SEGA recently released the Yakuza series on GOG but not without removing several developers and support studios from the games’ credits.
As reported by PC Gamer, Timo653 on Reddit pointed out each game in the series is affected, with chief creator Toshihiro Nagoshi perhaps the highest profile removal.
He’s not the only one though, as in in Yakuza 0, for example, even director Kazuki Hosokawa, art supervisor Saizo Nagai, and game design supervisor Koji Yoshida were removed.
Support studios, who don’t lead design on the game but assist with more technical aspects, were also cut. Lab42 was previously credited as porting Yakuza 0 and Kiwami to PC but was removed from those credits. QLOC was similarly credited with porting Kiwami 2 and Yakuza 3, 4, 5, and 6 to PC, but was also pulled.
“Despite using a larger font and more spacing, the GOG credits manage to be shorter than the Steam version ones, because of all the removed names,” said Timo653. “A bunch of names are missing from almost every section of the credits. Some of the removed people seem to be former Sega employees who left for Nagoshi Studio, but I’m not sure about the other removals.”
The NetEase-owned Nagoshi Studio was founded by Nagoshi after he left Sega in 2021, and given his connection to Yakuza’s roots and the core of the Ryu Ga Gotaku Studio, some Sega staff joined him on the new adventure. It’s unclear if there is a connection to the employees removed from the credits and the ones who left Sega for Nagoshi Studio, but IGN has asked Sega for comment.
Timo653 continued: “This feels unnecessary and disrespectful to the people who worked on these games. As of the time of writing this post, only the GOG version has these ‘updated’ credits. The people who worked on these games are still credited properly on the Steam version.”
Playing Pikmin has always felt like a warm hug, and I’m delighted to report that nothing in that regard has changed in Pikmin 4. During the hour I spent roaming around in story mode, delegating tasks to my little leaf-headed guys — as well as my new sidekick, a very cute two-legged, bug-eyed canine fluffball named Oatchi — I constantly had to remind myself to stay on task; the lure of scrounging around every little nook and cranny of the map was extremely tempting. But focus, I must. Because as the newest recruit of the Rescue Corps, my crash-landed crewmates and civilian castaways were splayed out, waiting for me to save them.
Once again, I landed in a forest area called Sun-Speckled Terrace with my Red Pikmin waiting to be extracted from the Onion, ready to be tossed around and respond to my every command and whistle. This time, though, I was also greeted by my new buddy, Oatchi. This alien pup has tons of handy uses. It can bash through sturdy objects the Pikmin can’t, drag back heavy things all on its lonesome, and follow the scent trails of stranded crew members, treasures, and ore that can eventually be used as the material for item crafting and equipment upgrades once you locate your missing lab-rat comrade.
In Pikmin 4, players aren’t relegated to searching the surface level and exploring in the daytime. Nighttime Expeditions to find new Glow Pikmin are now available, as seen in the gameplay trailer unveiled during the recent Nintendo Direct, although I didn’t get to try that out during my hands-on demo. Additionally, you can dive into manhole-covered pipes that lead to subterranean levels where time moves more slowly than it does up above. Not that I needed to be clock watching. Like Pikmin 2 and 3, Pikmin 4 ditches the strict 30-day time limit to assemble pieces and do recon for your team in favor of an open-ended timeframe that encourages exploration of the map and mastering Dandori, the technique of planning ahead.
In the morning of Day 2, I landed back in Sun-Speckled Terrace to find that Oatchi had practically doubled in size overnight and was now big enough to ride on like a horse.
Pikmin 4’s caverns are where I unearthed more types of Pikmin, including the electric, eared Yellow Pikmin and the brand-new chunky Ice Pikmin that can freeze enemies, giving Oatchi a clean target to bash into for massive damage. Down in those depths, I also found a couple of my crewmates and had my Pikmin drag them back to safety, which would unlock their highly useful and specialized skill sets the next day. Like Tears of the Kingdom, these extra layers of playable levels — oh yes, some pipes have more pipes within — provide a whole different aesthetic experience on a large layout while remaining true to the game’s ultimate mission. With all of the glimmering treasures poking out of corners, I desperately wished I had more time to scratch my completist itch and de-mist every piece of the map and strip-mine the area for all it’s worth. Once you’re finished grinding underground, you’ll find an air vent to blast you up to the surface with all your Pikmin in tow.
Nightfall still looms, however, and you’d better make sure all your little guys are at attention by the time the 10-second clock counts down, lest they be lost to the dangers of the night. In the morning of Day 2, I landed back in Sun-Speckled Terrace to find that Oatchi had practically doubled in size overnight and was now big enough to ride on like a horse. One of my crewmates explained that I can train Oatchi to improve his utility, like making his bashes stronger and increasing his health gauge. Another of my rescued cohorts gave me the ability to craft items, including treats for Oatchi and things like a shock-resistant collar. My solo time ended shortly after these discoveries, but it certainly highlighted some of the potential that’s awaiting in Pikmin 4, especially with a new galumphing pal at your side.
I also spent some time with the competitive Dandori Battle mode. Here, players on opposite sides of a tiny map go head-to-head with Oatchi and an equal number of Pikmin in collecting treasures and sneaking bombs underneath your opponent’s ship to blow up their cache in a timed match. I personally found it too chaotic, but that can probably be chalked up to a rustiness in my Dandori skills. I much prefer the cozy adventure of pulling up Pikmin and cruising around on Oatchi until my brain feels smooth in the best possible way.
Final Fantasy 16 players are absolutely loving Ralph Ineson’s performance as Cid, who’s essentially become the unofficial summer voice of video games after also appearing in Diablo 4.
Ineson has emerged as the standout star in Final Fantasy 16 with fans loving his cheeky attitude and deep Yorkshire drawl. “Cid’s voice actor is insanely good,” said chai_zaeng on Reddit.
“This man’s voice is deeper than the Marianas trench and his delivery of Cid’s lines is awesome: so nuanced and yet so full of emotion.”
Others agreed. “Such a brilliant job as Cid,” said TheKarnov on Twitter. “I actually slow down to make sure I hear every Cid line when I’m playing,” added RabToons. The official PlayStation UK account chimed in too. “This is now a Cid from Final Fantasy 16 account,” it said.
Ineson also played Lorath in Diablo 4, and fans equally flocked to his role there. “The same voice actor for Cid is also Lorath in Diablo 4,” said a Reddit user. “Awesome voice. That is all.”
Taking heed of the compliments, Ineson took to Twitter himself to share his appreciation of all the players enjoying both games.
“Thank you for all the kind words about Final Fantasy 16 and Diablo 4,” he said. “I started working on both games three years ago not realising they’d be released within a month of each other. Cid and Lorath were both great fun and I had some great writing to work with.”
