Category: IGN

Auto Added by WPeMatico

Final Fantasy Tactics Creator Reacts to Unicorn Overlord Localization Debate and Shares His Own Stories

Yasumi Matsuno knows a thing or two about troubled localizations. Final Fantasy Tactics, arguably his magnum opus, struggled with an infamously bad English translation before eventually being reworked on PlayStation Portable.

So it was notable to see Matsuno weigh in on an X/Twitter discussion on Monday around the translation of Unicorn Overlord, a new tactics RPG from Vanillaware that received a demo last week. Responding to claims that Unicorn Overlord sacrified accuracy for flowery prose, Matsuno said he endorsed a degree of localization as long as the original creator approves.

“I believe that it is unacceptable for someone to alter a work without considering the original author’s intent. However, when the market or language is different, a direct translation may not convey the intended meaning accurately. This is especially true for humor. Therefore, I think some degree of alteration is unavoidable,” Matsuno said. “The issue lies in whether the original author has consented to these alterations. Has anyone confirmed whether the author of Unicorn Overlord has approved its English translation?”

He added in a separate tweet, “The insistence that you should comply with the original no matter what, and the claim that it is good to free translate if it matches the market. I know that there has been a fierce debate for a long time. I don’t stand for either claim. The discussion should be done by the players.”

The instances observed in the thread mostly involve attempts to enhance otherwise straightforward dialogue. In one example cited in the thread, the hero Clive says, “I think fighting Renault with our current strength would be difficult,” while the English localization reads, “Casting the gauntlet at Renault’s feet would only send us all to an early grave.”

IGN has reached out to Atlus for additional context on Unicorn Overlord’s localization.

An age-old RPG debate

While Matsuno was careful to avoid commenting on Unicorn Overlord itself, he was weighing in on an age-old discussion within the RPG community regarding the English localization of Japanese games, particularly role-playing games. It’s a debate that stretches back to the days of RPGs on 16-bit consoles, when stories became more sophisticated and fans began to debate the intent behind various localization choices. Like so much of the rest of games industry discourse, it’s a discussion that at times has become toxic.

In talking about his own experience with Final Fantasy Tactics, Matsuno pointed to the direct translation of Hokuten Knights, which might have been more accurately localized as “Order of the Northern Sky.”

“Given the character limit, it’s easy to imagine that it was a difficult task. Moreover, the schedule for translation was likely tight as well. That’s why I wanted to consult with me before making a decision. I think it would have been okay to change the name of the knight order to something more suitable for an English-speaking audience in the English version. I don’t blame the translators; I believe the responsibility lies with those who assigned the task,” Matsuno wrote.

In a separate tweet, Matsuno said that his experience with Tactics led him to send the names of special moves, items, and other terms to the Vagrant Story localization team in order to align them as closely as possible with the English version. He praised localizer Alexander O. Smith for the “high level” of the work on Vagrant Story, which has been praised over the years for its excellent translation.

One way or another, Matsuno says that he’s “really looking forward” to Unicorn Overlord, which is a strong endorsement coming from one of the acknowledged masters of the tactics RPG genre. Indeed, Unicorn Overlord is in many ways a direct tribute to Matsuno’s own work, particularly the much-loved Ogre Battle series, while featuring the lavish art that Vanillaware is known for.

Unicorn Overlord is currently slated to release on Switch, PS4, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S on March.

Kat Bailey is IGN’s News Director as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.

ScHoolboy Q Seems to Be Teasing That He’ll Have Music in GTA 6

We’re still looking for more details on the massively awaited Grand Theft Auto 6, but we may be able to start piecing together who could be featured on its GTA Radio.

Rapper ScHoolboy Q seemed to tease that he’ll be back for GTA 6, having previously been featured on radio stations in both GTA 5 and GTA Online. He’s been celebrating the 10th anniversary of his hit album Oxymoron and, in response to one of those celebratory posts, a user on X/Twitter wrote, “As long as you drop some heat for GTA 6 radio we all Gucci.”

“Ima be on tHere don’t even trip,” ScHoolboy Q said in a quote-tweet yesterday.

So, while he doesn’t explicitly say his music will definitely be in the game, it’s pretty hard to take the statement otherwise. IGN has reached out to both Rockstar and ScHoolboy Q for further comment.

His tease doesn’t come long after T-Pain also said he was working on GTA 6, as he revealed last month (with a good amount of annoyance) that he could no longer roleplay on GTA 5 servers because of his involvement with the sequel. GTA 6 has been shrouded in secrecy, so it’s a little surprising to see both musicians speak openly about their involvement – but hey, maybe they’re not supposed to anyway.

GTA radio, of course, is one of the longest-running hallmarks of the series, helping add to the flavor of the world since the first game in 1997. The stations themselves have attracted celebrities ranging from Cara Delevingne to Axl Rose as hosts.

Little else has been revealed about GTA 6 since that massive trailer drop last year, but for everything we do know, check out our roundup, as well as 99 details we spotted from said trailer.

Thumbnail credit: Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images

Alex Stedman is a Senior News Editor with IGN, overseeing entertainment reporting. When she’s not writing or editing, you can find her reading fantasy novels or playing Dungeons & Dragons.

