This past week, I wrote about generative AI in games and demos I liked from Steam Next Fest. It's a free post, too! Check it out:

"Labels are inevitable but standards are what matter"

In this week's update, I write a little bit about Obsidian, sales numbers, and The Outer Worlds 2. It's free! Check it out:

This week's post is free! I discuss some great games journalism from 2025: www.patreon.com/posts/free-p...

🧑‍🚀"Now?" 🔫🧑‍🚀"Always has been."

'We are shutting it down:' Ubisoft unions call for international strike

Last week we took the Buick to LA to check out #Highguard. Monday, January 26th at 10am PST, we enter another dimension! Yayayaya

My fav Games of 2025 Is Public! The Children of Clay Metal Garden One Rotten Oath Necrophosis Herdling Navicula Meatus Labyrinth of the Demon King Routine BF 6 Ghost of Yotei Donkey Kong Bananza Mohrta Kingdom Come: Deliverance II Split Fiction Shape of Dreams Avowed Hades 2 Skin Deep Abiotic Factor

My favorite games from 2025: The Children of Clay One Rotten Oath Necrophosis Herdling Navicula Meatus Labyrinth of the Demon King Routine Battlefield 6 Ghost of Yotei Donkey Kong Bananza Mohrta Kingdom Come: Deliverance II Split Fiction Shape of Dreams Avowed Hades 2 Skin Deep Abiotic Factor

Check out @thegamingdiscourse.bsky.social review of One Rotten Oath. Tyler did a lot of research on this one and I'm extremely thankful for this review! #indiegamedev #FMV #FPS

My review of One Rotten Oath is public! Check it out: www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRm7...

My review of One Rotten Oath is up for Patrons! It will be public later this week. You can watch it now starting at $2! www.patreon.com/c/thegamingd...

My video about Battlefield 6's campaign (and Battlefield singleplayer modes in general) is live! Check it out:

My new video about Battlefield 6's campaign is available for Patrons. You can check it out for $2! It will be public Saturday. www.patreon.com/posts/what-t...

I love this quote so much. www.theverge.com/news/818672/...

Welp. I guess the writing was on the wall. Good news? The Giants might be the most attractive landing spot for potential HCs. That is unless front office/ownership drama doesn't move people away. www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/...

The Patreon update this week is free for everyone! I wrote a little bit about the reaction to Battlefield 6's Season 1 update:

For no particular reason, I feel it's important this morning to remind everyone that Halo is a game where the humans eventually ally with the aliens (and flood--kinda) in order to stop religious zealots from killing the galaxy.

My post on Patreon this week is free for everyone! I wrote a little bit about my thoughts on Battlefield 6's singleplayer:

This week's Patreon post is free for everyone! A quick rundown of some of the games I played during Steam Next Fest this week: www.patreon.com/posts/what-i...

The year is 2081. The machines have conquered New York, Moscow, and Tokyo. The resistance loses ground every day. Annoying college football fans now storm the field every time their team gets a first down.

HUGE day for fans of enshittification. kotaku.com/ea-sale-saud...

Jaxson Dart. Please be real.

My weekly Patreon update is free this week! I wrote a little bit about MGS Delta and stealth games. tinyurl.com/y3s5kjry

I thought it would be fun to sit down and talk through my collection of physical games! So I did! A rough cut of the vid is up for Patrons. Check it out!

It's been a while. Glad to be announcing a new game, and happy that it is something experimental and weird: a tiny, tense, turn-based strategy game about merging units into spectacular combinations, and then watching them evaporate thousands of bugs. store.steampowered.com/app/2396130/...

My latest review: Herdling is a short game that feels like an epic adventure, showcasing Okomotive's excellent talent for storytelling.

"what a joy it's been to work with an editor again" I feel this in my soul.

The fourth and final part of my Splinter Cell retrospective is here! Check it out:

My Blacklist retrospective is up for Patrons! You can check it out for as little as $2 on Patreon. It will be public sometime this weekend.

My Patreon blog this week is free for everyone! I discuss a fundamental difference between live-service/mobile gaming and gaming in general:

The rough draft for my upcoming Splinter Cell Blacklist retrospective is on Patreon! It'll be a few weeks before I can clean up the script and post it on YouTube. If you're interested in watching it now, consider supporting me! Subs start at $2/month. www.patreon.com/posts/rough-...

If Kotaku had ended at G/O, it would have probably kept me up at night seeing that the audience for the kind of meaningful work we wanted to do was always there. Don't let anyone tell you there's no demand for it. Anyone who says so is misleading you for their own gains.

More than 9k people. Between this and Microsoft slopping it up with Altman, it's hard to believe in Xbox's grand vision for the future of gaming. Steam has been a fantastic, if imperfect, custodian for gaming for two decades partially due to the advantage of not being a public company. This sucks.

I must resist the urge to reinstall CFB 25 and make the new PAC-12 I must resist the urge to reinstall CFB 25 and make the new PAC-12 I must resist the urge to reinstall CFB 25 and make the new PAC-12 I MUST RESIST THE URGE TO REINSTALL CFB 25 AND MAKE THE NEW PAC-12

between this and bans on gender affirming care, the message couldn't be clearer: they want trans people to die whether they've transitioned or not. death through neglect has always been america's favorite form of genocide. same thing we did with AIDS and continue to do with homelessness

This week's Friday morning blog is free for everyone! In it, I ponder a question: do you still get nostalgic for games?

Support human workers. Support human artists. Buy a t-shirt. aftermath.site/buy-destroy-ai...

A new video update on '4500 pages of game conference history', newly added to the VGHF Digital Library: www.youtube.com/watch?v=lemN...

This week's Patreon update is free for all! I wanted to pitch an idea for my Patreon updates and wanted to see if anyone who isn't subbed would be interested. Check it out and tell me what you think!

‘An overwhelmingly negative and demoralizing force’: what it’s like working for a company that’s forcing AI on its developers aftermath.site/ai-video-game-...

It's my biggest video yet: A 4,000 year-long 100-minute narrative about how real-life political history has shaped the underlying basic mechanisms of an entire genre of games we take for granted today. Kriegsspiel: How Napoleon Accidentally Invented Strategy Games www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6Am...

but again, I still feel like the best way to cover any of this is systemically — focusing on platforms and incentive structures, giving people the tools to understand that they’re being deceived — rather than piling more salacious dirt onto the heap

One of the sticking points in the negotiations are that companies want to be able to use YouTube videos and other public appearances to train its digital replicas. Essentially the problem is that companies want to retain the ability to do whatever they want outside of very specific scenarios.

i dunno man damn it www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/...

A new review is public! There was a lot I liked in Eternal Strands and a lot I disliked, but I really appreciated its efforts at making something fresh from the familiar and writing characters that have real compassion and care for one another.

I interviewed Mark a few years ago and he was very kind and candid. If you don't watch his channel, you really should. GREAT info about how games are made.