Thank you for all the kind words about #FinalFantasy16 and #DiabloIV . I started work on both games 3 years ago not realising they’d be released within a month of each other. Cid and Lorath were both great fun and I had some great writing to work with https://t.co/b7mT07PSWy
While perhaps most known to UK fans as Finchy from The Office, Ineson has otherwise appeared in some of the biggest entertainment franchises in recent memory.
His credits include Star Wars Episode 8: The Last Jedi, The Green Knight, Chernobyl, Guardians of the Galaxy, Kingsman: The Secret Service, Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Games of Thrones, and more.
Warning: full spoilers follow for both Final Fantasy 16 and Game of Thrones.
Final Fantasy 16 producer Naoki Yoshida has made no secret about drawing inspiration from Game of Thrones for the latest epic in the long-running RPG series, but the influence of A Song of Ice and Fire goes way beyond its gritty mediaeval setting and regional British accents. At some points the similarities are as heavy-handed as Ramsey Bolton’s approach to Theon’s special area.
So, let’s take a look at the many characters, plot points, and locations in Final Fantasy 16 that feel less like they took inspiration from Game of Thrones and more like George R.R. Martin warged directly into the minds of the team at Square Enix. Full warning, we are going to be covering the entirety of Final Fantasy 16, right up to the finale, so there will be extremely big spoilers. There will naturally be a fair few for Game of Thrones, too, so now is your chance to back out if you need to.
Clive Rosfield Is Basically Jon Snow
With his unkempt dark hair, determined demeanour, and loyal hound by his side, it’s immediately clear that Final Fantasy 16’s protagonist, Clive, has a passing resemblance to Game of Thrones’ Jon Snow. But as Clive’s character develops it becomes increasingly clear that there’s a lot of overlap between the two. Both are the black sheep of a highborn family, are forced into servitude, and have a link to fire-breathing monsters. Flick through the gallery below to see just how many of Clive’s character traits are shared with Jon Snow.
Joshua Rosfield Is Basically Brandon Stark
Much like Jon, Clive has a younger brother who grows into one of the most vital keys to saving humanity from the looming apocalypse. Similar to Brandon Stark, Joshua is pushed to the sidelines for many of the story’s early chapters, but when his importance is made apparent he becomes one of the plot’s most important figures. The two characters are also united by the fact that they share a significant link with mythical birds; Joshua is the Dominant of the Phoenix, while Bran becomes the Three-Eyed Raven. Take a look at the gallery for more details on how Joshua and Bran are alike.
Elwin and Anabella Rosfield Are Basically Ned and Catelyn Stark
With Clive and Joshua sharing much in common with two of the Stark children, it’ll likely come of little surprise to learn that there’s parallels between the Rosfield and Stark parents, too. Elwin Rosfield, head of the house and leader of the Grand Duchy of Rosaria, is a lot like Eddard Stark, including being the person who has to die to kick the story off. His wife Anabella, meanwhile, is a little like Catelyn Stark, although she also has traits seemingly drawn from Cat’s sister, Lysa Arryn, and Cersei Lannister.
Jill Warrick Is Basically Theon Greyjoy
Clive’s companion and love interest, Jill Warrick, also appears to be heavily inspired by a Game of Thrones character. While her personality and general approach feels largely original for Final Fantasy 16, her backstory is very reminiscent of Theon Greyjoy. A political prisoner that grew up in a family and land far away from her own, Jill is also forced to endure horrible hardships as an adult. It’s an echo of Theon’s own dark, complicated tale.
Clive’s Companions Are a Lot Like Hodor, Daenerys, Ghost, and More
The Rosfield family are where the most significant parallels between Final Fantasy 16 and Game of Thrones can be found, but they are far from the only places where the series’ influence is felt. Many of the supporting cast share traits with Game of Thrones characters, ranging from small details to clear homages.
The World of Valisthea Is Basically Westeros
It’s not just the characters that bear a resemblance to the world of Ice and Fire, though. The actual landscape of Valisthea feels a little more than familiar; much like George R.R. Martin’s The Known World, Final Fantasy 16’s story primarily takes place across two continents, one of which is locked in a long and difficult conflict between many houses. Many of the towns and landmarks in this world also echo places from Game of Thrones, either through their physical appearance or their purpose.
The Villain Is Almost Just The Night King
Many of Final Fantasy 16’s characters and concepts are not as directly inspired by Game of Thrones as those detailed above. However, there are plenty of ideas from the books and show that make their way into Final Fantasy 16 and act as one small part of an otherwise more original character or plotline. For example, an apocalyptic evil that overshadows the power struggles of mortal men is a major element in the story of Valisthea. It’s an idea that stops short of just being The Night King, but still certainly has similarities. Then there’s wider concepts, such as the quest to bring an end to slavery. Look through the gallery to learn about these in more detail.
That’s everything we spotted, but there’s likely dozens more. Tell us any Game of Thrones details you noticed in Final Fantasy 16 in the comments below.
Just like an actual ocean, Dave The Diver is beautiful at first glance, but then you dive into it to find a vast, wonderful world to explore just beneath the surface. This waterlogged adventure manages to exceed the expectations of an already hilarious premise with some of the most irresistible exploration, sim management, and minigames I’ve seen in a long time, and which kept me completely glued to my seat for far more hours than I’d ever intended. With characters and a story that are deceptively substantial and more content packed into it than I could have anticipated, Dave The Diver never stopped surprising me. If you would have told me that one of the best games I’d play this year, standing alongside juggernauts with mega-million-dollar budgets, would end up being a retro indie RPG where you play as an obese SCUBA diver who runs a sushi shop…I would have believed you, actually. That sounds awesome. And it is.
Dave The Diver’s story focuses on a loveable group of coworkers turned friends who open a sushi bar near the mysterious Blue Hole: a seemingly magical stretch of water known to change its terrain and aquatic ecosystem every day. You play as the titular Dave himself, a rotund, soda-chugging diver who begrudgingly caters to the whims of everyone in his life, including the occasional bossy sea creature. What follows is an endearingly silly tale involving a secret society of merfolk, some really aggressive wildlife-protection enthusiasts, and dozens of people making very rude comments about your character’s weight.
But while it comes off a bit shallow at first, the story shockingly develops into something more substantial, with characters that are far more complex than their pixelated faces initially suggest. Even after more than 30 hours I still find myself eager to spend time with the likes of Bancho, the stoic, fearless sushi chef, and Duff, the anime-obsessed, neck-bearded gunsmith. It certainly helps that many characters are given extremely amusing and memorable cutscenes every time you interact with them, like one where Bancho traumatizes a fish with his knife-sharpening skills or where Duff elegantly dives into a swimming pool to test out a newly crafted weapon. I’ve seen them all dozens of times at this point, and yet I refuse to skip them – they’re just that good.
