Have you heard of Hungry Knight? Probably not. But few may know that this was the working title of one of Australia’s greatest games of all time, Hollow Knight, back when it was first conceived during the Ludum Dare 27 Game Jam.

With recent global layoffs totalling into the thousands, it’s no secret that the video game industry is undergoing a contraction. Work and funding is sparse for junior and experienced developers alike. With no economic relief on the horizon, how do developers learn new skills, network with peers, and take risks on new projects? The answer may lie in Game Jams.

In a Game Jam participants develop a game from scratch in a hyper-condensed timeframe, often just a few days. Jams are typically themed, with prompts to guide the initial creative process.

This is a contributed piece to Infinite Lives, commissioned and allocated at $AUD 1 per word, when most videogame writing on the web is paid less than $50 USD per article. If you want to support more commissioned work, you can sign up to support Infinite Lives via a paid subscription.

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Most Jam projects end up as curios on itch.io, but some, like Hollow Knight, find second life as full releases. Former Global Game Jam (GGJ) Melbourne Regional Organiser and Executive Producer Giselle Rosman recalled Screencheat. Highly awarded at GGJ 2014, the title launched studio Samurai Punk during a time in which the Australian games industry had all but collapsed.

Now, with the economic climate impacting developers globally, smaller projects born from Jams are again making headlines. Local titles such as upcoming My Arms Are Longer Now from Toot Games, Enter the Chronosphere by Effort Star, and the freshly announced Cloudlings from Middle Space, all trace their origins to Jams.

Jams can be a “contained space to learn something new in a risk free environment,” says Toot Games’ Matthew Jackson. “A lot of game design is about being wrong quickly and privately, and Jams are an opportunity to do that when the stakes are low,” echoes Ned Kirner, Co-Director at Effort Star. For Effort Star, a Jam let them test and eliminate a tech choice that ended up being “an absolute debugging mess,” before implementing it in Chronosphere.

“If you don’t know if it’s good, do you want to devote years of your life to it?” says Kirner. Before Chronosphere entered production, the Jam version was commended by the former Nintendo of America President. Similarly, Jackson highlights how the tone of My Arms Are Longer Now’s comedy hasn’t changed much since the Game Jam, and that this humour was what caught the eye of party game developer, and now publisher, Jackbox Games.

In-person Jams are also great places to build connections, and careers in the games industry. “Every game I’ve worked on came from a Jam, and every job I’ve had came from people I met at Jams,” Effort Star Co-Director Rhys van der Waerden said. While online Jams still provide experience and, for Kirner, can feel more productive, he agreed that some connections can only be made in-person.

Beyond contacts, many developers said they apply the principles they learned during Jams to broader indie game creation. The key lesson? Keep the scope down. “Blowout is always a thing,” van der Waerden says, but “if you’ve done five or six Jams you have a better idea of what you can actually do.” When Toot Games partnered with Studio Folly for Dogpile, a dogstacking rogue-like, “the prototyping was Game Jam-esque” says Jackson, with the core loop established in the first week.

The results of Game Jams have been instrumental for some developers for securing initial grants, the hard-won funding lifeblood of Australia’s indie gaming scene. “Talk is cheap,”van der Waerden said. “If you’re applying for a grant with no prototype, you better be a household name.” Even if you’re not taking a specific prototype to production, Rosman says that they managed to convince VicScreen that Game Jam games count as published games when considering the experience level of applicants.

Given the prevalence of generative AI, it isn’t a surprise that Game Jams have to consider guidelines for its usage. Controversy surrounding LLMs and AI has split organisers. GameMaker’s Toolkit Jam, one of the largest running Jams, has banned the usage of generative AI. Meanwhile, GGJ has elected to allow usage of the technology.

Ultimately AI usage is up to individuals, making it hard to predict how prevalent the technology will become in Jams that do not expressly forbid it. “People who are just interested in the end product will probably self-select out of Jams,” says Rosman, while Jackson points out “If you’re doing a Jam to practice your craft, ultimately you’re the one getting hamstrung” through its use. Still, both acknowledge policing AI is beyond the scope of many organisers, and that the technology is changing rapidly.

Despite their importance, one of the longest-running Jams, Ludum Dare, is set to end in 2028 - despite a clear appetite for these spaces and their benefits. But regardless of where you are in your game development journey, from experienced pro to interested hobbyist, there’s clearly something to be earned from a bit of Jam.

Austin Gallagher enjoys long walks on the beach, sunsets, and games with turn-based tactical combat. If he isn’t save-scumming in XCOM or a immersive sim, running a tabletop RPG, or climbing a rock wall... wait that’s not Austin... what is that? You can find more of him in a few places, but it is probably easiest to go to austingallagher.bsky.social.

Have you taken part in a Game Jam? And what are your thoughts on their future? Let us know in the comments below.

Staring blankly at the Nintendo Switch store, I wonder: Will I buy my favourite videogame for the fifth time?

Later this month, an updated version of the classic game Final Fantasy X is being released on Switch 2. It’s an update, of an update, of an update. Beyond the HD remaster of the game released in 2013, other changes to the title are marginal at best. This latest version is a Switch 2 native product that bundles in some of the perks of the PC edition.

Right now, I can still at least access the last HD remake I bought on the original Switch all those years ago, so I could have a copy of the game that I can play on the move. And as long as I keep my old PS2, I’ll always have the physical disc that came with the PS2 my parents bought for me back in 2002. That, I know, will always run.

But as developers increasingly look at ways to make more money from existing titles, often via subtle tweaks to them, I genuinely wonder whether support -- or even access -- for that digital version will eventually be cut to push me towards purchasing the Switch 2 update.

Such fears across the gaming community were stoked last week when Sony announced it would stop producing physical games for its consoles from January 2028. In the same announcement, as if to underline that it cares little for game longevity, it also removed support for the PS Vita and PlayStation 3 online stores.

The move from Sony is not totally unfounded. Weeks earlier, Rockstar announced that it would not sell physical copies of Grand Theft Auto 6. Any boxes sold in retail stores would contain a code that players could use to download the game. And this went down with seemingly little backlash. Sony’s announcement, however, triggered an online tirade. The company is offering a discount on its PlayStation Plus subscription as a mea culpa as fans cancel theirs in protest.

Sony is far from an outlier here. Both Nintendo and Xbox have made moves in recent years to better align their games for digital distribution. There’s a case to be made that these companies are simply meeting the market where it is: Sony announced back in its May earnings that 85% of its total game sales are digital.

But its decision more or less puts gaming in some interesting and uncharted territory for entertainment media. Despite the prolific adoption of streaming services, music and movies are still sold physically around the world.

Videogames seem poised to become the first medium to fully embrace digital-only distribution, saving publishers around $1 per physical product sold, according to Game File. Global gaming analyst firm Newzoo believes that over time, this could soften the second-hand game market, especially as disc drives are stripped from future consoles.

And all of this creates challenges, especially from a consumer affairs perspective.

The main point of contention comes from how consumers have fewer rights with digital products in contrast to their physical counterparts. Rory Mir, Director of Open Access and Tech Community Engagement at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, explains it’s the equivalent of going from owning a game to indefinitely renting it.

“Physical media comes with a ‘right of first sale,’ a copyright protection that means you can safely share, resell, alter, or destroy your own copy of a copyrighted work,” he explains, citing US law on the matter.

“But courts have held that digital media doesn’t come with this same right, meaning no such protection is offered to digital purchases.”

“Even worse, videogames are typically distributed with restrictive digital rights management software, sometimes making it a crime just to alter your game to enable things like offline play.”

Mir’s calls for regulators to balance the scales between digital ownership and physical ownership are echoed by his Australian counterpart, John Pane, Chair of Electronic Frontiers Australia.

“If companies want the commercial benefits of digital-only distribution, they must accept stronger obligations to protect users,” he said.

“EFA keenly recognises digital platforms can and do create systemic consumer and competition harms that ordinary after-the-fact enforcement may not fix.”

“But the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has not yet given Australians a clear digital ownership right, a right to continued access to purchased digital media, or a comprehensive game preservation framework. Those are the next steps policymakers should be considering.”

While consumer rights groups are pushing for stronger protections, there’s also a view that our current framework in Australia, at least, may deter the worst possible practices. That’s the view of intellectual property and technology lawyer for Thomson Geer, Briar Francis.

The one loophole she sees that could land publishers in trouble in Australia is if they misrepresent consumers’ rights at the checkout. Interestingly, this very point is currently being tested in a Californian court. Four gamers are suing Sony for using words like “buy” and “purchase” when the terms and conditions outline that they are more or less renting the game indefinitely from the company.

Francis is also keeping an eye on how Australia’s new unfair trading practices regime, coming into effect in 2027, will interact with the digital sale of games, which will influence how online platforms represent their products, and also put in place stronger protections for consumers on subscription services.

But despite showing some confidence in Australia’s framework, Francis still believes it can go a bit further. “As a gamer, I’d like to see my digital licence entitle me to some sort of ‘legacy’ access to an archived version of the game I purchased, if it is ever cut from support or sunsetted,” she said.

Regardless, there’s a sense of inevitability lurking over this debate. Games are going fully digital and there’s little that can be done. Funnily enough, fatalism is a key theme in Final Fantasy X too. Its main characters struggle against an overwhelmingly inevitable conclusion, and somehow on their journey find a means to overcome it. Maybe the push from consumer advocates and the courts is our version of that loophole, a chance to defy an ending everyone says is already written, where as gamers we are somehow paying the same for less.

But for now, I guess, I’ll get my credit card ready.

What do you think about the move to digital-only gaming? Does the convenience outweigh the loss of rights? Will the scales be balanced eventually? Let me know in the comments.

While the mythical Queensland spirit is often applied to performances in sports, its doing-it-for-your-mates attitude has long been fuelling the state’s tight-knit game development community. Once a year, that spirit manifests in the form of the Queensland Games Festival.

“(Queensland Games Festival) is one of the few venues that consolidates Queensland video games in one place and lets the world know about it,” Blake Kammermann, Co-Organiser of QGF said. He’s also the Treasurer of the Brisbane chapter of the International Game Developers Association.

While Melbourne and Sydney have long been known for their gaming events and communities, with the former playing host to Australia’s largest international games festival, Queensland’s scene is gaining momentum. Global hits like Unpacking and Fruit Ninja have helped put it on the map. The state also plays host to the local arm of global developer and publisher, Gameloft, a company originally created by one of the founders of Ubisoft.

This is a contributed piece to Infinite Lives, commissioned and allocated at $AUD 1 per word. Most videogame writing on the web is paid less than $USD 50 per article. If you want to support more commissioned work, you can sign up to support Infinite Lives via a paid subscription.

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Kammermann is deep within the work of putting together the 2026 edition of the QGF, with the festival having grown significantly across its fourteen years of existence. The inaugural Game On Symposium—as it was known back in 2012—attracted approximately 200 attendees. Last year’s QGF saw more than 2000 people walk through its doors. Publishing ahead of offical numbers, its expecting 3000 attendees this year.

“The goal was, and has always been, about bringing the community together to support each other,” Kammermann said.

“Rather than trying to fill a gap in a market, (starting QGF) was just people supporting people. And at this point ‘people’ has expanded to include all Queensland game devs.”

For Lachlan Toft, a Brisbane-based independent game developer behind the upcoming Stewards of Nu Juno, the festival is a chance to connect, learn, and get their project in front of other Queensland game makers and players.

“I’ve been twice before as a visitor and had such a great time chatting with the devs and trying out as many games as I could get my hands on. This will also be our first public exhibition, so it’s both exciting and nerve-wracking to be putting our game out for anyone to pick up.”

There are challenges that come with running a Queensland-centric games festival. Queensland is geographically large, with its capital city, Brisbane, technically sitting closer to New Zealand than to certain remote regions within its own state.

Hosting an event that also highlights talented developers from outside the heavily populated south-east corner is no easy task, but it’s an area Kammermann is confident the festival has shown improvement in.

“Brisbane and Gold Coast used to be the main hubs of Queensland’s game development, but because of the support by organisations such as Screen Queensland, we are seeing the wonderful growth of regional hubs. This year we’ve also had submissions from Toowoomba, Townsville, Cairns, and Hervey Bay (all regional Queensland cities).”

That reliance on government funding poses another potential area of concern for QGF, as other long-running Australian games festivals have fallen victim to its occasionally volatile nature. However, Kammermann believes that “the durability of the festival is in the tenacity of the Queensland game dev community for it to happen, in whatever form that takes, with as much funding as it has.”

The state’s government, through Screen Queensland, has been continuing its recent spending on the homegrown game scene, including a slate of new titles receiving grant funding. And given QGF has also received healthy non-government support from donors including major Queensland studio Gameloft Brisbane and respected local radio program Zed Games, the view that the event has sustained itself thanks to its community appears to hold true.

“The festival has told the personal stories of the Queenslanders who made these games, highlighted Queensland locations, or simply demonstrated the creativity and talent of the Queensland developers,” Kammermann said.

“And I’m not sure how much more quintessentially Queensland you can get than that.”

The Video Game Storyteller (Harry Fritsch) is a games writer based in Brisbane, Queensland. Check out his Substack, covering stories in games, and the ones we create playing them, here.

Have you been to the Queensland Game Festival? Or would you like to see a similar event in your hometown? Let us know in the comments.

Just over six months ago, it was billed as Valve’s Wii moment. The launch of the Steam Machine would bridge the divide between console and PC gaming. It would also be a conduit for introducing some of Australia’s best PC native indie games to a living room audience.

Now, with the device’s details revealed, the Steam Machine isn’t closing any gaps. In fact, it’s poised to widen many of them.

It will distinguish those who can afford gaming as a luxury item, and those who can’t. It will reaffirm PC gaming’s relatively higher barrier to entry, despite its extensive access to a library of cheaper indie games. And, crucially, it will galvanise the industry’s and its consumers’ mounting frustration with the rise of data centres and AI.

So what’s going on?

After months of delays and a shifting deadlines and angst emanating from Valve, the Steam Machine has arrived. It’s shipping in Australia on June 29, along with the rest of the world, but there’s quite a few, significant, catches.

First and foremost, it will launch as Australia’s most expensive console to date back a minimum of $1609 ($1115 USD) for the base 512gb model. For contrast: the previous holder of that crown, the PS5 Pro launched with a price tag of $1195.95 ($829 USD) and that caused quite the stir on its debut.

Yet, it somehow gets worse. Due to supply constraints, the Steam Machine can’t simply be purchased at launch. Those interested will have to register for a global lottery, and then win the right to buy one.

We can’t be too surprised by this. Console price hikes have become the norm: Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft have all jacked up their device price tags within the past 12 months. Lotteries are also the norm in other markets, such as the US.

But, somehow, this announcement is hitting harder.

“Dared to dream” about the Steam Machine

It certainly has for some in the Australian indie developer community.

