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, Tess comes across set pieces that ground her environment in the early 2000s. There’s a chunky black television set and scattered DVD cases, little bottles of bright nail polish, a black-and-white strip from a photo booth, newspapers remembering 9/11 and hunting for bigfoot, and a bright pink tube of sickly sweet lip balm. These are the leftovers of her adolescence — the room is disheveled and largely empty, with most of her possessions packed away, ready to move. Tess picks through the room’s remaining photos and yearbooks, her hand-drawn fingers reaching out to interact with 3D objects, revealing more of her backstory with each touch. The cuff of her jacket is jarringly familiar every time it enters the frame.

Open Roads is a narrative-driven, exploration-focused game about the road trip that Tess and her mother take when a death in the family uproots their life. After clearing out the house and finding a mysterious diary in the attic, Tess and her mom, Opal, print out directions from RoadBuddy (not MapQuest) and set off on a long drive. Emotional upheaval is bound to ensue.

Annapurna Interactive

I watched developers play the first 15 minutes or so of Open Roads, and the preview reeled me in immediately. Visually, the game is polished and engaging; the settings and interactable objects are 3D, while characters are hand-drawn, carving depth into each scene. Developers at the Open Roads Team uploaded real-life handwriting samples to create yearbook pages, postcards and letters, which removes the threat of pixelated text ruining the immersion. In conversation, the characters float between movements like old-school Disney storyboards, making the entire experience feel like a lucid dream.

Tess and Opal are fully voiced by two mainstream actors, Kaitlyn Dever and Keri Russell, and in the scenes I’ve seen, their performances are fantastic. The interactions between Tess and Opal are simultaneously loving and strained, as mother-daughter relationships can be. The writing is also evocative and genuine; dialogue flows smoothly, even with the various player-chosen paths that each conversation can take. These characters feel real right away.

Annapurna Interactive

The house that Tess and Opal are leaving is lived-in and it has a sense of history. There are personal, hand-crafted touches in every room, and developers added bits of their own lives to the game. The chair by that desk? It was modeled after a developer’s own childhood memories. Those old, creepy ornaments in the attic? A developer’s grandma passed down those exact decorations in real life. The scribbles on the wall? They’re drawings from the creators’ kids. These details won’t be obvious to most players, but they lend a sense of authenticity to the game as Tess explores the closets and corners of her family home.

Open Roads doesn’t just provide early-2000s nostalgia, but it also reaches back and references the ’60s and ’70s, covering multiple generations in Tess’ family. As Tess investigates the house and picks up various objects, Opal provides context and tells stories about their life, and there are branching dialogue paths. At one point during the preview, the developer that was playing decided to make Tess walk away from the refrigerator without shutting its door, and this caused Opal to scold her. Tess and Opal’s relationship is charming and warm, but there’s a sense of tension running through their interactions that I’m eager to examine in the full game.

Open Roads feels like a mix of Gone Home, Life is Strange and What Remains of Edith Finch, in the best possible way. The writing, voice acting and animation style harmonize in the first few minutes of the game to create a realistic and nostalgic world populated with vivid characters. I’m ready to hit the road with Tess, Opal and their printed-out driving directions when the game hits PC, Switch, PlayStation and Xbox on February 22. After all, I already have the jacket.

Welcome back to our weekly gaming news roundup. 

January is a magical time in the video game industry. We've just closed out 12 months of marketing hype and shifting production timelines, and the year ahead is filled with the promises of new titles and fresh hardware. During this special month, we can look at the 2024 release calendar with excitement and optimism, before the delays start rolling in. So, let's get to it — these hearts aren't going to break themselves.

This week's stories

Arcane season 2 teaser

You watched Arcane, right? The Netflix series set in the League of Legends universe debuted in late 2021 and it was an instant sensation, starring fan-favorite characters like Jinx, Vi and Caitlyn. The next season is set to come out in November and Riot dropped a one-minute teaser for it last Friday. The trailer has Singed experimenting on himself in a dreary laboratory, while a creature that looks like Warwick hangs above, connected to tubes and IVs. It’s gonna get dark, kids.

If you haven’t watched season one of Arcane, do that now.

This kid beat Tetris

I guess we can all stop playing Tetris. 13-year-old Willis Gibson became the first person to reach the killscreen in the classic NES version of Tetris, 34 years after the game’s debut. Gibson caught the moment on camera and honestly, it gives me goosebumps every time I watch it. The competitive Tetris scene has been steadily growing over the past few years, and players are using a new input technique called rolling that allows them to move pieces faster than ever. If you’re into this kind of thing, I recommend watching Classic Tetris Monthly on Twitch or YouTube.

Promises, promises

Before we get back into all the award shows and livestreams and media events this year, let’s take a look at the video game promises heading into 2024.

There’s nothing official yet, but it looks like Nintendo is preparing to release the Switch 2 in 2024, seven years after the launch of the original Switch, and right in the middle of the PS5 and Xbox Series X console cycle. According to early reports, the Switch 2 will be an iterative hardware update with slightly more processing power and support for DLSS and raytracing. The big news is that Nintendo has finally joined us in the 21st century, and players should be able to transfer their Switch games to the new console without any roadblocks.

Outside of the new Switch, 2024 is all about games. We know how this goes, right — in video games, a release date is really just the first step before a delay, so whatever you’re into, prepare for heartbreak over the next 12 months.

There are two games I’m confident will actually hit the market on their release dates in 2024, and that’s only because they’ve been in development for years and delayed multiple times already. Ubisoft’s open-world pirate simulator Skull and Bones is due out on February 16 for PS5, Xbox and PC, and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth will hit PS5 on February 29. Rebirth looks legit, while Skull and Bones … doesn’t.

