Samuel Horti

I hate to tell you this but my dad (old) literally did this yesterday...

Huge congrats, Malindy!

7 years after I started VGC, I’m incredibly proud of the editorial team. In particular, in the last 18 months, we visited the likes of Team Asobi, Capcom, Kojima Productions, and TPC, while interviewing Todd Howard, Hideki Kamiya, Sega, Square Enix, Konami, Sucker Punch, CD Projekt, and many more.

Got ya. Also looks like lots of tabs to click through on the bottom... anyway, will definitely check it out. Glad you're on it, you're the only person I've seen shouting about it!

Ah I've wanted to play this since reading your piece on it - sounds (and looks) incredible. Do you think it'd work with controller/on Steam Deck? It's marked as playable. Need a new go-to city builder, burned out on CS2 a while back

Hey babes, I'm Malindy, your writer, narrative designer, journalist, localiser and all around words person:
Portfolio - malindysportfolio.notion.site/Malindy-Hetf...
LinkedIn - de.linkedin.com/in/malindyhe...
Blog - malindy.medium.com

⚽️ Special offer ⚽️

We are offering £5.00 off the Collector’s Edition of our book - A Tale of Two Halves: The History Of Football Video Games (Captain’s Edition): www.bitmapbooks.com/collections/...

#bitmapbooks #bookstagram #gaming #football #soccer @mossrc.bsky.social

glad you enjoyed it!

Congratulations Mark!

A new website about PC games, from me, @brendyc.bsky.social and @jonhicks.com.

Reader-supported, which means no ads, no guff, and lots of games blogging about delightful things to play. If you liked our work on RPS, we think you'll like @jank.cool.

Board the Mothership. You're just in time. A couple weeks from now, on January 26, 2026, we'll be launching the full version of our new gaming website, Mothership, which aims to analyze games specifically through the...

my new website, mothership.blog, is launching this monday!! it's going to be super fun and you will all enjoy reading it. we are independent and worker-owned and can't stay alive without subscribers, though, and we are currently running a lifetime 15% off deal that you should realllly be grabbing ->

I could have written 10k words on this game. It's remarkable. It's everything you want and need from a city-builder, but also there's transport tycoon and sid meier's colonization stuff in there as well, and even in EA it's almost perfect

How game developers worldwide are reliving Y2K Japan, from Jet Set Radio to Dance Dance Revolution The people behind Unbeatable, Hyperyuki and Denshattack discuss their Japanese influences, from trains and Digimon to music and the Dreamcast.

Hello! Over the weekend, my article on some cool games reliving the spirit of Y2K went up on RPS! Feat @rj.dcellgames.com @davidjaumandreu.bsky.social
www.rockpapershotgun.com/how-game-dev...

Bethesda's former Elder Scrolls loremaster on why he left, Starfield's 'communication breakdowns', and how he wanted The Elder Scrolls 6 'to be The Empire Strikes Back' "It was almost certainly time for a change."

Really enjoyed chatting to Kurt Kuhlmann, former Bethesda dev and Elder Scrolls "loremaster", about his decision to leave the studio and a promise Todd Howard made him about TES6 - a promise, he says, that was never fulfilled

www.pcgamer.com/games/the-el...

Reporting and writing this story consumed me at the tail end of 2025. I'll post my favourite details tomorrow but, for now, enjoy!!

Thanks to @mattleone.bsky.social for having me, all the interview subjects for talking to me, and @kim-hu.com for the incredible accompanying illustration.

Mirror's Edge: An oral history 17 years on from its release, DICE's first-person parkour thriller is a cult classic. We spoke to nine people who worked on it about how the revelatory game came to be.

Our next big project is live! @lewisgordon.bsky.social spent the past few months tracking down nine people who worked on DICE's innovative 2008 parkour runner.

DHS Is Lying To You About ICE Shooting a Woman At least four videos show what really happened when ICE shot a woman in Minneapolis on Wednesday. DHS has established itself as an agency that cannot be trusted to live in or present reality.

use your eyes

www.404media.co/dhs-is-lying...