I refuse to skip cutscenes – they’re just that good.
But this is not just an amusing adventure RPG; it comes with a surprisingly deep restaurant-management sim baked into it. You’ll split your time between diving into the dangerous depths of the Blue Hole to hunt for fish and supplies, battle wet foes, and complete quests while also managing a sushi shop by crafting recipes, cooking, hiring and training employees, and dealing with an extremely fussy clientele.
Diving into the Blue Hole is where the literal and figurative meat of the adventure happens: you’ll use a harpoon, guns, and nets to capture and kill fish to be turned into sushi, and explore ever deeper, inevitably leading to action-packed confrontations with aggressive sharks, navigating ancient ruins filled with simple puzzles, and fighting off over-the-top bosses like a massive hermit crab using a monster truck as a shell. Tracking down and collecting all manner of sea life is a compelling and Zen-like game of hide and seek where you’re rewarded for bringing your quarry down with as little brute force as possible by mastering Dave The Diver’s simple but satisfying combat.
Swimming around with guns blazing like a savage brute will get the job done quickly, but your shoddy work yields minimal usable resources for your restaurant. Using your harpoon – or better yet, nets or tranquilizer darts – to bring fish in alive is much more beneficial, but trickier. That tradeoff gives you plenty of ways to succeed, depending on your preference and what you think you can pull off with the tools you’re given.
Shoddy work yields minimal usable resources for your restaurant.
Sometimes you’ll get swarmed by a whole school of small, hungry biters, while other times a lone narwhal will come barreling at you to impale you on its spiral tusk; you never know what vicious wildlife lurks in the Blue Hole’s depths. Dodging out of the way and fighting back is usually easy enough, so long as you aren’t an overburdened sitting duck, but mastering the angles, navigating the environment, and choosing which weapon to bring with you (you only get one per dive) will significantly impact your options.
You might prefer an awesome long-range sniper rifle that does high damage but has extremely limited ammo, or you might prefer to get up close and personal with your prey using a shotgun that requires less of that overrated aiming. Or, if you’re feeling particularly brave, you might try to bring down your enemies with a tranquilizer dart gun and extract a giant shark to your boat while it snoozes for a few moments – a tall order that requires some serious finesse and can get you killed fast. There’s lots of different ways to play, and although it always amounts to the same pattern of dodging, shooting, and swimming away from your pursuer, it allows for quite a bit of creativity and usually leads to some pretty amusing hijinks.
Fighting silly, enormous bosses and solving simple press-that-switch-to-open-the-path puzzles offers a nice change of pace from spearfishing, even if both are too easy to provide any kind of meaningful challenge (and no difficulty options are available to bump it up). There’s definitely some very cool novelty in taking down a giant squid at the bottom of the ocean, but since nearly every boss can be killed (very quickly) by learning their pattern and hitting them three times, the break from the norm is usually short-lived. Similarly, while the plot developments that are usually involved in story-heavy puzzle sections are usually worth the trouble, the actual puzzles are mostly effortless busywork, like a few sections where you redirect beams of light off of mirrors but the solutions become obvious literally the moment you see them.
It creates a loop that is truly hard to walk away from.
In between dives you’ll make worthwhile upgrades to your gear that make your excursions more profitable and improve your combat effectiveness. There are tons of useful stuff like making your oxygen tank bigger, refining your swimsuit so you can dive deeper, increasing your inventory space, and crafting and upgrading your weapons to deal more damage and apply status effects like poison and, nonsensically, fire to your underwater foes. All of these require increasing quantities of resources generated by capturing fish and driving up profits from your sushi business, and it creates a loop that is truly hard to walk away from. I can’t tell you how many times I promised myself “One more dive,” before then rationalizing to myself, “Well, I gotta wrap up the day at the sushi stop, then I’ll stop,” then repeating those empty promises for hours on end.
Throughout all of your exploration you’ll need to keep a close eye on your oxygen tank, which smartly doubles as your life bar and your carry load limiter, drastically slowing you down when you bag too many fish and other treasures to easily carry back to the surface. Early on, that meant I often found quite a bit of challenge when faced with fish of prey, as one or two false moves could leave my oxygen nearly depleted as I desperately tried to get to the surface in time. Meanwhile, my greed for rare fish and supplies often forced my encumbrance beyond my maximum, leaving me sluggishly floundering around and jeopardizing my entire run – being spotted by a giant shark while over-encumbered is always a bit dicey.
When you run out of oxygen you don’t actually drown, but you return to the surface with only a single measly item from your haul that you are allowed to choose to take with you. This makes failure quite high-stakes – especially since you (annoyingly) can’t save in the middle of runs, which could mean you lose a half hour of progress with a single death due to some rookie mistake you should have known better than to make. The limitations of your oxygen tank and carry load also ensure that you’ll regularly need to emerge from your watery paradise, but that’s not annoying at all because it leads to interactions with the other fantastic half of Dave The Diver’s world: restaurant management.
Like a true spreadsheet lover’s dream, running an exotic sushi bar requires you to master numerous disciplines like gathering materials, hiring and training your staff, nurturing both an agricultural and a fish farm, learning recipes and upgrading your menu, and more. Watching sales charts climb and building a better business is a dopamine hit that kept me up late into the night and repeatedly drove me back into the ocean to collect ingredients, especially once the complexity of my business swelled to insane proportions when my success required me to open a branch location. The bonkers amount of depth and planning that goes into preparing for a single night of slinging sushi awoke my inner entrepreneur like few games have. Wait, should I open a sushi bar in real life? Oh, my God! Are we really doing this?!
Dave The Diver nearly constantly keeps throwing new, ridiculous stuff at you.
Perhaps Dave The Diver’s best quality, though, is in how it nearly constantly keeps throwing new, ridiculous stuff at you. As if spearfishing and restaurant management weren’t enough on their own, you’ll also get into gambling, aquatic photography, seahorse racing, raising a Tamagatchi-inspired digital pet, concertgoing rhythm games, and at least 20 other absurd things I wouldn’t want to spoil. Whether you’re exploring the Blue Hole as you hunt for an elusive shark or hanging out with merpeople, Dave The Diver lives up to the adventure game genre by absolutely never being predictable throughout its entire duration.
It’s truly impressive that, even in the story’s closing hours, I was still being introduced to new mechanics, some of which had caused the already habit-forming rabbit hole to grow ever deeper. There’s even an entire section where you’re suddenly thrown into a visual novel that fleshes out the backstories of some of the cast. Moments like that are just such a treat!
