🤖🌟 Issue 6 of APWOT is live on Kickstarter! 🌟🤖 Featuring a beautiful lenticular cover of Astro Bot marking both our feature interview with the game’s director, Nicolas Doucet, and the 30th anniversary of PlayStation. Get in there! 💫 kck.st/4i1GAHT 💫

Great piece by Alyssa on the poor treatment of talented upcoming developers by the Games Awards

If you were a member of The Game Awards Future Class and can speak to your experience, I want to chat with you for The Guardian! DM me, or email alyssamerc[at]gmail[dot]com. Signal boost please!

This should be reported alongside any coverage of the GTA 6 delay www.theguardian.com/games/2025/n...

Got my copy of On Magazine volume 2 and it’s beautiful!! I wrote about 90s horror games and their insidious influence on modern designers

Hello I wrote about the long symbiotic relationship between The Simpsons and video games. “Keep firing; convert the heathens!” www.theguardian.com/games/2025/n...

Back in The Guardian. Thanks @keefstuart.bsky.social for the opp and edits, and for destroying any semblance of productivity I have for the rest of the month as I get Tranmere Rovers to the Champions League final www.theguardian.com/games/2025/n...

Teen Vogue has been an amazing resource for understanding US politics. We really are in the bad place

Hello, I wrote about Mortal Kombat and moral panic to celebrate the release of the very good Mortal Kombat Legacy Kollection! www.theguardian.com/games/2025/n...

Just sharing the most terrifying image in horror game history

I reviewed The Seance of Blake Manor by @spookydoorway.bsky.social and absolutely adored it. Interesting procedural detective work, folk horror, Irish mythology, colonial subtexts and jump scares!! 👻 www.theguardian.com/games/2025/o...

What is the ratio of your book reading between fiction and non-fiction? I am, like, 85% fiction but I own sooooo much fascinating non-fiction which I fear will only ever be guiltily dipped into…

Superb piece by @jamesbloodworth.bsky.social in this month's @bylinetimes.bsky.social mag: "Britain's Media Has Let Nigel Farage Reshape Political Journalism - Why?" This article alone was worth my annual sub to one of the very few news outlets still doing proper journalism

I wrote earlier about the magic of B-games and @keefstuart.bsky.social continues that perfectly while looking at Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2. "The game is also a reminder that flawed-but-fascinating games were once the backbone of the industry." Go read and remember the OK-weird games

Hi I wrote about the glory of seven-out-of-ten games focusing on Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines 2. I finished with vampire puns and I wish I could say I was sorry but… www.theguardian.com/games/2025/o...

Fascinating that he gives only left-leaning examples. Fascinating that he thinks platforming Reform so heavily is reflecting public interest when they have only a handful of MPs. And despite all this, when Reform gets in, they’ll de-fund the BBC in a heartbeat

To celebrate the NES' birthday, I got @mikedrucker.bsky.social to reminisce: www.theguardian.com/games/2025/o...

I wanted to review Silent Hill f but I didn’t want to rush it - so I didn’t. Consequently, here is my rather late verdict. It’s a masterpiece www.theguardian.com/games/2025/o...

Would anyone currently playing Battlefield 6 like to team up? I want to play in a squad that doesn’t just continually disband like some sort of militarised Pink Floyd reunion. Caveat: I am terrible

once again I need help with some research for my novel! I need to speak to women born between 1979 and 1981. If that is you, and you don’t mind chatting to me about 90s clothes, books, TV, etc, please let me know!

Sometimes as a writer it is important to really test yourself - to take risks, to break out of your comfort zone and do something radically new. With this in mind, I have written a nostalgic article about a Sega game www.theguardian.com/games/2025/o...

I'm working on a Roblox story for a national outlet and keen to talk to parents of older teens (12-16) who play Roblox games: ✅ Which games do they play? ✅ Why play that rather than a console game? ✅ How do they find new Roblox games? Shares appreciated #JournoRequest

Hi I reviewed Battlefield 6. Tldr: multiplayer = great, back to classic Battlefield Campaign = ughhh 🤢 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ www.theguardian.com/games/2025/o...

Have you ever gone on eBay because you’re bored and can’t sleep and then four days later an Orion dual video cassette player turns up?

