Graham Smith

I think the trad games press can offer better value through deeper critical engagement, but that's still harder than ever, niche and - pertinent in this instance - unlikely to arrive on launch day of a new game.

This is all true, but I'm also less convinced than ever of the merit of covering small games, particularly in the "here's a quick post about its announcement/release" vein. No one reads the posts and a lot of these games evidently don't need the coverage to find an audience.

Split Fiction (2025).

Ministers plan to allow naming and shaming of offenders completing community sentences Exclusive: critics say the move, part of the sentencing bill for England and Wales, would bring shame upon families of offenders

Feel this is being buried under the digital ID announcement today.

So Starmer is backing ID cards - which I do not like - in order to facilitate this government’s ugly immigration policies - which I also do not like - and in doing so is apparently spiralling down the electoral drain and throwing votes to Farage - whom I do not like?

Fan-fucking-tastic.

If anyone is considering purchasing part of a property via a shared ownership scheme, I strongly suggest you: don't. It's pitched as "affordable" housing but then they will quadruple your service charge and make it so no mortgage lender will touch it, stopping you from selling or staircasing.

These are some of my favourite games and @pentadact.com is one of my favourite people so this is really just a huge opportunity to ruin a lot of things I love

I started my new job last month: I'm now studio manager/producer at Suspicious Developments, the team responsible for Tactical Breach Wizards, Heat Signature and Gunpoint!

We're shortstaffed on RPS and need some rad PC-minded freelancers for urgent review work. Specifically:
- Borderlands 4 (yes I know it's out already)
- Dying Light: The Beast
- Silent Hill f

Standard rate is £200 GBP per review, make yourselves known at james.archer@rockpapershotgun.com

Then Aaron Sorkin revives Studio 60 just to write another episode about it.

A cocker spaniel curled up on a couch, looking soft.

Floof.

There's a later slide that's like, "some players are willing to spend $10,000/month!", the argument being, "so you should try to take that".

In fairness, that's effectively what this particular talk was arguing. 'Mobile games are making more money via F2P, microtransactions, etc. and now console devs are beginning to do it, too.' It's the dawn of the live service game. I think it's also the dawn of a more extractive way of selling games.

The "supply" here is: a person has bought your game, they'd be willing to spend more, but you're not offering them ways of doing so. So you increase "supply" to meet "demand" by offering DLC and microtransaction hats and so on.

It's not incorrect. It's just... exhausting.

These arguments always seemed to contain a moral component, as if you owe it to the work or its creators to wring the money sponge as tightly as possible. If your fans had money to spend on going to PAX, then by rights they should be giving that money to you and only you, as "owner" of the fandom.

A slide from a GDC 2011 presentation explaining that traditional models of selling games "represented lost economic value".

Every video game industry presentation I saw circa 2009-2016 looked like this. "Consumers who were willing to spend more on games weren't able to". Oh no!!!!!

Would people be willing to pay more for Silksong? Sure. Is it worth more? No idea. Is it nice to have an interaction with capitalism that isn't designed by a team of data analysts to take you for the absolute maximum possible? Yeah.

Ah, this was Tony. I was trying to bluff my way to the PC Gamer word count with a lot of words I didn't need and he righteously sliced me to pieces.

I've still got a printout of a bit of feedback you gave me 16 years ago. A breakdown of sentences I had written in a preview of a Men Of War game, so surgically precise it was worth carrying into everything I wrote afterwards.

We had similar experiences with maybe three different people. Sorry you and the fam are going through, Pat.

The BBC is about to shut its Written Archives to the public. Writers and researchers rely on these archives. They belong to the licence payers. Please sign and share this open letter.

A photo of the box for the Casio Loopy, an old video games console. Most of the text is in Japanese except for "My Seal Computer". It has pictures of colourful games and lots of pink hearts.

A photo of the box for the Casio Loopy, an old video games console. It has Japanese writing, "My Seal Computer" in the corner, and lots of coloured hearts along the bottom.

I don't know what this is but it's the apex of technology

We're excited and proud to announce that Digital Foundry is now fully independent, having parted ways amicably with IGN. In this DF Direct Special, we share our thoughts and aspirations for the future of the channel: youtu.be/tl7bIJ2yu4I

Mr. Burns, glowing green, bringing people love in a drug-induced haze as Smithers reaches to stop him.

when the reality is more like

Hot damn, what a nice thing to say! Thanks Katharine. Hopefully we get to work together again some day. Say hi to Scotland for me.

Thanks Evan. Hope everything is well with all of you at PC Gamer.

Thanks Kat! Hit me up if you're ever near Brighton again, we can lament the state of our football teams

Thanks Keza!

Thanks Kieron. I wrote every edition in the "THE SUNDAY PAPERS" Google Doc you're still the owner of, which Jim shared with me in 2013. That thing must really smell bad by now.