In 1964, Donald Horne published The Lucky Country. It was a scathing yet insightful and totally accurate deconstruction of Australia, its national identity, and its view of the world. The central thesis of it is that Australia, which has grown to become a regional power and exert global influence despite…
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“505 Games lays off 30% of staff, will focus on sequels and “previously successful” games because that’s what works.” It’s the latest headline in what has been a bloodbath year in the games industry as developers and publishers, large and small, have hemorrhaged staff and slashed their plans. Earlier this…
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Late last week, Sony PlayStation head, Jim Ryan, announced his resignation. Good. Ryan joined the company in 1994, just before the launch of the PlayStation. That’s a 30-year tenure, and there’s no doubt that he was instrumental in the company becoming the entertainment behemoth that it is today. During that…
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Here’s a tale of two very different sides of the games industry for you. On the one hand, I was recently given an hour-long look into The Plucky Squire, an upcoming Devolver Digital-published game about a character that can pop into and out of the “real world” from a book,…
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Having spent the last two weeks packing my home of eight years up, moving, and now staring down the barrel of unpacking it all, I’ve come to a very simple, sharp realisation. Well, two realisations. One is that moving is exhausting and sucks. The other has to do with games…
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There’s just no way that I’m going to be able to review Baldur’s Gate III. It’s too large, and between work, needing to move home, and having one of those irritating 24-hour colds this week, I just haven’t had the time to dedicate to it. However, I have grown much…
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Some news today on Microsoft acquisition journey towards a monopoly: The company announced that it has signed a “binding agreement” to continue to produce Call of Duty games for PlayStation. This comes off the back of much hang-wringing about the PlayStation being locked out of such a critical load of…
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“I’ve been writing a bunch of really awful short stories lately. I mean it. They’re absolutely ghastly… “I’ve been working on this stuff pretty much nonstop for over two years now, adding one unpalatable tale to another, making an entire collection of difficult, dangerous and really horrible fiction. Why can’t…
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Illusion Software is one of the genuine trailblazers in video games. The studio has been around for 22 years, having been founded in 2001, but it’s all over now. The company has announced its imminent closure, and in its shutdown notice, also said that it would also be taking all…
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Valve’s inconsistencies around what is and isn’t too offensive for its platform are at the point where it is so blatant that there are ulterior motives at play that it is incredibly offensive. Here’s a story of two different sets of games to illustrate. The first involves Hitler. Steam is…
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