Overall, we have a healthy lineup of titles to get excited about in 2024. First, on the mainstream front: 

• January 18: Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown | Ubisoft Montpellier

• January 19: The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered | Naughty Dog

• January 26: Tekken 8 | Bandai Namco Studios, Arika

• February 2: Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League | Rocksteady Studios

• February 2: Persona 3 Reload | P-Studio

• February 16: Skull and Bones | Ubisoft

• February 29: Final Fantasy VII Rebirth | Square Enix

• March 22: Dragon’s Dogma 2 | Capcom

• March 22: Princess Peach: Showtime! | Nintendo

• March 22: Rise of the Ronin | Team Ninja

• 2024: Silent Hill 2 remake | Bloober Team

• 2024: Star Wars Outlaws | Massive Entertainment

• 2024: Avowed | Obsidian Entertainment

• 2024: Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 | Ninja Theory

• 2024: Concord | Firewalk Studios

• 2024: Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door | Nintendo

This isn't a comprehensive list for the year in AAA gaming, but it's a solid start. 

And then there are the games I’m personally looking forward to in 2024. Most of these still have vague release windows — it's as if the developers didn’t want to give a timeframe at all, so they just whispered 2024 to their marketing teams and hoped no one would notice. But I did. I always do. I’m always watching.

Here are the games on my underground radar this year (again, this isn't an exhaustive list because there are so many fantastic games nowadays, but these ones spring to mind):

• January 16: Home Safety Hotline | Night Signal Entertainment

• August 20: Black Myth: Wukong | Game Science

• 2024: Skate Story | Sam Eng

• 2024: Lorelei and the Laser Eyes | Simogo

• 2024: Baby Steps | Gabe Cuzzillo, Maxi Boch, Bennett Foddy

• 2024: The Plucky Squire | All Possible Futures

• 2024: Mewgenics | Edmund McMillen, Tyler Glaiel

• 2024: 33 Immortals | Thunder Lotus

• 2024: Thank Goodness You’re Here! | Coal Supper

• 2024: Despelote | Julián Cordero, Sebastian Valbuena

• 2024: Time Flies | Playables, Raphaël Munoz, Michael Frei

• 2024: Cryptmaster | Paul Hart, Lee Williams, Akupara Games

• 2024: Hades 2 | Supergiant Games

• 2024: Hyper Light Breaker | Heart Machine

When any of these titles is inevitably delayed, we can all gather right here and have a good cry. Let us know in the comments what you’re looking forward to this year and why it’s Hollow Knight: Silksong.

Now Playing

I’ve been sticking with local co-op games during these chilly winter months, and now I’ve moved on to Baldur’s Gate 3. I know, I know, everyone is already telling you to play it, but this pitch is strictly for the splitscreen crowd — Baldur’s Gate 3 is a joy to play alongside a loved one, as long as your cleric actually remembers to heal your party every now and then. You know who you are.

We knew it was coming, but now we have a date: Bobby Kotick will officially step down as CEO of Activision Blizzard on December 29, 2023. Blizzard and King vice chairman Humam Sakhnini will also leave at the end of December, Activision Blizzard chief communications officer Lulu Meservey is out in January, and a handful of other executives will leave in March, according to an internal memo from Xbox head Phil Spencer published by The Verge.

Activision Blizzard vice chairman Thomas Tippl, Blizzard president Mike Ybarra and King president Tjodolf Sommestad will remain at the studio and report to Matt Booty, Microsoft's president of gaming content and studios. Otherwise, leadership teams across Activision, Blizzard and King will stay the same, according to the memo.

Kotick has been the head of Activision since 1991. At Activision Blizzard, he oversaw massively popular franchises including Call of Duty, Diablo, Starcraft and World of Warcraft, and once the company acquired mobile studio King in 2016, he added Candy Crush to that list. The company is a AAA powerhouse and it generated $7.5 billion in revenue in 2022.

Activision Blizzard was sued by California's Civil Rights Department in 2021 over allegations of systemic sexism, discrimination and harassment at the studio, and executives were accused of fostering a frat-house style culture. At the time, all top leadership roles at Activision Blizzard were filled by white men. The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a separate, related lawsuit against the studio a few months later. In November 2021, The Wall Street Journal reported Kotick had long ignored and helped cover up instances of sexual harassment at the studio. In response, workers at Activision Blizzard held walk-outs and demanded Kotick's resignation, but a shareholder vote in 2022 kept him in place.

Activision Blizzard settled the SEC lawsuit for $35 million in February, and it settled the California CRD suit for $54 million just days ago.

Microsoft announced its intent to purchase Activision Blizzard in early 2022, lawsuits and all. The deal was valued at $69 billion, and considering the scale of both companies involved, it faced intense scrutiny from regulators in the US and the UK. The acquisition was approved in October, after 21 months of legal arguments and concessions. Microsoft is now the third-largest video game studio in the world by revenue and it's the face of the ongoing consolidation craze tearing through the industry.

Once Microsoft's purchase went through, Kotick said he'd stay on through the end of 2023. According to Bloomberg, Kotick is set to make $375 million from the acquisition, and he's expecting a golden parachute of $14.6 million.

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 stories

No Game Pass for Baldur's Gate 3

Baldur’s Gate 3 is officially the Game of the Year and after months as a PlayStation console exclusive, it’s finally available on Xbox. However, if you’re waiting for it to become available on Game Pass, stop. Baldur’s Gate 3 is never coming to Xbox or PC Game Pass, according to Larian Studios founder Swen Vincke. It’s a fantastic, big and lengthy game sold at a standard price of $70 — take it or leave it.

