Latest articles by Austin Wood
Valve leads considered making a "mediocre" game before Half-Life to build the team up, but original marketing exec said "if you do that, the company will fail"
News "I told Gabe that I thought the only way that Half-Life was really going to work was if it was named Game of the Year"
The lead UI designer on Metaphor: ReFantazio had never designed for a game before – he just rolled up and made some of the best UI I've ever seen in a JRPG
News "Hyper stylish" became the guiding light for Metaphor: ReFantazio
Behold, the most intimidating demo I’ve had in 12 years of covering video games: playing "literal walking simulator" Baby Steps in front of Getting Over It mastermind Bennett Foddy
Feature Baby Steps, from Bennett Foddy and the Ape Out crew, is a singular experience
Ex-Bethesda dev says his new studio isn't making a "little Skyrim," but does channel a key part of the iconic RPG: "Stuff got built because somebody cared about building it"
News Soft Rains has a first-person sci-fi game in the works
"There is an expectation we're gonna make a little Skyrim": Ubisoft and Bethesda veterans form new studio headed by Skyrim and Fallout designer, debuting with first-person sci-fi and "crunchy mechanics"
Feature Soft Rains studio head Joel Burgess says "it would be unfun and foolish not to use our strengths to challenge our weaknesses"
When Destiny 2 "weekly active users dropped lower and faster than we'd seen since 2018," Bungie assembled an A-Team to put out some fires: "We needed to do something"
News Before Lightfall's problems, Bungie "leadership got worried" about the state of the MMO
Lies of P director loves FromSoftware and respects the Soulslike tag, but says "I'm really serious, I'm not lying, I'm very truthful, our focus is to create our own style of game"
News "I am a big fan of Bloodborne, and we believe that it's actually a very attractive game"
Lies of P director says Overture DLC is at least 15 to 20 hours long for "experienced" players, packing tons of bosses and ideas the devs couldn't fit at launch
News Lies of P Overture almost sounds like the final third of the game
"Will today’s players still enjoy a game from 30 years ago?": JRPG icon Kei Shigema says he was thrilled to see Lunar getting a remaster even after all this time
News "When I saw Grandia being remastered first, I thought, 'That’s so nice. I’m jealous!'"
CD Projekt boss says "cutting-edge single-player games" – you know, like The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2 – will "continue to enjoy great popularity" despite industry shifts
News Single-player games update: not going anywhere, it seems
Monster Hunter Wilds Title Update 1 is out April 4 and looks stacked: Zoh Shia returns, the Grand Hub adds a social space, plus Arch-Tempered Rey Dau, arena speedrun contests, and Mizutsune
News The Zoh Shia armor might be the best-looking set in the game
Half-Life devs worried Gabe Newell "promised things that they couldn't possibly deliver" for the iconic FPS, but "they just didn't know" that they'd be able to do it yet
News The game was awarded 'Best Action Game' at E3 1998
Helldivers 2 boss says "death and rebirth" is a natural part of the games industry, but it's "unnecessarily brutal" right now "because we don't diversify enough"
News "A lot of publishers try to play it safe by taking safe bets, but one thing that's guaranteed is those safe bets are a death sentence for the studios that try to make it."
Helldivers 2 players "became obsessed" with Malevolon Creek, but it was Gabe Newell who really kicked off one of Super Earth's bloodiest battles
news The rally we didn't know we needed
Former Valve exec recounts the meeting where Half-Life's publisher almost killed the iconic FPS: "Half-Life would quietly die. I was stunned"
News Half-Life might have just been an underappreciated gem if ex-CMO Monica Harrington hadn't put her foot down
Palworld devs tried, but the "certain franchise plus guns" brand in the West "has stuck with us to this very day despite our best efforts to shake that off"
News Things changed quickly for little Palworld
"Valve would never ship another game": Former exec forced Half-Life publisher's hand by saying Gabe Newell and the team would pivot away from game dev
News "I knew Gabe had interesting ideas that had nothing to do with games"
Helldivers 2 boss outlines the single design trick that eventually led to his breakout success: "This works, I think we're gonna be rich someday"
News "This 'it could happen' approach to design is super powerful"
Valve literally gives Half-Life away now, but 27 years ago it was carefully crushing its angry pirates: "None of them had actually bought the game"
News The launch of Half-Life, straight from Valve's founding CMO
"Don't tell Valve I told you this": Industry expert warns devs that Steam "is an engine that turns magic into money," and you can't break into "Real Steam" until you have the magic
News Chris Zukowski loves Real Steam
Helldivers 2 director says "balance is a myth," and devs shouldn't spend more than 5% of their time on it: "If you balance out all the chaos, you've made an uninteresting game"
News Arrowhead's Johan Pilestedt says if you spend all of your time on game balance, "you're an idiot"
Helldivers 2 boss told launch players not to buy until servers calmed down, and it "took 5 minutes until I got a call from the friendly people over at PlayStation asking what the f*** I was smoking"
News "'Don't recommend that people do not buy your games' - it's incredibly conventional wisdom"
Steam expert says devs need 250 reviews "in the first month" after launch or else it's probably "not gonna happen," but admits one ingenious factory game defied the odds: "They somehow pulled it off"
News Beltmatic managed to gain success months after launch
