My best friend recently taught me an important lesson about AI pessimism: Don’t remain silent and accept no substitutes

Jess Kinghorn, hardware writer, amateur artist (Image credit: Future) This week: Besides levelling up my horse girls in Umamusume: Pretty Derby, I asked my best friend to draw me as one of the expeditioners in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (because that RPG really has become my entire personality). On account of my truly abysmal handwriting,…

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In 15 years of interviewing AAA game developers, I think this is the first time one’s straight up told me ‘Many people make games for money, but we make money for games’

I don’t think you can go by a nom-de-plume like “Soulframe” without really, really loving videogames. More than a decade before Digital Extremes started cooking up its Warframe sequel, young Chinese architecture student Qiwei Liang came up with the name as his internet handle, and has been using it ever since. It lasted through his…

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From “A Winner Is You!” to the NES Top Loader

Here’s the blunt opener: the same four words that crowned NES champs—“A Winner Is You!”—explain why the best online casino games still hook us today. Fast payoff, crystal-clear feedback, no fluff. That victory flash compressed everything into one clean dopamine hit. Modern online casino sites that copy this cadence—quick win cue, readable tally, back to…

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