The Last of Us Online is dead

Naughty Dog has canceled The Last of Us Online, its multiplayer spinoff that’s been in the works for years. This isn’t too surprising, considering the lack of updates about the game, but it is now official. Naughty Dog said it didn’t have the resources to support a live-service game and also create new single-player narrative experiences, which are historically its thing. The studio has more than one of these games in development right now.

2023 was a pivotal year in games

2023 was a year of upheaval in video games. There were three main factors molding the industry: consolidation, layoffs and unionization.

In terms of consolidation, the biggest story of the year was the approval of Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard King for $69 billion. Microsoft is now the third-largest video game business in the world by revenue, right behind Sony and Tencent. Today, the Xbox umbrella covers nearly 40 studios, including Arkane, Bethesda, id Software, Infinity Ward, Mojang, Ninja Theory, Playground Games, 343 industries, and Turn 10.

Sony is more subtle than Microsoft about its attempts at total domination, but it owns 21 development teams, including Bungie, Guerrilla Games, Haven Studios, Insomniac, Naughty Dog and Sucker Punch Productions. It’s made a lot of purchases in the past three years, and invested heavily in studios like Epic Games and FromSoftware.

And then there’s Tencent, which has thousands of tentacles spread across the industry. Tencent owns a portion of Bloober Team, Paradox Interactive, PlatinumGames, Remedy, Roblox and Ubisoft, among others. It has a majority stake in Supercell, Tequila Works, Techland and others. It fully owns Riot Games, Funcom and, of course, others. It also runs multiple internal development companies and publishing labels.

Tencent also owns a 40 percent stake in Epic Games. This alone means any time you buy a game built on Unreal Engine, Tencent is getting a cut. If you played something this year, Tencent was probably involved.

There are clear short-term benefits of being bought by a larger company, but there are downsides to relinquishing independence. Acquired studios are held accountable by people outside of the actual development of a game, and the bigger the company, the further away its bosses are from the creative process.

The most extreme negative outcomes for an acquired indie studio are, of course, layoffs and closures. We saw a lot of these in 2023.

An estimated 9,000 people lost their jobs in the video game industry this year, up from about 1,000 in 2022. This is a crisis level of loss, and it was spurred by over-eager acquisition sprees by the companies at the top. Embracer Group, which owns more than 100 video game studios, laid off more than 900 people and it completely shut down multiple studios.

Unity laid off about 900 people this year. In November, the company reported a yearly revenue increase of 69 percent and executives told investors, “We continued to manage costs well.”

Epic Games fired about 830 people in 2023, including a chunk of the team at Fall Guys studio Mediatonic, which it purchased in 2021. EA dropped more than 1,000 employees this year, including significant cuts at Codemasters, a studio it purchased in 2021. CD Projekt RED, Sega, Ubisoft, and Microsoft’s 343 Industries also laid off at least 100 people each.

Looking back on the carnage this year, it feels like a warning — as consolidation efforts increase, more studios will be controlled by just a handful of companies, and they’ll be vulnerable to moves like mass layoffs and closures. We’re laying the foundation for the future of video games right now, and consolidation only makes the industry smaller and more generic. What will rampant consolidation mean for all of these acquired studios in five years’ time? What will it mean when these teams aren’t shiny, new investments any longer, and the people at the top are ready to get lean again?

Unionization is one approach that can help protect the livelihoods of people in the video game industry, and there was progress on this front in 2023. Developers at multiple studios now have union support, from small indies to AAA powerhouses. Microsoft is currently the home of the industry’s largest union, with representation for more than 300 quality assurance workers at ZeniMax Media.

Other companies with unions established in the past two years include Avalanche Studios, Anemone Hug, CD Projekt RED, Experis Game Solutions, Keywords Studios, Sega of America, Tender Claws and Workinman Interactive. We love to see it — and for the industry to remain stable, we need to see more of it.

Now playing

I’ve been unable to get The Talos Principle II out of my head since I previewed it and interviewed the developers a few months ago, and I’m finally, happily playing the game in its totality. I’m playing on a Steam Deck OLED, and I'm having a great time solving laser puzzles and talking about the meaning of life with a bunch of robots. I highly recommend you try the same.

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 game studio in the world, smaller companies were firing staff and shutting down entire teams, even amid fervent collective-bargaining efforts. It’s been a wild ride.

In 2023, the main factors molding the video game landscape were consolidation, layoffs and unionization, with each of these phenomena feeding into each other. This past year, the video game industry shrank, even as it grew financially.

Consolidation

When its purchase of Activision-Blizzard-King was legally approved on October 12, 2023, Microsoft became the world’s third-largest video game studio by revenue. As the owner of the Xbox ecosystem, Microsoft was already a massive player in video games, but purchasing a tentpole AAA studio solidified its position in the top three. Activision and Blizzard are the owners of Call of Duty, Diablo, Overwatch, World of Warcraft and Starcraft, but the real meat of this deal comes from King, the mobile division. King operates Candy Crush Saga, a game with 238 million monthly active users, which is more than twice as many as Activision Blizzard’s combined player bases. Candy Crush Saga has generated more than $20 billion in lifetime revenue, and King routinely outperforms Activision and Blizzard in terms of quarterly returns. Mobile gaming remains a huge business, especially in the Chinese market, which represents the largest and most lucrative audience in video games.

