Man. I’m going to vent and go on a nostalgia trip for a second because I had an excellent dark beer and I’m living my best life.

There’s a documentary on Netflix called “High Score” that I recommend to anyone interested in the gaming industry. The people and stories they highlight are wild. I grew up in the 80s and 90s as the video game scene was taking off and that documentary does a great job talking about those years.

My first game that I owned was X-Wing. It came on 5 or 7 3.5" disks. It was amazing. TIE-CD-Rom, Wing Commander III, Caesar II/III, anything by Westwood, Sierra, and Blizzard. All of that is gone. It’s a shame and I’m glad indy gaming is thriving right now, but something doesn’t quite hit the same. All of this innovation and awe around such a new and novel industry just evaporated in the 2000s/early 2010s as small corpos sold out. We can’t forget that. It’s not so much the a giant corp just took over, but a small studio decided to get bought or absorbed and then died. Even a MUD I played sold to Sony Online Entertainment and then get trash binned.

Don’t know where I’m going with this, but, there it is. Great brewery, Alchimiste in Quebec. Alas, I miss gluten and La Fin du Monde.

This is a dizzying reorganization. I’m reading the article but I’m just not processing the changes. Why? Streamlining development with an MS “games studio” or just corporation being corporation?

Yes. Absolutely floors me. Given the research on bots vs humans, fascism, etc. that plagues Twitter, playing the “but the audience” card holds no merit.

Valheim and Kingdom Come Deliverance II.

Hell yes! Nice to see a happy internet moment in the wild. Hope it works for you and game on friend.

True. I do wonder if there’s a bit of a second wind after getting out from under EA. Not the same as the Blizzard of the 90s and early 00s, but something a bit refreshing at least.

Either way, I’m thankful a staple of joy in my childhood didn’t meet the EA executioner. RIP Westwood, Bioware, et al.

Man. Hyped and then apprehensive. If they went with a Helldivers style gameplay I’d be OK with it. But I was hoping for an RTS. Oh well.

I’m hesitant to jump in here, seeing how far off the rails this went, but AI Data Centers have a plethora of problems. Potable water depletion (The Dalles, OR, USA), Exhaust (Boxtown near Memphis, TN, USA), Noise and lowering water tables (Sydney, Australia). The issues they present over “old school” data centers are amplified because of the speed they arise in communities, resources they use, and power (as in influence) disparities that are part of the package.

They are being built rapidly, with little oversight or research, and suck up enormous resources that “old school” data centers did not. Toss in the ethical concerns as wide ranging as stealing art styles to destroying books; to be normative, that tends to piss people off.

To get us back on rails, all of that contributes to me using theater of the mind rather than Gemini to draw me a portrait for goblin Yipyip in my campaigns.

Yeah, that’s sad. I don’t let AI touch my RPG sessions. As a DM, the imperfections and winging it are part of the fun.

I know nothing about game design, but here “poor optimization” often regarding such large games. Is this an instance if that? What exactly is optimizing?

Battle bits was pixel COD/MW. Not sure if its atil going strong.

For an absolutely hilarious yet challenging experience (you need the right people honestly), Hold Fast. Nothing says fun like a second rate crewed by Americans doing bad British accents and Brits doing bad American accents trying to sink a French second rate crewed by Germans.

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Thanks!

Thanks. Its hard to find good video game journalism at all.

Never played GW or GW2. Maybe I’ll hop onto this just for something new.

What…what the hell?

On further research, I had no idea CD Projekt Red sold GoG Games. CD Projekt sold GOG to its original co-founder, Michał Kiciński, in December 2025 for approximately $25.2 million. Did they go full Nazi after that or were they always suspect?

Either way, I’m downloading what I bought over the years and closing my account. No way I want to be anywhere near anything associated with Nazis.

Update: Downloaded my games, closed my account.

Gotta keep it alive since Netflix is actively trying to kill it.

Joking aside, great to see a game like this get new content.

Windrose but I’m hitting the “this got repetitive fast” stage and am starting to return to my classic RPGs. I’ve fired up an oldie but a goodie from the glory days of Bioware - Dragon Age: Origins. Dark high fantasy RPG. Absolutely loved it when it came out and I’m revisiting it. Its a little wonky compared to similar contemporary games like BG3 but oh so much fun.

“Enchantment? Enchantment!”

Dropped KCD II after they replaced localization translators with AI.

Back to BG 3!

Honey? New Caesar III just dropped. And we don’t talk about Caesar IV in this household.