Hearing Rematch in some GOTY lists (including
on @backpagepod.bsky.social) reminded me I forgot to post this. After a decade of trying I finally got good at an online game - and it wasn't everything I hoped it would be.

Wonderful illustration by Katherine (below!)

remapradio.com/articles/the...

Microsoft's year of shame Can't make a few trillion dollars without ditching game developers, going googoo gaga for AI and supplying tech to the military, I suppose!

So very tired, but I couldn't let 2025 end without taking stock of Microsoft's embarrassing treatment of gaming, Windows, and indeed human beings while it chases the AI money train

It was deeply cathartic to be asked to contribute some thoughts to this piece on the use of LLM chatbots in NPC dialogue. And a privilege to be among such insightful company.

Very grateful to @samuelhorti.bsky.social for giving us so much breadth and depth to discuss such a hefty topic.

Essentially, I think that LLM-generated dialogue only makes sense if you believe that the product of writing is words.

But the product of writing isn't words, any more than the product of justice is prisoners, or the product of love is weddings. The product of writing is meaning.

There are a ton of wonderful people in this article discussing the realities of LLM based character interaction

I always return to the fact that parser games are not mainstream juggernauts and that people don't want to have to learn to be improv actors to participate as a character in a setting

i got to rant about LLM chatbots in games + my fears about the dead future that tech oligarchs want for all of us, alongside some very clever + thoughtful folks. thanks so much @samuelhorti.bsky.social for giving me the space & time to articulate all of this

"Horrible", "boring", and "cheap": Experts pan new chatbot NPCs, but some leave room for optimism We speak to a collection of developers and AI experts about the potential impact of LLM-powered NPCs in videogames.

I had five fascinating conversations for this RPS piece, gathering perspectives on genAI chatbots in games, as seen in Where Winds Meet. Thanks to @meghna.bsky.social, @pyrofoux.bsky.social, @maxkreminski.bsky.social, and @chrisgardiner.bsky.social www.rockpapershotgun.com/horrible-bor...

A decade on from Gamergate, how has the games industry changed for women? Some of gaming's most influential women share their experiences, along with what still needs to be done

Delighted to see this piece up! Massive thank you to all the women who shared their experience with me for this 🖤

www.gamesindustry.biz/a-decade-on-...

@mikebithell.bsky.social Hi Mike, hope all well - any chance you could follow or DM me? I wanted to discuss an article with you. Cheers

The Messages Rockstar Saw Before Firing 34 Union Members YouTube video by People Make Games

EXCLUSIVE: So far it's been unclear what proof Rockstar Games has to justify its firing of 34 union members, who it claims were leaking "confidential information in a public forum".

PMG has now seen some of the messages which contributed to this decision being made.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TvW...

AI Is The Ultimate "Forced Meme" There are few things in this world more insufferable than a rich person trying to force their shitty ideas on everyone else. And in 2025, there are very few things that feel more forced than “Generati...

Honored to be featured on the freshly-relaunched @aftermath.site with this new piece!

It's about AI and Fascism, and also the beloved Y2K-era teen comedy Mean Girls.

The Rockstar Workers Fired Before They Could Finish GTA 6 YouTube video by People Make Games

I went to meet the 'Rockstar 31', the developers who were suddenly fired from their work on GTA 6 for what the studio has described as gross misconduct.

That's not what the workers call it though. They have another couple of words they prefer to use: union busting.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9nO...

Hitman developers on how 25 years of the series led to the ultimate stealth game – 'when Absolution shipped, we had 50,000 or 100,000 players every month playing Contracts Mode just enjoying the game ... Celebrating 25 years of the bald contract killer

Hitman's Paris level was originally gigantic, with a multi-storey restaurant in addition to the palace.

This was cut early on, but was eventually re-used as the starting point of the Bangkok hotel level - hence the slightly incongruous French colonial architecture.
www.techradar.com/gaming/hitma...