Though the $69 billion Activision deal was the biggest in Microsoft’s history — beating its purchase of LinkedIn for $26 billion in 2016 — it wasn’t the company’s first video game acquisition. Microsoft owns nearly 40 developers and it bought a chunk of those in the past five years. The Xbox umbrella covers 343 industries, Arkane Studios, Bethesda, Compulsion Games, Double Fine Productions, id Software, Infinity Ward, Mojang Studios, Ninja Theory, Playground Games, Tango Gameworks and Turn 10, among dozens more.

Charley Gallay via Getty Images

With these studios at its back, Microsoft is leaning hard into cloud gaming while attempting to build a device-agnostic ecosystem powered by the Xbox brand. These moves are designed to unlock the mobile market even more, putting Xbox games on all devices, everywhere, all the time.

Still, Sony is bigger than Microsoft by revenue. Though Microsoft is often the face of the game-studio acquisition spree, Sony is the owner of 21 development teams, including Bungie, Guerrilla Games, Haven Studios, Housemarque, Insomniac Games, Media Molecule, Naughty Dog and Sucker Punch Productions. Sony has been subtly expanding its roster — more subtly than Microsoft, at least — over the past three years, and it’s also made heavy investments in studios like Epic Games and FromSoftware.

With this lineup, Sony is betting heavily on ongoing games, and it has 12 live-service titles in production right now, on top of Bungie’s Destiny franchise. These include Haven’s Fairgame$ and a multiplayer Horizon title from Guerilla.

“By expanding to PC and mobile, and… also to live services, we have the opportunity to move from a situation of being present in a very narrow segment of the overall gaming software market, to being present pretty much everywhere," Sony Interactive Entertainment president and CEO Jim Ryan said in 2022.

For the companies at the top, total domination is the goal.

Even still, Tencent is bigger than both Sony and Microsoft. Tencent is not a console manufacturer, so it isn’t a household name among most players, but it’s one of the largest companies in the world, and it wields a ridiculous amount of financial power in video games. Tencent owns a portion of Bloober Team, Bohemia Interactive, Don’t Nod, Epic, Paradox Interactive, PlatinumGames, Remedy Entertainment, Roblox and Ubisoft, among others. It has a majority stake in Supercell, Grinding Gear Games, Klei Entertainment, Tequila Works, Techland, Yager Development and others. It fully owns Riot Games, Funcom, Sharkmob, Turtle Rock Studios, and, of course, others. It also runs multiple internal development companies, including the Level Infinite and Tencent Games publishing labels.

Xinhua News Agency via Getty Images

Sure, Sony has a stake in Epic, but Tencent’s is bigger. This investment alone means any time you buy a game built on Epic’s Unreal Engine, Tencent (and Sony) is getting a cut. Tencent is the biggest investor in games, with thousands of tendrils across the industry — if you played something this year, Tencent was probably involved.

On a smaller scale, companies like Netflix and Devolver Digital have also dipped their toes in the acquisition pond recently. Devolver started buying studios in 2020, and it now owns Croteam, Dodge Roll, Doinksoft, Firefly Studios, Nerial and System Era Softworks. Annapurna Interactive bought South African studio 24 Bit Games in November. Netflix launched its Games division in 2021, and it’s already purchased four studios, including Oxenfree developer Night School and Alphabear company Spry Fox.

Night School co-founder Sean Krankel told Engadget in June that the move to Netflix was a boon for the studio, providing financial security, a dedicated working space and plenty of marketing support for its projects.

“A small subset of teams are good to go for the next 10 years, but others have these peaks and valleys, and we were somewhere in between,” Krankel said. “We weren't in danger of anything going sideways. But we were at a spot where we're like, it would be cool to tether to somebody who has a similar vision, and somebody that we could work with that would like, de-risk us.”

Netflix

This is the short-term benefit of being bought by a larger company, but there are downsides to relinquishing independence. Having a corporate overseer can result in rigid production timelines, hindering a studio’s ability to pivot, and despite all of the promises otherwise, developers may be forced to adhere to a specific tone, vibe or game-development structure. Owned studios are held accountable by people outside of the actual development of a game, and the bigger the company, the further away its bosses are from the creative process.

The most extreme negative outcomes for an acquired indie studio are, of course, layoffs and closures. We saw a lot of these in 2023.

Layoffs

The post-acquisition power dynamic is playing out in public and in real-time. It’s estimated that more than 9,000 people in video games were laid off this year and the firings affected teams of all sizes. This is a crisis amount of cuts. In 2022, just 1,000 video game jobs were lost, according to layoffstracker.com.

The Embracer Group provides the clearest example of rampant, surprise layoffs in 2023. Embracer has spent the past few years acquiring prominent midsize studios, including Gearbox Software (Borderlands), Crystal Dynamics (Tomb Raider), Eidos-Montreal (Deus Ex) and Square Enix Montreal (Deus Ex Go). In the past decade, Embracer grew its portfolio to cover more than 100 game studios, including Volition (Saints Row), Coffee Stain (Goat Simulator), Free Radical Design (TimeSplitters) and Zen Studios (Pinball FX). The holding company also secured the rights to The Lord of the Rings in 2022, promising to turn it into “one of the biggest gaming franchises in the world.”

Volition

In June 2023, Embracer announced a six-year, $2 billion funding deal had fallen through, and it was going to restructure — meaning, layoffs and studio closures. Since this announcement, Embracer has shut down Volition, Free Radical Design and Campfire Cabal, it divested Goose Byte and it’s fired developers at Saber Interactive. More than 900 people lost their jobs during these moves. Meanwhile, Embracer’s share price rose by 11 points in November.