Not all of the gambles Dave The Diver takes are successful (if they were they wouldn’t be gambles!) and sometimes you’ll end up playing some haphazardly thrown-together minigame that feels like it could have been left on the cutting room floor. For example, in one part of the story you suddenly find yourself playing a half-baked 2D stealth game that has you hiding behind crates and lurking in freezers as you wait for braindead guards to slowly walk by. The good news is that these misses are extremely brief, and even when one didn’t land with me, I was at least amused that the bizarre diversion was included at all.
The last thing to note is that, despite a generally insane level of polish likely brought on by its tenure as an early access game, Dave The Diver does have some bugs it’s yet to work out. Sometimes my UI would disappear, locking me out of doing things like managing my farm, and sometimes enemies or objects in the environment would become intangible, and a few times the framerate would randomly tank itself while I was hanging out in one particular area: the sea village. These issues weren’t common enough to make me not want to keep playing this alarmingly compelling game, but they pretty significantly annoyed me when they happened – it definitely sucked, for example, when one boss randomly became invincible during our fight and I had to start the whole dive over.
With Blumhouse’s new Five Nights at Freddy’s film releasing this year on October 27, there’s no better time than now to play through the Five Nights at Freddy’s games. Created by Scott Cawthon, the first game launched back in 2014 and has since garnered an incredible fan base and followed up its horror hit with a wide variety of games; from mainline installments to plenty of spinoffs.
For those interested in taking on the night shift against these killer animatronics, we’ve detailed how to play each of the mainline FNAF games in both chronological and release date order below.
When it comes to the main FNAF games, there are 9 in total, which we’ve covered below. As far as spin-offs and more challenge-based games go, though, there are 4 additional FNAF games that fall in this category. These are Five Nights at Freddy’s World, Freddy in Space 2, Security Breach: Fury’s Rage, and Ultimate Custom Night.
Five Nights at Freddy’s Games in Chronological Order
For those looking to play through the Five Nights at Freddy’s games in chronological order to get the full story, we’ve done our best to arrange them in story order. If you have different theories about this franchise’s order, though, share them in the comments!
1. Five Nights at Freddy’s 4 (2015)
Available on: Android/IOS, Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
When working through the timeline of Five Nights at Freddy’s, the game to start out with is actually Five Nights at Freddy’s 4, as it takes place in 1983. This is assumed because of an easter egg during one of the post-Night minigames that can be seen by interacting with a TV in the living room. After hitting it enough times, it’ll eventually bring up a still for a commercial for a show called Fredbear and Friends, which appears to have aired in 1983, given that’s the date beneath the title.
Compared to its predecessors, though, FNAF 4 has a different setting. This time, you play as a young child in their bedroom rather than as a security guard in an office. Throughout the night, you’ll need to run from your bedroom doors to your closet (and even check behind you on your bed) for a variety of terrifying enemies, but mainly nightmare variations of the original animatronics: Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy. Listen out for them and keep your flashlight close to scare them away.
2. Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 (2014)
Available on: Android/IOS, Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is next in a chronological playthrough and brings players to the newly-opened Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza to work the night shifts as a security guard. FNAF 2 also introduces new animatronics in the mix alongside updated versions of its classics. These new additions are The Puppet and Balloon Boy, so you’ll have more to watch out for on the cameras.
This time around, you’re also given a Freddy Fazbear head to wear in case the animatronics happen to reach your office. With it on, most of the animatronics will have a harder time recognizing you and leave, which’ll buy you some more time before the crack of dawn. You also have a music box that you need to keep wound up to keep The Puppet away. This animatronic won’t be fooled by your sneaky little fake Freddy head, so make sure to keep the music box going.
We’ve placed this game as second in line for a chronological playthrough, as it’s set in 1987. This can be assumed from the paycheck you receive at the end of Night 5, which is dated for that year.
3. Five Nights at Freddy’s: Sister Location (2016)
Available on: Android/IOS, Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
In a departure from the previous game, and as its title may point to, Five Nights at Freddy’s: Sister Location takes place at a different spot called Circus Baby’s Entertainment and Rental, which features its own animatronics as well. This time around, you play as a technician working night shifts with a series of tasks to complete alongside surviving the animatronics.
Five Nights at Freddy’s: Sister Location is actually a bit trickier to place on the timeline, and many fans still debate when it could be set. The reason we’ve chosen this slot is because of a line HandUnit says at the beginning of the game: “Due to the massive success, and even more so, the unfortunate closing of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, it was clear that the stage was set, no pun intended, for another contender in children’s entertainment.” This line could be referencing when Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza closed down in ‘87 following FNAF 2, which is also brought up by Phone Guy in FNAF 1 during Night 1. So, for now, having Sister Location between the two seems like a good fit. Let us know your theories in the comments below, though!
4. Five Nights at Freddy’s (2014)
Available on: Android/IOS, Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
The one that started it all. Five Nights at Freddy’s was the first game that had players taking on the security guard mantle to keep watch of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza for five night shifts. Mainly, you need to keep an eye on the animatronics there: Chica, Bonnie, Foxy, and of course, Freddy Fazbear. Their behavior has become a bit unpredictable lately, and they like to roam around freely at night… just make sure they don’t roam into your office.
Alongside the cameras that need to be checked, players can also close the security doors near them if the animatronics get too close during the night. Keep in mind, though, you only have limited amounts of power to use. Once it’s gone, goodbye doors and lights!
Five Nights at Freddy’s takes place a few years later than the previously mentioned games, likely sometime in the early ‘90s. This can be assumed from Phone Guy’s dialogue during Night 1 where he says that the animatronics used to be able to walk around during the day, “but then there was the bite of ‘87.” This helps place it after FNAF 2 and before FNAF3, which we’ll get to next.
Five Nights at Freddy’s 3 (2015)
Available on: Android/IOS, Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
According to Five Nights at Freddy’s 3’s Steam description, this game is set “Thirty years after Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza closed its doors,” which would put it after the events of FNAF 1, given that’s when Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza closed for good, and, if we’re going with the early ‘90s, would set it sometime around the 2020s. It brings players into a brand new location as well… Fazbear’s Fright: The Horror Attraction. Yes, this new attraction is based on the terrifying events that happened in Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, and they even have old animatronics from it to really keep you on your toes!
Once again, you step into the shoes of a security guard keeping watch of the attraction and its “great new relics” that have been picked up. Like before, you’ll have security cameras to monitor, but this time you also have a maintenance panel to reboot systems that go offline and close off vents to prevent those creepy animatronics from crawling toward your office space.
Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria Simulator (2017)
Available on: Android/IOS, Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
If you’re feeling tired of working security or maintenance, why not make the jump into running your own pizza place? In Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria Simulator, you get to do just that. But don’t worry, this game isn’t without its frights. You’ll still need to keep the animatronics away from you when in your office, and there’s plenty to monitor when you’re in there as well.