Stardew Valley’s Big Patch 1.6 Update Gets Release Date From ConcernedApe

For nearly a year, Stardew Valley creator Eric Barone, also known as ConcernedApe, has been teasing the farming simulator’s massive Patch 1.6. Now, after a development period that turned out longer than he had expected, the update finally has a release date.

In a post on Twitter/X today, Barone celebrated the game’s eighth anniversary by announcing that the 1.6 Update will be out on PC on March 19, with console and mobile following soon after.

In an update to the game’s press site, Barone also noted that the game has sold an impressive 30 million copies across platforms, with over 19 million copies on PC, throughout its eight years.

“With a new update on the horizon, a worldwide concert tour underway, an official cookbook coming soon, and now over 30 million copies sold, Stardew Valley is thriving more than ever,” Barone wrote. “As always, I’m eternally grateful to the players (you!) for making all of this possible.”

Barone initially announced he was taking a break from developing his new game, Haunted Chocolatier, to develop Stardew Valley’s Patch 1.6 back in April. Since then, he’s teased quite a few features, including a new farm layout, eight-player multiplayer support, hats for pets, and the possible addition of the long-awaited iridium scythe, although he mentioned that most of the update’s additions will be a secret until closer to its launch date.

In addition to the patch news, the Stardew Valley press site confirmed that the popular farming sim has sold 30 million units as of February 2024, with 19 million copies sold on PC alone. It’s an impressive figure that eclipses the official sales data for the likes of GTA: San Andreas and Super Mario Odyssey.

We gave Stardew Valley a 9.5 in our 2018 re-review, calling it “a beautiful, fun game that, when all of its parts are pulled together, make for a wonderful countryside adventure.”

Amelia Zollner is a freelance writer at IGN who loves all things indie and Nintendo. Outside of IGN, they’ve contributed to sites like Polygon and Rock Paper Shotgun, and they’re currently developing a game called Garage Sale. Find them on Twitter: @ameliazollner.

The 14 Best Board Games to Play in 2024

Talk to two different board game fans, and you’ll likely get two completely different all-time top-10 lists to pick through. But talk to enough gamers, and you’ll find patterns start to emerge. Some of the common games will be all-time classic board games. Others will be fondly remembered older games that topped the market in their respective eras. And of course you’ll get a sprinkling of recent titles that are soaking up all the limelight at the moment.

All of those categories can rightly be called the best of all time. So we’ve included all of them in our list below, from a genre-defining title that dates back to 1977 to some of the biggest, boldest titles of the last couple of years. Every one a bona fide classic in its own way.

TLDR: The Best Board Games to Play Now

Don’t have time to scroll? Here are all the games you’ll find below.

Ark Nova

Ever since Wingspan – another entry on this list – designers have realised the value of giving heavyweight strategy games widely appealing themes. The latest and greatest example is Ark Nova, in which players design and run a modern, environmentally-minded zoo. Doing so involves navigating a smorgasbord of the most popular and interesting mechanics of recent years, from action cards that vary in power and timing depending on how you arrange them to spatial and economic elements as you build and populate your wildlife park to attract visitors and plough the cash back into the project. The combination of winning theme, deep strategy and a smidgen of luck has won this legions of fans and acres of acclaim since its 2021 release.

Cosmic Encounter

Lots of games that revolve around grabbing territory tend to involve the kind of tentative alliances and festering enmities that mimic real-world diplomacy. Back in 1977, the designers of Cosmic Encounter had a brainwave: why not get rid of the territory and cut to the chase? The result is this hilarious game of shifting alliances where every player has a game-breaking alien power to leverage in the race to win colonies on five of your opponent’s planets. Crammed with variety, tactical decisions and more dramatic reversals than a prime-time soap opera, Cosmic Encounter may be the only negotiation game you need.

Brass: Birmingham

Brass: Birmingham is a redevelopment of the earlier game Brass – now renamed as Brass: Lancashire – a fascinating combination of history and economics in board game form. Players take the role of business magnates at the dawn of the industrial revolution and must build mills while also constructing the transport networks that supply them with raw materials and export their products. That takes money, of course, which you get from your mills in a delightful yet punishingly tough arc of circular strategy. It’s especially interesting when you start buying and selling raw materials to other players, in a realistic simplification of supply and demand economics. Birmingham adds a new industry – beer – and gives players a bit more control over their hand of cards for a tighter, richer strategic experience.

Gloomhaven

The lords of the board gaming pile got that way through an ingenious bit of genre-blending. If you like old-fashioned dungeon crawls with a strong narrative, well, the huge campaign of fantasy adventure has you covered. If you’re a sucker for tactical combat, then its cunning, card-driven face-offs against a staggering variety of foes will thrill you. But if you want heavyweight strategy, then deck-building and resource gathering over the campaign plus the in-scenario exhaustion mechanic gives you plenty of meat. Truly all things to all gamers — even fans of the best solo board games — Gloomhaven and it’s bigger, better sequel Frosthaven deserves their staggering level of acclaim. And if the cost is a bit much, Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion offers a smaller campaign at a much smaller price tag. And not for nothing, all of these titles also made it on our best board games for adults list as well.