Doing some book research into the mid-90s internet - this is a glossary from The Internet For Beginners, Usborne, 1997. It has made me feel very nostalgic

Keza just shared an example of this with me and now I’m too angry to eat my lunch

This is excellent work from @eurogamer.bsky.social www.eurogamer.net/eas-takeover...

Don’t worry everyone - whatever happens to EA, Andrew Wilson will be totally ok! www.gamefile.news/p/ea-ceo-and...

The beautiful Mega Drive book I wrote for is being re-released in a luxurious new format 😍😍

Hello, I have recommended some new(ish) cosy games for autumn! Comments are open so please come and add your own faves! www.theguardian.com/games/2025/s...

MAGA have found this neat Gamergate cheatcode whereby you unleash your lunatic internet army to make death threats against staff of the corporation you're trying to bully, thereby allowing its leadership to neatly sidestep the moral implications of caving by claiming it's a staff safety decision.

Fix your brain and heart

Five years ago I wrote an article asking the question: why do some gamers invert their controls. The piece led to scientific research and now a paper has been published! I spoke to the researchers responsible… www.theguardian.com/games/2025/s...

Here’s the silly thing I wrote about getting random lines of video game dialogue stuck in your head. Finally, some action… www.theguardian.com/games/2025/s...

Viewed my 99th ‘BFI 250 Best Films’ movie - Le Mepris! It is very beautiful with an incredibly luscious score and gorgeous cinematography - and it has Fritz Lang in it. Would watch again

James Chapman “Reform featuring in a quarter of all BBC News at Ten bulletins - far more than the Lib Dems, who have 18 times as many MPs, and far too often policy is unscrutinised, according to an authoritative new study. Something’s gone badly wrong at the BBC” www.theguardian.com/media/2025/s...

It only took me 107 hours. Thank you @hideokojimaen.bsky.kojimaproductions.jp!

Hi I’m writing a silly article on strangely memorable lines of video game dialogue - I don’t mean the classic quotes, I mean things YOU’VE remembered, maybe from lesser known games/scenes, and you don’t really know why. Do you have examples?!

I wrote a piece for the Guardian games newsletter this week on my PhD research into preserving play experiences, and why I think that the most archaeological games are those that that actually make you *think* like one 🏺 www.theguardian.com/games/2025/s...

Please please go and see Jaws while it’s on in the cinema. Alright, it’s my fave ever film so I am biased but it’s an amazing experience

Every CEO in the video game industry for the last 18 months: vm.tiktok.com/ZNdVW7Jqa/

The Play for Peace: Games for Palestine charity bundle is now live! Nearly 400 games from creators all around the world, with proceeds going directly to Gaza relief efforts. Bundle link: itch.io/b/2979/play-... We made a launch trailer to celebrate this moment👇 Please RT.

Hi I wrote about Little Problems by Posh Cat Studio because I am here for a detective game where the biggest mysteries include “who broke my favourite mug?” and “where is my essay?” www.theguardian.com/games/2025/s...

Look ma! I'm in THE FREAKING GUARDIAN! It's exciting to see people getting the weird Legally Blonde-inspired, anti-capitalist puzzle (but so much more) game we're making! Thanks so much for the thoughtful write up, @keefstuart.bsky.social!

Hi I spoke to @oneofmoo.bsky.social about Mythmatch, an intriguing puzzle game combining RPG and match-three elements with a slyly anti-techbro narrative www.theguardian.com/games/2025/s...

Hi I wrote about some games you should be playing this autumn while you’re not kicking leaves in the park or drinking pumpkin spice latte or wistfully considering the temporality of all things

For an unlikely yet incredible representation of this subject in the form of queer botanical horror fiction, read Eat The Ones You Love by @griffski.bsky.social it is *amazing*

Well, the greatest GamesCom 2025 moment has already happened - Limited Run games has announced He-Man and the Masters of the Universe: Dragon Pearl of Destruction a 2D brawler based on the classic cartoon. It better have the original music and Adam ➡️ He-Man transformation sequence

Still trying to come to terms with this sentence from the opening para of the Economist’s recent piece on the value of games to the UK economy

My favourite moment in Death Stranding 2 [🚨SPOILER ALERT FOR NERDS🚨] is when you think you’ve completed building the road network and then you visit this dude who tells you that he’s upgraded the tech and you can now put cool transparent roofs over all your highways. Kojima, you sly old fox! 👍