Not only do you have a computer near you to keep tabs on everything and complete your tasks, but you’ll need to watch the vents on both sides of you for anything that could be crawling through. However, both your computer and the vents make quite a bit of noise, so you’ll have to take turns shutting them off to hear your surroundings.
Throughout the game, you’ll salvage animatronics as well. One of these is Springtrap, whose first appearance in the series was in FNAF 3, which places this game sometime after it in a chronological playthrough.
Five Nights at Freddy’s: Help Wanted (2019)
Available on: Android/IOS, Nintendo Switch, Oculus Quest, PSVR, PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
Five Nights at Freddy’s: Help Wanted was the franchise’s first step into VR – and later came out on PC and consoles – and even has a sequel set to come out later this year called Five Nights at Freddy’s: Help Wanted 2 for PSVR 2. Developed by Steel Wool Studios in collaboration with Scott Cawthon, in Help Wanted you can play through a variety of mini-games that feature familiar animatronics and experiences from earlier games in the series.
But where does this game fit into the timeline? During the opening ‘Welcome’ message for the game, HandUnit states that “Fazbear Entertainment has developed something of a bad reputation over the last few decades, […] That’s why we have recreated many of these completely fictitious scenarios (lies) that you’ve been fed over the last several years into a hilarious VR game.” And given that Help Wanted recreates situations from previous games in the timeline up to FNAF 3 on our list, it makes sense to place it after that game and near Pizzeria Simulator.
Five Nights at Freddy’s: Special Delivery (2019)
Available on: IOS/Android
Five Nights at Freddy’s: Special Delivery is an Augmented Reality game that was released on mobile devices just a few months after Help Wanted. Much like how Help Wanted immersed you into FNAF in VR, Special Delivery did the same by bringing the animatronics home to you. In this game, you have to keep an eye out for them on your mobile device as they stalk around the room, utilizing a flashlight and controlled shock to stop them.
Similar to Help Wanted, Special Delivery involves its own branch of Fazbear Entertainment. Here, the Fazbear Funtime Service is what’s sending the animatronics to your house and, when it comes to the franchise’s timeline, it would make sense that they’d create something like this around the time of The Freddy Fazbear Virtual Experience in Help Wanted. Given how HandUnit explains at the start of Help Wanted that, “Fazbear Entertainment is excited to join the digital age, and what better way to do that than with an edge-of-your-seat virtual reality experience,” it sounds like that was their first endeavor, and this would be their second outing into it.
Five Nights at Freddy’s: Security Breach (2021)
Available on: Google Stadia, PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch
The most recent Five Nights at Freddy’s game, Security Breach, is the second game in the franchise to be developed between both Scott and Steel Wool Studios, following Help Wanted. It’s a free-roam survival horror where you play as a young boy named Gregory who gets trapped at night in Freddy Fazbear’s Mega Pizzaplex. Throughout the night, he’ll need to survive the various animatronics, but with a surprising helpful hand along the way.
In a chronological playthrough, this game comes in last. This can largely be taken away from the fact that Freddy Fazbear’s has now grown into a Mega Pizzaplex, but there’s also a moment in one of the endings that helps confirm that it’s set after one of the previously mentioned games. However, so as to avoid spoilers, we’ll let you uncover that ending on your own!
Five Nights at Freddy’s Games in Release Order
If you’re interested in playing through the main Five Nights at Freddy’s games in their release order, you can find them listed as such below:
I don’t know about you, but I’ve been stumbling around looking for a lot of in between games this year. Tears of the Kingdom pretty obviously has dominated a huge chunk of my life for the last month. And recently I was in LA for Summer Games Fest. Earlier this year, I was playing Kirby, and when I get home, I have Humanity waiting for me. But all of these games have been a bit too high stakes to just chug away at the whole year. Lately I’ve needed something slower, something I could get lost in. And recently, I’ve found myself dipping in again and again to a little game called Havendock.
Havendock is a city builder – one of those cozy ones that presents goals but low stakes, so you don’t have to frantically sort out a civilization as its populace crumbles in your arms. It takes place not on dry land, but in the middle of the ocean, starting on a tiny deserted island and proceeding to build out on a series of interconnected wooden docks. You build more docks to make more space for more housing, more people, and more mechanisms that will make your life somewhat easier. Potable water is the first concern, followed closely by something to eat, and shelter. Eventually you’ve worked your way up to dance floors and chicken coops. Materials drift lazily by on the waves, lending an element of pleasant randomness and surprise to your work. More recently, I’ve made a dance floor and a prayer center so my residents have something to hope for – which isn’t me being glib, it’s a literal game mechanic.
While your castaways do get hungry and tired, their needs build so slowly and are so easily fulfilled, their existence is rarely if ever stressful, at least in the several early hours I’ve played. It makes Havendock largely a soothing way to putter around with civilization building, interspersed with moments of humor such as discovering that I can grow hamburgers in the garden, or when I see the very human touch of silly names the NPCs that arrive to assist me have. Havendock is full of this personable goofiness, speaking readily to being a game eager to please a growing community throughout an early access.
Creator Yeo Ying Zhi (who goes by YYZ) got his start working on flash games as a teenager, and eventually took some classes to help him get started learning 3D engines such as Unity. He worked on some personal tower defense game projects for a bit, and also released a 2D idol RPG game called Enchanted Heroes that’s seen some success. Havendock is YYZ’s first attempt at a larger 3D game, and while he’s been fascinated by 3D animation and game design for a while, it took a random, restless night to give him the push he needed.
“I was lying in bed and I couldn’t fall asleep,” he says. “It was like 3 am. So I just had this idea of being in this peaceful place where you’re in the middle of the ocean. And then I made some concept out of it. I wasn’t serious about it turning it into a game. It was just some concept that I had in my head. And then it floated around, and then after some time I decided, ‘Okay, I guess I’m going to try to make this into a game.’”
I just had this idea of being in this peaceful place where you’re in the middle of the ocean. And then I made some concept out of it.
YYZ has his work cut out for him, not just in the transition from 2D to 3D animation, but also in his goals to make a proper multiplayer experience. I haven’t tried the feature out yet myself, and he bills it in the early access version of Havendock as “highly experimental.” It’s easy to see why, from his description.
“Whenever the character deposits an item into the building, you need to link that across all the players, all the buildings, the items in them, and the characters themselves on top of that. So it’s that interaction that actually makes it very, very difficult to have the game be really smooth in multiplayer. Currently, that’s why there are a lot of issues with multiplayer that I’m trying to fix.”
While some might balk at playing something that clearly isn’t finished, having an open development like this is something that’s important to YYZ. He’s been blogging prolifically about the development process, taking community feedback into account and being as transparent as possible about the problems involved in even simple aspects like letting NPCs drink either fruit juice or alcohol at the bar. He’s been this open from the beginning, too, telling me that he released the earliest version of Havendock to the public about six to eight weeks after he started the project.
