The New Yorker looks at 41-year-old Amabel Holland, an autistic board-game designer who "thinks about the world in terms of systems," and realized you could make a board game about almost anything, "and, when you did, its rules could both mirror and analyze the subject on which it was based."

They've since designed more than 60 games, and the article notes that Holland's work, "which is part of a larger turn toward complexity in the industry, often tackles historical and social subjects — death, religion, misinformation — using surprising 'mechanics,' or building blocks of game play, to immerse players in an experience." "With every game, you build a certain model of the world," Reiner Knizia, a former mathematician who's designed more than eight hundred games, told me. Several of his games illustrate market forces: in Modern Art, for instance, you play as auctioneers and buyers, hoping to buy low and sell high. Knizia is a traditional game designer inasmuch as he aims to "bring enjoyment to the people." But Amabel sometimes aims for the opposite of enjoyment... This Guilty Land, from 2018, is about the struggle to end slavery."
Holland says their games are "meant to evoke frustration" — specifically to communicate how difficult it can be to actually achieve political progress.

Thanks to Slashdot reader silverjacket for sharing the article.

Beijing is moving to curb excessive spending on video games across the country, according to a new draft regulation, dealing another blow to the world's largest video gaming market that is still recovering from the government's previous industry crackdown. From a report: Online games must not offer rewards that entice people to excessively play and spend, including those for daily logins and topping up accounts with additional funds, according to draft rules published on Friday by industry regulator the National Press and Publication Administration (NPPA). All video games must put a cap on how much players can top up their accounts and alert users about "irrational consumption behaviour" via a pop-up window, according to the NPPA.

PlayStation will no longer be removing over 1,300 Discovery TV shows from its platform next month. From a report: Sony had previously announced that users will not be able to watch Discovery content on PlayStation from December 31, even if they had already purchased it. However, the firm now says that due to an 'updated licensing agreement' with Warner Bros -- which owns the Discovery brand -- consumers will now be able to access their previously purchased shows 'for at least the next 30 months.'

Eight-year-old Bodhana Sivanandan from London has been crowned best female chess player at the European blitz championships, scoring 8.5/13 at the event and drawing with a grandmaster in a result described as "unbelievable." The BBC reports: The chess prodigy, who began playing aged five, said she was "proud" of her performance over the weekend. The tournament was held at the blitz time control -- a quick form of chess where players have just minutes on their clocks for their moves. Bodhana's opponents included grandmasters - the highest title given to the world's strongest players -- international masters and experts.

"I always try my best to win, sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn't," Bodhana told BBC Radio 4's Today program. "I was very proud of myself when I got top girl in the European blitz." Asked if she gets nervous, she replied: "No, I just play the board."

British International Master and commentator Lawrence Trent described Bodhana as "one of the greatest talents I've witnessed in recent memory." "The maturity of her play, her sublime touch, it's truly breath taking," he wrote on X. "I have no doubt she will be England's greatest player and most likely one of the greatest the game has ever seen," Mr Trent added. Bodhana will next compete at the International Chess Congress in Hastings, one of the world's longest running tournaments, on December 28.

Tom Warren and Ash Parrish report via The Verge: Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick is stepping down officially December 29th. Microsoft has not appointed a direct replacement and instead has rolled the suite of Activision Blizzard executives -- including Blizzard president Mike Ybarra, Activision publishing president Rob Kostich, and Activision Blizzard vice chair Thomas Tippl -- under Microsoft's game content and studios president Matt Booty. Kotick's departure comes just two months after some big Xbox leadership changes that saw Sarah Bond promoted to Xbox president, leading all Xbox platform and hardware work, and Matt Booty promoted to president of game content and studios, including overseeing Bethesda and ZeniMax studios. Now Booty is getting even more responsibilities with Bethesda, Activision Blizzard, and Xbox Game Studios all under his watch.

