Another T&F banger

We’re excited to announce Scholar’s Codex – a new anthology where academia explores the games of FromSoftware.

Beautifully produced as a premium hardcover and illustrated by acclaimed artist @nicodelort.bsky.social.

#eldenring #darksouls #bloodborne 💙📚

www.tuneandfairweather.com/products/sch...

Photo showing the Tune & Fairweather book Lore Bound: Elden Ring Explained by VaatiVidya. #eldenring #fromsoftware #booksky 💙📚 @vaatividya.com @dcaier-art.bsky.social @devlinart.bsky.social @zebes.bsky.social

We are excited to announce Lore Bound: Elden Ring Explained, @vaatividya.com's full lore analysis of Elden Ring.

Encompassing Elden Ring, Nightreign and DLCs, this work is the essential reference for any lore aficionado.

www.tuneandfairweather.com/collections/...

so sold on this game already, we WILL be pre-ordering

Obsessed with this Norwegian game Northern Journey. Very strange Half-Life style 1st person adventure. Someone in the Steam reviews said “it’s like a Viking took shrooms and suddenly understood how to make an N64 game.”

YouTubers Can't Save All the Indie Games “The systems we have available just aren't built for this kind of volume.”

www.pushtotalk.gg/p/youtubers-...

one of those rare instances where the answer to the question in the headline is "yes, definitely"

Such a good point. It’s the other side of live service fatigue

Come on over, dude. We’ll rally to smash that “Recommend” button

Garrett Martin is too humble to say this, but modern games journalism wouldn't exist without him.

For *many* years, he has been the great spotter and supporter of talent. He used Paste as an incubator for an entire generation of writers, critics, and reporters.

Read Endless Mode!

my first story for Endless Mode is up TODAY actually

Can't wait to see what you do next!

Thanks for the link! ❤️

How Much Game Can You Fit in 2.7 Inches? Conversations with artists pushing the limits of the world's tiniest games console

"Slowly, gradually, the Playdate has evolved into something more like a large-scale, collaborative, physical version of UFO 50. It’s an alternate history Game Boy with dozens upon dozens of genuinely great games." 👍

pushtotalk.gg/p/how-much-game-can-you-fit-in-27-inches

to be fair their pay scale goes hard

Valve's 30% Platform Tax is Bad for Small Developers It's time to follow Epic's lead by offering 0% fees on each dev's first $1 million.

New op-ed: It's time for Valve to follow Epic's lead by offering 0% fees on each dev's first $1 million.

Steam is an amazing force for good in games. But it is also incredibly dominant, and Valve has the power to make business more fair for small game developers.

www.pushtotalk.gg/p/valves-30-...

Idk if Nintendo's discovery features are bad on purpose but... the incentives are misaligned.

Over half of games sold on Switch are 1st party... where Nintendo gets 100% revenue vs. the usual 30% take.

Their POV: If they promote other games, they risk selling fewer copies of their own titles.

I have no idea why the Kepler Interactive people are playing so coy about the budget for Expedition 33, but this quote makes me more likely to believe the rumor I heard, which was that it was between $5m–$10m.

If true, that'd be incredible, and Kepler/Sandfall ought to share more on their process.

My guy ✌️

blogging's back - just post the newsletter signup link and we're in

I'm definitely pushing my luck going back to the well again lol

Brendan's pov is awesome tho

If you're worried about silly reductionist framing in negative/positive terms, you'll like the piece. We hate that too.

Gaming’s Great Downsizing and the Garage-Band Game Economy Brendan Keogh explains the post-2008 collapse of the Australian games industry and how it might prefigure changes coming for the rest of the world

If you’re not burned out on “deprofessionalization” discourse yet @pushtotalk.gg has a great chat with @brkeogh.bsky.social up that digs into more nuance.

Some of that nuance is *yeah this whole deprofessionalization thing would suck a lot less if we had universal health care and basic income!!!!!*

liked this @pushtotalk.gg article with @brkeogh.bsky.social on game industry economies: www.pushtotalk.gg/p/gamings-gr... … so if small game studios are like bands, are game bundles like our version of support acts? are all these game fests like touring?

Gaming’s Great Downsizing and the Garage-Band Game Economy Brendan Keogh explains the post-2008 collapse of the Australian games industry and how it might prefigure changes coming for the rest of the world

If you liked or hated my takes on ‘deprofessionalisation’, I went into a lot more detail in this great chat with @pushtotalk.gg for his newsletter.

Connected what’s going on now to what I observed in the Australian industry in the 2010s

www.pushtotalk.gg/p/gamings-gr...

super interesting thread

Yep. This is maybe one of the biggest long term trends in games. Impossible to refine down the whole picture—either the negative effects or positive possibilities—though there are going to be a million stories connected to it.

Thanks for the conversation and including me in your piece 🙏

New from me—I had a great time at PAX East last week and met truly incredible developers. I was also pulling my hair out at how many small teams outnumbered proper-sized studios.

It's good that indies can punch above their weight. It's bad that it's replacing stable work in games!

the 3D transition to the fight scene was insane

Hard to believe—really sorry to hear this Matt