“It is very scary,” he says. “If you are scared to release it, that’s probably the right feeling. If you are ready for it, you’re probably a bit too late already…When I tested it, I thought it would be okay, but players do all sorts of things and there’s this sandbox element to it. So you can break things in general in the early stage because I couldn’t expect the way people played the game. So there was a lot of learning from that. But I’m actually glad that it was released early because that gave me a lot of feedback to work with as compared to when I spent a long amount of time getting projects available to the public, it would be a lot of time spent building things that I didn’t know what if it was something that people wanted.”
Even with the struggles, YYZ says that releasing Havendock in such an early access environment has helped him develop it at a much faster and more efficient pace than his previous projects. At the time that we speak, he says he has around 2,400 Discord community members – sizeable. The help is appreciated especially as he’s largely working on the game solo, and still working part-time to pay the bills.
I went out for a day and the game had issues…so the whole day I couldn’t wait to just get back home and get to my computer.
“I think this approach is quite different from how normal developers do it,” he muses. “So I think this is also a big learning point and it’s super stepping out of the comfort zone for me…There was this one day, I remember I just went out for a day and apparently the game had issues because I posted an update the previous day, so the whole day I couldn’t get access to my computer, so I couldn’t wait to just get back home, get to my computer, quickly find out what the issue is and kind of push. It was quite stressful that day. So I think that’s some of the more things that I have to be more wary about.”
YYZ’s clearly deeply invested in this project, but when I ask him what it would take for him to consider Havendock a success, his answer is a humble one.
“Maybe if enough people know about it, I can ask my friend, ‘Hey, have you heard of my game?’ And they go, ‘Yes, I heard of it.’ Something like that. It becomes, I guess, common enough that it’s recognized. I’m not sure if that sounds like success, but I just think it’s cool.”
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.
Final Fantasy 16 has a lot of side quests—76, to be exact—but as our FF16 review pointed out, not all of them are necessarily impressive. So, which FF16 side quests are worth doing? You can check out the complete list of Final Fantasy 16 side quests and their rewards to decide on your own which to do, but to make it easy, we’ve put together a comprehensive list of all the essentials, whether you’re looking for unique rewards or quality story beats.
Essential FF16 Side Quests Worth Doing
These side quests all reward you with essential upgrades for your journey across Valisthea, including better potions, weapon crafting designs, and even a mount. They’re actually marked for you in-game—just look for green markers with the plus sign instead of the usual exclamation point. We won’t spoil their exact rewards here, but if you’re curious, you can check out the complete guides.
FF16 Side Quests With Collectible Curiosity Rewards
Eventually, you’ll be able to see some “curiousities” inside of Clive‘s room. There are 22 collectibles on the Wall of Memories, and many of them are earned by completing side quests. Some of these are repeats of the above, and some have an additional side quest prerequisite to unlock it.
One of Celeste’s images is also one of its most striking. Following an intense dream, Madeline awakens with tears in her eyes. She is laying in bed, looking pensive as she stares up at the ceiling. On the table is a bottle of pills. To her left is a childhood picture with her mother. You can read any number of emotions into that expression, but it’s apparent that she’s caught in a moment of reflection.
The transgender community, for its part, zeroed in on pointed cues like the trans flag on Madeline’s desk. More than a year later, Celeste creator Maddy Thorson finally acknowledged what was obvious to queer fans: Madeline is transgender.
“This feels painfully obvious to a lot of (mostly trans) people, and likewise it feels painfully obvious to me too, in retrospect. It has also become painfully obvious to me that I, myself, am trans,“ Thorson wrote in a 2020 blog post.
“But these are things that I was not aware of during the development of Celeste, where I was writing Madeline and speaking from her perspective. Creating Celeste with my friends helped me reach the point where I could realize this truth about myself. During Celeste’s development, I did not know that Madeline or myself were trans. During the Farewell DLC’s development, I began to form a hunch. Post-development, I now know that we both are.”
It was a massive moment not just for transgender gamers, but for queer gamers as a whole. It was a moment of true validation and visibility in what was broadly a mainstream game.
It’s been more than five years now since Celeste’s release and it’s tough to find a more personal and affecting representation of a trans woman’s quest for self-acceptance in games or basically anywhere else. Today, it’s one of the most popular and influential transgender games ever made, which is to say that it’s one of the only popular and influential transgender games. But that still counts for a lot in a world increasingly hostile to that community’s very existence.
‘We didn’t really have a plan’
Celeste wasn’t always meant to be one of the canonical games of the queer community. In the early days, it didn’t have much of a story at all.
“We didn’t really have a plan,” Thorson remembers. “I mean like, at first, we didn’t even have a story. We got to Chapter 3 before we even had the story coming in, and the story very much came from the mechanics. But then at a certain point, the story started becoming the heart of the game and we started turning it around, where everything else was taking cues from the story, which was very unusual for us in the way we made stuff until then.”
The story that eventually developed follows Madeline, a young woman trying to make her way to the top of Mt. Celeste with the help of Theo, a traveler from the faraway land of Seattle (Theo has an Instagram account, and like most things in Celeste, it’s very cute). Along the way she’s chased by a shadowy doppelganger named Badeline who harasses and mocks Madeline as she makes her way through ever more perilous challenges, which she negotiates by jumping, dodging, and flying past obstacles.
[Celeste] would go on to sell more than a million units while competing with God of War and Red Dead Redemption 2 for Game of the Year honors
Above all, Celeste is a universal story about mental health. It’s about climbing the mountain and emerging whole. It’s not exclusively a transgender story, even if it has a special resonance for the trans community, especially trans women. It’s possible to draw many different meanings from its story, which is one reason it has proven so popular. First though, Thorson and her team had to find that story.
Going into Celeste, Thorson was still in the mindset of making a game similar to Towerfall, which had found success with local multiplayer fans in 2013. None of Celeste’s developers had an inkling that their “little game” as Thorson described it would go on to sell more than a million units while competing with God of War and Red Dead Redemption 2 for Game of the Year honors. Where many big-budget games can take six years or more to complete, Thorson’s team finished Celeste in just two.
The team began working on the project in 2016, which was around the time that Thorson encountered Lena Raine at the Game Developers Conference – the annual gathering of games industry professionals that takes place in San Francisco. Raine had been a freelancer for roughly a month at that point, having mainly served as what she describes an “add-on” interpreting other composers’ visions. Going independent was a risk, but Raine wanted to see if she could make it in the games industry. (Disclosure: Long before Raine worked on Celeste, she composed the themes for my various podcasts).
