New from me: "Being engaged in videogames over the last decade has meant watching a cohort of publisher executives inherit an industry of products, professionals, and consumers they seem to actively resent for failing to produce instant, infinite profits."

Does anyone know how to drive this thing?

It's increasingly looking like nobody remembers how videogames work—or cares to.

pcgamer.com

we laid off the people who develop the games, we laid off the journalists who cover the games, everyone is freelance and there’s no freelance budget. It’s probably fine though

also: I don't think WoW is safe, either. Probably not today, not tomorrow - but give it five years and I am absolutely certain some rotating CEO in the revolving door of Xbox might make further cuts to Blizzard that ruin the whole thing, if they haven't already

Confirmed Games Enjoyer@hjrwithpen.bsky.social · 4w ago

it's so -wasteful-, and MMOs are such a dying breed already. i feel the fuckin Lorax sadly watching as a buncha sneeds get made out of the hard work of thousands

you'll hear about it in my weekend column, but i'm still legitimately fuming about how Zenimax Online Studios has been treated by Microsoft/Xbox writ large these past couple of years, particularly as a lover of the MMO genre

is it good that every single games studio i still own is having all its staff leak comments like "we cant possibly make games under these conditions" in ten thousand articles

asha sharma going "we want 1 billion players a day" a nice reminder that these execs are fundamentally incapable of understanding that their customers do not have infinite money or even just that time is finite. they just think you haven't been fed the right marketing yet to get you on board

I cannot emphasise how little saying you want 1 billion daily players makes sense. Absolute peak corporate waffle. The most empty, most meaningless figure you could spit out to try and justify the latest round of reaping. www.pcgamer.com/gaming-indus...

Xbox's CEO wants its games to cater to 'more than a billion people each day', or 24 times more than the peak population of Steam, which is delusional

Alternate title: Does Xbox CEO Asha Sharma know what a billion is?

pcgamer.com

There's legitimately nothing that'll disenchant you of the notion that mega-tech CEOs know what they're doing faster than becoming a journalist writing about these bozos. It's kayfabe all the way up, sacrifices at the altar of growth. And deep injustice that people's hard work has to suffer for it

ME, MR. XBOX: okay. it demanded a terrible financial and institutional cost, but i've successfully bought out all the people who make videogames OBSEQUIOUS UNDERLING: excellent. what's the plan ME: huh UNDERLING: the plan for the videogames ME: ????

The degree to which the games industry eats its own is insane. Imagine if winning an oscar got your production company shuttered. Imagine if winning a national book award got your future book deals canceled. This is how the video games business behaves!

Didn’t consider myself an MMO player for the first few decades of my life but, adjacently through other genres, I find myself becoming one. So I find interviews like this one increasingly fascinating reading. www.pcgamer.com/games/mmo/ul...

Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies vet tells me the theme park 'assembly line' MMO just isn't viable anymore, especially as dev costs spike: 'We hit the wall'

"The MMO audience feels underserved and overmonetized, that's how they feel about what's going on."

pcgamer.com

Yeah, no. It's neither seductive nor valuable. I can put sentences together because I've been doing so my entire life.

Jonathan Bernstein@jonbern.bsky.social · 2mo ago

this is not true, and this guy doesn't speak for me! nymag.com/intelligence...

today in things they let me do at work www.pcgamer.com/gaming-indus...

that Google search overhaul feels like this

New yap blog on Patreon (patreon.com/killsixbilli...) about punching a dragon but I want to highlight this section in particular.

uhhhhh I can think of another reason why people would be having to do more search queries than they used to

whenever someone's like 'i have a fulltime job and i play an instrument and i exercise regularly and have endless energy to attend social events' mate what cheat code are you using??? no rly which issue of Nintendo magazine was it in. i'm serious just tell me i wont tell anyone

the teen experience Mixtape imagines isn't a universal one. for example, there's nobody in the game who spends 600 hours in Alterac Valley

I liked Mixtape a whole lot - but when it comes to its existence as a videogame, it felt out of step with its otherwise gorgeous direction. www.pcgamer.com/games/advent...

Mixtape review

Perfect playlist, but just a decent videogame.

pcgamer.com

Just a heads up: I don't have an X account. @HJRwithpen on X isn't me and is, in fact, some weirdo impersonating me. If you could report 'em that'd be appreciated. x.com/HJRwithpen

Vulture scumbags may have reduced it to rubble but The Escapist is where I got my start and met some of the best people I've ever known online. I'll always be grateful for that.

I wish nothing but the most consequences of actions to everyone involved in this decision. The Escapist was obviously on the ropes for a while given the walkout, but yikes. This isn't gonna go well.

Mike Straw | Insider-Gaming.com@mikestrawmedia.com · 6mo ago

NEW: Clickout Media, Owner Of The Escapist, Pivots To AI, Holds Mass Layoffs insider-gaming.com/clickout-med...

also absolutely no hate to this person, the tweet's really funny, but: supremely, incredibly bold of you to assume I already haven't.

Confirmed Games Enjoyer@hjrwithpen.bsky.social · 6mo ago

"Deadlock has an ocean-deep skill ceiling and incredible complexity, true. But it's also an infinitesimal slice of a much more interesting world I wish we could see more of." www.pcgamer.com/games/moba/i...

"Deadlock has an ocean-deep skill ceiling and incredible complexity, true. But it's also an infinitesimal slice of a much more interesting world I wish we could see more of." www.pcgamer.com/games/moba/i...

I'm sad Deadlock is 'just' a MOBA—not because I don't like them, but because I'm in love with Valve's lore and characters enough to want any other game instead

An RPG, an MMO, an FPS—I'll take anything, man.

pcgamer.com

I feel like we need to be asking the question: "God, doesn't this suck?" about these desperate attempts to make AI-gen goddamn -anything- more often. www.pcgamer.com/software/ai/...

sorry is there games journalism discourse happening, I was busy clumsily photoshopping a sword into the pope's hand on company time for a @joshuawolens.bsky.social story

Unfortunately, long headlines are excellent opportunities to make Bits, something that is directly correlated to how sexy I am.

my man

kevin@kevinstarwheel.bsky.social · 6mo ago

"let people enjoy things"

I don't want a Metacritic-style rating, if you're going to make fun of me I expect a fully-statted out attributes wheel. Y'know, the ones where the different stats create a polygon.