This is getting published a little later than intended but it's here now: a short, sharp write-up on the political resonance of FFT: The Ivalice Chronicles in the year of No Kings protests — one turn-based battle after another ✊ www.theguardian.com/games/2026/j...

accidentally introduced a bug to the game where all the text got replaced with "you"

I'm going on a BOOK TOUR next month with Super Nintendo! I'm launching it in Glasgow on Feb 12, then London, Brighton Edinburgh, St Andrews and Manchester. Tickets for everywhere are through this link: linktr.ee/super_nintendo

It is a ridiculously big year for Nintendo anniversaries. Zelda and Metroid are turning 40, Pokémon is 30, the Nintendo 64 is 30, the Gamecube will be 25 (alongside Luigi's Mansion and Pikmin), and the Wii will be 20. Even Pokémon Go is 10. A good time to buy my book 👀 linktr.ee/super_nintendo

remember when you could go online and search for "good pillow" and you'd get like blog posts reviewing and comparing pillows but now you just get an Amazon page for Good Pillow Great Sleeping Perfect for Single or Couple Great Soft sleepy Dream Pillow for soft Bedtime Relaxation pillow ($97.83)

Had this thought whilst being gently mocked for not being on TikTok the other day. It is okay for us to have our almost-middle-aged website dammit! Forums, IRC chatrooms, the good versions of social media, they're all gone now! We need SOMEWHERE to peacefully recreate our dumb old internet

2025 recapped

ME: team rocket will never steal these rare Pokémon! Not unless they wanna take on me and my fully evolved Miss Cigarettes! MISS CIGARETTES: miss cigarettes

thank you @mackeza.bsky.social for finally coining a term for vampire-survivors-likes - "horde control"

Well thanks to The Guardian's GOTY list I now know Blippo+ exists and why am I only now finding out about Blippo+. This is incredible. 80s public access FMV Sim? What? Sorry, the Rubber Report with Neomie Lifto is on g2g. store.steampowered.com/app/3323850/...

Every year I ask the Guardian's games contributors to come up with some lesser-known game recommendations, and every year I end up with a bunch of impulse purchases in the Steam winter sale www.theguardian.com/games/2025/d...

Every year I ask the Guardian's games contributors to come up with some lesser-known game recommendations, and every year I end up with a bunch of impulse purchases in the Steam winter sale www.theguardian.com/games/2025/d...

Vince was always someone you looked forward to interviewing at game events. He had a true enthusiasm for games and the player experience that was rare among execs. A creative of exceptional standing, he will be enormously missed

Money and power are concentrating in video games in the same way as in the wider world. And games influence people’s thoughts and attitudes: the most powerful people in the world have started to realise this. I wrote about the state of play at the end of 2025: www.theguardian.com/games/2025/d...

Money and power are concentrating in video games in the same way as in the wider world. And games influence people’s thoughts and attitudes: the most powerful people in the world have started to realise this. I wrote about the state of play at the end of 2025: www.theguardian.com/games/2025/d...

Me logging into COD

Time to join the Discourse 🙏 www.theguardian.com/games/2025/d...

My book about Nintendo is out soon! Early readers have said incredibly nice things about it! Pre-order here for US/UK: linktr.ee/super_nintendo

Is anyone else still playing Pokémon Trading Card Pocket? I need more trading/sharing friends! 8422056186737160 is my player ID

Hugely enjoyed @jmrivera.bsky.social's review of the Simogo Collection, a boutique collection of games from a time when it didn't feel like your smartphone was poisoning you. The App Store's golden window for games lasted such a short while 😔 www.theguardian.com/games/2025/d...

Incredibly depressing stat that explains a lot about How Things Are: only 14% of all the time people played games on Steam this year was spent on new games released in 2025. (The 92% stat is mine, obviously it is my job to play new games)

Our Discorders answered the question, 'what if the games of 2025 were Simpsons stills?' Judge the results for yourself.

I've been helping out at The Guardian's games team this year with edits and other support - thanks @mackeza.bsky.social for the opportunity, and to the (brilliant) freelancers I've worked with these past few months. A reminder if any sites in 2026 need an additional editor during busy periods, HMU!

Before the Game Awards in LA last week, a US video game workers union turned up to protest. "Anyone who works in the games industry can identify that our art form is being sold for parts to make a few people a lot of money." @alyssamerc.bsky.social reports www.theguardian.com/games/2025/d...