This wasn’t the only layoff round of the year. Unity lowered its headcount three times in 2023, affecting about 900 jobs. In its quarterly financial results in November, Unity reported a yearly revenue increase of 69 percent and it told investors, “We continued to manage costs well.”

Sony cut 100 jobs at Bungie, a company it bought for $3.6 billion in 2022. According to developers that are still there, Sony executives are attempting to use this upheaval to wrest more control of the studio from Bungie founders and leaders.

Epic Games fired roughly 830 people this year, or 16 percent of its staff. This included significant job cuts at Mediatonic, the studio behind Fall Guys that Epic purchased in 2021.

Mediatonic

“For a while now, we've been spending way more money than we earn,” CEO Tim Sweeney wrote about the layoffs. He continued, “I had long been optimistic that we could power through this transition without layoffs, but in retrospect I see that this was unrealistic.”

Electronic Arts was one of the first video game companies to institute significant layoffs this year, with a reduction of 6 percent of its workforce, or about 800 employees, in March. EA later cut jobs at Dirt and F1 studio Codemasters, which it purchased in 2021 for $1.2 billion. EA culled an estimated 1,130 jobs in 2023.

CD Projekt RED and Sega each laid off about 100 people in the past 12 months, while Ubisoft fired an estimated 255 employees. Microsoft cut 10,000 jobs across its businesses early in the year, and that included about 100 people at Halo studio 343 industries.

343 industries

These are just some of the biggest names in layoffs in 2023. Looking back on the carnage, it feels like a warning — as consolidation efforts increase, more game studios will be controlled by just a handful of companies, and they’ll be vulnerable to moves like mass layoffs and closures. We’re laying the foundation for the future of video games right now and consolidation only makes the industry smaller and more generic, as accountants, investors and shareholders push for low-risk concepts, rather than innovation and change.

What will rampant consolidation mean for all of these acquired studios in five years’ time? What will it mean when these teams aren’t shiny, new investments any longer, and the people at the top are ready to get lean again? Remember that many of the shuttered studios listed above were purchased within the past three years.

Being acquired is a cost-benefit analysis for smaller studios, where the benefits are immediate and the costs are potential. It’s easy to say that won’t happen to us. But it can happen, and it does, and as consolidation increases, bulk layoffs are only going to occur more often.

Unions

Unionization is one approach that can help protect the livelihoods of people in the video game industry, and there was progress on this front in 2023. Developers at multiple studios now have union support, from small indies to AAA powerhouses.

Microsoft is currently the home of the industry’s largest union, with representation for more than 300 quality assurance workers at ZeniMax Media. ZeniMax is the parent company of Bethesda, id Software and Arkane, and Microsoft purchased the whole caboodle for $7.5 billion in 2021. Microsoft formally recognized the ZeniMax union this January and the parties started negotiating in April. In December, Microsoft announced it would hire 77 contract workers as full-time employees under the ZeniMax Workers United-CWA union. The deal guaranteed a pay raise, paid holidays and sick leave, and a copy of Starfield, the game they helped ship.

Bethesda Softworks

“We are now stronger at the bargaining table and are working to secure a fair contract for all workers — direct employees and contractors," ZeniMax union member Chris Lusco said. "We are all a part of ZeniMax Studio’s success and we all deserve our fair share. We hope to set a new precedent for workers across Microsoft and the entire gaming industry so that all workers, regardless of their employment status, are able to improve their working conditions through collective bargaining."

Meanwhile, executives at Microsoft’s newest acquisition, Activision Blizzard, spent the past few years stalling internal unionization efforts. However, QA employees at Raven Software, a subsidiary of Activision, successfully voted to unionize in May 2022. Microsoft has vowed to respect organization attempts now that Activision-Blizzard-King is under its control.

Other companies with unions established in the past two years include Avalanche Studios, Anemone Hug, CD Projekt RED, Experis Game Solutions, Keywords Studios, Sega of America, Tender Claws and Workinman Interactive.

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 biggest announcements from last week’s show.

This week’s stories

Light No Fire

We’re gonna talk about The Game Awards a lot this week, but one of the biggest announcements from last Thursday’s show was the existence of Light No Fire, a new title from No Man’s Sky studio Hello Games. It’s a planet-sized, multiplayer game about exploration and community-building, and it uses procedural generation to fill every valley and mountaintop with life. At least, that’s the promise. There’s no release date for Light No Fire just yet, but Hello Games has been working on it for five years.

The rest of The Game Awards

Also at The Game Awards, we saw the reveal of a Blade game from Arkane Lyon, OD from Kojima Productions, Windblown from Dead Cells studio Motion Twin, and Exodus from Archetype Entertainment, a studio composed of BioWare, 343 and Naughty Dog veterans.

As for the awards, best narrative went to Alan Wake 2, best debut indie game went to Cocoon, and esports coach of the year went to Potter. Indie game Baldur's Gate 3 won game of the year, while Sea of Stars won best independent game over Dave the Diver, a title that was never indie to begin with. Got it? Good. Moving on.

Free Radical Design shuts down

Free Radical

UK studio Free Radical Design, which was working on the TimeSplitters revival, laid off more than 80 people and shut its doors on Monday. It marks another round of layoffs under Embracer this year — the holding company announced in June that a $2 billion funding deal fell through, and it’s spent the last few months closing studios and firing staff at places including Saints Row developer Volition and Chorus maker Fishlabs.