“When it was announced, plenty of us–including me–dared to dream it might mark a real shift, if the Steam install base grew here and globally,” said Mike Roberts from The Kids From Yesterday, creator of Dolven and Adventure Calls. He originally dubbed the launch Steam Machine as Valve’ Wii moment.

His take now: “That won’t happen soon, at least not from this product… I think consumers can see better value elsewhere in gaming right now, so the Steam Machine won’t shift the install base, meaning no real change for indies.”

Games industry analysts globally are taking a similar view. Though many told GameIndustry.biz that through keeping a close eye on the parts market, it seemed increasingly unlikely the device would come in under $USD 1000.

Locally, Australian analyst firm Telsyte is a bit more bullish than their global counterparts. They suspects the Australian market could be an outlier for the device.

“According to Telsyte’s Australian Subscription Entertainment Study 2025, 45% of Australian gamers consider video gaming a must-have and gaming commands a relatively high share of Australians’ entertainment budget,” Telsyte senior analyst Alvin Lee said.

“While it is more expensive than other consoles, the Steam Machine unlocks the world’s largest PC gaming library in the living room. It is also competitively priced against a comparable gaming PC build,” Lee said.

“The Steam Machine creates a premium tier between traditional consoles and gaming PCs that could put pressure on both sides of that market if it gains traction.”

Impact on the broader AI debate

Though, arguably, one of the hardest hit by this news isn’t in the gaming industry at all. Proponents of AI and data centres are fighting a global battle to hyperscale their sector. Valve’s decision and candidness to pin it on the memory shortage hasn’t done them any favours.

Sentiment against AI across online gaming communities and among indie developers is palpable. The initial frustration that games could become AI-slop fuelled experiences and destroy industry jobs is giving way to fresher concerns that it will wipe out any possibility of it remaining an affordable hobby.

Gaming’s new media scene has tapped into this frustration too. One of Aftermath’s recent lines of mech sports a “Destroy AI” motif. Australia’s new CONTINUE? Magazine ran a 30-second ad during Frosty Games Fest featuring its co-editors Mark Serrels and Jackson Ryan chainsawing a computer, blazoned with the text “No AI”.

For the videogame industry itself, it’s a tightrope. Despite hurting their margins and forcing price increases, many major gaming industry players have not condemned or called for a pause to the rapid rollout of data centres.

While Microsoft is a key proponent of the AI trend, others like Sony, Nintendo and major publishers are in an unusual position, snafued by the allure of AI’s promised productivity gains. The mantra: It’s a potentially useful tool to responsibly cut development times and costs, while maintaining margin and quality, as both inputs continue to rise each year.

All of this forms another line in which data centre operators could face a shift in public sentiment from gamers, a group that would be traditionally agnostic towards them, given data centres host and enable some of the world’s largest games. It comes as sites for new data centres emerge as a political issue in both the US and UK, with similar themes emerging in Australia.

In an attempt to hear the other side of the story, Infinite Lives put questions to Data Centres Australia, the peak body representing the organisations surging ahead with Australia’s equally as explosive data centre rollout. They declined to comment, citing that the issue is outside their remit.

For now, what was meant to be an exciting moment for both Valve and the Australian indie gaming scene is now somewhat in tatters. The Steam Machine’s high price and limited availability takes what critics are saying is broadly an excellent device and has turned it into an industry issue.

Much like the Wii’s famous launch, where its unique controller wowed the world, the Steam Machine has all the pundits talking about the future of the industry. But not in the way that anyone hoped or expected.

What do you think about the Steam Machine’s launch? Will you pick one up (if you can)? And does its debut change your view on the rapid rise of new data centres across the globe. Let me know in the comments. (And before you point it out, the figure in the headline is Australian dollars…)

These past few months I’ve been getting pretty close and personal with my Switch 2. I divorced my Playstation 5 for a year, as there’s no way I could lug it around Europe and the UK for nine months.

But, travel, they say, is a pressure cooker for all relationships. And while I still love what it brings to the table, I wish my Switch 2 could do more? Support me more broadly. Solve problems rather than create them.

This has got nothing to do with games. Nor with how they play. But as the most nomadic console, I feel there’s a few low-hanging features that could really buff up its portability. Some of which Nintendo could fix with a simple software update.

The Switch 2 turns one this month, and now costs more than it did at launch thanks by-in-large to the AI-fuelled memory crisis among other factors. So surely a bit of advice on how to improve it is welcome? Here’s what I came up with, it’s by no means a definitive list.

Seamlessly take wifi logins from your phone

Entering in new wifi credentials with each and every destination is somewhat of a rite of passage with travelling. The biggest pain point for gamers is that we often have to do it more than once, and often using a finicky game device keyboard the second time around.

To boot, newer routers typically come bundled with randomised passwords for added security. Gone are the days of “Admin” or “Password” as passkeys. Now they are often a soup of letters and numbers, with punctuation to boot. You will get them wrong at least once.

Both Apple and Android have solved this with their devices. You only need to enter it once, then it ports to each other devices on their ecosystem. There has to be a way in which gaming companies can follow suit, possibly connecting to your phone to solve this significant pain point.

Offer a travel-friendly version of the Dock

There’s a strong argument that all of the docks for the existing portable consoles were not designed for travel. The console itself is the portable component. But with extended stints abroad, staring at a small screen for extended gaming sessions will literally send you cross-eyed.

Most accommodation these days usually sports a TV with a HDMI port. It may be a decade old, but so is HDMI technology.

Yet, the dock itself does not travel well. It’s clunky in a suitcase, too big for carry on, and slightly adds to your overall travel weight.

There are third party docks designed for this. you can spend hours on Amazon and Youtube pinpointing them all, and trying to verify their claims on whether they actually work. All to be taken offline with one simple unexplained update from Nintendo.

For my money, I’d strongly prefer that Nintendo either release their own travel dock or design their docks to be highly portable?

Serve as a platform for TV streaming services

Once upon a time, Nintendo dipped its toe into the realm letting video streaming services onto its ecosystem on the Nintendo Wii. This was back when both Xbox and Sony were attempting to “own the living room”, launching their respective consoles as multimedia hubs.

That’s still somewhat the case, though Nintendo has retreated a little. Both the Switch and Switch 2 cannot stream Netflix and other services. TVs have gotten smarter since them too. Now most of them offer streaming services natively. So what’s the issue?

Logging in and out of each of them is an absolute pain. Not all smart TVs are born equal either; especially in Airbnbs where you are largely inheriting your host’s TV of generations past. Most I’ve dealt with require you to manually enter your credentials with the remote control. Not all of them are second-screen or cast compatible too.

So, the solution? Just hook your console up to your TV, and it streams for you. You can also download movies and watch them on the go, saving you packing an iPad and your console. With stationary consoles this makes a lot less sense in the era of smart TVs. With portable ones, we may be onto something.

Give you the option for mobile-data connectivity

There’s two clear reasons as to why this hasn’t already happened. The first: It requires another port for a SIM. The second, searching for connectivity (and maintaining it) drains a lot of battery.

Technology has solved the first problem: eSIMs are now commonplace. In fact, the physical SIM may be going the way of the headphone jack in the near future.

Why is this helpful? Well, it unlocks a lot more gaming on the go options. Especially in transit hubs like airports or stations, where wi-fi can be dubious or patchy. Just look at what’s available via mobile phone gaming.

Beyond that, it’s another solution for the perennial Airbnb wi-fi issue. Again, all accommodation will say their wi-fi is excellent, but trust me, that’s rarely the case.

Build in additional battery life options

If you are paying attention to the news, more airlines are cracking down on portable batteries due to an uptick in cabin fires resulting from them. Some are outright banning their use on the plane with airlines across the US are leading the charge here (no pun intended). Given a lot of global aviation regulation actually comes from bodies the United States, you can expect others to follow suit.

For most travellers, this is an annoyance. For Australian and New Zealanders, who have to travel at least six hours to go anywhere meaningful, it’s a major frustration. It rations your gaming during what is a very good time to game, as it’s a gamble whether the USB port on the plane can power your device. Some of them ration energy like the plane’s arrival depends on it.

The only viable solution for this is to prioritise battery life of the device over other functions, which is a shame. The only reason this is last on the list, is because it’s a give-in that it will happen eventually. Next generation batteries (solid state batteries) that hold up to 50% more charge and are less flammable are making their way onto the market. Eventually they will find their way into consumer electronics, when the cost comes down.

And just to address what you may be thinking…

After all that, yes, I could just play games less while abroad. In a lot of cases, that’s what I’ve been doing. But, gaming is a great time filler between huge activities. Travel naturally creates so much down time. Even if you don’t game, think of how many books you read, or shows you watch while overseas. It’s all the same pool of time.

I’ve been critical here, but don’t get me wrong. I only write this as there’s always room for more. Surely screens can’t get much bigger. Device makers will have to work harder to find perks that make the upgrade worthwhile as graphics in gaming start to plateau.

If this helps out any budding device designers, you’re welcome. If this helps out Nintendo, well, I’ve always wanted to visit Nintendo Land. I promise, I’ll bring my Switch 2.

Are there any features (travel or no) that you wish were included in the Switch 2? Let me know in the comments below.

Around this time last year, I ventured out into the great unknown of asking the internet to pay for journalism. Hold up, I’m understating that: videogame journalism. You know, the kind that’s oversaturated on the internet, and chronically undervalued.

I set up an experimental model: New articles would be free to read for all existing subscribers. After a week, they would go behind the paywall. To access my archive, you need to pay. The theory was: This would reward older subscribers, and incentivise new signups. But, that’s not quite how it panned out.

Despite the effort I put into them, interviews, research and, at time, a lot of deep thinking in the shower, older articles now don’t really have a shelf-life as they are gated. I constantly feel the need to unlock them.

As for new paid subscribers who do not know, I did get a few subscribers (typically lawyers and a few game devs) who signed up to read my Explainers (I’m one of the few reporters digging into gaming-related policy issues in Australia). But, most of my backers are family and friends. Or other journalists who believe in my mission of using the funds I raise to support more games journalism at a sustainable rate.

But, there isn’t any real momentum here, and I know why.

The biggest motivator paying for any form of media is (sadly) fear of missing out. Feeling like you are out of the loop, or tangibly worse off, for not being in the know or part of a community. The only reason I’ve got any paying subscribers at all is I’ve primarily tapped into a second motivator: Wanting to support someone because you believe in what they are doing.

There are writers on here that I totally support for that reason as opposed to the first. But you can’t really build something sustainable off the back of that. It’s basically building off philanthropy, and it’s fickle. It’s the first thing to be cut when your circumstances change. And personally: Asking for charity is exhausting. An exchange of equals is so much more satisfying.

Moreover, Substack kind of expects newer writers without or existing following to monetise off those they’ve met here. It feels incredibly icky asking some of this platform’s most prolific games writers, many of whom support my work with likes, comments and shares that I wholly appreciate, to engage in a paid-subscription-go-round, where the only real beneficiary is the Substack itself. Perhaps if Substack did more to support videogames writing, I’d have a different view.

So for Infinite Lives to build to something that does sustain the kind of change I want to see in the videogame media, I need to rethink it. I need to create a separate additional part of it that is tightly gated and valuable. That creates a sense of community. That really serves an audience well, that you would miss if it was cut. Right now, while travelling, I’m not in the position to sustain anything I come up with. Even filing just one story a week can be a challenge.

But here’s the thing: I am in a position to meet others and learn. So that’s what I’ll be doing. Talking to others, hearing their stories about what’s worked and what hasn’t. Asking people who could pay, who want to, what’s actually valuable. Talking to others about what’s worked, what hasn’t and revising from there.

Before you cancel your payment…

So I will be dropping my paywall on my older articles, which erodes the value paid subscribers see. But before you hit unsubscribe, this is what I’ve done with the funds I’ve already received:

• Commissioned three articles from three writers so far. (Slight spoiler, Substack’s gaming community will recognise one of them).

• Paying each $1 AUD per word, for 600 words. This is in a world where writers can be paid as little as $50 USD per article -- some spanning over thousands of words for SEO purposes. As Infinite Lives grows, I want to place upward pressure on this trend and help move games writing towards a living wage.

• I also value writer’s legwork. Unlike many other publications in Australia, I’m paying an advance (50% upfront) and also paying the remainder on acceptance of the finished story, rather than publication. The latter can see writers go months unpaid with some mainstream outlets.

The good news: I have enough to continue doing this, and publishing articles this year. So these practices won’t stop despite not driving for paid subscriber growth. I will keep my paywall running, but it will largely be there for those who want to pay, as opposed to keeping people out of any of my content.

Lastly, I just want to thank everyone who reads me, and single out those who do pay — around 18 of you over the past year. Thank you so much for putting a value to my words, and in turn, making my deeds for other writers possible.

I cannot understate how much penning Infinite Lives has enriched my personal and professional life. I’ve said this to family and friends, but my stint abroad this year would be so much poorer without it. Being an Australian games writer has led to so many opportunities I wouldn’t have otherwise, and I’ve met so many incredible people in the process. It’s rekindled what I loved about journalism in the first place: Being privy to interesting ideas and interesting people.

So where to from here? I’ll keep meeting others, and supporting others however I can. I’ll put my brain to work and come up with a product that will scale, that will be worth something. Despite the name of my stack, there are no cheat codes for genuine growth.

But for now, you can expect continuing regular columns, full unfettered access to my backlog and paid contributions from others where I can manage it.

Thank you for continuing to read Infinite Lives. Don’t worry, it won’t die. It can’t.

True to form, Substack allows you to paywall your content really easily. Removing the paywall from them however, is a manual process that I need to go in and do for each of my 130+ articles. So I’ll be unlocking them gradually over the next month or so. If there’s an article you desperately want to read, reply to this email and I’ll unlock it sooner.

Any thoughts? Let me know in the comments.

Summer Game Fest has come and gone, and with it another week filled with hype, promises and a lot of game trailers. But there were a few differences this time around that perhaps only the keenest of observers may have noticed. For instance: did you pick that more games had a release date this time than at the previous Summer Game Fest in 2025?

Last Summer Game Fest, only 15 titles announced across the three major showcases (State of Play, Xbox and the Summer Game Fest showcase) had release dates. This year, that figure doubled to 30 games across the same showcases. However, this could be a coincidence rather than a trend.

“Without knowing the specifics around each game, I don’t think anything has fundamentally changed,” Travis Plane, co-founder and General Manager, Double Jump Communications told Infinite Lives. “I suspect this is merely a representation of where each game is at in its release timeline.”

“What we know, and what we address as part of our consultancy, is that when you announce a game, it is rare that you would reveal a release date too early in your marketing cadence. Timelines constantly move in games and putting a flag in the sand too early is unrealistic.”

Though, if it continues it is a welcome sign for the industry. Last year, there were plenty of examples of how disclosing a release date at the last possible minute hurt the chances of other titles — the most prominent being Hollow Knight: Silksong’s impromptu release last September.

