I wrote entirely too much about Round1, Konami, the death of arcades, and my capital-F faith for @startmenu.bsky.social:

ChatGPT will give you a hundred words to obfuscate the underlying transaction

I wrote about podcasting’s ongoing pivot to video, and the power of listening without also watching:

2025 is finally over which means we can finally tell you what the best games of the year were

My boss' boss privately DM'd me to yell at me for writing this story back in 2024, doing her best Bari Weiss impression to loudly proclaim that nobody cared and it had nothing to do with gaming.

Big public service for someone to write so thoughtfully about some of 2025's most boring games

Unfortunately I don't think 2025 will get a Cyberpunk 2077 redemption arc

Backlog season is in the air

Not surprising that a political ally installed to push an agenda at CBS News would try to kill a piece critical of the Trump administration. More frustrating was how many ostensibly not brain dead media pundits went along with the obviously absurd justification www.forever-wars.com/watching-bar...

After weeks of my boss yelling at me here is my very belated State of Switch 2 which doubles as a six month later review:

The internet is increasingly just engagement bait. Everything is a bit all of the time, or so indistinguishable from one that the difference doesn't even matter

attention, money, cultural relevance, all different things!

My personal hate issues with Outer Worlds 2 notwithstanding, seeing the Kotaku folks getting to write personal Top 10s again (and correcting the bullshit from last year in the process) warms the heart. Shouts to @shepardcdr.bsky.social and @ethangach.bsky.social 's lists as well.

I am shocked--SHOCKED--that the billionaires don't want to fund actual fact-finding outlets to combat the background radiation of algorithmic slop that's currently rotting all of our brains.

$350 for a New XL so I can play Link Between Worlds

How Trump's culture of corruption allows a bot to make $230,000 betting on video games https://kotaku.com/polymarket-betting-dota2-bot-trump-truth-predict-2000656106

Whole selling point of Starbucks and places like it (Caribou) during college was paying outrageous prices for coffee to pretend you were hanging out in the coffee shop from Friends. Now it's a glorified slurpee station where online orders crowd out any actual semblance of an in person shop

Starbucks is fine* if you're quickly passing through a strange suburb on a long trip, but they've long since made all their stores barren, chairless skinner boxes that urge you to GTFO rather than relax with a friend or book and God forbid build community.

Surprised Pikachu face

for the holidays: I went blog mode on my modern Star Wars pet peeve: people quoting Kylo Ren like he’s right kotaku.com/star-wars-la...

When the discourse is bad

We're two weeks from the Anthem shutdown. If you're a fan playing until the end, one who dropped off, or a developer who worked on the game and want to talk (anonymously) about these final days, the shutdown, or the game broadly for a Kotaku story, hit me up here or at [email protected]! RTs plz.

It's happening.

Missed this while traveling but looks like I made my GameSpot debut yesterday! Glad to have you back, episodic games. www.gamespot.com/articles/gam...

Checking in on one of Rockstar Games' finest

My babies

"..."

GIANT BOMB'S GAME OF THE YEAR STARTS IN EARNST WITH *checks notes* Doctor Hockey, AKA The Dark Echo, AKA Jerf(?) giantbomb.com/articles/jef...

When Congress cuts your funding

Christmas for kids: this rocks Christmas for me: nothing in the dishwasher comes out clean? Why do the water pipes now start ringing whenever I turn on the sink faucet? Oh no the kitchen lights are dimming when I turn on the toaster.

Oh no it me!

The Santanic is a double dry hopped IPA. 4/5 rams heads

I made this (article and image)

i got to rant about LLM chatbots in games + my fears about the dead future that tech oligarchs want for all of us, alongside some very clever + thoughtful folks. thanks so much @samuelhorti.bsky.social for giving me the space & time to articulate all of this

Weird how Microsoft won't provide this statement on the record to anyone else

First time I've ever witnessed frame drops in a movie theater!

My Barnes& Noble did Game informer dirty

Can't stand by the story and also agree to kill it.

I just uploaded @jasonparis.bsky.social 's recording of the segment CBS News pulled from "60 Minutes" to YouTube:

EA hasn't yet commented on the Battlefield 6 AI sticker backlash but I expect it will get removed from the bundle in the coming days.

EA's statement on the tragic loss of Vince Zampella

This is just awful

Gather the family around the fire and settle in for Bullet Points' annual look at our favourite and least favourite games of the year, with @youmeyou.bsky.social @edwardsmithwriter.bsky.social @strida.bsky.social @reidmccarter.bsky.social & special guest, @ethangach.bsky.social tinyurl.com/y5n9mabc

You haven't really experienced Avatar 3 unless you've seen it in 3D IMAX with a Grinch shot

I understand this now

Imagine being sent to censor CBS but also being this bad at it

60 Herbs

Me showing up to Christmas Eve with a cooler full of seafood to make a god awful seven fishes dinner

Very pleased to be able to publish this interview with the legendary composer behind so much of FromSoft's best music (and beyond) in English /and/ Japanese, cos we know there's an audience in both languages for this sort of thing:

Marathon art director Joseph Cross has left Bungie. He said he's very proud of the project and what the team accomplished.