I'm just going to leave this here. Linked by my college roommate.

Civilization VII is set for a major update that finally let players stay as one civ through all Ages, as the boss of parent company Take-Two has admitted: “we got it wrong.”

Civilization VII is over a year old now, and has fewer players on Steam than both Civilization VI and the 15-year-old Civilization V. When Civilization VII launched, players highlighted issues with the user interface, a lack of map variety, and a lack of features they’d come to expect from the franchise. But some veteran Civ fans also didn’t get on well with the dramatic changes developer Firaxis made to the game.

At launch, a full campaign in Civilization VII was one that went through all three Ages: Antiquity, Exploration, and Modern. Once the Age is completed, all players (and any AI opponents) experience an Age Transition simultaneously. During an Age Transition, three things happen: you select a new civilization from the new Age to represent your empire, you choose which Legacies you want to retain in the new Age, and the game world evolves. The Civilization games had never had such a system, and it proved divisive.

While Firaxis launched a number of key updates in a bid to turn sentiment around, and Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick indicated to IGN that he was confident Civilization VII would eventually prove to be a successful project, developer Firaxis suffered layoffs in September, and the game is still stuck on a ‘mixed’ user review rating on Steam — its core platform.

Speaking to Game File now, Zelnick took responsibility for Civilization VII’s struggles.

“Every time there’s a new Civ, the team at Firaxis thinks about: ‘How do we push the envelope far enough that it makes sense to buy this new game? And how do we preserve what people love enough so that they’re not disaffected?’ And we got it wrong with Civ VII, but it wasn’t for want of trying. And again, I take responsibility for it,” he said.

“So we’ve made a bunch of fixes. We’ll continue to make fixes. The game is a really good game. And it’s certainly a profitable enterprise for us. But this is one where I think what we tried to do was a bridge too far, from the consumer’s perspective.”

I just bought a Switch copy of Red Dead Redemption for $30 USD at Walmart and wondered if that'll be the last of its purchase I'll ever make. There's nothing quite like buying a new cellophane-wrapped copy and it makes me sad the physical age of gaming is at its twilight.

Set in the Roaring ’20s, The Sinking City 2 is a survival horror steeped in Lovecraftian dread. Defy an eldritch deity and explore the drowned alleys of Arkham, stalked by the dead, as you weigh one life against an entire city.
Coming this summer to PC, PS5 and Xbox Series.

The first time I thought they might actually get away with it was in 2021, when I first saw Mina Harker. Wizards of the Coast had just released a set of Magic: The Gathering cards titled Innistrad: Crimson Vow, an elegant set with vampires as its central motif. As always, the set came with the usual assortment of alternate illustrations for some of the marquee cards, which was something that I and most people who took the competitive side of the game seriously to an embarrassing extent made a routine of ignoring. This time though, the theme for the alternate art series wasn’t some stupid-looking sideshow—it was Stoker’s Dracula. A select few cards, including some that would be the strongest and most frequently played in the entire set, would have secondary but playable versions depicting recognizable characters from the literary classic.

The problem was that they nailed it. The illustrations were beautiful and restrained, a fun and relatively unobtrusive tribute to Stoker, released right in the middle of spooky season. This included Magali Villenueve’s new drawing of Mina Harker, Dracula’s protagonist, cast here as the alternate version of a card called Thalia, Guardian of Thraben.

The card choice mattered as much as the excellent art. Thalia herself is an iconic character in the world of Magic, and a powerful-enough card that, from a competitive standpoint, you’re usually either playing the card yourself or showing up with a plan to beat her. This meant that Mina Harker, a character with no relation whatsoever to Magic: The Gathering, was now constantly appearing in games of Magic. Between the quality of the art, the ubiquity of the card, and Dracula having a literary sheen far less offensive than both previous and future attempts at this sort of intellectual-property bait-and-switch, people got used to it.