The other trend? Everyone is avoiding Grand Theft Auto (GTA) 6’s release window like it’s radioactive. While it could be delayed yet again, it’s currently slated for November 19 this year.

This isn’t a new story — in fact, you likely saw headlines on this just after Sony’s State of Play, where it seemed developers were cramming all of their titles into September to escape the marketing radius of what is deemed to be one of the world’s largest games.

Xbox’s showcase had the last-mover advantage here. Curiously, few of its games flagged September launch dates, with many opting for October instead. That includes its biggest release from its showcase, Gears of War: E-Day.

I’ve gone ahead and visualised this trend just to show how stark it all is. A few caveats with the data: I’ve excluded games without a firm date, and only focused on the three major showcases — which still covers plenty of games.

I’ve also excluded Nintendo from this analysis — technically it’s showcase isn’t part of Summer Game Fest. But it’s interesting to see that few of its major first-party releases clash either. Nintendo is also bucking the new trend on release dates: we only know the launch dates of its imminent first-party titles, despite it saying some will launch this year.

The hot guess floating around is that the much-vaunted Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake — revealed right at the end of its showcase and set to debut this year — will launch around the same window as GTA 6, positioned as a holiday game. But we won’t know for sure until Nintendo provides more information.

Regardless, Summer Game Fest week has done its job. There’s a lot to look forward to over the next year, and a strange sense of industry stability emerged from the event. It won’t last long. Xbox and Ubisoft both just flagged another round of layoffs. The hype is over, back to business as usual.

Notable upcoming major games from Summer Game Fest and the June Nintendo Direct:

• July 23 – Splatoon Raiders (Switch 2)

• August 27 – Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy (PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC)

• August 27 – Star Wars: Zero Company (PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC)

• September 15 – Marvel’s Wolverine (PS5)

• September 17 – Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave (Switch 2)

• September 24 – Silent Hill: Townfall (PS5, PC)

• September 24 – Control Resonant (PS5, Xbox, PC)

• October 6 – Gears of War: E-Day (Xbox Series X|S, PC)

• October 15 – Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse (PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch, PC)

• October 22 – Final Fantasy Resonance (PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch 2, Switch, PC)

• October 22 – Nintendo Switch Sports Resort (Switch 2)

• November 19 – Grand Theft Auto 6 (PS5, Xbox Series X|S)

What did you think about Summer Game Fest? Are there any titles you are looking forward to? And how do you feel about the impact of GTA 6 on the industry, and the return to providing launch dates well ahead of time? Let me know in the comments.

Weeks out from last year’s debut Frosty Games Fest, one of its organisers, Amy Potter-Jarman, wouldn’t commit to a second show. “Was it meaningful to developers? Did it resonate with viewers?” she asked. “Until we know if it worked, I can’t say for sure.”

She got her answer. In a few days, Frosty Games Fest will air again as part of Summer Game Fest. The slot that was a dream come true the first time around has become a fixture.

Which curiously leaves a harder problem than the one she started with. One key ingredient in last year’s success was its surprise. It came out of nowhere, championing a scene the rest of the world overlooks. This year, that novelty has worn down; it’s competing for eyeballs with at least 18 other showcases. Whatever cut-through Frosty gets, it has to earn on curation alone.

Are you an Australian or New Zealand game dev doing something globally interesting or unique? Or someone who supports the industry that has something to say? I’m always looking for stories. Get in touch at harrison@infinitelives.com.au or via Signal: harrisonpolites.90

The good news? That’s something Potter-Jarman and the broader Frosty team can control. Over 220 games applied this year —slightly more than the last, in a far shorter window — and only 50 made the cut.

“The challenges have changed,” Potter-Jarman told Infinite Lives, ahead of this year’s showcase.

“Last year there was some youthful optimism and naivety; we were flying by the seat of our pants.”

“We had a lot of time to build the first showcase. We opened applications crazy early because we didn’t know. We were sitting there thinking: ‘We really want this to exist, but does the market? We don’t know if sponsors will pay; we don’t know if anyone will watch,’” Potter-Jarman said.

This year’s showcase ran a tighter ship. Applications opened in March and closed within weeks. Submitting video content was mandatory too. “We didn’t do that last year, and that was a big mistake on our part, because a lot of the games being submitted aren’t announced yet, or don’t have video,” Potter-Jarman said.

“They’re looking to launch their first announcement trailer with us, so they don’t necessarily think to submit raw video of their game. So we added that this year.”

Landing on 50 games is a process of deliberation between Potter-Jarman and her four other collaborators, Lucy Mutimer, Pritika Sachdev, Kieron Verbrugge and Ted Darling. Darling was brought on this year as an in-house video-editing resource to help pull the event together, another key learning from the first showcase.

As Potter-Jarman describes, there’s a “very long list,” a “long list” and then finally a shortlist. That discussion is filtered through a few lenses: Are there enough games in each category? Will the key audience (both players and media) care about these games? What’s trendy right now?

There are slam-dunk games that escape that process. Titles that look great, are advanced in their production and are announcing something new using the showcase. The rest get debated.

Developers are notified if they didn’t make the cut when the team has their shortlist. Though, they pass it through one more filter before everything is locked in. Frosty Games Fest syncs up with showcases as part of Summer Game Fest and checks that no one same trailer is featured across multiple events.

“Summer Game Fest is a big moment, and we want to make sure we’re showing unique things across all the showcases rather than doubling up,” Potter-Jarman said. “We certainly don’t want to show the same content as another showcase. That would be a waste of time.”

There is, however, a wrinkle in the showcase process that Potter-Jarman fully concedes. They live and die by the applications they receive; their quality directly impacts the show. Yet, steering them for the better is a challenge.

“It’s very easy for me to sit here and say developers don’t know what makes a good showcase application,” she said. “But showcases also aren’t well-positioned to give feedback to everyone who’s applied.”

Currently, the best they are able to provide is a templated rejection email and push out broader content on the common reasons applications are denied.

Potter-Jarman added that they “overestimated” developers’ experience in applying for showcases the first time around. They received a lot of good games, but poor applications. To an extent, that continues to be the case.

“So it’s on our minds to try to help with that,” Potter-Jarman said. “We just haven’t quite figured out how to do it yet.”

The hint there is that Frosty Games Fest is here to stay. Asked about the future of the event, Potter-Jarman shed her conservatism from last year’s interview. She’s already thinking about the third Frosty Games Fest, and how they can improve.

After all, it’s taken a lot of processes, learnings and time to turn what began as an offhanded moonshot tweet into a deliberate, considered and growing operation.

Want to apply for Frosty Games Fest next year?

Here’s some advice based on what Potter-Jarman said about this year’s process.

Apply early: Games are typically considered in batches of 50 in order of application. Have your collateral ready to go before March next year.

Repeats aren’t dealbreakers: Featured already? Frosty is happy to showcase games more than once. Just not too many of them. They go into their own category for consideration.

Have something to say: A new trailer? A release date? A unique high-profile reveal? All of this raises the appeal of the application. The showcase is aimed at the press, so the same PR beats work.

Consider your competition: Each genre has a quota within the showcase. While some buzzy genres have a higher quota, with others you’ll be competing with other Australian and New Zealand games that are similar.

Are you too early in development? If you don’t have much to show, you won’t have much to say. Consider how close you are to launching, and whether you’ll be able to make the most of the moment if you get picked.

Want to tune in? The Frosty Games Fest showcase will air:

• Sunday 7 June, 8am AEST, 10am NZST

• Saturday 6 June, 3pm PT

• Saturday 6 June, 11pm GMT

Did you tune into Frosty Game Fest last year? What did you think? And will you watch this year? Let me know in the comments below.

Suddenly, Rick Salter found himself rearranging his furniture in his living room.

It was the last thing the industry veteran and co-founder of Sydney’s Hojo Studios expected to be doing as a first-time judge for the Australian Game Developer Awards (AGDAs).

With no game in the running in 2025, Salter decided he would put himself forward to judge as a way to give back to the community. In a bid to be helpful, he indicated when applying that he had access to a broad spectrum of gaming devices, including one that could play virtual reality games.

“One of the games I judged used the actual furniture in your room or in your office... I kind of had to change my living room into a bit of a labyrinth to give it its fair shake. Otherwise, I wouldn’t really be testing the game.”

“Hopefully there isn’t a game where it’s like you can only test this game by base jumping into a canyon or something like that.”

Salter’s dedication here is just one example of the mammoth effort that goes into deciding Australia’s next game of the year. From when nominations end in early June, to the announcement of the awards in October, dozens of industry judges anonymously play, assess and score games based on a strict, but transparent criteria.

As the number of games released continues to climb each year, awards have become increasingly important in helping titles stand out. It’s more than just an accolade. An award win can lead to a renewed marketing campaign, funding for a future game or new opportunities down the line.

With competition intensifying, and the stakes escalating too, there’s a broader push from award organisers around the world to improve the transparency of the judging of their prize. This varies globally. From the opaque Game Awards in December, where similar to Eurovision, a mix of popular vote and industry judging from an undisclosed pool of handpicked global judges decide the winner.

All the way to the BAFTA Game Awards which has publicly discussed its internal process, and has a 13-page public rule book (PDF) dictating how it runs.

Australia’s, run by the Interactive Games and Entertainment Association, is arguably up there as one of the most transparent.

How the award works

It’s a two-round process. Games are initially reviewed by a pool of general judges, and are played and scored by a minimum of six of them using a strict, and public (PDF), rubric. Each game receives a score between 1 and 5 for each relevant criteria. The awards also provide judges with clear guidance as to what each score means.

“The great thing about the rubric is that it doesn’t leave a tonne of room for interpretation,” Cassandra Gray, Studio and Production Manager at VR technology company PHORIA and a repeat judge for the awards, said.

“This means that theoretically the games should be assessed by the same metrics for each judge.”

Top scoring games qualify for each category and proceed to the second round where they are assessed by two specialist judges, selected for each category based on their past experience. The Game of The Year category is a bit different. It is decided based on the total score it receives from all judging.

The scores are locked in, the winner and finalists are decided and are announced two weeks prior to the awards.

Yet, even the most air-tight processes are open to personal interpretation, and several of the judges conceded this.

Gray adds: “Where it gets personal for me is using my own experience making and playing games to fill in any areas the rubric might not cover, or to look at a game and recognise that while it may not hit the exact criteria that’s laid out it makes up for it… compensates in an innovative and interesting way.”

Fellow veteran judge Nik Pantis, a senior game producer at Riot Games, agrees. Though comparing games complicates matters further.

“I’ve been asked before: ‘Do you compare games against each other when doing your scores?’ and the answer is no.”

“I’m always focussed on the game I’m judging at the time, so if that game is scored a particular way it’s because that game should be scored that way, rather than ‘Oh, this other game I’m judging does this thing better so I’ll alter my score down a bit’.

“It can definitely be tough to steel your mind to your current game, but I believe it’s important to isolate the games one at a time. The end scores will do the comparisons for us.”

Balancing for bias

The main counterbalance for any bias is the volume of judging each game receives. But that leads to another challenge: the volume of games each judge receives to assess. Judges for the awards are generally allocated a number of games based on the details they provide when they apply.

Pantis, for instance, indicated they were moving overseas during the process, so was given a lighter load than prior years. Hojo Studio’s Rick Salter however, said he was both available and had every platform possible at his disposal, and he says was allocated around 10 games to play last year.

It’s a lot of gameplay, as the judges Infinite Lives spoke to indicated that most games they assessed spanned between the 5 to 7 hour mark. Though, it’s not an issue for everyone who participates.

Leah Williams, a 2025 judge and Content Producer at ScreenHub, arguably, by volume of stories, one of the busiest writers in the industry, said: “The organisation team is particularly good at accounting for time constraints and other responsibilities, so it doesn’t feel like too much.

“That’s speaking from the perspective of someone who reviews lots of games every month. I’m used to spending time on games, playing them to completion wherever possible.”

Though, there’s one category that’s difficult to judge in this regard: Excellence in Ongoing, an award for live service or long-running games. These games don’t necessarily end in a formal sense.

“I continue to play the game until I have ‘tasted a little of everything’, so to speak,” Nik Pantis said.

“Enough to form a solid understanding of the game and enough to have seen how the game meets each of the rubric’s core considerations. Most games in this category are very difficult to ‘finish’.”

Judging what’s there, not what could be

The judges Infinite Lives spoke to also agreed that one of the hardest parts of judging games for the awards is separating out its potential from its reality.

Salter says that one game he scored last year was shipped to him with a bug that had to be addressed by the developer. The awards has a process for this baked in to manage such an instance, but it still coloured Salter’s opinion on the game.

“You can’t judge a game based on where it might be six months from now. You have to judge what you’re actually given to run. So there’s a bit of balance there,” Salter said.

PHORIA’s Gray agrees.

“You’ll play a game where you can see that the developers have really tried to do their best but haven’t quite hit the mark in some areas,” Gray says.

“It can be difficult to mark them down, especially if you can see what they were going for or you can tell it just needed a little extra work or time.”

Much like some games it judges, the AGDAs criteria and its processes are far from final. The AGDA process is reevaluated each year, and tweaked based on feedback from its judges. The criteria is then adjusted for all to see.

Gray says: “I always think it’s important to be transparent with these kinds of things. That’s one of the many reasons I keep coming back to judge the AGDAs. They also believe in transparency.”

Pantis adds: “My hope is that other award ceremonies around the world follow suit.”

What do you think about videogame awards? Are they broadly transparent? Could they improve? And were you suprised by the lengths the AGDAs goes to in administering it awards? Let me know in the comments below.

Talk about a backflip.

This week, Sony killed its plans to port existing PlayStation Studio exclusive games (Ghost of Yotei, Saros) onto other platforms. This wasn’t some corporate thought bubble either; Sony purchased a studio, Nixxes Software, dedicated to creating high quality PC ports.

They were all-in on the strategy, and analysts agreed.

Epyllion’s Matthew Ball and Circana’s Mat Piscatella have both chimed in on this in the past. The logic is pretty straightforward. They’ve said that for major gaming productions totalling into the hundreds of millions to have any hope of recouping their costs, they need to get in front of as many eyeballs as possible. That means an end to the console wars, and the rise of cross-platform gaming.

This rationale is also powering Xbox’s thinking, as it continues to focus on Game Pass as opposed to its devices. Though with its new leadership still finding its footing, this position may change. Funnily enough, Ball was announced as Xbox’s new Chief Strategy Officer this week.

The fundamental fact remains: if you want your game played by as many people as possible, it needs to be as device-agnostic as possible. So what’s actually changed? Zooming out gives us a bit of an answer, and it’s not great.

This decision was preceded by not one, but two PlayStation price rises in the space of a year. It now costs closer to $1000 AUD for Sony’s console, and there’s still a significant portion of PlayStation 4 owners out there who are yet to upgrade.