Raine got the job through a casual offer over Twitter DMs from Thorson, who said she thought her music would be a good fit for Celeste after listening to Singularity, a solo EP that Raine had released not long before.
“That was the style that they really latched onto,” Raine remembers. “It’s like listening to effectively what was my debut into exploring electronic music, and figuring out what I wanted to do with synths. Because before that EP, I really didn’t do a lot of electronic music. I did a lot of instrumental chamber stuff, I wrote for solo piano… guitar, and all that kind of stuff. And I really wanted to explore more sounds than just instruments that I didn’t have the money to hire people to play.”
Where more modern games favor mood-setting soundtracks, Celeste’s music is at the forefront from the beginning. It’s meant to be noticed.
That was the signature sound that Raine brought to Celeste, resulting in a soundtrack that would be streamed some 4 million times on Spotify by the end of 2018. The playful, exploratory, but haunted notes of First Steps backing the first stage made for a powerful first impression, echoing the memorable 8-bit and 16-bit music that had served as the soundtrack for gaming’s early years. Where more modern games, particularly ones developed by American studios, favor ambient or mood-setting soundtracks, Celeste’s music is at the forefront virtually from the beginning. It’s meant to be noticed.
Like the rest of the team, though, Raine had to find her way into Celeste’s overall themes. Her early work was “upbeat and peppy and a little bit more inspired by the Kirby games.” Raine was instructed to tone it down with an eye toward putting herself in Madeline’s shoes and focusing on the feeling of “standing at the very bottom of a room and looking at the puzzle of how to climb further.” It was a striking contrast to its platforming contemporaries like Super Meat Boy and N++, which in Raine’s words have a “frantic kind of pace to them.” It eventually became clear to Raine that Celeste’s story, and thus its music, had a clear emotional arc.
“I first got the hint at what the character themes and motivation were once we started getting into more of the cutscenes and some of the more introspective moments, because from the get-go, I had no idea necessarily the direction that I wanted to take it emotionally,” Raine says. “Writing the main theme and writing all this stuff, it was still evoking a lot of the feelings that were in the environment art in the first level. There was the ruined city and snowing… it was definitely evocative of a space… that initial ascent with first steps and with the first level, that set a groundwork for where I was going.”
Celeste was eventually released in early 2018. As with so much of the rest of the project’s development, its success felt almost serendipitous. Celeste had the benefit of being in the right place at the right time, arriving a little less than a year after the Nintendo Switch’s original launch. While it was released on several other platforms, it was most at home on Nintendo’s handheld, where its simple pixel graphics were able to shine. This being the early part of the Switch’s lifespan, it also didn’t have to fight as hard to stand out amid what would eventually become a deluge of indie releases on the platform.
Celeste went on to win praise from fans and critics alike, who lauded its distinctive art style, tight level design, and affecting storytelling. It quickly garnered a large and influential speedrunning community, who took pride in being able to beat its challenging B-Sides while dying as little as possible, but it also set the standard for accessibility with elements like Assist Mode. In short, it was a stunning achievement that was in many respects well ahead of its time.
“Celeste is a surprise masterpiece,” Tom Marks wrote in IGN’s Celeste review. “Its 2D platforming is some of the best and toughest since Super Meat Boy, with levels that are as challenging to figure out as they are satisfying to complete…But the greatest triumph of Celeste is that its best-in-class jumping and dashing is blended beautifully with an important and sincere story and an incredible soundtrack that make it a genuinely emotional game, even when your feet are planted firmly on the ground.”
‘She was just not a straight girl’
Thorson didn’t know she was transgender while working on Celeste. That came later. But Thorson tends to put a lot of herself into her writing, and her own conflicts with gender began to arise in Celeste’s story. In particular, it was apparent to the development team early on that Madeline was queer in some way, or as Raine puts it, “she was just not a straight girl.”
By the time work began on Celeste’s Farewell DLC, the ninth and final expansion that among other things introduced mechanics like Wavedashing and Wallbouncing, the team knew that Madeline was transgender. Raine, who is transgender herself, remembers artist Amora Bettany approaching her and asking whether it would be sensitively appropriate for her to have certain objects in her room.
“I was just like, ‘Yeah, those are really wonderful little details,’ that I think show what we want to say about the character without just making some big after-the-fact kind of statement because we were really sensitive to that kind of stuff. We didn’t want to say anything about a character that wasn’t actually presented in the text,” Raine remembers. “We really wanted to have the themes present for themselves.”
It wasn’t easy. Movies and television have a long and sordid history of presenting a character’s transgender identity as a shocking twist, which the development team worked diligently to avoid. As Thorson put it in her blog post a year later, the team didn’t want it to be a moment like Samus removing her helmet at the end of the original Metroid.
Movies and television have a long and sordid history of presenting a character’s transgender identity as a shocking twist, which the development team worked diligently to avoid.
When the Farewell DLC released in 2019 and fans took notice of the clues in that iconic image, the development team remained silent, choosing to let the moment speak for itself. It wasn’t until a year later that Thorson chose to address the topic, in the process opening up about being trans herself.
“The Celeste community has wanted clarification on Madeline’s identity for a long time now, and I don’t blame anyone for wanting that, but the messy realities of my gender identity and coming out have meant that I needed time before I could talk openly about it,” Thorson wrote.
Immediately after the post, Thorson remembers “so much outpouring of support and love and personal stories of how they relate to Madeline and how it makes them so happy to know that she is canonically trans and that the story came from that kind of perspective.” Both Thorson and Raine say they continue to receive heartfelt messages to this day.
Thorson’s post wound up filtering throughout the trans community, and many picked it up for the first time. Among them was Eleanor, who had previously avoided Celeste due to its reputation for being difficult, which she tended to associate with negative memories of hyper-competitive behavior among boys (Note: We are using a pseudonym at Eleanor’s request). In the end though, she discovered that she was not only able to cope with Celeste’s difficulty – she loved it.
“I think Celeste broke through my defenses on that because there are those cute little postcards with the strawberries at the start of every level reminding you, it’s okay to take a break, keep trying,” she said, noting that on an especially bad day she will go and play through all of Farewell. “Your death counter is something to be proud of. And there’s the design choices of fudging the physics a little so you land in the right place or letting you restart at the start of a room every time instead of going back to a checkpoint. That kept me going.”
Eleanor sees Celeste’s journey as an elastic metaphor that can be read in many different ways, but she mainly focuses on the sense that Madeline is running from her past, saying that she heavily identifies with her anxiety of “being thought to be someone you aren’t and the terror of branching out into a new life when people are trying to hold you back into what you once were.”