Frosthaven

This one’s not for everyone, but if it’s for you then you’ll absolutely love it. If you’re one of the rare few who not only have seen everything Gloomhaven has to offer but also remain hungry for more, Frosthaven is the banquet to satiate you. Bigger, bolder and better than the original, if you can find time for it in your life it’s an epic gaming experience like no other. Newcomers to the series, however, would be better suited to Jaws of the Lion, above. In the meantime, check out our Frosthaven review for more info.

Pandemic Legacy: Season 1

If combat-based narrative campaigns aren’t your thing, how about working together to purge the world of infectious diseases? Building on the success of the original Pandemic, this introduces “legacy” concepts to the game, in which components are added or removed as you progress through the game, based on your decisions, successes and failures. After a few plays, your copy will be a unique record of your group’s play. So in addition to offering a very personal tale to engage you, Pandemic: Legacy also individualizes your strategic experience. It’s a magical combination that has spawned two further seasons, creating an epic arc of story and strategy to enjoy with a gaming group or even as one of the best family board games.

Twilight Struggle

Billed as a cold war simulation and with bullet-pointed rules, Twilight Struggle can appear daunting to the uninitiated. But there’s a reason it was widely acclaimed as the best game of all time after its 2009 release. Players have hands of event cards that replicate key moments from the conflict, keyed to either their side or their opponent. If you play an opponent’s card you can still make moves on the board but their event also occurs. This makes every hand a thrilling, tactical dance of play and counterplay as you try to move your plans forward while also nullifying enemy events. In addition to the superb strategic workout, you might even learn some history too with this war board game.

Agricola

Another game that spent its time in the “best game ever” limelight is this unlikely game about farming. Stepping back from the theme, however, growing a family to work on a family farm is a dead ringer for the popular Worker Placement mechanism. As a result, Agricola conjures a real sense of growing and developing your humble plantation into a thriving stead, with plenty of interesting strategic bumps to navigate along the way. Its particular genius is its huge decks of cards, only a handful of which are used in each game, which ensures lots of strategic variety and allows you to tailor things like complexity and interaction to your group’s tastes.

The Crew: Mission Deep Sea

The genius of The Crew: Mission Deep Sea is in taking a very familiar gaming concept – trick taking card games – and using it to build something entirely novel but easily accessible. In this case, the competitive card game concept you know from classics like Whist and Bridge becomes cooperative. Players get a series of goals to distribute, indicating that they must win tricks in certain patterns or containing particular cards. The players must then work together to ensure those people fulfil those goals without being able to tell each other what’s in their hands. The result is a fascinating game of unlikely depth, rippling with tension and missed cues. And because it’s also simple and cooperative, it’s as much fun around the family dinner table as it is in a hardcore gaming convention.

Lords of Waterdeep

By marrying the sensibilities of Dungeons & Dragons with the mechanics of modern board games, Lords of Waterdeep made a smash hit to last down the ages. Players take the roles of power brokers in the Forgotten Realms’ biggest city, hiring adventurers to defeat perils threatening Waterdeep while building new facilities in the town. It’s these additions that take this unusually thematic worker placement game to the next level, with the new buildings entering play ensuring that new strategies are required each time. Throw in a modicum of minor “take that” cards to spice things up and you’ve got a brilliant game with very wide appeal.

Ticket to Ride

One of the few hobby board games to cross over into full mainstream sales, Ticket to Ride is a steaming success story. It’s a combination of familiar concepts with players collecting cards, like a Rummy game, in order to try and claim matching routes on a map of the US. But beware: it’s a tight board with relatively few potential connections between the cities that you’ll need in order to complete your allotted routes. And if another player gets there first, you’ll lose potential points instead of gaining them. Easy to learn and exciting to play and with a wide variety of versions and expansion maps, Ticket to Ride is great fun for all ages. It also works well as a two-player board game, or with a group.

Concordia

While conquest games involving ancient Rome are ten a penny, Concordia instead has you manoeuvring a noble family to gain wealth and contacts during the height of empire. Play is conducted using a deck of action cards that you can expand, using wealth from your trades, as the game progresses, allowing you to tailor your strategy accordingly. But the kicker is that your final scoring is also depending on those cards, with different cards earning you points in different ways, from goods in your storehouse to colonist pieces on the board. This creates a fascinating, rich, wheels within wheels layer of strategy, while the resource management elements also let you mess up your opponent’s plans while advancing your own.

Codenames

Blasting onto the scene in 2015, Codenames changed the face of party games forever. In place of trivia quizzes or trivial tasks, it challenged players to come up with clues to interlink a series of apparently unconnected words. So you might link “Trip”, “Rome” and possibly even “Embassy” with the clue “Holiday”. The concept proved so accessible and addictive that it launched an entire new genre of synonym-based word games, each giving different spins on a similar formula. But for ease of teaching and wideness of enjoyment, the original is still the best.

The Castles of Burgundy

Coming into this game of estate-building in medieval France you could be forgiven for feeling overwhelmed by the options to grow your castle. Fortunately, it’s a dice-based game where the roll each turn limits your choices of where you can take actions. But don’t be fooled into thinking this is a random game: rather, the dice are there to keep throwing you curveballs you have to dodge around as you build a strategy. A classic case of having too much to do and too little to do it with, every action of every round feels weighted with impossible priorities, keeping you stretched right up until the points are tallied.

Looking for more ideas not covered here? Check out our rundown of the best board games for kids.