We can do better

The Game Awards

The Game Awards last week ran for three hours, hosted by organizer Geoff Keighley. It was fancy and packed with movie stars — which, honestly, is pretty weird for a show that’s supposed to be about video games. Between abundant ad breaks, rushed speeches for winning developers, and ample stage time for celebrities, this year’s Game Awards didn’t feel like a celebration of the industry.

I’m not the only one who noticed the imbalance. After The Game Awards, plenty of developers, players and critics expressed displeasure with its pacing and priorities. Of the show’s 180 minutes, speeches from award winners took up just 10 minutes, and developers were prompted to ‘please wrap it up’ after just 30 seconds.

Meanwhile, Jordan Peele and Hideo Kojima were given nearly 7 minutes to talk about their upcoming project that looks like it’s more movie than game. There were appearances by Simu Liu, Matthew McConaughey and actors from TV shows based on video games. The Game of the Year award was presented by Timothee Chalamet, for some reason. Gonzo the Muppet even got 2 minutes.

Keighley rushed through most awards by reading the categories and winners directly into the camera back to back to back. Announcement trailers were indistinguishable from ad breaks, and there was no time spared for the industry’s most relevant issues, like the upheaval of mass layoffs, the fight to establish unions, and the medium's relationship with conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza.

These topics would feel drastically out of place at The Game Awards, and that alone is an indictment of the show. If there’s no room to discuss, celebrate and condemn these topics at the industry’s most public-facing event, what are we even doing here?

The Game Awards organizers have done a great job replacing the embarrassment that was Spike’s VGX with a show that looks more like The Oscars — but the video game industry is not Hollywood. Where are our luminaries? What are our issues? How are we innovating? Making video games more like movies is not the goal — unless you’re Kojima, I guess.

There are a bunch of other events that give time to video game creators and broader conversations, such as the Game Developers Choice Awards and its Independent Game Festival competition, The Spawnies from Spawn on Me, Gamedev.world from Rami Ismail, and Day of the Devs. And there are always the showcases from indie publishers like Annapurna Interactive, Devolver Digital and Panic throughout the year. But with E3 officially dead, Keighley's two big shows — Summer Game Fest and The Game Awards — are now the premier industry events on the gaming calendar. There's a responsibility that comes with that position, and his organization clearly needs to strike a better balance.

Now playing

It’s been a strangely stressful time, so I’ve been relaxing with couch co-op in Halo: The Master Chief Collection. It’s familiar and comfortable, and the toggle between old and new graphics is still an absolute delight. I’d love to discover some new couch co-op games, so let me know in the comments if you have any favorites.

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 on a planet the size of Earth, blending RPG elements with sandbox survival. It's a multiplayer experience on an ancient and fantastical planet, with climbable trees, hills and mountains, and secrets to discover at every turn. It's "the first real open world," according to Hello Games co-founder Sean Murray. 

Light No Fire has been in development for five years, by about a dozen developers at Hello Games. In the title's first trailer, it looks like the team took an entire planet from No Man's Sky and filled it completely with life, resources and mysteries. 

There's no release date for Light No Fire and no confirmed platforms, and the game was kept in complete secrecy until its reveal at The Game Awards on December 7.

Hello Games is synonymous with No Man’s Sky, a sprawling and incredibly popular space-exploration sim that landed in 2016 and only got better with time. But before the indie studio scored a huge marketing deal with Sony for No Man’s Sky — before one of its founders was meeting with Steven Spielberg and appearing on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert — Hello Games was known for the cartoony sidescroller Joe Danger.

UK developers Ryan Doyle, Grant Duncan, Sean Murray and David Ream founded Hello Games in 2009, after quitting their jobs at major studios like EA and Criterion. This was before the modern indie boom, at a time when XBLA was just getting started and Steam had only a handful of indie games.

"Actually breaking away and doing your own thing was a stupid thing to do at the time," Murray told me in 2016.

For nine months, the Hello Games quartet worked on Joe Danger, a 3D sidescroller starring a happy-go-lucky dirtbike daredevil, and they tried to lock down a publisher. No one was interested.

"Everyone turned us down," Murray said in 2016. "Sony turned us down, and Microsoft and so many places."

Out of money and resigned to giving up on their indie dreams, Doyle, Duncan, Murray and Ream went to the pub.

"We came up with this stupid idea," Murray said. "I had a house, and so I sold my house to pay for the rest of development. … The way I looked at it was like, I had bought that house because I had worked at EA, so it was like blood money. Like a blood diamond. You gotta sell that; that's bad karma."

And he really did. Built on loans and the money from Murray’s house sale, Joe Danger came out on June 9, 2010, and it was a hit. Hello Games followed it up with Joe Danger 2: The Movie in 2012. By then, the studio was an established indie hit-maker and it had relationships with major publishers. In December 2013, the team revealed something entirely unexpected: No Man’s Sky, a multiplayer game the size of the universe and filled with galaxies of procedurally generated planets to explore.

Hello Games

The next summer, No Man’s Sky had a tentpole moment at Sony’s E3 press conference, and the AAA marketing machine was activated. Sony leaned heavily on Hello Games to bolster its image as an indie curator, and over the next two years, the buzz around No Man’s Sky reached astronomical heights. Spielberg, Colbert, Kanye West and Elon Musk all got involved in their own ways, and No Man's Sky was a household name years before it launched.

By the time the game came out, it was impossible for it to live up to the hype. No Man’s Sky promised a universe of procedurally generated planets to explore, teeming with minerals and creatures and other players to encounter, but at launch on August 9, 2016, it was buggy and empty. The bones of a fantastic game were there, but some players felt so misled by Sony's intense marketing campaign that they filed a lawsuit against Hello Games.