What makes this interesting is that Sony’s consoles have historically been a loss leader. They make their money from videogame sales and ancillary services tied to the devices. Yet, while this figure isn’t public, there is obviously a cap on how much they are willing to lose on each sale.

Each price rise coincides with an explainer of market conditions from Sony: they’ve primarily cited the rise of shipping costs and other broader inputs outside of their control.

One point they are worried about, however — which analysts have been drilling them on — is the impact of AI on their business. But not in a way that you would expect.

In the background of all of this, the same components that are used for gaming consoles are the building blocks of data centres. And they are springing up everywhere, in response to the immense compute power required to fuel AI’s ongoing growth. During its latest investor call, dancing around the issue so as not to spook its investors, Sony has said that it has supply for this coming financial year.

But as data centres pop up on every street corner, whether it will be able to say that again next year should be in doubt.

Valve has also been pretty candid here. This is one of the main reasons the Steam Machine — a device initially announced for Q1 this year — is yet to see the light of day, with no further updates on when exactly it may come out. Instead we got… a controller. It’s telling that the one item they did release does not use any memory or RAM.

The logic follows: if the cost of the console can only go up from here, you can’t really add new features, and you need to create a bargaining chip that encourages your customers to actually buy the device. The only lever you have left to pull is exclusivity.

This, however, is just one interpretation of events. Despite analyst observations, the strategy to dual release on Playstation and PC may have just underperformed. Recent data from Newzoo suggests that releasing the PC port a year after the original significantly weakened demand for the ported game.

And there is also real merit in Sony following Nintendo’s approach, given it is a gaming company that continues to defy all market realities. Its devices continue to fly off the shelf, selling over 19 million units by March 2026, despite only playing host to a handful of first-party games. Nintendo isn’t immune to the RAM shortage, but appears to be managing it better than its rivals. Though it too is increasing the cost of its devices.

There was a fun bit of irony buried in that Sony investor call. Straight after the company quickly glossed over how memory shortages affected its console business, it launched into a spill about how it’s leveraging AI to accelerate game production. What good are faster games if you have nothing to play them on?

What are your thoughts on console exclusives? Are there just too many games to even bother with them these days? Or do you own a PS5, and now feel a bit vindicated in your earlier purchase? Let me know in the comments below.

When it comes to creating a game, you might think the biggest pain point is the idea, or the design. Finding funding to get it off the ground? Finding the right people to build it? Or ensuring that it’s actually fun?

All are challenges. But by far the most insurmountable one: A game’s marketing and launch.

It’s been a running theme across the chats that I’ve had with Australian game developers over the past two years. It’s easy to see why. According to SteamDB, over 21,000 new titles launched on Steam last year, up from around 18,000 in 2024. By way of contrast: In 2014, only around 1700 games came out on Steam. And that’s just one platform too. The market for mobile games is a magnitude larger, totalling at over 100,000 titles annually.

Are you an Australian or New Zealand game dev doing something globally interesting or unique? Or someone who supports the industry that has something to say? I’m always looking for stories. Get in touch at harrison@infinitelives.com.au or via Signal: harrisonpolites.90

The sheer volume of upcoming games is expressing itself across all promotional channels. Frosty Games Fest, a tailored showcase of Australian and New Zealand Games, is running again this year in June. It features a whopping 50 games from across the two countries, in what will be a brisk power hour of gaming excellence. The catch: It slimmed it down from over 200 applications. Only one quarter of those who applied will be showcased. There’s simply not enough space for them all.

As the crowd continues to grow, standing out from it is getting increasingly difficult. The standard approaches are leading to mixed results. Some have found it leveraging reviews and traditional media outets. Some rely on video game content creators or have found bang-for-buck with well placed Reddit ads that feed directly into their wishlist. Others show at every available expo and demo with the same goal. But, as GameDiscoveryCo regularly discusses there’s plenty of instances where giant wishlists totalling into the hundreds of thousands have not converted into sales at launch.

With this in mind, Infinite Lives put the call out to local Australian developers who are trying something a bit different with how they are getting their game out there. This is not to say they aren’t doing all the usual things but have found another unique way to promote their game.

Think of this more as a thought-starter for the industry. And for those not in it, a look at the lengths developers are going to in order to get noticed. More often than not, the approach isn’t intentional nor aimed at driving sales. But thanks to their creativity and unique design, video games are uniquely placed to write their own playbook when finding a way to stand out.

Turning End of Ember into a TV series

In February earlier this year, South Australia’s Bad Plan Studios announced a first for this market. Ahead of their game’s release, End of Ember had been optioned for launch as a TV series by production house Cosmic Scream.

The deal would see the studio leverage the IP of End of Ember in a show, including the designs from well-known artist Dan McGuiness, who illustrated Anh Do’s Hot Dog series. It coincides with the introduction of laws in Australia, whereby streaming companies (Netflix, Amazon, Disney) need to spend a portion of their local earnings on funding original Australian content.

End of Ember deverloper Chad Habel told Infinite Lives that the agreement came about through an opportunity provided by VicScreen. They met with a dozen production houses as part of a Melbourne International Film Festival program.

“Dan would always ask: Do you like roguelikes? Most filmmakers were like, oh video games, yeah, cool. But they didn’t know about games”.

“But, then this one studio, Cosmic Scream were like: ‘Yeah, we love roguelikes. Oh, Binding of Isaac [another roguelike], one of my favourites. Fantastic’. And they got the game, and they played it on the Steam Deck”

“That day, at lunch they said: We want to do a proposal for you. We want to catch up. Then we went through the whole process of talking to them.” From there, it took around nine months for the process to finalise in January 2026.

His advice for other devs considering the same approach: If you are considering pitching for a TV adaptation, “think about it sooner rather than later”.

“These things are planned, they need to be booked in,” he said. “And go to events,” though he warned: “You have to be so lucky with pitching.”

Terra Firma 2 tries the same content creator approach, but shifts the target

Gareth Robinson’s take on the issue: You don’t have to reinvent the wheel to find success. Small tweaks to existing approaches can work too.

Robinson from game studio Working As Intended had a breakthrough brokering a conversation with a content creator outside of the gaming sphere. Their game Terra Firma 2, a landscape simulator, was showcased by a science creator Milo Rosi (Miniminuteman), in a widely shared video debunking the “Antarctic Pyramid” conspiracy. It amassed 1 million views since it debuted last week.

It’s the same approach as many other games, who vie for YouTube creator attention, but a very different audience. Keeping on the same theme, Robinson also said Terra Firma 2 has seen some growth on its own channels by posting content about the key challenges of designing the game.

“Content creators approach games from a gameplay angle but as the creator of a game there are stories and content only you can produce about how the game is made and how it works under the hood.”

“It’s something audiences love, the chance to see behind the curtain, it’s super effective but not something I heard people mention a lot when I was marketing my game.”

“I think this is going to become conventional wisdom at some point- if as a developer you’re not doing it, you’re missing out because nobody else can make that content for your game.”

Dolven launches a physical card game

Incidentally, strategy game Dolven was inspired by card games such as Gin Rummy, 500 and Poker, but was never slated to become one until after production started. Yet, its cardboard rendition hit the shelves before the digital product.

Covyne Entertainment’s Bree Nai headed up the card game, co-developer Andrew Naish puts down to her work ethic, and also his tendency to underestimate deadlines and “polish everything” with the video game.

The card game, which features the same rules and pieces, has helped Dolven stand out on crowded showfloors and expos. At PAX Australia last year, they offered a bundle that included the PC game alongside the card game. It sold out.

Dolven has incidentally tapped into a broader trend in gaming, whereby more videogame intellectual property is ending up in cardboard. League of Legends creator Riot Games launched Riftbound last October, and it’s quickly become a staple at local games stores globally. There’s little in the way of commercial data to verify its success, other than reports of its growth on card purchasing platforms.

However, industry heavyweight Wizards of the Coast’s success with gaming IP in its long-running game Magic: The Gathering paints a more holistic picture. Its Final Fantasy cross-over set last year generated $200 million in its first day of sale, surpassing the previous success it saw with a Lord of The Rings set in 2023. Notably, Wizards of the Coast contributed 88% of parent company Hasbro – yes, that toy company – operating profit in FY25.

While it’s a stretch to say Dolven will see the same success as some of the world’s largest entertainment firms, they certainly have verified that there’s a market.

“We haven’t cross promoted as much as we’d like to from Steam, but it’s definitely something we’d like to explore,” Naish said. “We probably spend too much fun building stuff I think, and not enough time telling people about it!”

Naish’s point here is more telling than at first glance. For most game devs, building is very much the focus and it’s a challenge to find the time to consider the game as a product that also needs to be marketed and sold. A lot of game developers simply aren’t wired that way.

As Bad Plan Studios’ Habel elaborates: “It feels really capitalist, and really money hungry, and separate from the creativity of building games, but it’s critical to have that thinking there.”

But the bottleneck isn’t thinning any time soon. Australia’s next big game may already exist, we just don’t know about it.

Are there any cool marketing tricks that you’ve seen games pull in order to stand out? And has finding your next game gotten that much harder from the sheer volume of titles being released? Let me know in the comments.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article said Miniminuteman’s video amassed 10 million views. This is incorrect. At time of writing this had only amassed 1 million views. This has been corrected in the article.

We’re entering a weird new world when it comes to how you pay for videogames.

Consider the past month. We’ve seen price rises (mainly for consoles), price drops (Xbox Game Pass) and now, in hushed whispers across the gaming business, talk of dynamic pricing (both Nintendo and Sony are actively experimenting with this). Let’s hope nobody gets inspiration from Uber and tries surge pricing!

It’s all such a far cry from what we are all used to. A lifetime ago, working at retailer JB Hi-Fi, I found that games and consoles usually cost the least at launch, when competition to sell them was at its greatest. Then a day or two later we’d bump the price back up to recommended retail. It would stay this way until it went on sale, usually months, or even years, later.

Physical retail made pricing harder to adjust, and therefore simpler for consumers. Now, while retail largely operates in the same way, digital storefronts have unlocked new strategies. As broader economics continue to pincer the gaming industry, experimentation has begun in earnest.

It’s an issue I’m keen to follow as it unfolds, especially in regard to how these models interact with various consumer laws. But to help get a sense of it all initially, I’ve teamed up with pricing and marketing expert Kayla Medica to understand some of the mechanics behind the strategies at play here.

Thanks for joining me, Kayla. I wanted to first ask you about the console price hikes in recent months. Consoles are traditionally a loss leader for gaming companies. Yet Sony bumped up its consoles by between 15 and 20 per cent last month. That follows another price increase from May 2025. Can you talk me through the mechanics of price increases?

Kayla: Thanks for having me! Raising prices can not only adjust for the increase in production cost but also reduce the loss that these companies take to sell consoles — it can be a net positive for the company. They sell lower volume, but they also lose less money.

There is very much a pure business decision at play here: charge a premium and sell less but potentially increase profitability, or sell it “cheap” and move higher volume of stock, which might help them reduce the cost of production through economies of scale (i.e. the more you make, the cheaper it is to make, due to bulk pricing discounts on raw materials and manufacturing) and help them get into more homes and then go on to sell more games.

Harrison: That’s really interesting. We actually saw a couple of things happen in response to this latest hike. For starters, there was a rush on consoles in response to it, triggering another wave of sales.

Kayla: Price increases to generate sales are actually used all the time! Think about early-bird event tickets, hotels and flights, new calendar or financial year price increases — there are endless examples. Oftentimes this is also related to supply and demand or material costs increasing, but it can also just be artificially inflated for no real reason.

Harrison: I just wanted to pull up something you mentioned earlier. It’s interesting that you mention profit here. As I touched on, while Nintendo is an exception to the rule, the typical play with consoles is for them to be sold at a loss, and make the money back over time by charging a premium for the games themselves.

Kayla: Yeah, that’s a common approach. A loss leader product that hopes to upsell you later is called a “land and expand” strategy. Away from the console topic, it’s similar to freemium app-based games, where a few whales offset the cost of giving something out for free to the majority of users — however, that mass number of users might be what makes the game worth playing, and so it’s a necessary evil.

If (profitable) games rely on multiplayer mode to make them “worth” playing and paying for, then that free user base is essential to attract the whales.

All of this is to say pricing is complicated and depends on a number of factors: what game types are bringing in profit and what their value proposition stems from, the company’s overall profitability, the journey from entry point to a payment being made — it all has to be viewed as one connected piece.

Harrison: Let’s move onto the next point that has everyone up in arms: dynamic pricing with games. How does this work more broadly?

Kayla: Dynamic pricing requires the company to have a lot of real-time data. The simplest data is supply and demand, like in the case of Uber knowing how many drivers are available compared to how many passengers are requesting them — and importantly, the price goes up for all passengers during surges. In the case of Sony using a factor like assumed income, that would be pretty shitty of them.

However, simply changing the price due to location isn’t necessarily dynamic pricing; it could just be localisation. If we go back to the dichotomy between selling a lot of things cheaply vs selling fewer things for a higher price, localised pricing allows less wealthy geographies to still get the same game as wealthier nations, while the company still makes a profit in both regions. If they’re doing this then I’d be all for it, because gaming is such a universal hobby across all kinds of diversity factors.

Harrison: This is what I’m wondering. To an extent, dynamic pricing already exists on a geographical basis, thanks to currency fluctuations. And games are just cheaper in some regions because that’s what the market can pay.

Kayla: Yeah, real dynamic pricing would be two people in the same town being charged different amounts at the same store because of their gaming history, which will probably cause uproar — but there will be no change unless people universally vote with their dollar. You cannot influence these companies to change their tactics if you continue to buy games from them, because you’re proving their theory that people will pay the price they set. You’d need a proper boycott to get them not to do it.

Harrison: It’s interesting. We’re hearing a lot about pricing experimentation from Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony. But little from Steam. And prices for games fluctuate a lot on that platform too, continually going on sale and essentially creating a culture that disincentivises buying a game at full price. The last thing I wanted to ask: do you think there are any other pricing models that may surface here? Any other thoughts on the direction this could all go?

Kayla: One interesting pricing strategy could be group-buying. Take games like It Takes Two for example: it specifically requires two people to complete the game and it’s aimed at couples — even long-distance couples. They have the ability for the second player to join the co-op game without having a second copy of the game; basically, only one person needs to have the game for two people to play together via internet connection, and not sharing a single console if they’re not physically in the same place.

There’s absolutely questions here as to what consumers will and won’t tolerate in terms of monetisation. And whether its fair too. But the group buying model could be another avenue for exploration here. Especially with games that get more value from more players playing together in a session (think: Mario Kart or Mario Party). It could be interesting to see shared group logins much like a Netflix account.

What do you think about gaming companies experimenting with new price points and models? Is there a model that seems fairer to you than any other? Let us know in the comments.

My first three are below. Let me know what you think of this format in the comments.