Wingspan

Wingspan is often sold as a family board game but in truth, it’s a little too complex and challenging for kids and is generally more for board game enthusiasts. It has a perfect weave of tactics and strategy together with a winning theme as you try to attract birds to a nature reserve. Different birds need different foods and habitats but will contribute to your growing ecosystem which becomes a kind of engine, generating resources to allow you to play bigger and more beautiful birds.

Read our review of Wingspan.

What to Consider When Shopping for the Best Board Games

There’s so much choice in modern board gaming that picking a game can be overwhelming, not to mention expensive! So to help winnow down the selection, here are a few things to look out for when making your picks.

How Often Will You Play?

Perhaps the most important one is whether it’s likely to see much play. Aspects of this are fairly obvious: whether it appeals to your friends, what’s the target age, if it’s a long game, will you have time for it, and so on. But there’s still more to these facets than may be immediately apparent. You may feel comfortable learning a very complex game, for example, but will your fellow players, and will you be able to teach it? Do you want a game to play with your partner, or your wider family, or does it need to be flexible enough to cater for both crowds?

Even then, these are often vexed questions. The play times listed on box sides are often hopelessly optimistic. Similarly, a game’s advertised player count can be very different from the ideal. A good tool to clear this up is the game information database boardgamegeek.com. If you search on a game there then, at the top of the page you’ll find, beneath the player count, a “best” suggestion for the optimal player count according to the site’s users.

How Much Space Do You Have?

There are other many other considerations. Some games take up a lot of table space, for example, which is no good if you play on a coffee or smaller board game table. Others can take a long time to set up and put away. These issues are often mentioned in a review if they’re problematic. And they can stack: you may be able to play a much longer game, for example, if you have space to pause and leave it out on the table to resume later.

Some genres of game require greater research than others. Increasingly, games are being released as lifestyle choices with a steady stream of expansions and new content. Which is great if it appeals to you, but you need to know what you’re getting into. Other games merge into miniature modelling which is a whole other hobby in it’s own right. Editions and versions are another thing worth checking out as many modern games come in standard and deluxe editions or may, in fact, be reprints of older titles.

You also need to think about how a game might fit in with your existing collection, both aesthetically and physically. For the former, consider what makes it different enough, mechanically or thematically, from games you already own to make it worthwhile. For the latter, remember that board games are big, and you’ll need to find space to store it!

Best New Board Games of 2024

There’s a always a stead stream of new board games to check out as the year progresses. We’ve reviewed a couple of the biggest board games of the year below:

Matt Thrower is a contributing freelance board game and video game writer for IGN. (Board, video, all sorts of games!)

Elden Ring Hero ‘Let Me Solo Her’ Says Shadow of Erdtree DLC May Finally End His Relentless Malenia Killing

Two years ago, we learned of one of the greatest video game heroes of all time: a man wearing nothing but a jar atop his head.

His name? Let Me Solo Her. His job? Exactly what his name says he does: standing outside the doorway to Elden Ring’s most difficult boss, Malenia, and offering to take down the punishing, scarlet rot-infested warrior on behalf of players who were struggling to do it themselves.

Now, almost two years later, Let Me Solo Her (LMSH) is still fighting Malenia on behalf of the people. But his Malenia-murdering days may soon be at an end, thanks to the recent announcement of Elden Ring’s first major story DLC: Shadow of the Erdtree.

We first spoke to LMSH way back in April of 2022, and caught up with him again over email following the DLC announcement and yes, he’s still fighting Malenia all this time later. It’s not all he does, but he tells us he has about 1200 hours in Elden Ring at this point, and has “probably defeated her about 6000-7000 times by now.” Last April, he even beat the game using a mod that turned every single enemy into Malenia.

But when Shadow of the Erdtree drops in June, LMSH concedes it might finally be time to move on from Malenia. For one, he wants to play the new DLC. He calls the new trailer “spectacular” and says it “did not go the way I thought it would be.” His excitement is understandable — he’s a big fan of other FromSoftware games and their DLC.

I feel like he will be an enemy that can steal helmets

“Soulslike games have a history of their DLCs being the best part of the game, and I trust that Mr. [Hidetaka] Miyazaki [Elden Ring game director] will give us another masterpiece to enjoy,” he says.

In particular, LMSH is intrigued by the unfamiliar enemies throughout the trailer, particularly the mysterious red-headed character near the end. Miyazaki confirmed for us that this character is called Messmer, and that he is a “key figure” of the DLC who “stands on equal footing to these other demigods and children of Marika.” LMSH picked up on the alleged prowess of Messmer, too, telling us that “the new boss is especially exciting as he might be a lost sibling to Malenia and equal in terms of difficulty.”

I ask him what he thinks of this absolute atrocity:

To which LMSH replies, “I feel like he will be an enemy that can steal helmets lol.”

He’s also excited by some of the new items shown, such as the armor sets, because he “loves knight aesthetics,” and he’s really into the “throwing pot/jar that explodes” — appropriate given LMSH’s usual choice of headwear.

When Shadow of the Erdtree drops, it’s absolutely no question that LMSH will be playing it all the way through. Though he’s made a number of different characters, he expects he’ll play on his main account “Let me solo her” because “I like to collect everything in one account.”

