alyaza

[…]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....

archive.is link...

[…]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...

archive.is link...

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...

It feels to me like the closer we get to the Nintendo Switch 2’s June launch and the, apparently, $80 games associated with it, the more people are fighting with themselves over what is and isn’t worth it. But at least Sony veteran and previous head of PlayStation Indies Shuhei Yoshida is free from inner turmoil – he...

In 2004, AbleGamers was established as a nonprofit dedicated to elevating disabled voices and improving accessibility in the gaming industry. For approximately 20 years, the organization has presented talks across industry events, raised millions through annual charity events, and acted as a consistent resource for developers...

After over a decade of corporate ownership, Giant Bomb will now be truly independent. We don’t work for a corporation anymore, we work for you (please let us know where to send our PTO requests and expense reports). We’re not serving an algorithm or executives, we’re serving you, the audience. We want to lean into what’s...

I saw someone, somewhere, saying something like this recently: it’s always easier to play the role of doomsayer than the optimist, because far fewer people seem to care if you’re wrong when you’re predicting something will fail....

Atari has put out updated versions of multiple classic consoles in recent years, following up its Atari 2600+ replica console from 2023 with the 7800+ in late 2024, all accompanied by honest-to-god physical cartridge releases containing classic Atari games like Berzerk, Space Duel, and Ninja Golf. However, the retro game maker...

I spent well over a month talking to investors to get the actual data behind what’s happening to the games industry. I was going to say “enjoy!” but it’s, uh, not great.

Big question: Why have alienated young men, especially in America, found their home in the populist political right? Part of the answer is that the populist right takes video games seriously....

I made a website. It’s called One Million Chessboards. It has one million chessboards on it....

For many gamers, this week’s release of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered has provided a good excuse to revisit a well-remembered RPG classic from years past. For others, it’s provided a good excuse to catch up on a well-regarded game that they haven’t gotten around to playing in the nearly two decades since its...

The maker of cryptic block-seeding puzzler Starseed Pilgrim has announced a new game in which you are invited to do the unspeakable and “kill gameplay”. The End Of Gameplay will be an exploratory 2D platformer according to the tags on its Steam page but anyone who has played the work of creator Droqen might predict those...

Ah, well thank heck for that. I thought I’d spent my weekend hunched over a screen in a goblinesque sweat-trance. No! Says Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 voice actor Andy Serkis: I was simply partaking in some vital culture; a veritable Wildean sophisticate. Film industry folks thought games were “not an art form in any...

The legend goes that in the 12th century, King Canute plonked his throne down on the seashore and commanded the tide to go out, thereby empirically demonstrating to all the toadies at court that he was not, in fact, God Almighty. You don’t need to order the ocean to piss off in Endless Legend 2: it’s already in headlong...

Video games’ influence on popular culture has never been more prevalent. Their effect is visible and audible in today’s music, across the world of TV and cinema, and on the catwalk. Even your favourite language-learning and fitness apps feature progression systems and rewards popularised by games. To reflect the medium’s...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3UO1j9TYpg...

How did this all happen? After first touching base with our team and ensuring our interest, the team at Gunzilla Games secured the rights to Game Informer. From the start, the new owners insisted on the idea of Game Informer remaining an independent editorial outlet; they felt just as strongly as our team did that the only path...

I’ve spent years wandering many an inhospitable wasteland, so Atomfall’s pleasant post-apocalypse is pretty inviting. They’ve got tea here. And bakeries. And it’s extremely green—not because of radiation storms, but because it’s all pastures and woods and verdant hills as far as the eye can see. It’d be a nice...

There’s now an industry-wide union for video game workers in the US and Canada. The United Videogame Workers-CWA (UVW-CWA) has a mission to bring together “artists, writers, designers, QA testers, programmers, freelancers and beyond to build worker power irrespective of studio and current job status.”...

What if, while playing a competitive shooter, you could force your opponents to fire their weapon every five seconds, even when they’re trying to camp in a corner? What if you could instantly teleport them back to their spawn when they take damage? What if you could toss aside a weapon to turn it into a mini-turret?...

Former Activision boss Bobby Kotick has filed a defamation suit against G/O Media over a pair of 2024 articles....

Sony is working on a prototype AI-powered version of at least one its PlayStation game characters. An anonymous tipster has shared an internal video from Sony’s PlayStation group with The Verge that demonstrates an AI-powered version of Aloy from Horizon Forbidden West. After we published this story, the video was pulled from...

To celebrate the enduring influence of video games in the arts and in our wider culture, we’re asking players from around the world to help us decide the Most Influential Video Game of All Time....

It’s been a while since I looked at a main series Pokémon game and thought, “That looks nice.” This includes last week’s full reveal of Pokémon Legends Z-A, which going from the first bit of footage seems to feature a lot of hazy-edged grey rooftops, futurist UI, and eerily smooth NPCs, and not a lot of consistent,...

It sounds basic, but it was refreshing to hear a developer talk about their multiplayer shooter in terms of custom lobby rules and scaring the pants off your buds instead of metas and MMR. We’re in something of a golden age of co-op games about getting scared with your friends—Lethal Company and Phasmophobia made proximity...