Give an inch, lose a mile. I start with Dracula because of how quaint it is in retrospect, how tasteful. But anyone with even a passing familiarity with Magic knows where that impulse toward a “crossover event” would go. Spongebob Squarepants Secret Lair drops; basic land cards featuring illustrations of pizza from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles; a full destruction of the standard format at the hands of a minor character from Final Fantasy. Perhaps something you love is undergoing a similar transformation—endless intermixing with other creative properties such that the barrier between the two wholly blurs, entries released at intervals so frequent that their creators can’t possibly have done a worthwhile job, a lurking sense that someone else is being pandered to in order to keep the line going up. But who? Who, apart from Hasbro’s shareholders or the WotC C-suite, is any of this for?

The answer is fandom. It was a culture of fandom that said We like this to the people whose job it was to exercise editorial control over the art and design of Magic. And if you yourself didn’t like it, well, you were probably already invested in the game enough that you were willing to put up with it. At root, that’s the bet, wherever this sort of corporate decision appears: if you care about something, you won’t go anywhere even if you notice its erosion, all while new customers show up. A Growth Opportunity was making itself clear, at least as extrapolated by sales data. And in the end, isn’t Growing the Game the most important thing of all?

Everyone within videogames knows the term "Games as a Service", but we mostly use it when we talk about the business model of games that are aimed to provide a continuous experience to its players. However, you cannot run a Game as a Service, when you don't also design it as such. I compare this type of approach to something similar to a Restaurant, where customers are sold an illusion of comfort that actually requires a lot of effort to keep up. We all know the stories of angry restaurant customers, who love to yell at service workers and in a way, the most vocal elements of videogames are very similar both in their expectations as well as their tone when they are not met.

We have a big problem with videogames in that most voices who get to talk about game design as a craft are people who are very good at one very particular kind of game, those that are commercially successful. This also applies to games criticism, where even those pieces that do try and look at games from an angle that goes beyond treating games as consumer products, mostly look at games that come out of that very specific, industrialized part of videogames culture.

Over time, and subjectively I feel this has gotten much worse over the past 10 years, this has lead to a very stagnant idea of what a videogame actually is. In the landscape of 2026, a videogame can only be a Restaurant. Everything orbits around the player, even elements that sound like they might go against the player's interests are framed such that they are actually good for them.

Dude I remember when pcsx2 was struggling to run on my computer unless I heavily tweak some settings, now it just works.

Even more amazing and jaw dropping is that I could now emulate these games on my phone, I tried ARMSX2 and it was stable enough that I 3D printed myself a phone holder that snaps onto my controller for on the go ps2 gaming.

s&box, from the creator of the popular Source Engine sandbox Garry's Mod, released three days ago. s&box is based on the Source 2 engine, and not only a sandbox but a game development and publishing platform, including publishing on Steam.

The news post one day after release openly covers the mixed ratings, public finances, doubling their play fund that pays creators, and public roadmap.

I was surprised to see they openly and transparently publish day-by-day finances.

The public performance stats are interesting too.

Refreshing. I wish more publishers would do these kinds of things with deliberate open communication and transparency.

I finally decided to return to Grimstone after a huge pause. I built a new team mainly because I wanted to play all the characters my GF didn't see on her playthrough (as she's watching my playthrough).

In an hour I managed to regain my progress and am already more confident with this setup than I was in my first try. Having 1 nearly useless character isn't as bad as having two such characters.

I also got creative with the names this time although none can stand alongside my GF's Anrse.

Luna is still my favorite character.

Caution: Massive spoilers for the game. This one goes deep...

I really dislike their new DRM update even if its "testing the waters" , after being a fan for so long I'm set to completely drop them by the end of this year (yes I'm waiting for gta6).

I managed to convince my normie friends to switch with me to PC gaming by being their IT support 😂

Crossposted from https://piefed.social/c/games/p/2025041/subnautica-2-early-access-cinematic-trailer

Description from the video:

Subnautica 2 is an underwater survival adventure game set on an all-new alien world. It is the next chapter in the Subnautica universe, developed by Unknown Worlds.

Driven from your home by ongoing conflict, Alterra offers you the chance at a new life. But as the colony ship CICADA shepherds you and your fellow Pioneers to your new home, something goes awry. The ship’s AI insists that your mission should continue. Stranded and faced with near-insurmountable odds, you must do everything in your power to survive. The future of humanity on this world is in your hands.

Subnautica 2 enters Early Access on May 14th, 2026, at 08:00 PDT / 15:00 UTC.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/41873102

Wizards have joined the party!