But if Messmer or another boss proves to be a second Malenia in terms of difficulty, will he offer to solo them, too? He’s not sure yet. “Everyone knows that FromSoft likes to make the DLC bosses the strongest (for example, Gael),” he says. “I welcome the challenge and hope newer fans of the genre will also enjoy the difficulty as well. I’m not too sure if I will solo the newest boss yet. I will have to see what the boss will be like.”

Whatever awaits him in the DLC, it does sound like Let Me Solo Her is finally about ready to move on from the activity that made him a community legend. He calls his adventures fighting Malenia a “great joy,” but admits that after thousands of attempts, “I’ve had my fill of fighting Malenias lol.”

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Elden Ring Fans Left Scratching Their Heads Over Miyazaki’s Undiscovered Secret Tease

Elden Ring players are flummoxed over FromSoftware boss Hidetaka Miyazaki’s tease that one final secret still exists within the two-year-old game.

Speaking to IGN last week, Miyazaki commented on the myriad twists and turns Elden Ring takes throughout its pieced-together story that demands players interpret items, landscapes, bosses, and beyond. This style of storytelling naturally leaves a lot to player investigation and interpretation, but despite more than two years of myriad fans analysing, Miyazaki said there’s still more to find.

He and his team at FromSoftware “are always surprised and delighted by how much the players do discover, and how much these communities work to uncover these secrets”, he said, before dropping the bombshell. “For me personally, there is a small element that I feel has not yet been discovered. So, whether that’s up to user interpretation or up to just further investigation and playing, that’s something I’m looking forward to.”

The famed director, who also led the likes of Dark Souls and Bloodborne, therefore didn’t give much away as to what this secret is, but those embedded in the world of Elden Ring don’t expect it to be a grand or revolutionary discovery.

“Obviously it’s more exciting to think there’s some grand treasure hunt we can embark on to find Elden Ring’s last secret, but I don’t imagine there’s any way we, or even FromSoftware, will ever conclusively know how much is left to find,” said YouTuber Zullie the Witch on X/Twitter.

Her contemporary Sekiro Dubi agreed, adding it’s something that may even require multiple languages to learn. “Like Zullie says in other tweets, I doubt Miyazaki is like, ‘They didn’t see I left a such and such in this or that armour’. Add the ingredient that he probably knows Elden Ring mostly in Japanese and some stuff might be lost in translation.”

Sleuths on Reddit discussed the possibilities too, with some suggesting a deep analysis of item positioning in the open world being necessary. “There is a lot of trickery in the environment that is not being remarked upon,” said Miirshroom. “Items are placed and the landscape crafted very deliberately.

“Probably untapped analysis potential. These are things that are invisible to data mining because there is no flag in the programming indicating that something notable has been found. It’s just use of careful observation.” Miirshroom offers a few examples but notes there are literally hundreds in Elden Ring.

The time of day could change things too, as noted by setfunctionzero. “There’s the whole encounter system at specific times of night,” they said. “Gurranq’s night roaring is one off the top of my head, but I recall one that only occurs at a specific time in the dead of night, so you have to spin the clock, travel to the place, and wait 22.5 minutes in real time, and at 3am in the Elden Ring universe.”

These fans will likely be eager to discover the secret before June 21, 2024, when Elden Ring’s expansion Shadow of the Erdtree arrives, a DLC larger than any released by FromSoftware previously. Hundreds, if not thousands, of new threads will be added to the game to connect and follow, burying, or perhaps bringing to light, this last secret even further.

In our 10/10 review of the base game, IGN said: “Elden Ring is a massive iteration on what FromSoftware began with the Souls series, bringing its relentlessly challenging combat to an incredible open world that gives us the freedom to choose our own path.”

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

‘Stop F**king Firing My Friends’ – DICE Award Winners on the Industry’s Biggest Challenge Today

Earlier this month, the games industry gathered in Las Vegas, Nevada to celebrate the 27th annual D.I.C.E. Awards, honoring the best of video games in 2023. It was a great time, and a lot of really excellent games won well-deserved prizes.

But it’s also been a rough year for the games industry. We’ve written about the current upheaval elsewhere, and it didn’t go unremarked upon onstage, either. Even in a time of well-earned joy, a number of developers onstage were there having lost fellow team members who should be celebrating with them. Even those lucky enough to have avoided layoffs were accepting their awards in front of an audience of peers rocked by job loss, funding uncertainty, and apprehension.

Backstage, we had the opportunity to chat with almost every person who accepted an award that night. And while we asked them a number of celebratory questions and cheered with them on their victories and incredible games, we also asked them, candidly, what they felt the biggest challenge facing the games industry was in the year ahead. Overwhelmingly, the mass layoffs were the most common answer, but it also wasn’t the only thing we heard. Some developers brought up other struggles that they have been reckoning with at their own studios, or even smaller causes that ultimately have lead back to the larger industry struggles we’re seeing play out week after week.

So, from the developers of the best games of 2023, here are the biggest challenges the games industry faces in the year ahead:

Scott Hanau

Senior score producer for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, winner of Outstanding Achievement in Original Music Composition

“I would say all the layoffs probably, a lot of restructuring, reorganization, trying to keep all the teams together as best we can and go forward and make great games. It’s pretty daunting sometimes.”

