Tag: author_name|Jessica Conditt

What’s up with the ‘toxicity’ around Cities: Skylines II?

Cities: Skylines II developer Colossal Order has a uniquely close relationship with its community. The original Cities: Skylines came out in 2015 and gobbled up the audience that was left behind by EA’s SimCity, which came out in 2013 and was a busted mess. Cities: Skylines scratched that urban-planning itch,…

Read More

Open Roads preview: Bring me to life in 2003

I own a jacket that’s eerily similar to Tess’ in Open Roads. It’s a blue bomber with yellow and burnt orange accents, and it’s not the only thing that Tess and I have in common. As she leisurely explores her childhood bedroom in the first few minutes of the game,…

Read More

2023 was a year of layoffs and acquisitions | This week’s gaming news

Welcome back to our weekly gaming news roundup. As the year comes to a close, we’re looking back on 12 months of massive change for the video game industry, driven by acquisitions, layoffs and unionization. You can read my story on consolidation for more on gaming's tough year. This week’s…

Read More

Video games in 2023: Acquisitions, layoffs, unions

This was a year of upheaval in video games. The industry has shapeshifted over the past 12 months, and it’s not all due to Microsoft’s lengthy acquisition of Activision, Blizzard and King. While Xbox executives were defending the legality of a $69 billion deal that would create the third-largest video…

Read More

The Game Awards’ missteps and Light No Fire | This week’s gaming news

The Game Awards are done and the video game marketing machine is winding down for the year, but this industry never fully stops. This week, we’re taking a look at what The Game Awards could have done better (a few things, it turns out) and breaking down some of the…

Read More

The makers of No Man’s Sky will simulate a whole planet for Light No Fire

UK indie studio Hello Games is building something that it's calling "more ambitious" than No Man's Sky. The studio's next game is Light No Fire, and it brings procedural generation to an entire planet on an incredibly detailed scale. Light No Fire is an open-world exploration and community-building game set…

Read More