The team kept working on No Man’s Sky, releasing bug fixes, updates and expansions, including a VR version. Over the years, the vision that players were initially sold clarified in-game, and the online rage died down until it was fully replaced by admiration. Since launch, No Man’s Sky has won multiple high-profile awards, including Best Ongoing Game at The Game Awards 2020. This year, it’s nominated at The Game Awards in the Best Community Support category.

Hello Games

"It's become so much simpler two years out from launch," Murray told me in 2019. "At launch, we were so focused on trying to please the partners that we were working with, trying to market our game, trying to live up to expectations that we were really struggling to meet."

No Man’s Sky in particular is Murray’s brainchild, and he was the face of the game as it rose and fell and rose again in public perception. He and the rest of the Hello Games team — which is bigger than four developers nowadays — have kept silent about their internal projects, and it’s easy to understand why.

"They are super talented and I didn't want to just move on and let that be their legacy," Murray said in 2019. "It's really nice for them to be able to say to people, 'I worked on No Man's Sky,' and people to be really happy and positive about it now. That is something that they deserved."

This history makes today’s reveal of Light No Fire even sweeter. Fourteen years after that fateful night in the pub, Hello Games is a testament to persistence.

No Rest for the Wicked is the new project from Moon Studios, the team behind Ori and the Blind Forest and its sequel — and it looks as beautiful as you'd expect. It's a top-down action RPG set in the year 841, in a kingdom that's just lost its king. His arrogant and inexperienced son has taken over, and the Pestilence is sweeping the land. The turmoil has led a powerful religious leader to expand her influence in the region, and groups on the fringes are fighting for control wherever they can. You play as a holy warrior called a Cerim, imbued with magic and destined to fight the Pestilence.

No Rest for the Wicked emphasizes action and precision in a gorgeous medieval setting, and it includes online co-op for up to four players total. It's due to hit early access on Steam in the first quarter of 2024, and it will eventually come to PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.

Moon Studios debuted the project at The Game Awards with a cinematic trailer, promising more details during a digital showcase called Wicked Inside on March 1. Private Division is publishing the game.

Exodus is the first game from Archetype Entertainment, a studio established by Wizards of the Coast in 2019 and staffed by former developers from BioWare, 343 Industries, Naughty Dog and other AAA establishments. Exodus is a big and bold sci-fi RPG that deals with time dilation, the idea that time passes more slowly than we're used to during high-velocity travel, causing interstellar explorers to outlive their friends and family back home.

In Exodus, humanity has been forced to abandon Earth and establish a new civilization in a hostile galaxy. Players are the Traveler, a person tasked with exploring far-off solar systems for advanced alien technology. What the Traveler counts in days, the rest of humanity experiences in decades. With this conceit, players' choices will cause butterfly effects to ripple across humanity's new planet, particularly in the lives of their own loved ones, and the Traveler will watch these play out over generations.

Player choice is a big part of Exodus, affecting individual combat moments and helping to shape the overall story arc. The game includes alien weaponry and classic gunplay, a deep progression system, and a swathe of companion characters (yes, romance is on the table). Also, Matthew McConaughey is in Exodus in some way, and he presented the game at The Game Awards, unveiling its first, cinematic trailer.

Archetype, a division of Wizards of the Coast, is packed with stellar sci-fi video game talent. It includes studio head James Ohlen (Baldur's Gate, Dragon Age: Origins), executive producer Chad Robertson (Star Wars: The Old Republic), director Chris King (Halo 4), and narrative director Drew Karpyshyn (Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2). The focus on time dilation and personal loss in Exodus underscores the team's desire to build an emotional, narrative-driven game, with action as an engaging but supplementary feature — and they have the résumés to pull that off.

Exodus is in development for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC.

Day of the Devs is awesome. It’s a showcase that pops up a few times a year to promote promising, in-progress indie games, irrespective of publisher, genre, budget, visual style or release window. It’s curated by the folks at Double Fine and iam8bit, and they’ve been hosting Day of the Devs live events and digital showcases for the past 11 years.

The latest Day of the Devs celebration wrapped up on December 6, the day before The Game Awards, and it featured 20 marvelous and strange independent projects. The virtual show included a few world premieres and release date announcements, but mostly, it was a celebration of creativity and innovation in indie games. This is particularly relevant right now: The Game Awards reignited the debate around the definition of “indie” in November, when its jury voted Dave the Diver into the Best Independent Game category — even though the title is made by Nexon, one of the largest studios in South Korea.

Indie is more than a label; it identifies teams that are operating outside of the AAA system, without a safety net, and it helps players determine where to spend their money. We published nearly 2,000 words on the topic of defining indie games, so read that if you want more juice. But right now, efforts like Day of the Devs feel extra necessary.

Day of the Devs: The Game Awards Edition 2023 offered a non-stop flow of indie goodness, so watch the whole show if you’re into cool stuff like that. We’ve broken out the news and highlights here:

New games

Kind words 2 (lofi city pop)

Kind Words (lo fi chill beats to write to) came out at both the perfect and most upsetting time — it landed in September 2019, a few months before the pandemic shut down everyday life across the globe. Kind Words is a game about listening to smooth lo-fi beats and writing real letters to real people, and during quarantine, it served as an outlet for thousands of players seeking interpersonal connection, warmth and encouragement.

