“Playboy Bunnies Could Never Take Their Shoes Off” – Brenda Romero On The Sims-Esque “Hugh-Hefner-’em-up,” Playboy: The Mansion

“I feel like I made an adventure game starring Hugh Hefner”. The award-winning designer Brenda Romero has a piece of advice for developers wishing to make great games: “Look at whatever company you want to work for and see what their Metacritic rating is.” If the Metacritic score is 85 or higher, “go join that…

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The companions in Owlcat’s new Mass Effect-inspired RPG stand ready to have heart-to-heart chats, drag you into their sidequests, and blow a lot of stuff up

Over the past eight years, Owlcat Games has built a reputation for making some of the best modern isometric RPGs (after a bit of patching, at least!), including Pathfinder: Kingmaker and Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader. And though it’s clearly not giving up on that genre any time soon (there’s a follow-up to Rogue Trader on…

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‘Cripple their sales, tank their stock price. Stop collaborating with them as developers’: New Blood CEO on fighting against DLSS 5

DLSS 5 is contentious, to put it lightly. Though execs from the likes of Capcom and Bethesda seem on board with the new generative AI rendering tool, some of its employees didn’t even know it was going to be announced (admittedly, the logistics of informing all employees does make my head spin, not to mention…

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2026 is shaping up to be a golden year for gaming mice, as Razer’s battery-boosting FrameSync adds more goodies to the pot

Ever since mouse sensors in premium gaming mice all became generally on par, and especially now that some sensors in budget mice are pretty on par too, it’s been difficult to get truly excited about any new rodent-based technologies. But earlier this year, Logitech changed the game with the X2 Superstrike and its haptic-inductive analogue…

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