Jordan Mochi is perplexed. The history student turned solo game developer ticked all the boxes. His survival horror war game Conscript had a healthy wish list of over 165,000 users on Steam — meaning that many gamers intended to buy the title on release. A successful Kickstarter, dozens of global press reviews — all largely… Read more »
Australia rarely makes global headlines when it comes to video game legislation. And when we do, it’s not always for the right reasons. Last week, we became one of the first countries — next to China — to regulate loot boxes and gambling content in games. So what does it all mean? This week we… Read more »
It took over eight years and a reported 150 staff to build Concord, and just under two weeks to apparently decide to throw it in the bin. Last week, Sony shocked the global gaming community with its sudden decision to remove its new shooter, Concord, from sale and refund all those who purchased it. What’s more,… Read more »
It could have been the time I was crushed by the Stone Vanguard. Or that time I was fried by an electric-charged dragon, Kang-Jin Loong. I definitely remember turning the game off after being skewered for the 20th time by the Yellow Wind Sage’s obnoxiously long trident. While the broader gaming community is currently lauding… Read more »
While well-regarded and lauded within the crypto community, Australian-founded ‘Pokemon-like’ Illuvium knows it’s in for a fight to win over a broader market. “They f-cking hate us,” says Illuvium CEO Kieran Warwick. He’s speaking, of course, about the online gaming community. Which is inconvenient given he’s just launched the open beta of a new video… Read more »
PC Master race: It’s an iconic snub that essentially frames gaming’s greatest divide, the split between console and PC gamers. This line has arguably blurred in recent years. Consoles are taking on the full functionality of mini gaming PCs at an affordable price, while PCs are becoming more like their console brethren, adding broader support… Read more »
I have $350 riding on the announcement of Nintendo’s next gaming console. Before you ask, I’m not much of a gambler. That’s in fact a quote I got for repairing an OLED Switch screen — the parts alone are the bulk of it. There’s a glaring scratch right through the centre of mine. I’m not… Read more »
Redundancy was the opportunity Tom King was waiting for. For the first time since he turned 18, he was fully unemployed. No side hustles, no part-time jobs, and a tidy cash buffer from the redundancy payout. So, he decided to explore a new venture, something that many gamers think about but rarely actually do; he… Read more »
There’s some sobering data in NewZoo’s second annual report into the gaming industry. It may not come as a surprise to some, but the sandbox-shooter-turned-metaverse-of-gaming, Fortnite, was the most played game on all platforms in 2023. In addition, over 60% of all playtime in 2023 — a year broadly recognised as one of the best… Read more »
Video games have a long history of polarising the community. Back in 1999, when it was revealed that the shooters of the Columbine massacre were players of Doom — a retro first-person shooter with satanic themes — it created a moral panic about the impact of violent video games. Further to this, an R-rating for video… Read more »
He didn’t know it at the time, but Jackson Ryan was foreshadowing the fate of video game journalism in Australia. Ryan, who until a month earlier was the ABC’s Technology and Science Journalist, offered a bleak acceptance speech for his joint award for gaming coverage at the 2024 IT Journalism Awards in March. He called for… Read more »
First it was music, then TV shows and movies. Now, the subscription trend is well on its way to becoming a force in gaming. It reached a new milestone in Australia this year, accounting for 12% of all gaming-related spend (excluding mobile gaming) in 2023, nearly doubling from 7% in 2021. The growth of gaming… Read more »
Massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) like Destiny, World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV get a bad rap. Let’s clear up some burning questions. When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg attempted to explain the metaverse during the 2021 rebrand of Facebook to Meta, there was one group of gamers that fully understood what he was… Read more »
Despite a global push for download-only gaming, the latest data confirms we’re a holdout country for physical copies. Australia has always been quick to adopt technology trends. Nine out of ten of us own a smartphone and unlike many other developed economies the vast majority of payments in this country are made digitally. We’re even… Read more »
I was close to throwing my Nintendo Switch at the wall. With over two decades under my belt playing video games, I had met my match. No, I’m not playing Elden Ring or another tough FromSoftware game. On the recommendation of a friend, I was finishing off Tactics Ogre: Reborn, a remake of a 1995 grid-based combat role-playing… Read more »
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