One of my many hunches about the corporate adoption of Gen AI, even in creative industries, has to do with the decades long obsession with "design thinking" as a leadership paradigm. Among other things, it emphasizes iteration, "failing fast", and quick prototyping.

Holy shit, Old Man Rivers is *dealing* tonight.

iCloud, Mega, and as a torrent. Archivists have uploaded the 60 Minutes episode Bari Weiss spiked.

All I want to do is play video games and explain to people that our current political moment is mostly due to Christian rock in the 90s, 00s, and 10s. In exhaustive detail. Album by album. Is that too much to ask?

“I learned on Saturday that Bari Weiss spiked our story, INSIDE CECOT, which was supposed to air tonight … Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices. It is factually correct.” - “60 Minutes” correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi

In an internal email, 60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi said new editor in chief Bari Weiss had “spiked” the story and said the government was using silence to “VETO” stories.

Rick Steves is a beautiful human.

I don't follow combat sports really at all so I have no idea why both Jake Paul and Andrew Tate have gotten beaten up in two separate fights on the same night, but if there's someone I can write to to make sure we have more nights like that, I'd love to be pointed in the right direction.

Heartbreak for the Lions. Bogus offensive pass interference takes away the first td, good offensive pass interference call that gets handled absolutely awful by a total ref clown show. Awful way to end that game.

Been enjoying my usual end of the year habit of consuming “best of…” lists for movies, music, games, etc. but something about the vibe this year feels so rancid, and I think the GenAI discourse right now in the games industry sums up why.

If we’re going to get really no quarter about genAI usage, I’m going to need people to learn the difference between AI and genAI real fast.

I think I’ve decided to root against the Packers forever. Not sure why. Just something that’s been building for a while.

A Lord of the Rings cover band called Sting.

Ghost of Yotei is blockbuster video game storytelling at its best. Lavish, sincere, and more thoughtful than most when it comes to how it makes the most of the medium. Maybe my expectations were too low, but I’m having a hard time thinking of AAA games I like better from the last few years.

The New York Times just named Caramel by Sleep Token the best song of the year and even as someone who listened to a fucking shit ton of Sleep Token in 2025, that is fucking hilarious.

I decided to focus on 12 games from my backlog to actually finish next year. We'll see how I do. The estimated total time from howlongtobeat for all the games I picked is over 500 hours, so. You know. Anyway, here are the games!

Here's the last Little Victories podcast of 2025!

I had so much fun doing this with Andres. I hope you'll check it out so he doesn't cut me out from the pod. If you want a sneak peek at my top 10, this is the place to see it. Though it is subject to change in the coming weeks before I post my list on BigNerdGaming 👀

Wrapping up a new piece on one of my favorite artists of the last five years today. Love writing about music.

Fuck NVIDIA man.

Why We're Boycotting Xbox: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ybj1...

Pretty good looking game.

Yo this is a freaking steal!! Some of the best writing in games, some of the best people writing it

At the beginning of the year, I launched a podcast called Little Victories with the intent of interviewing game developers about their craft. As the year ends, Taylor from Jetson Plays Games was graceful enough to let me write about the seven lessons these luminaries taught me, and hopefully you.

Subscribe to Unwinnable before the end of the year and get all the 2025 issues free! That's twelve issues of Unwinnable Monthly AND twelve issues of Exploits for five clams. Feed your brain over the holidays! unwinnable.com/subscribe/ (@unwinnable.com)

Finished the Kirsten arc in Ghost of Yotei and am just very impressed. I’ll be surprised if the rest of the gam keeps up with this level of characterful storytelling, because it’s the best I’ve seen in an open world game since The Witcher 3’s Bloody Baron.

I write about indie games literally every week, so this should be doable. HERE WE GO! 1. Consume Me Consume Me will disarm you with its earnest approach to difficult topics like eating disorders and teenage angst due to its smart calendar structure. Its WarioWare-style minigames are fun too!

Larian's horrible hirring process is an open secret in the industry – insane amounts of unpaid work in "writing tests", excessive numbers of interviews, months and months of back and forth, etc. Everyone in games narrative circles has heard the stories at this point, probably from multiple people.

Every holiday season I’m reminded Pentatonix exists, and following that, I crack myself up imaging having a group of friends I meet up with to do mouth noises with

"Lay off CEOs instead": Game Awards protesters fed up with the show and the state of the industry aftermath.site/game-awards-...

i have said this before but if you are actually interested in influencing people beyond a narrow circle of too-online journalists you will be making direct to camera videos on tiktok, instagram and youtube. if you primarily post on text-based social media then you're just dicking around.

As part of our project to preserve the history of Sega Channel, we have recovered OVER 100 new Sega Channel ROMs, including the legendary lost game Garfield: Caught in the Act - The Lost Levels. Read more: gamehistory.org/segachannel/

Congratulations to @nicanor.bsky.social for getting nominated for a Games Journalism Award at the NY Game Awards, hosted by the New York Video Game Critic Circle! This marks the first time a No Escape contributor has been nominated; read his essay on Despelote here! noescapevg.com/despelote-re...

PMG forever.

Tell you what. It’s the Bills players on D who remember the bad old days who are stepping up against the pats offense. Tredavious, Milano, Poyer all remember what fuck the pats mean.

Able to Play Games lets you set up a profile for yourself based on your needs, covering everything from issues with vision, hearing, mobility, cognition, mental health, and more. #Disability Read more here: https://twp.ai/9PXuJL

One thing about me is I’m always gonna turn up for Jeffrey Wright.

Indefinite moratorium on having to give it to people.

Great movie. One of my fav Joan Crawford performances.

New goal: actually finish a playthrough of BG3 before Divinity comes out.

This show is sooooo long #TheGameAwards

Truly intolerable number of ads for games that already exist in this year's #TGA2025

Werner Herzog stumping for Warframe is mystifying.

Extremely well deserved win for Jennifer English. The beating heart of that game.

Obviously pumped for new Larian, but holy shit that trailer was gnarly. Imagine that at the Oscars lol.

Appreciating the theatrics of this edition of The Game Awards. Renfaire dudes being yanked up into the sky is a good time.

OH SHIT

So that's two GOTY nominees already securing their own wins in Best Indie and Best Action. 2025 fucking sucked but the games were good man.

Oh lord the opening #TGA2025 stinger has Sleep Token. Haters about to have the best night of their lives.