There is precious little discussion of games themselves now. All conversation had been diluted to the surroundings of the thing instead of the thing itself.

What frustrates me is that, more than even movies or music, the discussion around games is just a proxy for the culture war.

Does anyone *actually* care about Marathon's player count? Or is it an artificial conversation gassed up by unimaginable losers looking to score a "win" in some social battle

Between Marathon and Pragmata the gaming trend of the year is shaping up to be Amazing Games With The Worst Fucking Discourse You Have Ever Seen.

Have another one of these coming up btw

I am semi-planning to go to Anthrocon this year. I haven't bought tickets yet, but my schedule would work out much now. Could it finally be... bpacc real....

It's my birthday! 🥰

I'm 28 now. Old ass man.

I can't blame Jax TADC too much because if i fumbled a cute frog girl with a big ass and half-lidded eyes I'd want to kill myself too

It does not bode well for your game when the director is an Elon dickrider who seems less interested in discussing how LoTF2 is going to fix the problems of the first and more interested in dogwhistling his hatred of trans people and boasting about how "sexy" the women in his game are.

The Lords of the Fallen director going off the deep end sucks because the 2023 game was halfway there to being something special and now the series will just... never get there.

Meanwhile, every actual book/movie/etc. that's used Gen AI is very obviously weaker for it. Arc Raiders would be better without the AI voices, Late Night With the Devil would've been better without the AI art inserts, Shy Girl would've been better if the writer had just wrote the prose herself.

Something very telling about the AI hype bubble is how, if you ask a techbro what AI books/movies/games they've enjoyed, they go mum, or at best stammer something about "giving it a few years..."

If this tech was *that good*, they'd be able to name at least one great piece made with it.

Update: I am honestly stunned at how the Cryo Archive exists in a AAA game in 2026. Literally how do you get away with making something this uncompromising and brutal. I love it and I honestly hope enough other sickos enjoy it enough to make it a success.

At this point I half expect the Cryo Archive to straight up delete your C drive if you fail to exfil.

Outpost is potentially one of the greatest multi-player maps OAT. It is also a Fear and Hunger-level killbox that will mince most new players so bad I would not blame them for dropping the game then and there.

I'm shocked at how much I enjoy Marathon, but if anyone involved were expecting it to be a smash hit they were smoking a massive amount of crack.

This is one of the most player-hostile AAA games I've ever played, and I mean that as a compliment.

Does she wear anything under her robes?
Answer says no

Wizard Naomi
OC

#nsfw #OC

My nuclear take is that Glitch's other shows (Murder Drones and later Gaslight District specifically) accidentally primed people to see the series through that lens. Now that Digital Circus has become like, an actual piece of art with things to say instead, people are getting oneshot.

TADC is what happens when a show goes over the head of its audience. Gooseworx wrote a show about the existential agony of being trapped in a stagnant, unhappy life and if it is possible to come to terms with such a thing, only for the fanbase to end up obsessed with lore and shipping instead.

The central issue, more than anything else, is that the game was just kinda bad. Deadlock faced a similar level of hate when it was first leaked, but won people over by being an amazing game. Highguard had terrible marketing and had very little going for it...

Honestly, I think blaming the negativity for the game's failure puts the cart before the horse. The only reason anyone even knew Highguard existed is because of the marketing debacle. If it'd shadow dropped during TGA like was originally planned, it would've bombed even harder.

It must suck to have your game turned into a joke, but that didn't come out of nowhere. You took the prime spot at the biggest gaming event of the year and delivered something so radically out of step with what people wanted it became a meme.

"Innovation is on life support" I say as I release a game almost exclusively notable for how hard it chases current trends.

I read this retrospective on Highguard's failure by one of the devs, and as much as this is a dick move to say, these guys were in a huge bubble because how the fuck was this anybody's reaction to the game. I'm not even saying this to hate - I find the situation more sad than anything. But... how???

Microsoft slamming Copilot into Notepad and TVs and then forcing every member of its workforce to start using it daily is the kind of desperation you usually only see from a guy in his twenties when his side chick isn't putting out.

Honestly, the most damning criticism of AI is that they have to push it this hard to make people use it.

If the tech was actually *so* useful, people would be integrating into their work naturally. Not because a company spent trillions convincing them that it's the only path to success.

I've been getting back into Deadlock lately and every round of this game feels like taking a hit of cocaine.

I read House of Leaves for the first time a few months ago and I was surprised at how divorced the actual book is from discussions about it online. The Navidson Record is only around a third of the story, even if it's the most attention-grabbing aspect of it.

"Huh I wonder why I've felt depressed lately."

The ever-helpful midwest weather pattern:

(glances at the hollow knight fandom the past twelve hours) Look at what you did EA. You went and JINXED IT. NO titjobs for you for 48 hours.

Anyway, I was gonna make this a bigger thing but here are my favorite games of 2025 aside from Silksong and E33, which are both obviously fantastic but I wanted to give some other titles the spotlight.

- The Hundred Line
- Keeper
- South of Midnight
- DOOM: The Dark Ages
- Dispatch