Rod Fergusson

General manager of all things Diablo including Diablo 4, winner of Online Game of the Year

“I think we hear a lot about the notion around how you continue [growing the industry]. We can have great games and we still have to have industry growth, and so finding ways that we can expand our reach. It’s one of the things that people don’t realize, that the majority of people are playing on mobile and we don’t talk enough about that. And the idea of, how do you bring your IPs and your games to that mobile audience and reach people who maybe don’t have those platforms to be able to play? There’s three billion gamers out there, how do we reach them all? Getting to those three billion gamers I think is the biggest challenge.”

Ramone Russell

Product development communications and brand strategist for MLB The Show 23, winner of Sports Game of the Year

“I think the challenges always remain the same, it’s just a different day. I think every video game development team just wants to make great games, but it is a business. At the end of the day this is a business, so one of the challenges that we continue to face is attrition and being able to get the yeses for the things that we need to do to be able to make those games great. But it could also be worse. It could be a lot worse. It could also maybe be a little bit better. We’re just happy that we get to come to work and play in the sandbox and do what we love to do and dream about doing all the time, which is make video games.”

David Walgrave

Head of production at Larian Studios for Baldur’s Gate 3, winner of Outstanding Achievement in Story, Role-Playing Game of the Year, Outstanding Achievement in Game Design, and Outstanding Achievement in Game Direction

“Following up on ourselves. As a company, there’s a lot of challenges that we are facing, because we’ve grown vastly over a few years. I think we, from the team that worked on Original Sin 2, we quadrupled, I think. So first of all, we need to make sure that all these people can still work on the next games. We should not overhire because then we will end up having to fire people. That is not what we want. So it’s again about finding that balance of how can we still keep on making the same type of game as this one without actually growing or overgrowing or bloating.

A video game is a thing that you buy once and it’s not a shell with all sorts of buttons that buy you more sh*t.

“Then for Larian, I don’t think it is a challenge, because this has always been our priority, is to think about the player first and the fun first, instead of how much money is this going to make. To us, it’s going to sound cliché, we want to make games that we want to play ourselves. We want to treat the player the way that we would like to be treated by publishers and game developers. So to us, a video game is like a thing that you buy once and it’s not like a shell with all sorts of buttons that buy you more sh*t. That’s not what games are. So I don’t know if that is a challenge for our company, but it’s a challenge for the industry, to treat people like they should be treated.”

Mike Fitzgerald

Director of Core Technology at Insomniac Games for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, winner of Outstanding Technical Achievement

“I think just finding ways to work together, support each other. Studios who have wins, try and share those with other studios in the industry and raise each other up to be better together. That’s the Spider-Man tagline. Better together.”

Bryan Intihar

Senior creative director on Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, winner of Outstanding Technical Achievement

“I think we all understand it’s a little bit of a volatile time for the industry, and we’re all hoping that we can be there for each other. I think the most important thing is, how can we support each other in this, what can be a tough time for some people.”

Tim Garbos

Creative director at Triband on What the Car?, winner of Mobile Game of the Year

“That a lot of other people are also making games. There’s just so many video games out there.

I play video games. I played all the demos in this Steam Next Festival. I got through seven [of them] and then I didn’t have any more weekend. That’s amazing. It’s also a challenge but it’s amazing.”

Hella Schmidt

Studio director and general manager at Guerilla Games on Horizon: Call of the Mountain, winner of Immersive Reality Technical Achievement

“When I was up there, I was thinking, am I going to make a statement or not? I think we’re in challenging times where you really want to keep up our creative freedom, whilst being challenged with delivering games on budget and on time. And I think that gives an extra challenge to an industry that’s already hard. It’s hard to make great games. So, I do [hope] that when financial decisions are being made, that they realize that the power of making creative games is you need to keep the spirit alive, so that would be my answer.”

Matt Kramer

Studio creative director at Sanzaru Games on Asgard’s Wrath 2, winner of Immersive Reality Game of the Year

“I think it’s people. Our studio is about people. It’s about the game designers, the audio engineers, the producers, everybody that makes these games. There are so many players in it and it’s really sad to see what’s going on right now with all the layoffs and stuff. So hopefully we can turn that around and set it on the right trajectory because games are what sells hardware. And we need more games. We need more high caliber games, like Asgard’s Wrath 2. So for everybody that’s a designer, producer, engineer, anywhere, thank you so much for all your hard work on every game that was shown tonight. You guys are awesome.”

Andy Beaudoin

Game director for Forza Motorsport, winner of Racing Game of the Year

“As games have gotten more complex, they’ve gotten bigger, we’re adding more and more value to players. If you think about what you spend today for a game versus what you did…I’m kind of old, sorry to tell you, but back in the day, it was 50 bucks, 60 bucks for a game, and you maybe played it for eight hours. Now we’re providing games that have hundreds of hours. And to do that, the size of the team has grown, the amount of talent we’ve brought to the team has grown, the complexity of the worlds, the complexity of all that. And we’re still offering incredible value for the money.

We’ve got to figure out a way to make our games in a way that’s sustainable.

“I think the challenge would be to continue to add value, to make bigger worlds, more immersive worlds that players can spend more and more time in and still provide it at a cost that’s affordable for people. There’s a challenge there. We see lots of studios laying off teams. It’s horrible to see that happen. We’ve got to figure out a way to make our games in a way that’s sustainable so we don’t have to let go of teams, but we can still provide hundreds of hours of wonderful entertainment for our players.”

