Oh hey I write free ones every Friday now, tell your friends newsletter.hitpoints.co/352-dark-nig...

Oh my god. I must have it la-machine.fr/us

I wrote about The Tantrum State and living in it. Personally I do not care for it very much. defector.com/fascists-are...

HEY HEY it's NEWS 'O CLOCK. 'EARTH MUST DIE' is coming out on the 27th of Jan, which is alarmingly soon! Please pop over here and wishlist it, and do share if you're able. Thank you. store.steampowered.com/app/3639780/...

We're looking for a News Editor to join TWIV. Ideal candidate would have proven experience with: - Working in news for a games outlet - Conducting original reporting - Mentoring junior writers ...and genuinely enjoy writing news, diving deep, and talking to people. UK timezone preferred. Email me.

May of us try to tighten our belts in the new year, but former Edge editor Nathan Brown of @hitpoints.bsky.social thinks that when it comes to gaming hardware, now's not the time to try and save money -- it'll only cost you more in the long run. thisweekinvideogames.com/feature/bonu... [Paywalled]

The developers of PEAK explain pricing

From a guy who deplatformed tens of millions of his own users so he could pressure Apple and Google to change what he considered an immoral policy. Billionaire headloss in the 2020s will be a rich topic of study one day, not sure there's been a more dramatic, weird or stupid example than this guy

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.