This comes almost two decades after Stockman left Saints Row development studio Volition, and a couple of years after Embracer...

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The Outer Worlds 2 was a slow burn for me, and it was a midgame encounter that finally cemented it in my mind as not just a good RPG, but a really excellent one....

Every day I wake up and say “What a week.” But it’s Friday, which means it’s actually near the end of the week so that’s something I suppose. Being back in school while having a full time job means that lately it’s just been free and pay-what-you-want indies I’ve been playing. Nothing wrong with that of course, but...

Like most sensible people, I long ago wrote off the Postal series as an idea that started terribly, enjoyed some fleeting glory in the same wave of cultural disaffection that brought us Limp Bizkit and the Attitude Era, and has spent the decades since thrashing around in search of relevance. Yet several times over the last few...

Elon Musk thinks Deus Ex is “one of the best games ever”. It’s not exactly a hot take. But his taste in games also displays an impressive lack of self-awareness. Musk sees himself as an outsider and heroic figure taking on the status quo, despite being the world’s richest man, the owner of X, and a sometimes-ally of...

see also their about page which goes into more depth

I’ve noticed a trend—particularly in some recent RPGs—of, well, let’s call it ‘Netflixiness’....

Mycopunk is full of clutch plays, chaotic fights, and good old-fashioned train-ing enemies. It’s probably the most fun I’ve had in a shooter for a long time, primarily because it manages to straddle the line of being difficult but not punishing....

Have you ever looked at the map in a video game and thought: wow, I wish this was just the entire game? Or maybe you’ve found yourself playing a board game and thought: there’s not enough pixels in this? You’re in luck....

[…]there’s another story to be told here — and it’s older and, if possible, even sadder. Microsoft has simply never been any good at running game studios....

The Steam Sale started a few days ago and people have been doing their recommendations. The Adventure Games Podcast has a nice page with their recommendations, Miri Teixeiri has a good recommendation thread on bluesky, but now I want to do one because that’s what blogs are for. As usual, I also think you should consider buying...

from the “Pre-emptively Answered Questions” page...

Riot Games are going to let their top League Of Legends and Valorant esports teams receive sponsorship from gambling companies, in a bid to snaffle up some of the billion dollar unofficial sports betting scene that surrounds both games....

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[…]Baby Steps’ title may sound like an infantalising putdown of its protagonist, but in this era of Dualshock uniformity, it is genuinely wonderful to learn to walk “for the first time”. Especially in the context of an open world game, a genre that prides frictionless exploration like few others. There are glowing...

Video game voice actor union SAG-AFTRA say they’ve reached a “tentative agreement” with a group of games companies that could bring an end to the latest voice actor strike, providing it gets approved by the union’s National Board and members....

Have you ever dreamed of becoming mayor of your own backwater town in the deep recesses of infinite space? Well, the best space exploration game of the decade just released another free expansion that will let you fulfill that particular fantasy to your heart’s content....

It begins as every Japan-set dating sim worth its salt does — with a transfer student....

If you’ve been following my indie game roundups, you’ll know that I’ve been in shock at how many adventure games have been coming out lately. I’ve never been an “adventure games are dead person” but even as someone that’s a bit touchy about that subject, I feel more comfortable lately saying it’s a great time to...

In a first for the video game industry, over 300 quality assurance workers working at Microsoft subsidiary ZeniMax Media — represented by Communications Workers of America Locals 2100, 2108, and 6215 (ZeniMax Workers United-CWA) — announced that they have reached a tentative contract agreement with the company. ZeniMax...

If you are in the mood to play Skyrim or the recent Oblivion remaster, but you don’t want to play a Microsoft-backed game for, oh, any number of reasons, the word on the grapevine is that open world RPG Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon is pretty decent. We don’t have a review as yet, but Khee Hoon Chan called Questline’s...

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The video game industry has made the jump to $80, first with Nintendo and Mario Kart World, then with Microsoft and its price hike announcement that will kick in this holiday season. Could Borderlands 4 follow suit?...

At DICE and GDC this year I heard talk of a trend in game development that sent a chill down my spine: “deprofessionalization.” As A16z marketing partner Ryan K. Rigney defines it, deprofessionalization is a phenomenon driven by the overperformance of older titles (particularly free-to-play live service games), large studios...