Sam Lake

Creative director at Remedy Entertainment on Alan Wake 2, winner of Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction

“It’s been quite a year, like last year, here we are celebrating and obviously so many wonderful games, but obviously a lot of hardship and bad news for so many talented people working in games. So yeah, really, really from the bottom of my heart, hoping that as many people as possible find new homes and can keep making great games.”

Karen Read

Director of audio management on Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, winner of Outstanding Achievement in Audio Design

“Oh, there’s a lot of challenges facing us, right? And I mean, we’ve all seen how the industry has had a lot of layoffs and a lot of financial cutbacks, so it’s challenging. It’s challenging keeping people together and creative and motivated when everybody feels like there’s this dark storm coming. But it’s in that creative space that we are really able to do things, right? When we focus on the games and we focus on the things that we love, I think when we come together as a community, that’s really how we handle it.”

Jerry Berlongieri

Senior audio director on Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, winner of Outstanding Achievement in Audio Design

“Games are always a challenge. I’ve been doing this for 30 years and it’s always a challenge. There’s new technology, there’s new genres to figure out, and that’s part of what’s thrilling, I think, is we reset, we figure out how to do it differently, how to do it with new technology. And it’s, as a field, sort of embracing the change and figuring out how we can be creative with it, how do we work with it? That’s always kind of been… Games are challenging in that way and I think that’s also what’s thrilling about it. So that’s game dev, right?”

Michael Douse

Director of publishing, Larian Studios for Baldur’s Gate 3, winner of Game of the Year

“Stop f**king firing my friends. Jesus Christ…I mean, everyone is talking about how the rules are changing. We’re in flux. Nobody really knows anymore what to make, how to get it funded, if it’s going to work, if they’re going to meet their projections, what those projections should be… Without that predictability, you can’t plan. And this is an industry that typically requires a certain amount of planning. And I know everyone has plans, but that’s very different to planning for what the future is. We don’t know what the future is. So the biggest challenge is figuring out what the fuck everyone is going to do. And that’s going to take a combined effort. And really it’ll be hindsight 2020. If it’s good, it’ll work. If it isn’t, it won’t.”

The most important thing is to figure out how to make it all sustainable. Because our mistakes will create victims.

“But I think for me, the most important thing is to figure out how to make it all sustainable. Because our mistakes will create victims. And trying to reduce that as much as possible, I think, will ultimately be what makes this industry continue to be successful. We need people to be able to be employed to make the games that people like. And that’s going to be tough. It’s tough now. It always was tough and it’s going to get tougher. So that’s the biggest challenge. How do we keep everyone f**king employed? Which I think is a challenge for everyone right now, but that’s our industry.”

Awards from Award Winners

As a bonus question, we also asked everyone we spoke to backstage: if you could give an award to any other game for any reason, what award would they give to what game? This is what they came up with:

  • Scott Hanau – Dave the Diver – Most Fulfilling Fishing Fantasy
  • Rod Fergusson – The NHL franchise “for continuing to disappoint me by not allowing me to play the playoffs in co-op.”
  • James Ham, associate animation director at Insomniac – Kingdom Hearts 2 – Most Heartfelt Game
  • Erwin Kho, art director for Cocoon – Most Amazing But Forgotten Game – Fragile Allegiance
  • Jakob Schmid, audio director and programmer, Cocoon – Best HR Giger Adaptation – R-Type
  • Tim Garbos – WarioWare – Most Inspirational Game for Being Okay Being Wacky
  • Ben McCaw, studio narrative director at Guerilla Games – Mass Effect Trilogy – Award for Pinnacle of Storytelling and Cinematics
  • David Walgrave – The Coolest Mathematics Award – Turrican
    • “I’m very much in love with the way that people worked with systems and computers 10, 20, 30 years ago. If you’re wondering very often, why did Larian do it like that or how did they do it? We still use a lot of the systems and systemics that they used in the eighties and the nineties to make stuff run.”
  • Mike Fitzgerald – Tetris – Best Multiplayer Game
    • “I have very fond memories of being in the backseat of a car next to my brother with our Game Boy Pockets plugged into each other, playing Tetris against each other, clearing lines.”
  • Jeannette Lee, project director for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, and Bryan Intihar both wanted to award games for “Best Sound Effect that Embeds in Your Brain and You Can’t Get Rid Of”. Lee gives the award to the Sonic the Hedgehog ring collection sound, and Intihar gives it to the Zelda “secret found!” sound.
  • Ramone Russell – The Last of Us – Best Storytelling
    • “The Last of Us really showed the entire world and the entertainment industry that video games are not just a play thing. It’s not just a participatory medium, it’s a medium that can tell stories. And one of the things we did this year is really built off of the back of that is that it’s not just interactive. You can tell really impactful emotional stories in this medium, and you can also educate in this medium too.”
  • Andy Beaudoin – Alan Wake 2 – Greatest Passion Project Ever
    • “I worked with those guys back in the days on Quantum Break, and just that team has been so passionate about storytelling and so consistent for so long.”
  • Mike Grodin, director of engineering, Motorsport gameplay at Turn 10 Studios – Hi-Fi Rush – Most Creative Idea
    • “We were sitting next to them and I was just in amazement that they created that game and how unique that game was.”
  • Michael Douse – BAFTA – The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow
    • “Because it’s fucking brilliant and nobody’s acknowledging that fact. Do we have a spare BAFTA?”

