My new 'studio' is called Emanation Games. Why? An emanation, in esoteric theology, is an overflowing of pure divine power; an outpouring of creation. But also, because it also sounds like it could be about cum. That's the duality I want to represent. Intellectual and puerile. Temporary logo:

Things are awful, so a little treat for the real Crush-Heads. It is now eleven years since I got this printed in the Metro.

The Spanish version is “the left liberates, the right oppresses” and once I learned that, both screws and politics made more sense

You're not ready for the name of the energy transition specialist at Heat Pump Association UK

They’re getting desperate. Keep it up everyone

My love, support and condolences to Pat Dane’s family and closest friends. He will be greatly missed 🖤

My end-of-year Hidden Gems list is up on PC Gamer! They asked me for 15. I did 30. Somehow, Weird Little Guys and The Apocalypse were a theme. 2025 was terrible in every other regard, but the games? Good. I also just updated my Steam Curator Page with all the stuff in the feature and a few others.

new game idea

Today in “Dudes Rock”: A dude playing Dire Straits’s “Sultans of Swing” guitar solo on…a recorder.

A brief selection of things I wrote and liked this year, all now paywall-free. There'll be much more free stuff coming in 2026, but if you subscribe RIGHT NOW you get 50% off your first three months. First, a tribute to the late, great Tomonobu Itagaki newsletter.hitpoints.co/341-itagaki-...

holy fuck what an intro

2025 recapped

Some of you might know this story, but someone requested it as a reply to this thread, so I'll do that. What you should know about me is that I've always had trouble with airport security, especially in the United States. I have 7 very Arabic names, and I travel a lot around the entire planet.

2025 was brutal for games media, but I'm seeing some glimmers of hope as worker-owned sites like @aftermath.site, @rascal.news, and @giantbomb.bsky.social have carved out vital spaces in the games community. Earlier this year, I made a huge Indie Games Media starter pack for y'all. Let's celebrate.

This is just going to always be my go-to response to this kind of thing anthonymoser.github.io/writing/ai/h...

If you'd like a free copy of Animal Forest+, I'm giving one away from my personal collection to a random Read Only Memo subscriber! 💰🦝💰

new game idea

So very tired, but I couldn't let 2025 end without taking stock of Microsoft's embarrassing treatment of gaming, Windows, and indeed human beings while it chases the AI money train

All the games are on sale, because it's winter! store.steampowered.com/developer/Sa... 🔥 IMMORTALITY - $9.99 📹 TELLING LIES - $4.99 ☕ HER STORY - $4.99 And you are obliged to 💫Wishlist our upcoming projects PROJECT C and PROJECT D whilst you're at it! #SteamSale #SteamWinterSale #Cheap #Art

Elden Ring is about having a beautiful dream that you're Welsh. Bloodborne is about waking up in England.

If you wanna be one of the last 30 people to sign up for @readonlymemo.com before I do a giveaway to celebrate hitting 3,000 subscribers, now's the time 👀👀 readonlymemo.com#/portal/sign...

oh my god

Nice, I'm in the credits of the best game of the year. Maybe consider booking me as a mock reviewer on your game project in 2026!

Okay please let's not call him that

I’m doing my part!

I wrote about Rob Reiner's shockingly good performance in The Wolf Of Wall Street in this, but it's striking how many different films and parts Defector staffers wanted to write about. He was a mensch, but he was also just everywhere in the culture for 50 years. defector.com/defectors-fa...

I need to start quoting Popeye more often in matters of principle

When you start Dark Souls

Good god but this is good.

Best indie game in the preshow. In 2025. Fucking hell.

Again, apologizing to all videogame environment artists who knocked up satirical posters for their games, I should not have rolled my eyes, yes, even you Cyberpunk billboard team, I am sorry

At about $60K that's about 128 million graduate team indie games, at $150K about 500,000 small indie games, at $300K about 250,000 mid-size debut indie games, or at around $950K about 110,000 indie games by a team of more experienced devs. There are a total of 110,000 indie games on Steam.

Take the Dwemer Bowls, Lydia. Yes all 79. What do you mean “then what,” then we sell them, then we go back for the cups. And one day you’ll be a Thane and you can have YOUR housecarl return every dwarven bowl to every dwarven ruin and I HOPE you never feel pressured to defend that activity

Which guest built the most popular console of 2025? It's the semi-finals, with congressional candidate @katmabu.bsky.social vs. former Edge magazine editor @hitpoints.bsky.social, and folk musician @basiabulat.bsky.social facing down Charlie Rosen of the @the8bitbigband.bsky.social Vote here:

today instead of buying barely discounted crap, get a paid subscription to an independent media outlet! a little $ goes a long way towards supporting a free press. 🗞️ drop links to your own or your faves in the replies so ppl can easily sign up (bonus if you add a couple words about why it’s good!):

A rare Pokémon appears: Mark Cerny, on the show, next week.

A thousand thanks to the consulting client earlier this year who insisted their game needed 64GB of RAM. (It really didn't.) Had no idea prices had gone this insane. Fuckin AI!

We did something different with the credits for Demonschool. We used this format: name, title, lengthy description of what they did. Often you see credits in games where you don't know what the credited developer was actually responsible for. We wanted to give people proper, actual credit.

So powerfully embarrassing I’m considering a career change

game design 101

“Our talented team with its own human hands and brains and souls decided that all this shitty art made by a computer was good enough to go in our game” is not a good defense of using AI tools to generate assets.

I made a joke in my main Discord server about DOOM E1M1 being in a major key and @abigbagofkeys.sickonedude.com actually made it. Jesus fucking Christ listen to this hahahaha

Hey Buddy! That door will only open when you shoot at with the phase beam upgrade. You should return here after you have collected that. By the way, Metroid is the name of the monster not the--

you can't just bring back austin powers. the franchise wrote itself into a corner after he volunteered to stay behind forever in the shagadelic dimension to save foxxy and vanessa. they already brought him back once without explaining how he escaped from fembot island, the audience won't buy it

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Head of Xbox Game Studios Matt Booty have been in the media recently, saying that the biggest competition for Xbox is TikTok. Nathan Brown of @hitpoints.bsky.social isn't quite sure they know what that means... thisweekinvideogames.com/feature/bonu... [PAYWALLED]

I spent an afternoon with Miles Jacobson to talk about building (and cancelling) Football Manager over a more than 30 year career. www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/foot...

It's cool how we keep proving over and over and over again that there's a significant market for narrative-heavy, character-driven, single-player experiences in video games and publishers just categorically refuse to believe us

a send-off: defector.com/dick-cheney-...