Microsoft is largely keeping the leadership team of Activision Blizzard in place, with some executive-level exceptions. Activision Blizzard chief communications officer Lulu Meservey will leave the company at the end of January. Humam Sakhnini (vice chairman, Blizzard and King) will also depart at the end of December. A number of Activision Blizzard executives will depart in March, too. Brian Bulatao (chief administrative officer), Julie Hodges (chief people officer), Armin Zerza (chief financial officer), and Grant Dixton (chief legal officer) are all reporting to their Microsoft Gaming equivalents. While Thomas Tippl (vice chairman, Activision Blizzard) is reporting to Matt Booty for now, he will depart Microsoft in March alongside other Activision Blizzard executives. "Thomas, Brian, Julie, Grant and Armin will continue to help us with the transition through March 2024," says Xbox chief Phil Spencer, in an internal memo obtained by The Verge.

Additionally, a memo from Matt Booty announced some of the changes taking place at ZeniMax and Bethesda, including that Jill Braff has been named the new head of those studios. Braff worked on the integration team when ZeniMax and Bethesda joined Xbox back in 2021 and will lead the studios' development teams. [Both memos can be read below The Verge's reporting.]

The PlayStation 5 has officially hit the 50 million sales milestone, Sony confirmed in a blog post. From a report: That's an impressive figure, considering the litany of supply chain issues that kept PS5s in limited supply after its November 2020 launch. And notably, the PS5 manage to reach 50 million sales just a week longer than it took the PlayStation 4, which wasn't bogged down by as many supply chain issues or a worldwide pandemic. Sony has also outsold the Xbox Series X and S by almost three to one this year, the Financial Times reports, based on data from Ampere Analysis.

Speaking of the 1.3 million stolen files of Sony division Insomniac Games that hackers have leaked, the data dump includes game roadmaps, budgets, and detailed information about Insomniac's upcoming Wolverine game, which a document says is slated for 2026. Bloomberg reports: According to the files, Sony plans to release several Marvel-inspired titles in the next decade, including Spider-Man 3, based on Venom and X-Men games. The files also reference a new Ratchet & Clank game apparently slated for 2029. Insomniac and Marvel's licensing commitment is as high as $621 million to develop and market the X-Men games by 2035, according to one document, which was one of many circulating on the internet. The documents also give us a peak into how Sony internally felt about Microsoft's acquisition of Blizzard. Eurogamer adds: Sony has privately described Microsoft's $68.7bn takeover of Activision Blizzard as a potential "leapfrog" moment for its long-term console rival to take the lead. Threats identified by Sony include Microsoft using Call of Duty to "disrupt and threaten console gaming and game subscription markets", with a potential "massive threat to PlayStation Plus." [...] "Activision provides incredible strategic value across live service games, scale in mobile and PC storefront (Battle.net)," Sony wrote, describing the various advantages Microsoft has now added to its portfolio with the deal freshly completed.

Sony Group's Naughty Dog studio has cancelled an online version of its popular console game The Last of Us. From a report: Naughty Dog announced today that the multiplayer spin-off of the hit series is no longer in development, citing concerns about managing ongoing content for a live-service game while still trying to produce the single-player blockbusters the PlayStation studio is famous for. "We realize many of you have been anticipating news around the project that we've been calling The Last of Us Online," Naughty Dog wrote in an update.

"There's no easy way to say this: We've made the incredibly difficult decision to stop development on that game." The studio said that as production on the project ramped up, it became clear that "we'd have to put all our studio resources behind supporting post launch content for years to come, severely impacting development on future single-player games." The choices were apparently between becoming a "solely live-service games studio" in the mold of modern day Bungie, which makes Destiny 2, or "continue to focus on single-player narrative games that have defined Naughty Dog's heritage."

A beta version of the Xbox Cloud Gaming app is now available for the Meta Quest headsets, allowing you to stream hundreds of Xbox games with an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription. The Verge reports: The beta app is available from the Meta Quest Store, and you'll simply need to pair a supported Bluetooth controller to start playing. You can use an Xbox controller (that supports Bluetooth), a PS4 one, or even Nintendo's Switch Pro controllers. Support for PS5 controllers is "coming in the future," according to Meta.