Dispatch

Why did this have to come out late October? I would have easily dedicated a whole review to this game had it not released amid a glut of other titles.

A spiritual successor, made by many of the same developers as Telltale games (The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us), Dispatch sees you manage a group of down-and-out superheroes working for the Los Angeles hero dispatch unit.

A lot of the game is spent watching cutscenes, shaping the story with dialogue options, interacting with quick-time events (I turned them off) and then managing the dispatching minigame. You try to marry heroes to 911 calls, selecting them based on their attributes and abilities. Despite its superhero trimmings, this is a really adult story with excellent humour to boot.

The voice acting performances and story here are on point. In fact, the weakest part for me was actually the minigame? One of the few videogame components of the title. But don’t let that discourage you.

Dispatch has a brilliant story that will hook you after the first episode. It’s a great one to play with friends or partners. Even better if you are running the game simultaneously and comparing notes, as your decisions do impact the overall story arc. Well worth around 7 hours of your time. I’m keen to give it another go and choose the path I didn’t take when it releases on Nintendo Switch 2.

And for those who have played, I picked Invisigal.

Hell Is Us

What’s the best way to get me to play a videogame? Target my friends. This one came to me from a mate who said it was the “best game he’d played this year [2025]”. So I had to give it a go.

I finished it, but I can’t say I agree. That’s not to say it’s bad though. Hell Is Us is a remarkable game that’s doing a lot. To start off with its dealing with some heavy themes around war, genocide and vengeance, in some of the most extreme ways imaginable. Some of the stuff you hear from non-playable characters in beggars belief.

This game also doesn’t hold your hand. Most objectives and goals are delivered to the player cryptically, and it’s up to you to learn the environment and figure them out. There’s been comparisons between this and Dark Souls (I feel like every third person game gets this). But it’s not quite the case. This plays a little closer to Nioh if we had to compare, set across several big levels instead of one big world. The gearing system is similar too.

For me, the game is a little let down by its enemy design, which largely remains unchanged throughout. You face the four same enemies a lot, with some variation. This game actually has me excited for a sequel from developer Rogue Factor.

There’s some great ideas here, and this is a daring game that pulls no punches. But, sorry to my friend, it didn’t make my best games list for last year. But the next one could?

Arc Raiders

If targeting my friends isn’t working, your next best bet to get me to play a game is to hit up my barber. Yes, I was convinced into trying Arc Raiders mid-haircut.

Let’s say this from the outset: I’m not into modern shooters. I’ll nuance that: I actually really enjoy shooter games, they are a blast. But anything competitive? I’m out. Shooting games somehow encourage a level of toxicity across players that I’m not really into.

Arc Raiders kinda felt like the exception to the rule and that’s what hooked me. It’s a resource-gathering extraction shooter. You gather resources on the surface, while being hunted by AI-controlled robots. You get out, gather stuff, then head back to a lift to the underground for extraction. Unlock items, and then go again. It’s a neat little loop.

While you can target and assassinate other players for their loot; playing solo, the rule of thumb is to help them out. And for the most part, that’s how people played. I can count plenty of moments where other players saved me from the bots, and I paid it forward too.

Yet, every so often, there were instances where players camped by the lifts and picked me off while I was waiting for it to arrive. Arc Raiders system apparently penalises players for targeting one another and matches them in servers with other players with the same mindset? Perhaps that why it was -- for the most part -- a wholesome experience.

There’s recent reports that Arc Raider’s player base is down 80% from its peak. I can understand it. The game was a blast, but somewhat got old fast. The randomness of the loot, and no real sense of progression wore down my enthusiasm within a month.

So what does this game need? For my money: A story! It built a fantastic world, but doesn’t really go anywhere with it and I think that hurts its appeal more broadly. If there is a revamp or relaunch of any kind, that would be a step in the right direction.

Have you played any of the games I’ve mentioned here? What do you think? Let me know in the comments below.

I still fondly remember the last time Pokemon launched a widely-hyped mobile game. We all do.

For me, it was like being warped into an alternative reality, where a kids’ game that I’d re-engaged with for about a decade prior was suddenly cool again. Everyone was playing it.

It filtered into my day job too. I had business reporters from major Australian publications calling me for a background chat on Pokemon. “Tell me about the significance of Pikachu,” one asked. It was a wild time.

We’re now at the precipice of another huge mobile release from the Pokemon Company. One that might not cut through and capture the zeitgeist like Pokemon Go, but has the potential to make the sport of Pokemon battling far more widely recognised.

Pokemon Champions is a strategy battling game originally released on the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 but, as aforementioned, will launch on mobile devices at a later stage. A firm release date is yet to be announced.

It cuts out the other trappings of Pokemon games to focus purely on the art of Pokemon battling. It also serves as the new home for VGC (videogame championship): the formal competitive format for the franchise that runs 2v2 double Pokemon battles.

As it stands, Pokemon Champions is a dream come true for veteran competitive players, who can now create teams with ease, removing the tedious trappings of raising and training Pokemon.

There’s a sizable number of them too, competing at the highest levels of the game. Around 278 adults competed in Sydney Pokemon Championships this year. In Europe, 1455 adults registered. Over 2900 in the Las Vegas regionals.

But given this is a mobile game aimed at a larger audience, I’m dubious as to how it will fare in bringing in new players. That’s because it puts them at a disadvantage on entry, and that’s significant for a competitive game.

Gotta recruit ‘em all

There are three core modes to Pokemon Champions: battling, recruiting, and training.

Battling is the focus here. You can compete in either single (1v1) or double (2v2) battles and have the option to take part in ranked matches or free exhibition battles. Ranked sees you climb a global ladder, increasing your standing with each win, earning points as you go. That ranking resets every season (which lasts around six to eight weeks), and each season brings in a new set of rules and available Pokemon for use, which will keep things fresh.

Recruiting is the game’s answer to capturing Pokemon. Instead of finding them, once a day — or sooner using points or vouchers — a Pokemon breeder gives you a choice of 10 monsters from a random pool to add to your team. You can choose to rent them for a week or use points earned from battling to shift them permanently onto your roster.

The game also interacts with Pokemon Home, allowing you to import Pokemon from recent games or Pokemon Go into Champions for use. That means any veteran players will likely have a much larger pool to work with on entry.

With training, you can use points to customise moves, stats, and abilities. The flexibility here is fantastic, something sorely lacking from the mainline Pokemon games.

For context, players would, in older games, spend hours adjusting this strata on their monsters, breeding them into oblivion to get the right nature, moves and abilities. Without getting too into the nuts and bolts, Pokemon Champions only requires you to have collected the Pokemon you want to train; everything else can be altered with ease.

New to Pokemon Battling? Champions won’t help

The framing of Champions as a accessible mobile-first game here is confusing, as it’s arguably, in its current form, not the best starting point for any new players.

To say Pokemon battling is complex is an understatement. Over the years, its rock-paper-scissors type matchup mechanic has given way to so much nuance and strategy that in some circumstances a fire Pokemon will indeed defeat a water one.

Despite this, Pokemon Champions offers little in the way of tutorials, aside from a few basic staged battles. Strangely, Pokemon Stadium 2 — a battle-focused Nintendo 64 game — did a better job with its extensive Trainer School feature.

Champions gives players just enough for a rudimentary understanding of mechanics, then largely relies on YouTube content creators to make up the shortfall. The game features an extensive text glossary of terms and explanations, but it’s broadly un-engaging and buried in menus.

That’s not all. Without any backlog of Pokemon, you’re going to be reliant on the daily breeder roulette, which can sometimes produce duplicates of monsters you’ve already claimed. This matters because in Pokemon battling, diversity leads to strategy. Picking the right leading Pokemon, and having monsters that can counter a particular foe can decide a battle.

One of the ways past Pokemon games got around this was with Team Rental Codes. Another player could create a team, put their code online, and you could use it to gain a copy of their team. No breeding or training required. Its introduction was another huge moment in accessability for the VGC format.

Pokemon Champions downgrades this with Replica Teams. For this to work, you need to own a copy of every monster on the team; the setting then simply replicates the moves and stats of those monsters. The reasoning is that it forces you to engage with the game’s acquisition systems rather than shortcut them, and that makes sense in terms of giving you a reason to play daily. But can you see the issue here?

This is a competitive game against real people. If you’re starting at ground zero, the systems of the game work against you. Entrenched players have past knowledge and access to a backlog of monsters, including rare ones that can drastically turn the tide of battle — even when you’re well ahead. This dynamic will likely worsen with future seasons that allow teams to be loaded with rarer legendary Pokemon.

Thankfully, you are rewarded by the game whether you win or lose. But crushing would-be Pokemon players with continuous stream of defeats isn’t exactly the best way to welcome them into the format.

A dream come true, for some

For those who already compete in VGC, Pokemon Champions is a dream come true. Points and vouchers are handed out liberally, making retraining or acquiring new monsters a non-issue.

The battles themselves are snappy, most lasting less than 10 minutes. The Pokemon animations are among the best they’ve ever been. Champions also provides players with extensive datasets that can help them build new teams and understand how others are prepping theirs. And, on top of all of this, soon, you’ll be able to play it anywhere with an internet connection on your phone.

This is perhaps why discourse on the internet is so polarised on Champions. The regular competitive Pokemon streamers are having the time of their lives, and when the game goes mobile their kingdoms are about to get a lot bigger.

But this is no Pokemon Go.

Pokemon Champions is asking a lot from casual players and new entrants, and in a twist on the usual mobile game experience, paying won’t really help. All of the paid options add improvements, but don’t solve that core challenge of being locked out of strategies and counter-plays from not owning the right monsters.

Mastering Pokemon is not an insurmountable challenge, and its always been hard to get into VGC. Everyone loses a lot as they are starting out and learning the game. And even the best team can fold to a poor matchup or unlucky miss of an attack. But in its current state, Champions is a missed opportunity.

Despite all of this, as a quality free game you can get a lot of value out of without paying a cent, it’s hard not to recommend trying Pokemon Champions. For those a little more motivated, the $10.50 AUD starter kit is good value, unlocking a significant number of vouchers for accessing Pokemon faster and retraining them without cost.

It’s also worth saying that as this is a live service mobile game, it’s likely going to change too. So if you are reading this review, two or three months down the track, it may be out of date.

To see Pokemon battling and VGC go mainstream would be another reality-defying moment. Imagine settling a dispute with a Pokemon battle, like they do in the games and anime. With tweaks, Champions is capable of making it happen, bringing plenty of new fans into the fold.

Pokemon is already a difficult game of skill, ingenuity, and at times luck. There’s no need to stack the deck any further.

Are you climbing the ladder on Pokemon Champions? And to what extend competitive games have to cater to new players or should they just get good? Let me know in the comments.

Australia is back.

After years in game development obscurity following the global financial crisis, an article from GameIndustry.biz has called it: the resurgence of Australia’s game development industry. But, of course, there’s more to it than that.

That’s because the true hero of this comeback story isn’t the studios or the broader ecosystem — and that’s not to talk down their involvement and generosity to one another in supporting each and every game release.

But rather, it’s government support, both at a federal and state level. Many new games get off the ground thanks to state government grants. Meanwhile, larger companies operate competitively on a global stage — in spite of higher costs in Australia — thanks to the country’s fairly new Digital Games Tax Offset.

Yet government support can come with its own challenges, and at times puts the industry in a precarious position of constantly having to sing for its supper. Expanding on GameIndustry.biz’s coverage, this explainer aims to dig into that delicate balance, criticisms of the current regime, and what it all means. Let’s get into it.

What does government support in Australia look like for the gaming industry?

There are two main schemes that directly benefit games companies:

Grants: These are offered by the various screen-related peak bodies across the country and also by Screen Australia. They directly fund new games, often with stipulations that the funds earned go directly into game development. They are competitive too — not all games that apply get funded.

The Digital Games Tax Offset (DGTO): This is a 30% refundable tax offset for eligible businesses that spend a minimum of $500,000 on qualifying Australian development expenditure. That minimum amount is important here, as it rules out a lot of indie developers. This was introduced in the 2021–22 Federal Budget, and is incidentally up for review in the coming years.

So why does the Australian games industry prefer government support over other commercial mechanisms for funding?

This is an interesting one, as there’s definitely a push within the ecosystem for more support from the government. But then again, that’s not unique to Australia either.

Government support, whether in the form of a grant or tax offset, is broadly considered across the games industry as the a desirable form of funding, because it allows full creative control over the end product and is generally free of commercial conflicts of interest.

While the government remains a key stakeholder, its involvement tends to be more passive than that of a venture fund, company, or publisher.

What are the challenges with government support of the games industry?

First and foremost, it’s not permanent. It’s vulnerable to budget cuts, a change of government, or a simple change of priorities. That’s true of any government-led program.

Secondly, it’s public funds. This means it’s wide open to scrutiny and needs to provide a clear return on investment to taxpayers — even if it’s a cultural one. That accountability aspect can be difficult for the games industry to grapple with, and can also be difficult to measure more broadly.

That’s largely shouldered by Australia’s gaming peak body, the Interactive Games and Entertainment Association (IGEA). “Policymakers want to see employment, location and revenue statistics as a minimum, along with information on skills development and the cultural value of games,” IGEA CEO Ron Curry said.

It’s a “significant” challenge, he added, yet they’ve managed it to date. In March, IGEA announced that the Australian video games industry contributed $608.5 million in revenue to the economy. A strong figure for a sector with only 2,443 full-time employees.

That’s impressive. But is it all a bed of roses? Are there any industry criticisms of Australia’s regime?

While it’s not universally held, there is an undercurrent of frustration with the current grant regime.

Industry veteran and Xsolla’s Area Vice President Simon Slee said that while the grants are valuable for game development, their allocation often leans a little more towards supporting the “art” aspect of games as opposed to those that may be commercially successful. This may be because they are allocated by the screen arts government agencies, where the focus is on cultural narratives and getting people started in the industry.

“Culturally, it feels like there is a bit of an allergic reaction to making money sometimes,” he said. “It has to be a balance, and right now, we’re a bit too far in the art camp.”

Moreover, Slee adds that the system has created a perception among budding developers straight out of university that the correct pathway to making games in Australia is with the grace of a grant.

Slee also advocates that, as opposed to more direct government funding, they could lower the DGTO threshold to around $350,000 and provide offsets for the business of games services costs — both of which could help studios from grassroots indie level to more sustainable, longer-term businesses that can be financially self-sufficient.

He points to New Zealand as a country that has the right balance when it comes to evening out commercial return with the art of making games.

The other main criticism, which came to the fore earlier this year with Freeplay failing to receive a new grant, is that there is little in the way of funding for services or groups that support the gaming industry — or targeted support for launching a game, which is the biggest chokepoint for all new titles.

You mention New Zealand. So what has it gotten right that Australia’s missing?

A very different focus, for starters.

New Zealand has a national economic target for its games industry — and an ambitious one at that: an industry worth $1 billion in revenue by 2026.