Keep having to delete nauseating emails from companies inviting me to "enhance creativity" with various AI tools. MY CREATIVITY IS FINE, THANK YOU. Is this how men feel when they get constant spam about boner pills

When you start Dark Souls

I don't know if this is true for other outlets (pls tell me!), but for me, coverage of The Game Awards never generates much traffic. Summer Game Fest doesn't either. (E3 used to.) I think wide-ranging online conversation gives the impression that it must be a huge views driver, but it simply isn't 🤷

“Don’t gather some of the most brilliant activists in the industry, treat us like crap, and then expect us to do nothing about it.” After the Game Awards cancelled its Future Class programme, @alyssamerc.bsky.social talked to its former honorees www.theguardian.com/games/2025/n...

Speaking from experience, as someone whose father died in childhood and whose mum died quite recently: you cannot escape loss. No technology can insulate you from the pain of grief. And nor SHOULD it - grief has been a vital, awful, tempering part of the human experience *since humans have existed*

Being a British parent is so weird bc you're actually worried about paying the sky high rent/mortgage & getting GP appointments but the entire press keeps telling you you're worried there's a trans person or immigrant nearby & the vat on Eton means there'll only be two skiing holidays this year

my great-grandparents arrived in the UK in the 1890s with nothing. they sold pickles from the front room window, took in laundry, worked as tailors. their children were nurses, teachers, salesmen. their grandchildren were professors, designers, opticians, doctors, magistrates, entrepreneurs.

Ha ha and, indeed, HA www.theguardian.com/games/2022/j...

The ebook version of my book Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment is on sale for just $4 today, or about 0.00000000482% of what it cost Netflix to buy Warner Bros.! www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/jason...

I spoke to @fortune.com about my upcoming book Super Nintendo and the secret(s) to Nintendo's enduring success - a large part of which is cultivating and caring for developers instead of hiring and firing everyone in yearly cycles. (Book deets: linktr.ee/super_nintendo) fortune.com/2025/11/28/s...

Stranger Things S5 is making me feel insane. Every other scene is like Teen 1: Exposition exposition... Teen 2: What are you saying exactly? T1: Exposition exposition! T2: But that doesn't make any sense! T1: Exposition exposition- T2 (interrupts): Wait- exposition- Together: EXPOSITION EXPOSITION!

You ever just think about the starfox puppets

My book about Nintendo is out soon! Early readers have said incredibly nice things about it! Pre-order here for US/UK: linktr.ee/super_nintendo

'We survive or fail on our own terms:' The rise and risk of independent game media

Here's me on Metroid Prime 4, I game I've waited 18 YEARS for. I might have found it disappointing had it come out in 2015, but now, it feels comfortingly retro. It is almost fascinatingly untroubled by the conventions of modern game design, for better and worse. www.theguardian.com/games/2025/d...

Come help us write articles for the internet made by humans https://kotaku.com/kotaku-is-looking-for-freelance-contributors-2000650081

Hi, for this week’s Pushing Buttons newsletter I talked to Dan Houser about the influence of Victorian literature on his games writing - especially Middlemarch on Red Dead Redemption 2 - it was a really interesting chat! www.theguardian.com/games/2025/d...

Here's me on Metroid Prime 4, I game I've waited 18 YEARS for. I might have found it disappointing had it come out in 2015, but now, it feels comfortingly retro. It is almost fascinatingly untroubled by the conventions of modern game design, for better and worse. www.theguardian.com/games/2025/d...

Hi, Keza and I decided on the 15 most important Xbox 360 games. I’m afraid we will not be taking questions www.theguardian.com/games/2025/d...

HORSTACHIO FOREVER

Your annual reminder that the most revealing difference between Irish and Scottish Gaelic is definitely in the words for December: Mí na Nollag (Month of Christmas) in Ireland, and An Dubhlachd (the Blackness) in Scotland. So once again may I wish you all a lovely Blackness.

I am researching for a feature: what do your children play that's NOT Roblox? (And if you've banned it, what did they gravitate towards afterwards?)

I do not know what editors are supposed to do about the flood of AI-generated pitches. I can't be the only editor who's been caught out once or twice over my career by a writer (or a source) who was making something up. Now you can make up a whole article in seconds. thelocal.to/investigatin...