Stephen Totilo's discussions

It’s certainly worth talking about the Epic store’s missing features, the impact of Epic chasing exclusives, anxieties people have about Epic’s previous data breaches and other things people bring up. Having played only one game via the EGS, I can’t say the store is all that impressive, but I didn’t hate it either.… Read more

I ask everyone to press the z-trigger to auto-lock onto whatever they need to focus on. Then they can circle-strafe if need be. Read more

There were haters before and there are haters now. For some, GG is mostly a thing of the past. For others, the dynamics of perpetual outrage continue. Read more

I don’t think the best reviews all boil down to that, but playing a game is, of course, a thing you actively do, so to not talk about that process would be to ignore an integral part of the experience. The magic of Mario 64 is not just its text but the process of reading that text and what it feels like to use that… Read more

“the” or “is”, because it would be an intriguing linguistic challenge Read more

Witcher 3. I’ve tried. I respect the many smart people who love the game. But I got through Novigrad and it still didn’t hook me.  Read more

You know, they keep telling me that Kotaku should only cover sports, and I’ve just had to say no. Read more

Thank you! Read more

Jason and I have talked about this a lot, as recently as this morning. We weigh a lot of factors, including the public’s curiosity, whether the news would ever be known otherwise if we didn’t report it, any public good that might be served, any ways it might expose some wrongdoing (seldom relevant to the kind of leak… Read more

I do want to buy a new laptop. I’m using a 2015 Macbook Air, but I was not ready to burn it. Read more

The more means people have to communicate, the more those means can be used positively or negatively. Never before have so many gamers and game-makers had instant access to each other and such public platforms for saying what’s on their mind. So just in terms of quantity, there’s more negativity and toxicity out there… Read more

In general, I like that games change after release. It keeps them interesting. However, the belated introduction of less positive things like after-the-fact microtransactions is less lovable. Games change so much that I don’t think that one thing would make us go back and update a review. But what we could do, now… Read more

Get back to us after 5pm ET. Cool? Read more

Don’t know. I’ve got a lot of hate-readers on my Twitter feed, too. I’m too nice to block people, but it does make me wonder why people who can’t stand us waste their time and energy following us. Read more

I encourage writers to get their bylines on the site two or three times a day, more for nights and weekend folks, but we don’t operate with a quota. Sometimes a person just needs more time to get a key story done or to play a game they intend to cover. Read more

We’ve actually tried for years to avoid just covering the most recent games. I want us covering games and their communities months or even years after launch. It’s an example set by some current and former staffers, including Patricia Hernandez, and one I’ve tried to continue to lead by example with coverage of the… Read more

Good question. I know there were threats of a class-action, but I don’t know what’s come of it. I don’t know if any of our staff were affected by the leak of this year’s info, but I did attend at least one of the E3s from another data breach that they acknowledged. But no surprise magazine subscriptions in my mailbox… Read more

I think it’s helped us cover a broader range of stories with more empathy. The broader the range of experiences a staff has, the better equipped we are to spot and understand a range of stories that are relevant to a broad array of readers. Read more

I definitely heard from some readers this week that they thought we were not taking complaints about the Epic Games Store seriously enough. I don’t agree, but enough people said it that I’ve given it some thought. It was actually helpful for some readers to bring up the situation regarding the developer of Darq… Read more

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