Kind Words 2 (lofi city pop) is an expanded sequel coming from the original team, Popcannibal. Writing nice letters to strangers is still a core gameplay mechanic, but players are no longer confined to their bedrooms. There’s a whole city to explore, with coffee shops for writing poetry, mountaintops for making wishes on stars, and public spaces filled with people to talk to. The sequel also introduces a social media system with no quantitative feedback — no likes, no popularity metrics, just good vibes.

The Steam page for Kind Words 2 is live now. It's coming in 2024.

Loose Leaf

The studio behind Boyfriend Dungeon is back with something completely different, but potentially just as sexy. Loose Leaf is a tea-drinking, tarot-reading, witchy experience with a serene 3D art style, and Kitfox Games is advertising it as the most in-depth tea-brewing simulator ever created. It looks like an incredibly detailed version of the potion-making minigame from Pottermore, with a side of social interaction in the form of tarot readings.

Loose Leaf is a game about patience, friendships and the magic therein. There’s no release date at the moment, but it has a Steam page.

The Mermaid’s Tongue

SFB Games, the team that brought us Snipperclips and Tangle Tower, has a new project called The Mermaid’s Tongue. It’s part of the Tangle Tower universe and stars Grimoire and Sally, the two detectives from that series. The Mermaid’s Tongue is a murder mystery game about the death of a submarine captain, and players have to interrogate bystanders, investigate their surroundings and solve environmental puzzles.

The Mermaid’s Tongue is heading to Steam and Xbox in 2024, and a Steam demo is out now.

Nirvana Noir

Genesis Noir is one of the most visually striking games of the past few years, and its sequel, Nirvana Noir, looks just as stunning. Nirvana Noir is Feral Cat Den’s follow-up to Genesis, and it offers a jazzy, psychedelic twist on the series. The main character, No Man, is caught in a cosmic conspiracy and players will use dialogue-based detective work to understand the surrounding characters, read between the lines and hunt for clues.

There’s no release date for Nirvana Noir at the moment, but it's coming to Steam, the Epic Games Store and Xbox. It'll be published by Fellow Traveller.

Release dates

Flock

Flock looks like a charming, cozy game about soaring around fantastical environments and collecting flying friends, with singleplayer and multiplayer settings. It comes from Hollow Ponds and Richard Hogg, one of the creators of Hohokum, and it is incredibly cute. Aside from befriending birds, the game includes a creature guide for identifying new beasts and there’s a wool-collecting mechanic tied to the sheep roaming the lands below. Flock didn’t have a release window until today: It’s due out in spring 2024 on Steam, PlayStation and Xbox, published by Annapurna Interactive.

Annapurna Interactive

Open Roads

Open Roads has been on the indie radar for a while now, and it finally has a release date: February 22, 2024. Open Roads follows a mother and her 16-year-old daughter on a road trip that reveals hard truths about their family and ultimately tests their bond. It looks like an emotional, moving story, and it stars actors Keri Russel and Kaitlyn Dever.

Open Roads comes from The Open Roads Team, a group of developers that split off from indie studio Fullbright. It’s published by Annapurna Interactive and it's heading to PC, PlayStation, Xbox and Switch. It'll be on Game Pass at launch.

Annapurna Interactive

These look especially dope

Cryptmaster

Cryptmaster looks like Inscyrption mixed with hell’s cel-shader, and I’m personally very into it. Cryptmaster blends word puzzles with action sequences; players build their arsenals by solving letter-guessing games with text or voice, unlocking the resulting attack skills. It comes from Paul Hart and Lee Williams, published by Akupara Games, and it’s due to hit Steam in 2024.

Akupara Games

Drag Her!

This one’s for the royalty in everyone. Drag Her! is a fighting game featuring real-life superstar drag queens and kings from RuPaul’s Drag Race, Boulet Brothers’ Dragula and beyond, and it looks like a camp ol’ time. Drag Her! stars Alaska, Asia O’Hara, BenDeLaCreme, Kim Chi, Landon Cider and Laganja Estranja, with voice acting by each performer and unique attacks based on their personalities.

Drag Her! comes from Fighting Chance Games and it’s slated for release in early 2025.

Holstin

Holstin brings horror to a small Polish town in the 1990s, with beautifully dark pixel-art scenes that swap between isometric and first-person perspectives. The developers at Sonka grew up in this world of post-communism religious influence, and they used their experiences to build a game dripping in psychological and supernatural horror. Holstein is an eerie game that values investigation and sharpshooting in equal measure, set in a rare locale.

There’s no release date for Holstin, but it’s coming to PC, Xbox, PlayStation and Switch eventually. A demo showing off its first-person combat system recently went live on Steam, and another demo is coming in 2024.

Home Safety Hotline

As a true ’90s kid, this one is weirdly comforting. Home Safety Hotline is a text-based horror game that plays out on a Windows 96 desktop, complete with pixelated icons and sad gray pop-up windows. Players log on to work at a call center, where they help their clients get rid of spooky, paranormal creatures and occurrences invading their homes.

Home Safety Hotline is heading to PC in early 2024 (a slight delay from its original release date).

Night Signal Entertainment

Militsioner

Militsioner is essentially 1984, the video game: It features a cop as an all-seeing colossus, sitting watch over a quiet town, alert and eager to throw you in jail. Players have to escape without attracting the attention of the giant policeman, learning when to sneak and how to talk their way out of capture, and exploring empty buildings and solving spatial puzzles along the way.

Militsioner comes from Tallboys and doesn’t have a release date, but its Steam page is live.

Tallboys

If you're still craving more, check out the full Day of the Devs: The Game Awards 2023 show here.