Author: Chris Tapsell
-
What is the point of Xbox?
The 360 years feel like a lifetime ago. This week, Xbox stunned the industry by announcing it had closed three studios, and repurposed a fourth into another service game support team. This follows the 1900 people laid off across Xbox at the start of this year, and those Xbox employees quietly caught up in the…
-
What to Play This May 2024
Hello and welcome back to What To Play! We’ve returned from a little hiatus, which you definitely noticed and have been very sad about, of course. It’s finally edging towards spring here in the UK, but don’t let that tempt you into going outside, there’s video games to be a-playin’! As ever, this is where…
-
Flintlock’s breezy visual panache suggests another fine addition to the burgeoning “souls-lite” genre
A short way into an extended hands-off presentation of Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn, and my main thought was: this feels a lot like a mix between God of War and Souls games, at which point creative director Simon Dasan described it as… more or less exactly that. “A massive thing for us was to…
-
Harold Halibut review – sub-aquatic sci-fi adventure is a little too prog-rock
A visually arresting, warm-hearted tale of a gofer searching for his purpose, Harold Halibut flounders amongst endless fetch-quests and waffle. Harold Halibut review What if a game was intentionally quite boring? This feels like the premise with Harold Halibut, and at first it’s kind of brilliant. You take on the role of the eponymous janitor…
-
Fortnite exec on kids making games: Island Creator Program is 18+ because “this is professional labour”
User-generated content, or UGC, has been a continued source of discussion recently, particularly when it involves minors doing the creating and, in some cases, earning off the back of it. Last week saw Roblox Studio head Stefano Corazza raise eyebrows with his comments on Roblox’s openness to allow under-18s to publish and earn money from…
-
Epic Games: mobile “gatekeeping” is “at the heart of why the industry is in a rut”
Back in September of 2023, the European Union officially designated Apple a “gatekeeper” under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), stipulating that it must open its App Store on iOS in a number of ways, including adding the ability to “side-load” apps from the web rather than the store, to have other storefronts available, and more.…
-
The Crush House is a “thirst-person shooter” that holds a mirror to reality TV production
Last night on Married At First Sight Australia, Eden revealed she’d be hiding a terrible secret. Another bride – who I won’t reveal because SPOILERS, obviously – had texted her asking if she could borrow a top, so she could wear it to… see her ex-boyfriend. The Crush House preview Developer: Nerial Publisher: Devolver Digital…
-
Roblox’s new AI creator tools conjure all the wonder and scepticism of a magic show
If you’ve been to a magic show, or even just walked past one of those blokes who spray paint themselves gold and ‘levitate’ by Covent Garden, you’ll know the feeling. First it’s something between a full-blown “Woah!” and an appreciative “Neat,” then the inner child dies again and it’s back to boring old rationalisation. The…
-
Roblox Studio boss: children making money on the platform isn’t exploitation, it’s a gift
Roblox remains a gigantic phenomenon, boasting monthly player numbers of over 200 million – close to double the entirety of Steam – and a pattern of growth that defies the recent struggles of the wider games industry. It also remains controversial, as exemplified by People Make Games’ accusation in 2021 that Roblox is “exploiting” young…
-
The big Larian interview: Swen Vincke on industry woes, optimism, and life after Baldur’s Gate 3
“Greed has been fucking this whole thing up for so long, since I started,” said Swen Vincke, founder and head of Baldur’s Gate 3 developer Larian, while collecting Game Developers’ Choice award for Best Narrative last week. “I’ve been fighting publishers my entire life and I keep on seeing the same, same, same mistakes over,…