There are a variety of display sizes for an immersive VR environment to stream Xbox games in or even an Xbox-themed virtual space on the latest Quest 3 and Pro headsets that takes advantage of full-color passthrough.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: While the video game industry had already largely given up on E3 -- once the largest video game trade show in the industry and the biggest video game showcase event of the year -- there was always the chance it would return after multiple years of cancellations. However, in a statement to The Washington Post today, E3's organizer confirmed that the show is permanently canceled.

"We know it's difficult to say goodbye to such a beloved event, but it's the right thing to do given the new opportunities our industry has to reach fans and partners," Stanley Pierre-Louis, the CEO of the Entertainment Software Association, the nonprofit trade organization that ran E3, told the Post. Pierre-Louis alluded to the biggest reason for E3's precipitous collapse and ultimate demise: game developers and publishers had increasingly moved away from the event in order to put on their own less costly showcases targeted directly to fans, rather than the industry insiders and journalists that E3 typically catered to. The last E3 was held in 2019. The 2020 event was canceled due to the pandemic, only to return as a digital showcase in 2021. A virtual-only event was scheduled to take place the following year but was canceled, with promises that it would return in 2023. Then, that was canceled, with a possible 2024 return date. Now, it's been confirmed that E3 is never coming back.

During a Wells Fargo summit last month, Microsoft Gaming CFO Tim Stuart suggested Xbox is seeking to bring Xbox Game Pass to competing platforms, such as PlayStation and Nintendo Switch. One of the scenarios for Xbox Game Pass expansion may include offering access in exchange for viewing advertisements. Windows Central reports: "For models like Africa, or India, Southeast Asia, maybe places that aren't console-first, you can say, 'hey, do you want to watch 30 seconds of an ad and then get two hours of game streaming?'," Stuart continued. "Africa is, you know, 50% of the population is 23 years old or younger with a growing disposable income base, all with cell phones and mobile devices, not a lot of high-end disposable income, generally-speaking. So we can go in with our own business models and say -- there's millions of gamers we would never have been able to address, and now we can go in with our business models."

Microsoft has previously surveyed Xbox users on the Xbox Insider Program and via other avenues about the possibility of offering Xbox Game Pass time in exchange for viewing advertisements. And recently, security researcher Title_OS shared some code snippets from the Xbox OS that described systems that would provide access to Xbox Game Pass via on an "Earned Time" basis, complete in 15-minute blocks.

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Doom, both John Romero and John Carmack are appearing now on a special 30th anniversary stream on Twitch. (Right now they're talking about people who got into professional networking careers because of what they'd learned from setting up multiplayer deathmatches...)

And earlier this morning, Romero shocked the gaming world by posting six words on X.

"Free WAD for SIGIL II is up"

The official page for the long-awaited new Doom episode promises a 2 megabyte file "packed with some hardcore classic DOOM punishment — beware of Ultra-Violence mode!" There's nine new maps with names like "Wrathful Reckoning" and "Vengeance Unleashed". And the site is also selling an upgrade with a THORR soundtrack — priced at €6.66 — along with t-shirts, boxed editions of the original game Sigil, and a "Megawad Beast Box" that's "individually numbered and signed personally by John Romero and featuring the artwork of Christopher Lovell" (including a signed art print).

Besides sundry extras including a t-shirt, stickers, and a Sigil-themed coin, it also comes with a pewter statue of John Romero's head on a spike...

UPDATE: John Romero released a new 9-map episode of Doom.

But it was 30 years ago today that Doom "invented the modern PC games industry, as a place dominated by technologically advanced action shooters," remembers the Guardian: In late August 1993, a young programmer named Dave Taylor walked into an office block... The carpets, he discovered, were stained with spilled soda, the ceiling tiles yellowed by water leaks from above. But it was here that a team of five coders, artists and designers were working on arguably the most influential action video game ever made. This was id Software. This was Doom... [W]hen Taylor met id's charismatic designer and coder John Romero, he was shown their next project... "There were no critters in it yet," recalls Taylor of that first demo. "There was no gaming stuff at all. It was really just a 3D engine. But you could move around it really fluidly and you got such a sense of immersion it was shocking. The renderer was kick ass and the textures were so gritty and cool. I thought I was looking at an in-game cinematic. And Romero is just the consummate demo man: he really feeds off of your energy. So as my jaw hit the floor, he got more and more animated. Doom was amazing, but John was at least half of that demo's impact on me." [...]

