Gaming
Sharp analysis of the hardware, design choices, communities, and business behind play.
Razer Acquires StreamElements: Saving a Creator Institution
The live-streaming industry experienced a major shift when gaming hardware giant Razer announced its acquisition of the assets of StreamElements from its former holding company, Live Momentum Ltd. The deal brings one of the...
Aug 8, 2026Read articleGamingSpeedrun-Friendly Design: Embracing the Community’s Need for Speed
Speedrunning—the practice of completing a video game as fast as humanly possible by exploiting movement mechanics and programming bugs—was once a niche subculture. Today, it has grown into a massive global entertainment phenomenon that...
Jul 3, 2026Read articleGamingAsymmetrical Multiplayer: Redefining Competitive Group Play
The vast majority of competitive multiplayer games rely on perfect symmetry: two teams of equal size, equipped with identical capabilities, fighting on a balanced playing field. While highly competitive, this design can sometimes lead...
Jul 2, 2026Read articleGamingThe Evolution of Unreal Editor for Fortnite: User-Generated Gaming
The traditional line separating video game consumers from professional video game developers is blurring rapidly, driven by the massive success of advanced user-generated content toolsets. The premier example of this shift is Unreal Editor...
Jul 1, 2026Read articleGamingAI Voice Acting: Navigating the Intersection of Technology and Art
Modern open-world video games feature massive, branching scripts containing hundreds of thousands of lines of dialogue, requiring years of voice-recording sessions that consume a significant portion of a game’s budget. To expand dialogue possibilities...
Jun 30, 2026Read articleGamingThe Digital Game Preservation Crisis: Archiving Our Interactive History
The video game industry’s rapid transition from physical discs to purely digital storefronts has provided unmatched convenience for consumers, but it has also triggered a quiet, devastating preservation crisis. Unlike film or literature, which...
Jun 29, 2026Read articleGamingPath Tracing Ubiquity: The New Standard for Virtual Realism
For years, video game lighting relied on clever artistic tricks, pre-baked shadow maps, and screen-space reflections to create the illusion of a realistic world. While effective, these techniques could never perfectly replicate how light...
Jun 28, 2026Read articleGamingThe Hollywood Renaissance: How Gaming Replaced Literature as Entertainment’s Blueprint
For decades, the relationship between Hollywood and the video game industry was notoriously disastrous. Film adaptations of popular video games were universally dreaded by fans, often turning into critical and commercial flops that completely...
Jun 19, 2026Read articleGamingThe Golden Age of Handheld Gaming PCs
For generations, portable gaming was defined by clear technological compromises. Devices like the Game Boy and the Nintendo Switch proved immensely popular, but players always accepted that mobile experiences would feature significantly downgraded graphics...
Jun 19, 2026Read articleGamingThe Cultural Shift of Esports into Mainstream Collegiate Athletics
A generation ago, the idea of a university offering athletic scholarships for video game players would have been dismissed as an absurd joke. Competitive gaming was largely confined to dimly lit internet cafes and...
Jun 16, 2026Read articleGamingCloud Gaming Finally Comes of Age
When the concept of cloud gaming was first introduced to the public, it was met with a mixture of intense excitement and deep skepticism. The promise of streaming high-end, graphically intensive video games to...
Jun 15, 2026Read articleGamingThe Renaissance of Single-Player RPGs in a Live-Service World
For several years, the conventional wisdom among major video game publishers was that traditional, single-player role-playing games were a dying breed. The industry became heavily fixated on the “games-as-a-service” model, prioritizing multiplayer shooters, battle...
Jun 14, 2026Read articleGamingBLAST Announces $10 Million Overhaul of Counter-Strike Competitive Calendar
Esports organization BLAST has revealed a $10 million revamp of its global Counter-Strike competitive calendar, marking one of the largest investments in the scene to date. The announcement reflects the continued growth of professional...
Mar 4, 2026Read articleInvestigationInside the 14-hour One Piece nationals disaster
What a flagship event’s collapse reveals about competitive TCGs.
10 MIN READRead articlePlayStationThe road to 2027 begins now
Wolverine, Final Fantasy, and PlayStation’s next eighteen months.
7 MIN READRead articleDesignCouch co-op is reclaiming the living room
The best connection isn’t always online.
6 MIN READRead articleIndustryGame preservation has reached crisis point
What disappears when storefronts close and servers go dark?
9 MIN READRead article