Dishonored co-creator says it was ‘a shock’ when Microsoft closed Arkane Austin after Redfall’s release: ‘We were working on something really cool’

Arkane Austin is far from the only studio that Microsoft—in its push to post 30% profit margins year upon year—has closed down. But for me personally, it was the most upsetting. While its vampire looter-shooter Redfall was not the studio’s finest work, its previous projects include 2012’s brilliant immersive-sim Dishonored, and 2017’s System Shock successor…

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Quake’s third Brutalist Jam now has a whopping 75 maps, and its organiser is working on a hub to stitch them all together: ‘this is going to be an insane challenge’

For the last four years, the hottest mapping event in the retro FPS scene has been the Quake Brutalist Jam. Here, mapmakers enthralled by id Software’s 1996 shooter have gathered to honour architecture’s moodiest style, constructing levels designed to evoke its austere, concrete minimalism. The first Brutalist Jam occurred in 2022, spawning 35 maps that…

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Blizzard’s focus is on existing properties, president Johanna Faries says: ‘We have iconic IP and in many ways it still has a lot of room to scale’

After almost three years as general manager of Call of Duty, Johanna Faries became president of Blizzard in 2014, replacing the outgoing Mike Ybarra. Under her tenure, Blizzard struck a new deal with NetEase, undoing a bitter breakup and reopening the lucrative Chinese market. Talking to Bloomberg as her second anniversary as president approaches, Faries…

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Blizzard’s focus is on existing properties, president Johanna Faries says: ‘We have iconic IP and in many ways it still has a lot of room to scale’

After almost three years as general manager of Call of Duty, Johanna Faries became president of Blizzard in 2014, replacing the outgoing Mike Ybarra. Under her tenure, Blizzard struck a new deal with NetEase, undoing a bitter breakup and reopening the lucrative Chinese market. Talking to Bloomberg as her second anniversary as president approaches, Faries…

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One of the internet’s top experts on Skyrim minutiae hosted a $10,000 charity competition to guess how many trees there are in the Bethesda classic

YouTuber AnyAustin‘s playful, yet exacting style of videogame investigation has really taken off in the past year, garnering well over a million views per video. Whether he’s investigating the hydrology of The Elder Scrolls or taking Grand Theft Auto to task for its lax standards of airport realism, you’re in for a good time, and…

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