In late 1992, it had become clear that the 3D engine John Carmack was planning for Doom would speed up real-time rendering while also allowing the use of texture maps to add detail to environments. As a result, Romero's ambition was to set Doom in architecturally complex worlds with multiple storeys, curved walls, moving platforms. A hellish Escher-esque mall of death... "Doom was the first to combine huge rooms, stairways, dark areas and bright areas," says Romero, "and lava and all that stuff, creating a really elaborate abstract world. That was never possible before...."

[T]he way Doom combined fast-paced 3D action with elaborate, highly staged level design would prove hugely influential in the years to come. It's there in every first-person action game we play today... But Doom wasn't just a single-player game. Carmack consumed an entire library of books on computer networking before working on the code that would allow players to connect their PCs via modem to a local area network (LAN) and play in the game together... Doom brought fast-paced, real-time action, both competitive and cooperative, into the gaming mainstream. Seeing your friends battling imps and zombie space marines beside you in a virtual world was an exhilarating experience...

When Doom was launched on 10 December 1993, it became immediately clear that the game was all-consuming — id Software had chosen to make the abbreviated shareware version available via the FTP site of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, but that crashed almost immediately, bringing the institution's network to its knees... "We changed the rules of design," says Romero. "Getting rid of lives, which was an arcade holdover that every game had; getting rid of score because it was not the goal of the game. We wanted to make it so that, if the player died, they'd just start that level over — we were constantly pushing them forward. The game's attitude was, I want you to keep playing. We wanted to get people to the point where they always needed more."
It was a unique moment in time. In the article designer Sandy Petersen remembers that "I would sometimes get old dungeons I'd done for D&D and use them as the basis for making a map in Doom." Cheat codes had been included for debugging purposes — but were left in the game rs to discover. The article even includes a link to a half-hour video of a 1993 visit to Id software filmed by BBS owner Dan Linton.

And today on X, John Romero shared a link to the Guardian's article, along with some appreciative words for anyone who's ever played the game. "DOOM is still remembered because of the community that plays and mods it 30 years on. I'm grateful to be a part of that community and fortunate to have been there at its beginning."

The Guardian's article notes that now Romero "is currently working on Sigil 2, a spiritual successor to the original Doom series."

The role-playing adventure game Baldur's Gate 3 won game of the year last night at The Game Awards 2023 in Los Angeles. The New York Times reports: It was the crowning achievement for a game based on Dungeons & Dragons that largely stayed under the radar during its six years in development by the Belgian company Larian Studios. But its summer release -- 23 years after its predecessor -- captivated gamers, who celebrated a robust character creator, deep narrative and branching paths that made it seem as though anything was possible in its fictional universe of vampires and elves. Baldur's Gate 3, which is available on the PC, the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X|S, also went home with several other awards, including those for best role-playing game, best performance and best multiplayer.

The other nominees for game of the year were Alan Wake 2, by Remedy Entertainment; Marvel's Spider-Man 2, by Insomniac Games; Resident Evil 4, by Capcom; Super Mario Bros. Wonder, by Nintendo; and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, by Nintendo.

Tencent revealed one of its most ambitious attempts at a big-budget console game on Friday, betting on a new franchise to fire up fans and help the global expansion of China's most valuable company. From a report: Last Sentinel is an open-world adventure game set in a dystopian future Tokyo, developed by Tencent's California-based Lightspeed LA studio. The 200-member creative team is headed up by Steve Martin, a quarter-century veteran of the games industry who has worked on marquee games in the genre like Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption.