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Official Elden Ring Book Tells the Story of Two Co-Workers Who Become Friends Through the Game

The parent company of Elden Ring developer FromSoftware is releasing a novel based on the beloved fantasy role-playing game, but its subject isn’t necessarily what you’d expect.

As reported by Siliconera, Kadokawa Corporation is releasing See You At That Grace After Work in Japan, a novel telling the story of two co-workers who get to know each other by playing Elden Ring. The title references the Sites of Grace locations throughout Elden Ring’s world of The Lands Between.

The novel follows a Japanese office worker and gamer who enjoys Elden Ring but has only played solo. After spending his workbreaks looking at guide websites, a senior colleague notices and, as a fan of Elden Ring themselves, speaks to the worker about it. The two interact more and more both at work and online as they play Elden Ring together.

The novel arrives on March 29, 2024 in Japanese only, with no word on an international release. Keiichi Hikami, the author of several Monster Hunter novels, is writing this one too.

It’s not the first time a somewhat bizarre book on Elden Ring has been released, as Kadokawa previously released a manga. Instead of being a dark and dramatic fantastical story, however, as is told in the game, it followed a naked Tarnished called Asea as a comedy.

While it’s been more than two years since Elden Ring launched and a wave of wild and wacky content and creations around the game emerged, a similar situation may unfold soon as FromSoftware has announced a June 21 release date for its expansion, Shadow of the Erdtree.

Elden Ring proved somewhat of a cultural phenomenon upon its launch, with players finding a ton of different ways to interact with the game. Fans played it using a Fisher Price toy, the Nintendo Switch Ring Fit controller, and someone even made a working VR version of the game.

In our 10/10 review, IGN said: “Elden Ring is a massive iteration on what FromSoftware began with the Souls series, bringing its relentlessly challenging combat to an incredible open world that gives us the freedom to choose our own path.”

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Tekken 8 Sells Over 2 Million in a Month

Tekken 8 has sold over two million copies in the first month after launch, publisher Bandai Namco has announced.

The fighting game launched on January 26 across PC via Steam, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S, and sold one million on its first day of release, then hit the two million sold mark in the first month. This “greatly outpaces” the sales of Tekken 7, Bandai Namco said. Tekken 7, which is still being played, has the series’ total highest sales record of over 11.8 million copies sold worldwide.

Tekken 8 appears to be selling at a similar pace to rival fighting game Street Fighter 6, which also shifted two million copies after a month on sale. Capcom’s Street Fighter 6 went on to sell three million copies in seven months. NetherRealm’s Mortal Kombat 1, on the other hand, sold three million copies just over a month after going on sale.

Bandai Namco said support for Tekken 8 will continue “through various content updates, esports events, music and licensing announcements.” To that end, the Tekken World Tour 2024 kicks off on April 13, with the Tekken World Tour Finals the culmination of the game’s first year of esports.

Bandai Namco also mentioned Tekken 8’s controversial Tekken Shop, which has drawn complaints from some players. “This in-game shop will provide customisation items such as costumes from previous installments, character skins for avatars, and licensed items from our collaborations, letting players put their own touch on their favorite Tekken characters,” Bandai Namco said.

Tekken 8’s Year 1 pass is set to add four additional playable characters as DLC. The first of these is Eddy, who sports a new high-top dreads hairstyle and a new outfit for Tekken 8, although his capoeira fighting style is present and correct.

IGN’s Tekken 8 review returned a 9/10. We said: “Tekken 8 is an incredible evolution for the series, with tons of single player content, an excellent suite of training tools, a great online experience, and exciting new mechanics that make Tekken more dynamic than ever.”

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag Players Rise 200% Upon Skull and Bones’ Release

The number of people playing Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag has risen 200% on Steam after the release of fellow Ubisoft pirate game Skull and Bones.

As reported by PCGamesN, the player numbers of 2013’s Black Flag have floated either side of 1,000 for years. According to tracking website SteamDB, however, this number spiked on February 16: the day Skull and Bones finally released after years of troubled development.

Black Flag rose to 1,679 players upon launch, followed by 2,600 on February 17, and 3,226 on February 18. That growth has continued, not dipping below 2,401 since reaching a new peak of 3,594 on February 25. Skull and Bones has yet to launch on Steam, with Ubisoft favouring a PC release on the Epic Games Store and its own storefront, so player numbers are unavailable.

Announced in 2017, Skull and Bones initially looked set to provide players with more of what made Black Flag so popular: intense and dramatic ocean adventuring and combat. Six delays seemingly caused excitement to dwindle, however, and Skull and Bones has finally arrived in 2024 to little fanfare. “Skull and Bones is a maritime RPG with a strong foundation, even if it feels like a live-service first draft,” IGN said in our 7/10 review.

Ubisoft’s marketing for the game has seemingly inspired a few thousand players to return instead to Black Flag, even with an eight-hour free trial of Skull and Bones available.

In our 8/10 review of the former, IGN said: “Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag is a gorgeous, fantastic sequel that gives you the freedom to make your own fun.”

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.