This is partially guided by CODE NZ, a government-backed agency aimed at helping grow the sector from skills training through to game development. It was originally founded to support the Dunedin games industry, but in 2023, with government support, expanded its remit to the whole country.

The broader criticism of this approach is that by focusing on commercial return, it undermines creativity in the games that are produced. Though CODE NZ’s Industry Development Manager Vee Pendergrast refutes this.

“Creativity is a key criteria for us. Given Steam is sitting at over 20,000 new releases per annum for the past couple of years… creative project selection is part of the cut-through that any indie developer needs in a crowded marketplace.”

“However, CODE is very specific about informing developers about market trends, techniques to generate market validation and pitching, and training our audience to think commercially as well as creatively. It’s a Venn diagram, not separate circles.”

The numbers back this up. According to CODE NZ, around 35% of games that leverage its program succeed in securing a publisher, compared to the industry average of 0.0016%.

More importantly, the New Zealand government itself is championing similar figures and the sector more broadly — a stark contrast to most jurisdictions, including Australia.

“Games funding isn’t fickle when you can show the returns like we do,” Pendergrast added.

“Regardless of which side of politics is currently in government, return on investment and employment generation and retention talk louder than any ideology.”

So what do you make of all of this?

Some global contrast is needed. Australia and New Zealand are both ahead of so many other budding games industries, and both have different challenges too. In Portugal, for instance, the local games industry would greatly appreciate reduced versions of some of the policies discussed in this story.

As its head, Diogo Rato, Executive Director of local peak body Associação de Produtores de Videojogos Portugueses, put it, grants and tax-related support for new games would go a long way.

“For our emerging studios, ‘good’ support means funding the pre-production phase; grants for prototypes that bridge the gap between a student project and a viable business,” he said. The Portuguese local and national governments both support the ecosystem, but not to the extent of other countries.

Thanks to its current level of government support, the Australian games industry can take more moonshots than a lot of other jurisdictions. One striking feature of our ecosystem is that there are fewer indie games in Australia that fast-follow market leaders and attempt to copy their success than there are elsewhere in the world. And that is something to relish.

But it’s not perfect. Quietly fragile, in fact, as it puts the Australian games industry in a continual state of justification for art. As such, IGEA’s efforts to put a figure to that and support its continuity are admirable, especially when the grants funding many of the country’s newest games do not place as much emphasis on commercial return.

Though it doesn’t have to be that way, as Pendergrast explains: “If the premise is that government funding is vulnerable, then the obvious answer is to equip the studios and broader community with the skills so that they can find their own sources of development funding and not be wholly reliant on the government.”

Yes, Australia’s games industry is back. But if the government ever pulls the pin, for whatever reason, will it remain that way? If we’re finally now in any position of strength, that is now the challenge.

What do you think about the state of government funding for games in Australia? Or government funding of the games industry globally? Let me know in the comments.

For Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Donkey Kong, Mario, and many other loved Nintendo brands, the worth of a videogame often comes down to its key moments. It doesn’t have to be complicated or overly cinematic either. Even the earliest Mario games threw players a memorable curveball when they first learned that the princess is in another castle.

While it’s difficult to pin down an exact quote in all the interviews he has given over the years, the sentiment remains the same: Great games should evoke emotion, challenge the player to want more, learn more. And many designers over the years have diligently followed this ethos.

We’ve run four of these greatest in gaming articles, but this has to be my hardest callout to date. Through a combination of gameplay, visual and sound design, moments in games can outshine even the most famous scenes in movies and iconic lyrics in songs. There are so many to choose from too. It seems like every game these days attempts to have at least one section that inspires emotion and sticks in your brain.

Yet, Substack’s game writing community delivered, picking scenes and segments I’d never even considered. (Keep in mind, there are some minor spoilers below, which I’ll attempt to flag). Here are some of their most memorable moments from the games they’ve played.

Raphael’s House of Hope fight, Baldur’s Gate 3

By Mike Piggott, Twisted Wonderland

In 2024’s Game of the Year, Baldur’s Gate 3, a fantasy RPG set in the world of D&D, you meet a character early on, a devil named Raphael. If you steal from his house in the Nine Hells, what results is one of the greatest boss fights in gaming. Upon entering his lair, if you’re sharp-eared you’ll hear subtle musical notes which play as you explore. These occur whenever Raphael appears in the game, and are a nod to Raphael’s Final Act, a song which begins with this fight.

This gothic and dramatic melody plays during combat, and is a delightful Disney villain-esque number, performed by actor Andrew Wincott (Raphael) and classical singer Mariya Anastasova. With the wonderful lyrics: Hell, Hell, Hell has its laws / Hell, Hell, effects and the cause / Curtain falls, but hold your applause / Squirm, squirm, for now down here come the claws!

An unforgettable moment.

Encountering Bowser for the first time, Super Mario 64

By Peter Monks, Late to the LAN Party

In the beginning, games were in 2D, and life was good and flat. But we were always yearning for the third dimension, and the early 90’s brought us the pioneers of 3D gaming. One of the biggest was introducing a famous mustachioed plumber to a whole new world. And what better way to do that than to have him fight his nemesis in a way we had never seen before.

Bowser now towers over Mario, huge in every way. Lumbering towards him, there is no hope of jumping on his head this time. Instead, we can now go around him! Grabbing his tail, the brand new Nintendo 64 controller invites us to twirl the analog stick around, faster and faster. We see bombs surround the arena, the inevitability hitting us in the head. All we need to do is aim, let go, and watch the fireworks.

So long, Big Bowser!

Arriving in the Village, Resident Evil 4

By Evan, Everything Unimportant

The opening sequence of Resident Evil 4 is a slow trickle of mounting tension that eventually explodes into a massive battle in the main village square. Leon Kennedy is blitzed with murderous villagers as you have no choice but to run around evasively and take shots when you can with limited ammo. There’s no end in sight, no hope that you could possibly take all of these enemies out before you’re overwhelmed. It’s already challenging enough to balance maneuvering and shooting to stay alive in the horde, but then…

…you hear the revving of a chainsaw. If the droves of sadistic villagers coming to tear you apart wasn’t enough, you’re faced with an enemy wielding a chainsaw that can kill you in one swing. The feeling of panic that you feel any time you see this enemy running towards you is enough to get your palms sweaty, and they tank a ton of ammo before they go down for good. Only the sound of a church bell tolling gives the player a chance to catch their breath as the horde is drawn away from you in a trance, but only after your blood pressure has been adequately spiked.

It’s an absolutely iconic opening and enough to let you know that Resident Evil 4 is in a league of its own.

The stand-off over Synth M7-97 and blind betrayal, Fallout 4

By Dusty Gamer, Dusty Gamer’s Substack

If you’ve spent any time in the wasteland, you know the Brotherhood of Steel is a complicated beast. I’ve been in a “it’s complicated” relationship with them since the original games, with Fallout 3 coming the closest to winning me over. By the time I was climbing the ranks in Fallout 4, I was all in until the moment I handed that network scanner tape to Proctor Ingram.

The confrontation over Synth M7-97 is one of the most layered, tactile narrative sequences in the series. The dialogues with Elder Maxson are haunting; the zeal in his voice is unmistakable. It’s a moment that feels eerily prophetic today, as Maxson’s fear of uncontrolled technology echoes our own modern AI anxieties.

This stayed with me because it’s more than a plot twist; it’s a masterclass in agency. It taught me that with hope and a bit of silver-tongued diplomacy, you can navigate the wreckage of betrayal and the collapse of someone’s life mission and purpose to find a place where something entirely new can begin.

Facing Endsinger at the end of an epic journey, Final Fantasy XIV Online

By The Game Enjoyer, The Game Enjoyer Substack

If there’s anything that online RPGs excel at above every other type of videogame, it’s their ability to make the world feel alive and deep beyond what the player sees. When Square-Enix gave Naoki Yoshida the job to rescue Final Fantasy XIV, nobody expected its original story to last for 8 more years.

Over that time, players adventured, fought terrible foes, bonded and formed communities. When, at the end of 2021, the story that started back in 2010 and had converged with every expansion came to an end, it wasn’t a solo moment. Facing the Endsinger next to 7 other players, we were all at the same point, the final fight after years in Eorzea. When the enemy was felled, there was not the usual collection of loot, “gg” messages and leaving. Everyone stood there, knowing there was no going back: the story was over. Then I realised what an epic journey it had been all along.

The unscripted rollercoaster of each surface run, Arc Raiders

By InGameScientist, Just One More Turn

Heading Topside in Arc Raiders is dangerous business. The elements, robots, and sometimes other players all conspire to prevent you from making it back home safe. But it also gives birth to epic sequences of thrill, uncertainty, and finally, relief.

On one occasion, I went through the emotional rollercoaster of hiding from a haelstrom of rockets unleashed by one of the game’s most feared enemies to fighting against said enemy with fellow players, then losing some of those players to a downpour of rockets, and finally, escorting a downed player to safety.

The great thing is, I can look forward to and experience something unique and epic every single time I play the game. It’s the reason this is the only game I’ve played for the past several months: I get an epic 100+ hour RPG story experience condensed into an action packed 30 minutes.

Revan’s reveal, Star Wars: Knights of The Old Republic

By Cat, Cat’s Controller Corner
*Spoilers ahead*

Star Wars is known for one of the biggest reveals in cinema history. Knights of the Old Republic made that into something personal. Something that you had your own say in. In it, Revan wasn’t your father, the reveal was that they were you. Nothing is more quintessential to gaming.

This moment meant a lot for me as a kid because it was what really solidified my love for videogame stories. Not only was I seeing them happen, I was a part of them. It showed that those stories can be complex and have depth. It made me replay the game again and again because it was so impactful and fun. I sat through the same reveal time and again and each time I got chills. It was monumental for me and for the industry at large.

Also you can go to Korriban, the Sith academy planet, after finding out you’re Revan and tell everyone there and no one believes you and the fact that you can do that at all is fantastic.

The Coin, Legacy of Kain

By ROP, ROP’s Passions

Legacy of Kain is a saga built on revelations. With each conversation, what you believed to be truth fractures and reforms. History rewrites itself; like when Raziel or Kain introduce a paradox and the world reshapes to accommodate it. The Coin discussion is one such moment: deceptively simple, yet… a moment that remained ingrained in my memory of the Series.

“Suppose you throw a coin enough times… suppose one day, it lands on its edge.”

The coin represents choice, yet both of its faces promise ruin. Two outcomes, same Fate. Two paths, both foretold. And then, you realize… Raziel became that coin when Kain cast him into the Abyss as a calculated wager. And this wasn’t a gamble on prophecy’s design, but on its flaw: the impossible third outcome!

By the end, Raziel might not escape Fate, but… the edge wasn’t about evasion—it was about Defiance. Through acceptance, Raziel chose to live by shaping the lives around him in the best way possible and to show us that Free Will can exist even in a reality ruled by insurmountable Fate.

And therein lies the revelation: The Coin landed on its Edge!

Stepping out into Hyrule, The Legend of Zelda, Breath of the Wild

By Christena Maurer, Tunesdays With Mauer

The Legend of Zelda series is known for presenting stories of grand adventures. Each iteration of Hyrule promises heroic quests and valiant battles, from the music to the characters to the world design itself.

However, few moments capture the scale of the quest set before Link quite like the opening of Breath of the Wild, which had me staring in breathless silence on my first playthrough. Waking up from a hundred years of slumber in the Cave of Resurrection, Link finds some ratty old clothes and a Hylian-Tablet ahem “Sheikah Slate” before venturing outside.

Until this point, the sound design is understated and the colors are relatively dark. However, as Link squints into the sunlight and steps forward, the music swells and the camera pulls away to show the vast beauty of the world of Hyrule spread out before him.

And the fate of this world rests on his shoulders.

A Leap of Faith, Shadow of the Colossus

By The Videogame Storyteller, The Videogame Storyteller

Ever since Jumpman began leaping over barrels in 1981’s Donkey Kong, jumping has been among gaming’s most iconic mechanics. And yet, I struggle to think of a more exhilarating single use of the jump than when it was deployed early in the battle against Avion (the fifth colossus) in Shadow of the Colossus.

Not that Shadow of the Colossus is known for its intuitive leaping. The game’s notorious physics mean that Wander’s jump feels more like an ascending stumble than the effortless nature of Mario’s springs. This means that when the flying colossus Avion swoops down towards you like a gigantic bird of prey, you hardly feel confident in your pressing of the “triangle” button.

It’s a heart-in-your-mouth moment in gaming where danger is fast approaching and you must react. And just like with Donkey Kong’s barrels, there is really only one option. You must jump. So, you do. You jump, grab onto Avion’s wings, and then take to the sky.

Waking up in Tibet, Uncharted 2

By Evan C Moore, Play Moore

Nathan Drake woke up dazed. A stranger spoke to him in an unknown language. He bid Drake drink, stand, dress, and follow. We later learn that this stranger is Tenzin. Over the course of several minutes, Tenzin guides Drake through his hometown. I will never forget it.

The scene is calm, easy, and nonviolent. Drake’s only urgency is Tenzin’s encouraging voice to follow him. All the pleasantries and delights of Drake’s explorative nature are still present: the expansive views, the sheer beauty of this remote land. We are forgiven for thinking it a moment of peace.

But the scene is still hectic. Drake himself is recovering, and he does not know where he is. He doesn’t speak Tibetan. Outward beauty and inward strife.

That contradiction sticks with me. How can we enjoy a steady breeze or the image of children playing when the threat still looms over us? What greater moment can there be, but one of confusion in the face of peace?

When you suddenly end up playing as a ring, Kid Icarus: Uprising

By Calvin Barrett, Retro Journal
*Spoilers ahead*

Kid Icarus: Uprising was a far more innovative game than the general public gives it credit for. The narrative was perfectly interwoven with the ongoing gameplay as the gods of the world joked, argued, and bickered with each other as you desperately fought off hordes of demons in an attempt to just stay alive. But in chapter 18, after Pit had apparently died, the character suddenly takes control of... a ring. Yeah, with no introduction, you’re playing as a ring now. Passing from the little girl who discovers you, to a dog, and even Magnus, and a tank of a human that you met in the first chapter of the game. The world is entirely different now: Palutena is the antagonist, and the world has been plunged into darkness, just moments after you thought you were poised to save it.

Everything, and I mean everything, about the game is changed from this moment onward, down to the themes of the menus and the goddess who controls your flight path. Such a bold decision and such a drastic shift in momentum changed how I viewed not only Kid Icarus: Uprising, it became the standard for every narrative-driven game I’ve played since.

Encountering The Dragon Slayer Ornstein and Executioner Smough, Dark Souls

By Joe, The Saved Game

Those perturbing names from Dark Souls quickly became etched into my mind from the moment I first stepped through the fog and witnessed the shockingly beautiful cathedral within the depths of Anor Londo.

