A beautiful collage of IGNCG members (and our lovely rep) in a Zoom meeting, prepping to negotiate a fair contract for their coworkers.

It's been a ✨while✨ since we've posted, huh?

That's because our Bargaining team has been DEEP in negotiations over our first contract for over a year now.

But we're finally getting towards the end, and we're hopeful that we can come to a fair agreement!

I mean how could you say no to these faces?

I finally finished Clair Obscur this week after bouncing off it a bit last year and I’m glad I went back.

Super neat game, extremely cool ending, but also fairly surprised it swept award season just as hard as it did. In the running for sure, but didn’t strike me as “of course this won everything.”

Yeah I was not actually mad, it was just so funny.

For those who don’t know the context it is very funny. I took this controller to game for work and Tom asked where I got it and I said I took it from his desk and then he had me flip it over to see the label “Tom’s do not take.”

Thus the second label was added.

Surely the exact thing I used!

Cleaning out some boxes, found my PS4 controller from the old IGN SF office with a message to @gameonysus.bsky.social…

Magic: The Gathering Commander Deck Reveal - What’s Inside Prismari Artistry From Secrets of Strixhaven? A first look at a bunch of new Commander cards from Magic's next set.

My latest Magic reveal is the entire Prismari Artistry Commander precon! As well as a little chat with @imdanielholt.bsky.social about the design of the deck and some of its new cards.

www.ign.com/articles/mag...

Not that logic matters here, but since we did a temp score to start, we literally weren’t even included in stuff like the Metacritic average when it caused the stock to drop.

Crimson Desert Review This extremely ambitious open-world adventure swings wildly from incredibly cool to gobsmackingly infuriating.

My final review of Crimson Desert is now live (video version coming Monday). After finally reaching credits, my thoughts from my in-progress review remain largely the same!

Read my full thoughts, via @ign.com:

www.ign.com/articles/cri...

Crimson Desert Review More than 110 hours in, this ambitious RPG has swung wildly from incredibly cool to gobsmackingly infuriating.

My review in progress of Crimson Desert is now live! A super ambitious game that tries a ton of stuff, but misses in some pretty key areas, making it equal parts fun and infuriating.

Check it out, via @ign.com:

www.ign.com/articles/cri...

Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly Remake Review - IGN It's not a flawless photograph, but this remake is memorable, terrifying, and artistically stunning.

I wrote 3,500 words on Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly Remake for @ign.com, in which I try to unpack how a remake can both be a better game than the original and diminish itself as a piece of art at the same time.

Thank you to @tomrmarks.bsky.social for putting up with me on this one.

Reanimal Review - IGN The creator of Little Nightmares returns with more of the dark puzzle platforming it has honed over the last decade.

I reviewed Reanimal for @ign.com and tried to grapple with its themes and narrative structure without giving too much away. Very proud of this one.

Excited for this video to spike the market price of thermal printers and Raspberry Pi boards.

Mewgenics has sold over 150,000 copies in the first 6 hours, and the developer has said, "This is beating expectations by quite a lot." https://bit.ly/4tB6ozV

Very glad Dan was able to come back to review Mewgenics as a freelancer, and loved that we were able to chat about it at the end of the video review!

Mewgenics Review - IGN Mewgenics is a fantastic tactical RPG that's good for more than a hundred hours of roguelike runs. Just when you think you have it figured out it'll throw something completely unexpected and hilarious...

I told you I’d be back! Over the past month I’ve put more than 150 hours into Mewgenics and loved just about every minute of it. It really is a fantastic tactical RPG roguelike - and the soundtrack is exceptional, too. www.ign.com/articles/mew...

I cut addictive out of so many reviews. Unless you are talking about predatory mechanics that are literally designed to manipulate people in habit-forming ways, do not use it as "game is too fun!"

And now to start implementing the plans I laid out when @danstapleton.bsky.social left last year: bsky.app/profile/tomr...

Excited to say I've been promoted to Associate Reviews Director at IGN! I'm now formally running the game reviews show from top to bottom.

As someone who grew up wanting to review games while reading stuff like IGN, Nintendo Power, and Game Informer, it's quite a surreal place to have found myself!

My first video game review over on IGN!

Leaving the battlefield triggers? Don't be ridiculous, I would never include such a complicated interaction in the dinosaur-food-counter multiplication archetype of my Cube.

(Thank you again!)

Wait one more follow-up about this clearly very important topic!

Typically if a creature with counters on it dies, those counters would stop being Food and go away, right? But if they were also dinos, would they stay 7/7 creatures even after their host died despite no longer being Food or counters?

It is a weird cube.

I appreciate you humoring me!

Thanks for the response!

Rumbling dinosaur tummies aside, if this situation were to be complicated even further by having Ojer Taq out, does that mean something like Arcbound Prototype would enter as a 6/6 because the two +1/+1 counters it would usually get are both creatures and tokens?

The Magic: The Gathering card Icing Manipulator: Icing Manipulator {1}{G} Creature — Human Employee Each +1/+1 counter on a creature you control is also a Food token. (It’s an artifact with “{2}, {T}, Sacrifice this token: You gain 3 life.”) {3}{G}, {T}: Roll two six-sided dice. For each odd result, put a +1/+1 counter on a creature of your choice. Activate only as a sorcery.

The Magic: The Gathering card Displaced Dinosaurs: Displaced Dinosaurs {5}{G}{G} Creature — Dinosaur As a historic permanent you control enters, it becomes a 7/7 Dinosaur creature in addition to its other types. (Artifacts, legendaries, and Sagas are historic.)

@maro254.bsky.social Came across a silly Un question while building a Cube:

With Icing Manipulator, do +1/+1 counters enter AS Food, or are they not Food until they are on your creature? More specifically, would Displaced Dinosaurs make them 7/7s?

CC: @gavinverhey.bsky.social @wotcmatt.bsky.social

I had the great honor of doing this year’s IGN Awards art direction and I’m super happy with how they turned out! I went for a Y2K sci-fi aesthetic with holographic stickers and all. More to come throughout the week!

It is a pet deck taken to an unjustifiable extreme. I love it dearly.

"Dear Gonti" was one of the inspirations that got me to actually pull the trigger on building it!

It’s also a small statement on treating Magic cards like game pieces instead of stocks - when Mox Opal got unbanned, I decided to fully commit to the bit and run Reserved List cards too.

I’ve since had Dan Frazier sign some of the rocks, but even then Transmute Artifact feels like a big step up 😬