This Week In The Business: A Young Man’s Game

QUOTE | “It has become harder and harder for me to find jobs, and particularly after I got past 50 years old.” – 59-year-old designer David Mullich, talking with other game industry veterans about the pervasive age prejudice in the game industry Elsewhere in the business of video games this past week … QUOTE |…

Someone Recreated GTA V‘s Los Santos In Cities: Skylines

Rome wasn’t built in a day, but I’m starting to get the impression that Cities: Skylines players could’ve made it happen. The game’s only been out for a few days and someone’s already made an eerily accurate recreation of Grand Theft Auto V‘s Los Santos. Steam user grockefeller created a mod that adds the impressively…

The Shape That’s Everywhere In Mass Effect

There’s no getting around it: a lot of modern, graphically intense games look kinda same-y. At a glance, it can be hard to tell the difference. But show me a shot of the Mass Effect series and I’ll instantly be like, “Yeah, that’s Mass Effect.” Why? A single shape that’s everywhere Control500 spoke to series…

The GDC I Saw After One of Gaming’s Roughest Years

It’s Monday, March 2nd, the first day of the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, and I can’t help but notice a common refrain: “I’m already tired.” By most accounts, it hasn’t been a terribly brutal day, especially not by convention standards. But the developers, acquaintances, and friends I encounter seem worn down, deflated. Maybe…

Paula Deen’s New Game Commercial Is Totally Batshit

“Are you ready to have some fun? ” asks Paula Deen, as the rest of the world slowly backs away. Paula Deen now has a video game, and it’s called Paula Deen’s Recipe Quest. It’s a match-3 game because, of course, it’s a match-3 game. She has also produced a “commercial” for it: There are…

Worth Reading: The Tragedy And Ecstasy In The Binding Of Isaac

Sometimes, the most tragic stories are lurking just beneath the surface. This week in Worth Reading, a dive into what’s really happening in The Binding of Isaac, how Fire Emblem lets players tune the difficulty to their choosing, and much more. Let’s start the weekend! Hey, You Should Read These “Beards optional: Embedded difficulty decisions…

Look Out, Robot! Everything on This Planet Is Trying to Kill You!

Remember the terrible deaths that sad little boy suffered every time you screwed up in Limbo? Would you care if it was a robot dying in lots of painful ways instead? Take a look at the brightly colored Planet of the Eyes and see if you feel any empathy for a walking computer. The Cococucumber…

I Wish I Liked Code Name: STEAM More

Over the last week, I’ve put in about 15 hours into Code Name: STEAM, a steampunk turn-based strategy game from Intelligent Systems. As Intelligent Systems has proven itself before with games like Fire Emblem and Advance Wars, it’s pretty easy to get hyped up about the idea of Code Name: STEAM. It’s a new Nintendo…

Dying Light’s New Hard Mode Is Definitely Harder

Dying Light was already a tough game for many people when it first came out, but a new patch this week answered other players’ demands by making it even harder. Loot is one of the weirdest things about video games. I usually can’t stand it when a game makes you obsess over weapons and items…

Valve Is Not Psyched They Got An ‘F’ In Customer Service

Not too long ago, I stumbled across a curious fact: Valve, maker of the world’s biggest PC gaming service, was given an F by the Better Business Bureau. Other major gaming companies largely have A’s. The culprit? Poor customer service. According to the BBB’s page on Valve, people have filed 717 complaints about Valve and…

Dying Light patched out its famous loot-harvesting weapon-duplication trick once again this week. And once again, someone found another way to perform the same exploit. Follow the new instructions in the video above, especially if you need help surviving hard mode. Thanks to Reddit’s Uber-Lurker for the PSA. Step-by-step instructions included below: From the info…

Let’s Remember How Ridiculous The Xenogears Demo Was

Next week, we’ll finally be able to get our hands on the much-anticipated demo for Final Fantasy XV, which is basically the Half-Life 3 of JRPGs. This continues a long tradition of publisher Square Enix releasing demos for their big RPGs alongside other games… like the demo for Xenogears, which launched with the horror game…

Maybe video games are better without characters? Ian Bogost explores that idea over at The Atlantic and concludes that we should all join The Borg and play Sim games forever. Well okay, there’s a little more nuance than that.

I Have Failed To Impress The Gods

I thought I’d be showing off a thrilling victory to you today, Kotaku readers. A five-minute saga where a Norse warrior woman defeats a gigantic winter elemental as a taste of a promising indie game yet to come. But, no, I stand before you defeated. Now I want to play Jotun even more. The game…

Why Bard Is Such An Exciting League Of Legends Champion

League of Legends’ newly-minted “Bard” champion just dropped into the game by surprise yesterday. Players are extremely curious about this “wandering caretaker” and his potential in the game thanks to the big bearded guy’s more…distinctive qualities. What makes him stand out, you ask? A few key things. First off, here’s the champion spotlight Riot provided…

One of last year’s most bizarre and surprising hits on PC was Goat Simulator, and it’s coming to Xbox 360 and Xbox One next month. You can reach the author of this post at [email protected] or on Twitter at @patrickklepek