That grim boss fight and the unnerving atmosphere inside the otherwise ornate cathedral resonated with me. It was the beauty mixed with the challenge, the relief following the trial, and the powerfully epic music that made this moment stand out to me. My heart pounded as I faced them, my hands tightly gripped the controller as I dodged their attacks, and my soul became weary in exhaustion after I fell many times. However, the immense relief of victory made the pain worth it when I finally defeated them and received the Lordvessel from Gwynevere!

Years later, that ruthless duo set the bar for me when it comes to an incredible boss fight — with it becoming one of my greatest gaming moments of all time!

The death of Aerith, Final Fantasy VII

By Kamikaze Worm, Kamikaze Worm’s Gaming Adventures
*Spoilers ahead*

It’s 1997 and my little brother and I are aged 7 and 10 playing Final Fantasy VII.

Your team discovers Aeris praying and believes you are about to be reunited as a group when the unthinkable happens, and Sephiroth descends and kills Aeris with his sword.

Everything moves into slow motion and we watch as Aeris’ hair ribbon twirls to the ground and a glowing orb of materia tinkles down into the water below. Aeris theme begins to play and our tears begin to fall. We barely register the battle between our team and Jenova, so enraged we are by this turn of events.

We believed it wasn’t possible for us to lose one of our beloved team and we sat open mouthed as Cloud carried Aeris and gently dropped her body into the depths.

It remains the most emotionally charged scene from a game for my Brother and I that has been unmatched in the last 30 years.

Boss fight, or a moment of remembrance with Great Grey Wolf Sif, Dark Souls Artorias of the Abyss DLC

By Taylor V, Taylor V Substack

There are so many moments from video games that have stuck with me, but none of those moments compare to the Great Grey Wolf Sif fight from Dark Souls. If you ventured through the DLC (which took place in the past) you had the opportunity to save puppy Sif. If you did, then that one action transformed her boss fight into an emotional piece of storytelling.

As soon as she leaps off a giant tombstone she protects, your character falls as she stands over you. She takes one sniff and her eyes shift from anger to sorrow. Then she somberly walks over to her sword. That alternate scene always gives me chills. And that’s not all. Once her health gets low, she begins to limp and her attacks get slower. She is still the only boss that I hated to beat, but the storytelling aspect has always stuck with me.

When a mouse’s letter ends a cat’s pursuit, Post Mouse

By Systemfehler: Ich?, Systemfehler: Ich? Substack
*Spoilers ahead*

Post Mouse is a tiny, free puzzle game about a mouse delivering letters through an abandoned, ruined mansion. For hours, you’ve been piecing together hints about the people who once lived here –strange paintings, lives left behind. The game never tells you what happened to them.Then, in the basement, a black cat with glowing yellow eyes stalks you.

She’s fast and looks dangerous. You stumble, the letter falls open. You begin to read aloud: “Dear Irene, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? Mom’s been muttering your name... I really hope you don’t hate me still.” The cat stops. She sits right in front of you and listens. The letter is from her sister. An apology and invitation to come home.When you finish, the cat – this creature you feared – looks at the letter and whispers: “Someone sent a letter... to me?”You smile while you nod ,she lets you go and as you leave, she bows her head over the letter and says, quietly: “...and thank you.”

That four-hour game? It was worth it for this one moment.

Tifa nearly meets her end at the Mako Reactor, Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth

By Harrison Polites, Infinite Lives
*Spoilers ahead*

Twenty hours in, just when you start to think Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth is a straight rehash of the original, it throws you a curveball. Out of nowhere, Tifa -- one of the game’s most beloved and iconic characters -- is knocked into the Mako Reactor in Gongaga by a confused Cloud Strife, manipulated by the game’s big bad: Sephiroth. It’s a segment that smartly subverts the player’s expectations: we spend the whole game bracing for Aerith’s death — the most iconic moment in the original — only to see Tifa nearly meet her end midway through instead.

There are whole conspiracy videos about the significance of this scene, revolving around how Tifa — not Cloud — is perhaps the ultimate foil for Sephiroth’s plan for his new timeline. Sephiroth makes a concerted effort to remove her from the equation here, more so than in the original game. That reads to me as a setup for a much larger role in the third game — and I think we’ll look back at this moment accordingly. It had me glued to my chair, yelling at the TV, and it’s not one I’ll forget any time soon.

There’s plenty of moments that haven’t been mentioned here. Tell us about your favourites, or discuss the ones featured here in the comments below.

Like most business ideas on the internet, it all began as a chat thread.

Former Kotaku Australia editor Mark Serrels and fellow journalist Jackson Ryan were discussing the dismal fate of gaming journalism in Australia, spurred on by the closure of Kotaku Australia in 2024. The pair both contributed to the website — Serrels at one point served as its editor — and later worked together directly at CNET Australia. They were well aware of the gaping hole the closure left in Australia’s already receding games journalism industry.

They tossed around ideas for a new platform. Something they could operate within the constraints of their current roles. Serrels runs consumer advocacy group CHOICE’s editorial division, meanwhile Ryan freelances across both science and videogames journalism. A newsletter? A TikTok channel? A YouTube show? Nothing stuck until the most retro variant of media around came into the conversation: a print magazine.

Over a catch up at a cafe in Western Sydney in January this year, the pair made plans, and more importantly, set deadlines, to launch a new magazine called CONTINUE. It resulted in one of the most explosive media Kickstarter campaigns in Australia to date.

Within a week, CONTINUE had raised over $70,000, well beyond its initial launch goal of $25,000, generating global headlines in the process. Both were shocked and surprised when it initially hit $10,000 within the campaign’s first few hours. The majority — around 60% — of its backers are Australian.

“Watching the numbers go up, the big thing for me was: man, we have a good shot at making the magazine of our dreams here. And that’s what I’m really excited about,” Serrels said.

“Beyond the dollar figure rising, the response from people online; actual developers reaching out, journalists reaching out, random people I haven’t spoken to in ages. Everyone’s really excited about it.”

Ryan added: “I just started sobbing. I was like, this rules, man. People actually want this. It was really overwhelming,” he said.

“We are literally using the title to ask people: do you want us to continue?” he said.

“Do you want these types of stories told? Do you want this kind of journalism? To have people answer a resounding yes after the last five years of pain is just soul-warming.”

This was not your ordinary gaming journalism moonshot. It has capitalised on the quiet global resurgence in gaming magazines, mainly buoyed by 90s nostalgia and most recently seen by the revival of Game Informer as a print magazine.

In CONTINUE’s instance, Serrels and Ryan’s deep contact books have gone into pulling in some of the local industry’s best and brightest for the first edition, featuring this prominently on the magazine’s Kickstarter page. The crown jewel of this campaign: Jack Kirby Crosby’s artwork, combining elements of Hollow Knight: Silksong, Untitled Goose Game and other key Australian titles, presented as the first magazine’s cover.

Serrels added: “It really illustrates what we’re trying to do here: celebrate Australian games, elevate them, and bring them to a broader audience.”

Magazines aren’t without their challenges

Yet, while their initial excitement persists, the reality of the task is starting to set in, even for two industry veterans who somewhat knew what they were in for.

While the fundraising continues till mid April, the pair’s thoughts have already shifted towards execution of the first magazine. And even with the campaign’s outright headline success, the more Serrels and Ryan interrogate their costs, the more they believe they will need every cent.

They confirmed to Infinite Lives that as it stands at time of interview, with over $60,000 raised, they will still be broadly volunteering their time to get the first product out the door. Several initial contributors have also offered to forgo their fees out of a drive to simply see the product make it to launch ahead of Melbourne International Games Week in October.

In retrospect, the pair agreed the initial $25,000 target was too conservative, due to production costs and a drive to pay contributors fairly — a longstanding pain point in all work relating to games journalism. An initial target of closer to $40,000 would have made more sense.

Beyond this, around $10,000 has been raised directly for the magazine’s second issue, ruling out its use for the first edition. Kickstarter’s 8 per cent platform fee will also reduce the available working capital.

As first mentioned by AdNews, advertising has been ruled out from the first edition too, following a broader trend across gaming journalism upstarts that tend to focus their efforts on reader-supported monetisation.

Though, in a nod to the demand for cut-through for Australian games amongst an ever growing sea of indies released every year, five local studios (Studio Folly, Fuzzy Ghost, Paper House, Ghoulish, Powerhoof) have been granted pro bono slots for 90s-style feature ads for their games in the first magazine.

Other unforeseen costs brought on by contributors to the Kickstarter are now starting to add up too. Shipping was promised as part of several tiers of support for the campaign, and with global oil prices climbing and the lingering prospects of an ongoing war, that may start to balloon.

Some supporters, as part of their donation, made requests for a digital PDF version of the magazine, which also has additional costs and complications. Ryan didn’t rule this out, but insisted: “First and foremost, this is a printed physical magazine. That’s always going to be the goal.”

And given they well exceeded their funding target, a pledged new website is also now part of the equation. Though the pair confirmed that this is more likely set to be a home for longer-form investigative or feature-length gaming content that promotes any future magazines, as opposed to daily news articles.

Open for story pitches

Yet, despite the challenges ahead, the publication is promising to not only champion the local industry, but also surface new writing talent. In addition to launching the Kickstarter, CONTINUE also posted a form for writers to pitch their ideas for consideration, especially for its second magazine.

Serrels confirmed that despite its Australian focus, the site is open to writers from abroad. “We’re trying to revive Australian games media from a printed perspective. If we had a theme, I think it would be something like revival. So that fits nicely with having Australian writers,” he said.

“But definitely, if you have a strong pitch that is Australian-focused or can be made Australian, we’d hear it.”

Several editors contacted by Infinite Lives across the Australian gaming journalism ecosystem welcomed CONTINUE’s success so far; some adding they personally contributed to the Kickstarter too.

Interestingly, its significant success — and inferred demand — hasn’t triggered any broad introspection regarding gaming journalism business models. For those who are reader-supported, such as This Week In Videogames (TWIV), it reaffirmed their current direction.

“CONTINUE and This Week in Videogames share the same ethos in that both shirk the commercial approach and the baggage that comes with it to instead focus on the quality of the work, topics, and product,” TWIV managing editor Edmond Tran said.

“Their swift and well-deserved success shows that there is absolutely an audience for this kind of approach — especially in this day and age, especially with the talent they have on board — and that this audience doesn’t need to be massive to make magic happen.”

Others, however, plan to stay on their course, running their sites as a means to champion under-represented communities in gaming, as a passion project, or working towards a reader-supported cooperative.

Serrels and Ryan, meanwhile, have a huge year ahead of them. Not only working other roles, but also coordinating a massive magazine, putting supporter funds to use. All with the ultimate goal of making CONTINUE a sustainable platform for ongoing long-form games journalism.

Their thesis from that original chat thread — that there’s still a genuine paying demand for high quality games journalism and magazines — proved correct. To an extent that perhaps nobody could have guessed.

A brief disclaimer: I personally have supported CONTINUE financially, and support both Mark and Jackson in what they are pulling together here. It’s fantastic and I’m very excited for it. However, I’ve tried to come at this article journalistically. In that spirit, I’m disclosing my support here so you as the reader can decide whether that’s influenced my ability to tell this story in a balanced way.

What do you think of CONTINUE’s killer Kickstarter campaign? How do you feel about the move back to print magazines for videogames? Let me know in the comments below.

Surely someone at Capcom has noticed the coincidence. For a game series that’s built around bioweapons, zombies and mutating monsters, Resident Evil has seen its own steady evolution.

The franchise started as a puzzle-box survival horror game, then made a sharp turn into action with the release of Resident Evil 4. It veered a little too far into action with Resident Evil 6 and since then the series has been trying to find a middle ground between horror and adrenaline. It’s toyed with various camera perspectives, lead characters and plot scenarios, trying to strike this balance.

The core problem being: How can you scare the player when the playable character is a shotgun-wielding zombie-destroyer by the end of the game? The power creep ultimately undermines the horror. It’s hard to feel afraid when you’re all-powerful. But keeping the character weak and vulnerable also detracts from the fun.

Resident Evil Requiem’s latest iteration’s solve for this is pretty simple: they compartmentalise the game across two characters — Grace Ashcroft, the mousy FBI analyst, and series stalwart Leon S. Kennedy. While this is very much Grace’s story, you play as both, alternating between them as the game progresses.

Grace’s sections are pure survival horror and, big call, some of the best I’ve played to boot. The best regular weapon she gets is an upgraded pistol. Beyond that, she uses her brains to survive. She can craft items, (using mutated blood, don’t think about it too deeply) and the majority of her gameplay revolves around environmental puzzles.

Leon, on the other hand, comes in packing just about everything aside from a rocket launcher. He gets all the boss fights, can parry incoming attacks, and is a literal bioweapon-mincing machine.

In the spirit of evolution, this review is also going to be a bit different.

I’ve brought in another Resident Evil superfan, Scanlines, to help me break down this game. It’s a long discussion, and we go into a lot of detail. So if you are looking for a quick verdict: We both loved this game and felt it was up there among the series best. Though, its duality and plot create a few issues.

With that: I’ll pass it to him. What are your initial impressions? What do you think?

Scanlines: I think Capcom’s decision to split the game in this manner — though not without a few minor issues — was a stroke of genius. I was nervous to start this game and the heavy cutscenes in the first hour made me wary, but it all turned out great.

Ever since Resident Evil 7, Capcom has been juggling three different generations of Resident Evil fan — classic fans, action fans and modern fans — in a way where it always felt like one of those groups was losing out. Resident Evil Village is my least favourite of the modern RE titles and where I felt this friction the most; fans of classic survival horror like me were forced to play a contrived first-person shooter sequel to the best survival horror game since the GameCube, and action fans couldn’t even enjoy Village in third person until some time after release. In essence, the Grace, Leon split in Requiem turns one of modern Resident Evil’s Achilles’ heels into its biggest selling point.

Not up for the survival horror and stalker enemy? Just a few hours in and you’ll get to indulge in the Leon S. Kennedy power fantasy. Prefer survival horror? Well, Grace is the protagonist of the story — more so than Leon — and the first half of the game is survival horror Resident Evil at its most tense.

Modern Resident Evil fans get a game that isn’t a truncated version of something that released on the original PlayStation 30 years ago, and it advances the story. Everyone wins.

I’m going to echo your big call, Harrison. I replay these games every year — original hardware, headphones on, in front of the glow of my CRT or at my computer in the dark — and not since Resident Evil 2 Remake in 2019 have I felt the level of tension and dread Requiem provokes. Some jump scares had me flying out of my seat. The way certain mechanics from the very best of the survival horror era are reused put a massive smile on my face when I realised what was going on and how I was supposed to be using the Haemolytic Injector.

Grace’s half of the game is a sweet, short dose of the finest survival horror ever crafted… but I felt Leon’s half didn’t quite live up to past adventures; the enemy variety, set-pieces and weapons roster don’t hold a candle to games like Resident Evil 4 or 5. I’d be interested to know if you felt the same way.

