Dungeon Master(Image credit: Future)For my column this week I was going to write about climbing all over monsters in Dragon Dogma 2's chilly Dark Arisen expansion, but then EA decided to finally murder BioWare after years of slowly poisoning it. So sadly I am pivoting to this eulogy.It's hard to discuss BioWare's demise without detailing the corporate meddling that led to one of gaming's most celebrated and enduring studios getting...

Terminally Online(Image credit: Future)This is Terminally Online: PC Gamer's very own MMO column. Every other week, I'll be sharing my thoughts on the genre, interviewing fellow MMO-heads like me, taking a deep-dive into mechanics we've all taken for granted, and, occasionally, bringing in guest writers to talk about their MMO of choice.World of Warcraft: Forever's beta has just ended, and I'm basically sold, for now. I've had such a good...

Fans of Deus Ex, Dishonored and Gloomwood like to roll the words 'immersive sim' around their mouths as often as possible, savouring the fond associations with first-person drawer-rifling and guilt-ridden murder.Yet there's something like consensus emerging among the makers of these games: it's really hard to sell an immersive sim while calling it by its name. "Is it a good marketing term? No," says New Blood Interactive CEO Dave Oshry....

It seems like there's a new slightly-humorous-for-its-incongruity collab between game devs every other week at this point, and the latest in this sacred lineage is a team-up between Super Meat Boy 3D and Mouse: P.I. For Hire. The latter game's titular mouse detective has been squished into a cube-like shape and sent to navigate a hellish labyrinth full of sawblades for the rest of his miserable existence. Oh, and the...

The Japan Actors Union, an org consisting of around 2,600 actors and voice actors, recently announced a series of measures to protect the rights of performers in the industry with regard to generative AI (reported in English via Automaton Media). It's been a hot topic both in Japan and here in the west, with Leon Kennedy actor Nick Apostolides arguing AI voice acting was something of an oxymoron: "AI can...

Well, here's a headscratcher. Paolo Pedercini, developer of Future? No Thanks! recently admitted to using generative AI in his ecosocialist satire while also referring to the technology as "a technofascist, anti-human and anti-art project." Now, the developer has removed several AI generated voice lines from the game, following a backlash to his use of the very technology which the game lampoons.You might remember Future? No Thanks! from another recent controversy,...

The idea of playing Deus Ex entirely in third person has always seemed like sacrilege to me. I like my immersive sims to be, well, immersive, to let me see the world through my character's eyes and interact with it up close and personal.Yet having just watched several videos of Deus Ex being played in third-person, I've realised that perhaps I wouldn't be so averse to experiencing Ion Storm's cyberpunk...

Valve's mandatory AI disclosures are once again at the centre of the discourse, mostly thanks to Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, who has long been vocally against them. The debate has been reheated in the same month Epic Games proudly announced it will pivot to "AI first" development on its forthcoming Star Wars and Marvel crossover. Then it announced an AI game jam, before walking back its requirement for AI...

As reported by IGN, veteran actors Jennifer Hale and Mark Meer, who voiced the female and male Commanders Shepard in Mass Effect, respectively, directly addressed fans of the series in an October 21 Instagram Live. The two reflected on BioWare, and commiserated over its tragic fate. Here are some highlights from each I pulled from the stream:Both actors' reactions strike me as so characteristic of their respective backgrounds: Hale is...

You'll never play every game. In fact, most people won't play most games—plenty of games release on Steam to approximately 0 user reviews, and last year, more than half of the 19,000 games that came out had fewer than 10. But that doesn't mean indies and anything else outside of the biggest blockbusters are all sent out to die. So far in 2026, all-original indies have been making waves.That insight...