The man in the mask wants you to click the tally counter. So begins Strange Scaffold’s short, yet highly distressing new game, Clickolding—a very literal take on clicker games—released on Steam this week. The lore of how video games pitches are conceived is not always exciting. It’s often an obfuscated …
Read More »Fortnite Has a Political Violence Problem
In the hours after former US president Donald Trump was shot in Butler, Pennsylvania, a new Fortnite game appeared: Donald Trump vs Assassin. The game was quickly removed, but several other games that include antisemitism and political violence remained on the gaming platform, according to a new report from the …
Read More »The Real Reason Will Smith Broke Twitch’s Biggest Streaming Record
Every summer, the Spanish Twitch streamer Ibai Llanos hosts a livestreamed boxing tournament called La Velada del Año (The Evening of the Year). In just four years, it has gone from a relatively small event featuring matches between a few influencers from Spain to an enormous global phenomenon featuring over …
Read More »‘Death Occurs in the Dark’: Indie Video Game Devs Are Struggling to Survive
Necrosoft Games was running out of money. At the rate things were going, the video game studio’s director, Brandon Sheffield, surmised that the company would be broke before its current project, a Persona-like RPG called Demonschool, shipped in September. This was in March, and prospects were looking glum. The funding …
Read More »‘SimCity’ Isn’t a Model of Reality. It’s a Libertarian Toy Land
In the mid-1980s, when Will Wright was just getting started as a game designer, he realized that the process of constructing a game—building out the individual levels—was fun in and of itself. Why not share the joy of creation with players? He conceived of a new game in which people …
Read More »How the Developer of 'Among Us' Is Helping Indie Studios Survive Gaming’s Current Tumult
In 2020, two years after its release, Innersloth’s social deduction game, Among Us, was the world’s most downloaded mobile title. It brought in millions of dollars and gave the developer not only the cash necessary to stay afloat but enough to help fellow indie companies get their own games off …
Read More »'The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom' Finally Gives Zelda Her Own Game
After decades of serving as the named inspiration for the beloved franchise The Legend of Zelda, the series’ titular princess is finally getting her own game. The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, releasing September 26 for Nintendo Switch, gives Zelda her very own hero’s journey after Link goes missing. …
Read More »'Metroid Prime 4' Gets a Release Date After Years of Troubled Development
Metroid Prime 4 is alive. During today’s Nintendo Direct event, the company revealed that the highly anticipated sequel, now called Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, is headed to Switch next year. It’s been roughly seven years since Nintendo first announced the game during 2017’s E3 event with developer Bandai Namco attached. …
Read More »'Cities: Skylines II' Found a Solution for High Rents: Get Rid of Landlords
The rent is too damn high, even in video games. For months, players of Colossal Order’s 2023 city-building sim, Cities: Skylines II, have been battling with exorbitant housing costs. Subreddits filled with users frustrated that the cost of living was too high in their burgeoning metropolises and complained there was …
Read More »The Indie Horror Game That Launched a Surprising Queer Hopepunk Revolution
In late 2022, 3D animator Elizabeth Caingcoy completed the unheralded indie horror game Signalis and needed to talk to someone. Immediately. “The game resonated with me so intensely it was like I had to scream from the rooftops,” she says. Over the next few months, she created a number of …
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