Harrison: Yeah, you are bang on. I think we’re going to be agreeing for most of this article.

Before I delve into Leon, I just wanted to add: whoever came up with the idea to make the zombies just that bit more human with this new mutated T-virus — absolute stroke of genius. It adds a level of characterisation to the enemies that just isn’t present in many other survival horror games.

Enemies focus on light switches, which you can use to distract them, or attempt to clean up after corpses you leave in your wake. Others literally apologise while going for your jugular. These aren’t just monsters — they are victims. This is almost always the case with Resident Evil games, but it really hits home hard here. It’s innately more creepy than lifeless corpses lurching around the place.

Scanlines: That part of the new zombies took a long time to settle for me. When I first encountered the Chef in the kitchen, a combination of my juvenile humour finding his voice and dialogue funny, the heavy cutscenes at the beginning and a lingering bitter taste in my mouth from Resident Evil 8 set alarm bells ringing — but after my first hour in the Care Centre I really fell in love with the concept.

Gunning down one zombie and hearing it whimper “Sorry” as I waited to see that tell-tale blood pool to know the deed was done was a moment of emotional poignancy this series rarely hits.

Obviously this is a reference to RE3 Remake, but as you say, it reminds the player that these people are victims of bio-organic weapons and recontextualises every horrifying monster as an innocent you’re forced to put down. That feeling never left me.

Harrison: Speaking of lifelessness — this brings me to your earlier question. While it was interesting to return to Raccoon City in the second half of the game, it was a very dull, colourless environment. As you would expect from a place that survived a nuclear fallout, I guess.

Yes, it was riddled with easter eggs from past games, including a few nods to the very niche Resident Evil Outbreak 1 and 2. And it’s the ultimate power fantasy watching Leon essentially quash legions upon legions of undead.

However, this part was the most forgettable for me. Cool, yes. But I think the environments lend so much to these action games, because you are essentially doing the same thing for a few hours. This is a tricky one to parse — it’s not bad by gameplay standards more broadly. The combat scenarios designed for this section are top notch compared to other action shooters.

The tilted-over building where you use the glass floor as a weapon. The elevator ride from hell down a dilapidated apartment block. Even the weird gas station fight segment with a chainsaw. It’s all outstanding in hindsight. And I appreciated Leon’s weapon upgrade system and the linking of kills to points — reminiscent of the arcade modes in prior games.

Scanlines: I’m going to take this opportunity, now that we’re discussing art style and graphics, to say I played using the third person camera rather than in first and that in general the presentation of Requiem didn’t blow me away. The facial animations are all quite stiff and there were moments where I noticed some very muddy-looking textures; the dreaded yellow paint and yellow tape also make a return, and I hate how you can’t turn the film grain off in this game. The drab colours in Raccoon City exacerbate all of this.

This was such a difficult area to evaluate. I agree that the set-pieces are all outstanding and I loved the easter eggs — I burst out laughing at the hidden Tofu one — but part of me feels a bit sad that the PlayStation 1 version of the RPD has been erased from history here. They make a big song and dance about returning to Raccoon for the first time in about 25 years, but we’re not really returning to it, are we?

We’re revisiting the 2019 remake, not classic Resident Evil. The upgrade system was brilliant but I do miss the weapon variety from RE4 Remake — I felt like I was waiting for a new set of guns that never materialised.

Harrison: That’s such a great point. This is a nostalgia trip without the nostalgia. Though, I replayed Resident Evil 2 Remake after finishing this, and it hits a bit harder now because of this new game.

After finishing Requiem, I can’t help but long for more of what we got within the first few hours with Grace. As we both know, she has another moment later in the game, but it’s quite linear in comparison. I just wanted another sprawling survival horror section to cap off Requiem. The Rhodes Hill hospice was the game for me.

Scanlines: It’s funny to think that the biggest issue with Requiem is probably that it should have given us more. I’m happy to feel that way about it, especially after Resident Evil Village — a game I felt dragged on and on. It is a shame about the linearity, though; that late-game stealth section involving a certain classic enemy was top-tier, and the juxtaposition in gameplay served to highlight how far Leon has come.

Harrison: That’s a good jumping-off point for another discussion. Changing gears a little: given we’re both well versed in Resident Evil canon, what do you think about the game’s plot and Victor Gideon as the big bad? There’s also a world where Jill Valentine or Claire Redfield could have been in this game rather than Leon.

Scanlines: In general, I feel the franchise has come to rely too much on legacy characters, especially Chris and Leon. I would have preferred Claire or Jill, but let’s face it — they have neither the marketing power that shareholders like nor the meme potential that the internet sees in any Leon appearance.

I was always comparing Requiem to Resident Evil 7 while playing. That was the last time we were introduced to a major new character. I think I speak for most of the fanbase when I say that Ethan Winters wasn’t particularly interesting or well-handled; Ethan had too much background and dialogue to be a player self-insert, yet Capcom were obsessed with hiding his face for a while there.

That game’s big twist was excellent too — it recontextualised a disconnected story into an integral part of the modern timeline. By comparison, I felt Grace was a little cheated in Requiem. Her character arc isn’t all that strong, and despite having a much more interesting personality and closer ties to the canon than Ethan, she lacks agency. Leon and Gideon’s actions force her into situations — Grace doesn’t follow a mission like, say, STARS Alpha Team in RE1.

On the plot more broadly — I’m not a fan. I was seriously disappointed when a certain character was killed off unceremoniously in a cutscene, and the big plot MacGuffin felt much too far-fetched. Gideon was delightfully creepy and I enjoy his lore, but I have to say — as a Resident Evil GameCube super fan, with that remake being my third favourite game ever — my heart did sink a little that RE1’s sequels got all the nostalgia bait. We returned to the series’ origin and somehow managed to completely ignore the first game.

Harrison: I’d actually never thought of that, which is a shame — I agree, the remake of the first Resident Evil game rocks and holds up to this day.

Plot-wise: I think they started strong but didn’t really know how to finish it. For a game built around honouring the series, there aren’t any real lasting implications from it.

Scanlines: I agree on the lack of lasting implications; for a game that was supposed to be about tying up loose ends… we sure have a lot of new ones.

Harrison: Yes, they did end up adding in another mysterious group to keep tabs of. I’m running out of red string for my Resident Evil conspiracy pinboard!

We’ve covered a lot of ground in terms of gameplay and story. One way I always like to cap off my reviews is by looking at the value of the game — its cost relative to its gameplay.

It’s not cheap. Capcom bumped the price up in Australia to $107 AUD ($69 USD), around $10 more than their last title. For that, I got a solid 12 hours of gameplay. It is designed to be replayed, but without too much variation. Insanity mode features slightly changed item placement and enemy difficulty, but that doesn’t have me rushing in for a second run.

How I pine for the days when a second character featuring in the game meant an entirely different playthrough. We seem to be getting further and further away from that with Resident Evil. That said, I reckon I’ll replay this over the years. For me, it’s a no-brainer if you love survival horror or Resident Evil. Though these games do go on sale, I could totally understand others waiting for that. What do you think? Any closing thoughts?

Scanlines: I’m glad you brought this up, Harrison, because the price versus value debate is one I have a lot of thoughts on. Modern gaming reminds me a lot of GameCube-era Nintendo sometimes — during that console’s heyday, a lot of their games had excessive bloat in order to inflate the runtime. Wind Waker being longer than Ocarina of Time sounded better on paper until you realised the extra length was hunting for Triforce Shards. Where am I going with this? I don’t think hours equate to value.

Most of the greats aren’t particularly long games and nobody cares — what matters is that you enjoy the experience and don’t feel ripped off. Resident Evil games have always been short and replayable, and on a personal level I’m tired of playing games that take weeks to finish.

I think the price is worth it through the lens of replaying the game once a year, as I do, and certainly for Resident Evil players who like to speedrun — but Requiem certainly isn’t a game to buy at full price for those hoping for extra modes or just looking for one particular gameplay style.

All of that being said, there are barriers to that classic Resident Evil replayability here and I share in your fondness for the classic two-character system.

The front-loaded cutscenes grind down the opening hour, and there should have been an extra difficulty in there, because Insanity mode is meant for players who have already unlocked infinite ammo and other bonuses.

They try to position Classic mode as a stop-gap, but I don’t consider being forced to use Ink Ribbons a higher difficulty — to me, that’s just the way Resident Evil is meant to be played.

Harrison: Hard agree. I played with Ink Ribbons turned on for my first run!

Scanlines: It’s been a pleasure to join you, Harrison. I’ve been relatively critical of Requiem here, but my overall opinion is that this is the best Resident Evil game of the decade so far and about on par with Resident Evil 2 Remake.

Reviewed on: Playstation 5 Pro, RTX 5070, i7 12700KF PC.

Worth playing if you like: Other Resident Evil games? But you don’t need us to tell you that. The Evil Within, Dead Space.

Available on: Playstation 5, Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox Series S and X, Windows, Steam.

Are you a fellow Resident Evil fan? Given it’s not that long, have you played through Requiem and do you have your own thoughts? And what do you think of this format for reviews? Let us know in the comments.

Like the best birthday speeches, I’m going to try and keep this one brief. And by the end of it, you’ll know why. Though I will say now, it’s not bad news!

Looking back over the past two years, this platform has absolutely exceeded any expectation I had of it. Over 600 people now subscribe to this newsletter, 16 pay for it too.

With those funds I’ve been able to commission journalism at a rate that’s meaningful, worthwhile and puts genuine value on it. It’s something I’m incredibly passionate about and I did not think it would happen until years from now.

This year, I’ve got even bigger ambitions, albeit personal ones. I’m undertaking something that I’ve wanted to do my whole life: living abroad.

For the next 12 months, I’ll be operating as a digital nomad, primarily in Europe and the UK. Travelling, learning, writing and hopefully gaining insight that I’ll be able to feed back into this newsletter. I’m starting my journey in Lisbon, Portugal — a known gaming hub in the region — and plotting it out from there.

This is something I’ve always wanted to do, but life just got in the way. Despite my global roaming, this newsletter won’t lose its Australian focus. If anything, it will add to it. Gaming execs and publishers here are incredibly well-travelled. I’m often popping into their text messages or inboxes while they are boarding a flight.

There are, however, some trade-offs:

• To maintain my day job, I’ll have to more strictly stick to a once-per-week publishing regime, with the occasional bonus newsletter. It’s a cadence many of you expect anyway.

• Beyond that, there may be a few brief 1-2 week breaks throughout the year. Basically, every time I take a week off work, I take two weeks off the newsletter to enable a running start. It’s a policy that has served me well, and is key to keeping the newsletter running for three years on top of a full-time, self-run PR operation.

• Lastly, my ability to play games (and therefore review games) will be a bit limited. I won’t be lugging my PS5 around the world, so I’ll be confined to my Steam Deck and Nintendo Switch 2. There’s a world in which I consider picking up a Steam Machine as it’s a smaller unit, but I can’t make plans on a device that has no release date.

The one big upside: I’ll be able to go to (and will try to make time for) European and UK gaming events, and learn more about the industry. That, I believe, will put me in better stead for future reporting.

In closing… I realise that I genuinely suck at brevity. It was the goal, given I’m knee-deep in trip planning and odd jobs that come with renting out a house and packing for a year abroad. It’s been a hectic few months planning all of this!

I’ll post my movements via this newsletter and Substack Notes, and maybe I’ll get to meet some of you while I’m abroad. Perhaps at an event, or over coffee. I’m keen if you are!

Stay tuned for a cool collaboration review of Resident Evil Requiem with Scanlines later this week.

Players are in for a good scare when they pick up the latest copy of Resident Evil Requiem. But it turns out the real horror occurred within the first 24 hours of the game’s launch.

In what has to be up there as one of the most dystopian moments ever seen in gaming journalism, long-running UK games website Videogamer published an AI-generated review of the latest in the storied survival horror series amid all the other launch reviews.

It came onto readers’ radar when the review was automatically ported onto Metacritic, a review aggregator that drives significant traffic to websites around the world. Outrage ensued.

It gets worse. The piece is attributed to an AI-generated journalist. Yes, you read that right. Something ripped straight out of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, where its main newsreader is revealed to be an AI designed to subtly influence public opinion (sorry for the spoiler there), is now in a rudimentary form, a reality.

To its credit, Metacritic didn’t sit on its hands. Within days, it was removed as part of the site’s AI policy. Surprisingly, so were a number of other reviews from Videogamer, likely also AI-generated, but never flagged to the site.

From a glass half full perspective, the immediate outrage and recoil from audiences globally is a fantastic bellwether on how audiences feel about AI-generated coverage more broadly. This goes well beyond videogame journalism and is something that any newsroom should note.

It makes little sense for work that is taste-oriented and impression-based, such as a review, to be replaced by AI. With videogames, it’s an insult to the often years of work that has gone into creating the title in the first place. It also somewhat offends the intelligence of its readers. Videogamer’s cookie-cutter review of Resident Evil Requiem describes enemies as being part of some kind of “chainsaw cult”.

I’m nearly finished with the game, and can confirm: That’s very much not the case.

This said, the swift rebuke won’t stop AI-generated reviews, or attempts to further undermine videogame journalism with AI.

A study from October last year found that over 50% of all new content on the internet is generated by AI. From a journalism perspective, I’d wager videogame content is at the forefront of this. It’s a high-traffic, high-interest form of media that has essentially ground down its content production costs over time.

A recent extensive investigation from Jackson Ryan for Aftermath delves into this (it’s well worth reading). Videogamer, now owned by Clickout Media, is one of many former online videogame properties converted into content farms to draw eyeballs to gambling content. Australian website GamesHub met a similar fate last year.

These sites now heavily leverage AI reporters to populate their pages, attempting to strip out the remaining human cost of videogame journalism entirely. If you were wondering what the worst-case scenario more broadly for journalism and AI looks like, you are looking at it: AI wholesale replacing reporters rather than augmenting them.

All of this underscores why human-led outlets, including this one and many others on this platform, matter.

The challenge, as always, is ensuring writers are remunerated for their work. Especially given there’s currently nothing stopping AI from fast-following human criticism and journalistic work and cherry picking the best parts of it – a question Australia is now actively debating at a policy level.

If Videogamer had waited a day or two, its review could have merged the best insights from everyone else’s coverage and passed them off as its own. That could be its approach going forward.

Which raises an uncomfortable question: does the audience actually care? Those of us who write would like to think so. But are we just the vocal minority? Thanks to the global attention, there’s a reasonable chance that Videogamer’s jargon-laden Resident Evil Requiem monstrosity is its most-read piece to date.

This is an evolving story, that’s for sure. It’s a bit like a boss in Resident Evil: defeated for now, but it’s going to mutate and come back. And who knows what form it’s going to take next.

What do you think about this situation? And the rise of AI and journalism more broadly? Let me know in the comments.