Something I need to make clear here: if you are talking to journalists during a preview, that is on the record. We do not need to establish that we are on the record; by talking to us at a press event, you are on the record. Saying “that was off the record” after taking a poke at a former employee like Bonde did early on in the demo does not mean that I cannot quote that he described 1001 Threads of Mizan as payback for a cancelled Prince of Persia game he worked on at Ubisoft.

Good writeup of what sounds like a deeply odd playtest experience at Gamescom.

For many games, dialogue choices are a core mechanic (sometimes the only core mechanic), and so they are a means to many different narrative ends. That they don't uniformly have the same level of stakes or "consequence" is, for those games, a feature and not a bug.

The first reveal of a game is the most uncomplicated enjoyment you'll ever have of a game, and to finally play that game when it is released is to play it in its worst, most vulnerable just-launched form, thinking of the game it could have been, the game you wanted and needed it to be.

Really good writing from Pat on games, game design, game development, reward loops, and self-improvement.

We are so used to making games for people who don't want to actually play them, that the idea that people could just play the game because they want to play it is considered naive at best.

According to Oyama, players in Japan and Asia tend to be quite vocal about what they perceive as “inconveniences,” while players in Europe and North America are more likely to view these same game elements as “friction” and welcome them.

Interesting finding that I am going to attribute to the prevalence of friction-free mobile gaming being a much bigger factor in the East Asian markets than the Western (American) market.

Did you know one of the first games released by the developers of the STALKER series (GSC Game World) was a Warcraft 2 overhaul where they added aliens and nukes

The Ace Attorney Trilogy received the series' first official Latin American Spanish translation in 2025. It was a challenge, to say the least.

Really fun article about localization of a notoriously complicatedly localized game.

“Often what happens is, once a [guilty] character has a breakdown and starts lashing out at everybody, the character will obviously not do so formally, but rather switch to ‘tú’ in the process,” Di Carlo says.

Devolver said the unpredictable nature of indie publishing is not "readily compatible" with the reality of semi-annual public reporting, which places an emphasis on "predictable, sequential growth."

Good on Devolver for this one.

There is no “good” path in Tyranny which the player can take to extricate themselves from a crooked system. There is no happy ending for anyone in the game and certainly not for the player. If the player’s allies do not turn on and murder them during the game, it is sure to happen not long after the credits roll.

I am a huge fan of Obsidian's 2016 game Tyranny, and I think it's often overlooked. I don't think it's perfect but man when it hits it hits hard. A strange, unsettling little game.

I play a game like Vampire Survivors, and I think… where is the “play”? where is the joy, the creativity, hell, the “series of interesting decisions”? The time between level ups is just the time the reels spend spinning. After the first few, every level up is as automatic as pushing “spin again.”

You know, finally enough I had the exact same feeling as this author when I played Vampire Survivors. I knew I wasn't losing money but after a while it still felt slimy. The game relies on a LOT of stereotypical Dark Patterns, specifically those in the gambling space, to work.

I think the formula is not entirely unsalvageable -- imo, Terratech Legion iterates on it quite well and much more interestingly. But the raw, simple nature of Vampire Survivors just left a bad taste in my mouth.

It's funny and entertaining, sometimes, to play something terrible and weird or not-quite-fun. And there are people in my personal life whom I can talk to about that kind of thing, in face-to-face conversation. That's better than posting about it.

A textbook-like anthology of classic essays and articles about video game narrative design.

Amazing resource for games narrative and storytelling techniques.

Announcing a curated, thematic link page of important essays and articles about video game narrative.

Amazing resource from Bruno. Will link in upcoming post.

When I say that First Light is built for genre, I mean that every moment of the game feels like it is perfectly contoured over the model of the James Bond concept, folded and starched over the bodily form in ways that hundreds of professionals managed to accomplish over the course of several years. When I see the developing city emerge from the desert and the labyrinth of corporate managerial space capped with natural stone, I am prepared for genre to erupt at any moment.

Spectacular piece on First Light, James Bond, genre, and the current moment of IP acquisition and exploitation by Cameron.

The year baseball died and took everything else with it.

A beautiful little VN. Well worth your time. Gay and labor-interested and historical and heartbreaking.

Thus the video game writer is by nature a very political animal, whose job involves not only writing story but advocating for it and adapting it to changing circumstances as the project evolves. Often the role of producers and team leads in video game studios is to shield their teams from having to throw out work because of iteration; narrative really is no different.

Great post from Bruno about game narrative and how it functions. Highly recommend reading if you're interested in any of this.

The ninth console generation will be defined by corporate greed, mismanagement, and anti-consumer practices that could very well alter the course of the games industry itself.

Appreciate this piece a lot.

I truly don't know what the future holds for this industry if we continue down the path of the last five years, but I can tell you it won't be good.

I want to talk about games through crises and mass extinctions.

Outstanding piece from Paolo Pedercini analyzing the history of video games through an explicitly materialist lens of markets and populational trends. Pedercini makes the argument that games must be, ultimately, decommodified if we want the art form to survive, and moreover that that process of decommodification may already be underway. Excellent analysis and writing.

The writing I do for a game is our writing, not my writing; it's the game's writing. Its strengths and weaknesses emerge not from the strengths and weaknesses of my soul, but from the strengths and weaknesses in the relationships I have with the team.

laura putting it excellently of course, since she is a great writer.

In this post, I’ll be discussing some games that pull off tragic storylines, with varying degrees of success, and how they fit into strategies for addressing the wrong ending problem.

I still think this is one of the best pieces on how endings function in games and narrative more broadly.

Bluntly speaking, Bachelard said back in 1958 that games are not just graphics. They are architecture that create an experience. He would have made an excellent level designer.