The new title, four years in development, is testament to Tencent's long-term pursuit of foreign gaming assets and talent. The WeChat operator still relies heavily on domestic game sales in China, but in recent years it's amped up efforts to acquire slices of up-and-coming studios from Europe to Japan to complement its ownership of League of Legends creator Riot Games and large stake in Epic Games. Last Sentinel is part of its push to create new intellectual property from scratch. "We have a global gaming community that's screaming out that it wants something new. It wants new IPs, it wants new characters. We get to provide that," Martin, who left Rockstar Games to join Tencent in 2019, said in a video interview before unwrapping his work at The Game Awards in Los Angeles.

Nintendo has cancelled Nintendo Live 2024 Tokyo and postponed other Japanese esports events after persistent threats were made to both staff and spectators. From a report: A Japanese press release, shared by reliable translator Genki on X/Twitter, revealed the "all ages celebration of Nintendo fun," which took place in the United States for the first time in 2023, has been cancelled and its main esports tournaments postponed.

Nintendo said its employees have received relentless threats which have also recently targeted spectators, attendees, and staff at Nintendo Live 2024, forcing the cancellation in the interest of safety. It was due to take place from January 20 to 21.

Many PlayStation Network users reported Monday that their accounts were unexpectedly permanently suspended. As of Tuesday morning, many of the people who had received the messages now say their accounts have been restored. From a report: Some of them contacted customer service while others did not, but nearly a day after the issues began, Sony hasn't commented publicly or responded to us about the wave of bans or the restorations that followed. A message to one user read: "This account is permanently suspended from PlayStation Network due to violations of the PlayStation Network Terms of Service and User Agreement."

Sony is about to delete tons of Discovery shows from PlayStation users' libraries even if they already "purchased" them. Why? Because most users don't actually own the digital content they buy thanks to the mess of online DRM and license agreements. Some of the soon-to-be-deleted TV shows include Mythbusters and Naked and Afraid. Kotaku reports: The latest pothole in the road to an all-digital future was discovered via a warning Sony recently sent out to PlayStation users who purchased TV shows made by Discovery, the reality TV network that recently merged with Warner Bros. in one of the most brutal and idiotic corporate maneuvers of our time. "Due to our content licensing arrangements with content providers, you will no longer be able to watch any of your previously purchased Discovery content and the content will be removed from your video library," read a copy of the email that was shared with Kotaku.

It linked to a page on the PlayStation website listing all of the shows impacted. As you might imagine, given Discovery's penchant for pumping out seasons of relatively cheap to produce but popular reality TV and documentary-based shows, there are a lot of them. They include, but are not limited to, hits such as: Say Yes to the Dress, Shark Week, Cake Boss, Long Island Medium, Deadly Women, and many, many more. [...] Now, essentially anything you buy on PSN, whether a PS5 blockbuster or, uh, Police Women of Cincinnati, is essentially just on indefinite loan until such time as the PlayStation servers die or the original copyright owner decides to pull the content.

Microsoft is talking to partners to help launch a mobile gaming store that will take on Apple and Google's dominant position in the business, according to Phil Spencer, who leads the company's Xbox video-game division. From a report: "It's an important part of our strategy and something we are actively working on today not only alone, but talking to other partners who'd also like to see more choice for how they can monetize on the phone," Spencer said in an interview in Sao Paulo during the CCXP comics and entertainment convention.

The executive declined to give a specific date for a launch of the online store, which earlier reports suggested could be next year. "I don't think this is multiple years away, I think this is sooner than that," he said. Microsoft earlier this year expanded its Game Pass subscription service for players on personal computers to 11 new Latin American countries, leading to a 7% increase in customers. Peru and Costa Rica are the standouts in terms of customer interest, accounting for almost half of new signups, Spencer said. Globally Brazil is the second-biggest market for the PC Game Pass. "In many ways Brazil leads a lot of the trends that we see globally," Spencer said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from UploadVR: Valve just launched a free official Steam Link app on Meta Quest. The app, which is on the official Quest Store and approved by Meta, lets you wirelessly play SteamVR games like Half-Life: Alyx on your Quest 2, Quest Pro, or Quest 3 by streaming from your gaming PC over your home Wi-Fi network. You can also play your traditional non-VR Steam games on a giant virtual screen.