“You get that cryptic call with someone who might be a family member who’s cut her off or might be an ex-partner, and that’s one of the only times we see outside the frame of the game in the entire thing,” she says. “Throughout you’re told you aren’t a mountain climber. No, you can’t do this. No, this isn’t something you’re capable of. This is not who you are. This is not who you’re allowed to be. It’s all about that tension between past and current self and the potential of what you could be versus what you are.”
She remembers a sense of relief when seeing the image at the end of Farewell.
“I feel like there’s often this spectrum between someone writing a trans character where their entire story is about their trans-ness, and that’s often good, but it shouldn’t be the only thing. Or a character gets Dumbledored [a reference to Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling revealing that Dumbledore was gay], like the author’s voice many years later” she says.
“Seeing that shot at the end of Farewell, it was just this relief of, ‘Oh, okay, this feels very true to her character.’ And it’s such a relief as an artist who works with trans narratives that are also not necessarily narratives just for trans people to see someone who has put so much thought into trying to hit this balance. It meant a lot to me.”
‘I still tear up a little bit when I see that’
Celeste ultimately has a happy ending – still a rarity in media featuring transgender people. Madeline finds closure after Granny’s death. She unites with Badeline and summits the mountain.
[The mountain scene is something] I find a little challenging, because I don’t think I love the Badeline in myself in quite that same way. I don’t know how to – Eleanor
“It’s really beautiful,” Eleanor says. “I love the kind of quiet and gentle way that it makes clear that she just needs to love every part of herself, no matter how painful. And that’s the only thing that’s going to allow her to keep going. I still tear up a little bit when I see that. And at the same time, it’s still a scene that I find a little challenging, because I don’t think I love the Badeline in myself in quite that same way. I don’t know how to.”
It’s not an easy time for transgender people right now. Anti-transgender laws are sweeping the United States and other countries, and abuse is rampant on social media platforms like Twitter. Thorson says that Celeste reflects her belief that there are cisgender people who want to understand and care about transgender people.
“The one thing that makes me think that is the fact that so many cis people do relate to Celeste without even knowing that it’s a trans story, before we added that context,” Thorson says. “So that gives me hope, personally, that we aren’t these sort of aliens that are completely different where we’re just people and our stories are relatable. Maybe not in the details, but in the feelings and the human experience.”
huge congratulations to the whole Celeste Strawberry Jam team for launching their ridiculously huge fan compilation today 🤍
they released FIVE whole albums of music from the mod project & all profits go to Trans Lifeline, so you know what to do~https://t.co/tkf0NEqkld
She and Raine both hope that transgender people can find refuge in the transgender community, which remains highly active to this day. Earlier this year, a team of more than 350 contributors came together to release the Strawberry Jam mod, a collection featuring more than 111 maps with original mechanics, art, and music. Thorson describes the effort as “the most flattering thing possible.”
For true representation, it’s only ever going to come from indie games. You’re not going to get a game written from a trans perspective from Blizzard or whoever. It’s just not going to happen.
Thorson is less optimistic about other games, saying that she’s become disillusioned with representation in AAA games, many of which proudly tout LGBTQIA+ characters who are only identified as such in their biographies. Either that, or they’re one-dimensional sops for the transgender community, as was the case with Hogwarts Legacy’s Sirona Ryan, who was widely panned as a simplistic representation of trans pathos.
“I think for true representation, it’s only ever going to come from indie games. You’re not going to get a game written from a trans perspective from Blizzard or whoever. It’s just not going to happen. They’ll have their token trans character and they’ll stop doing harmful tropes, and that’s the best we can hope for, I think,” she says, adding that she thinks it’s at least good that some companies aren’t being actively harmful. “But yeah, I would look to indie games if you want to hear a trans story with some actual soul to it.”
Pressed for examples, she points to Get in the Car, Loser, an RPG about lesbian adventurers on a roadtrip with an angel, and Super Lesbian Animal RPG, which is about “love, anxiety, and fighting funny looking monsters in dungeons.” Other games like Tell Me Why have also centered around queer and trans characters.
What ultimately separates Celeste is that it’s transgender art from transgender creators with a mainstream following. That’s rare in any space, let alone gaming. It does more than center Madeline as a transgender character, it delves deep into her psyche – into her fears, her dreams, her insecurities.
Raine recalls an oft-discussed monologue that she recorded and reversed for one of the game’s tracks, titled In the Mirror. Seeking a good recording environment, she went into a closet and began talking to herself. In hindsight, she says, it felt like a potent metaphor.
“I was just reflecting on the themes of that level… I was monologuing as a means of a hidden message, just to have some sort of spooky reverse thing happening in the music track. But I really did reflect on those things, and I really was feeling the themes of the game. Because who doesn’t have some sort of experience that they can relate to with that?”
Kat Bailey is IGN’s News Director as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat.
Today’s testimonies in the FTC’s legal battle to press pause on Xbox’s merger with Activision were bookended by a closed session with Microsoft senior finance director Jamie Lawver and a brief questioning of Google Stadia product director Dov Zimring. But the real meat of today was the Phil Spencer show.
The suit-clad head of Xbox kept steady throughout a lengthy questioning by the FTC before laying out, in cross-examination, a clear map of Xbox’s mobile-focused strategy for acquiring Activision. When Microsoft wrapped up its inquiries, Spencer’s stint at the front of the court was concluded by a rather awkward line of questioning during which he found himself patiently explaining to FTC lawyer James Weingarten how, exactly, money works in acquisitions.
Relevant Markets Revisited
Once again, the FTC spent a solid portion of time focused on defining the “relevant markets” as part of its job in this affair is to prove that Microsoft acquiring Activision would “substantially lessen competition” in a “relevant market.” For this specific case, the FTC has put forth significant efforts on a couple of very specific relevant markets, one of which is high-end consoles – a.k.a., PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S…but not Nintendo Switch. Xbox has argued that it’s in “third place” behind both PlayStation and Switch, and an Activision acquisition would help bolster its weaker market position rather than harm competition. But if the FTC can remove the Switch as a competitor in its market definition, then the scales tip more in Xbox’s favor, and it can more reasonably make the argument that Xbox could hurt competition.
So, naturally, we heard a lot of back and forth over the Nintendo Switch today throughout multiple rounds of Spencer’s time on the witness stand. The FTC brought forward multiple internal Xbox documents demonstrating market share between PS5 and Xbox Series consoles as Gen 9, but seemed to exclude the Switch in an effort to prove that even internally, Microsoft does not consider the Switch a serious competitor.
Spencer’s argument, which gained strength once Microsoft counsel stepped up to counter-examine him, is that Microsoft uses a number of internal metrics to gauge success, some of which include Switch and some of which don’t – it just depends on what data they are looking for. Microsoft counsel busted out its own chart with all three platform holders on it to prove it – a chart Spencer supposedly receives an updated version of every single week. Spencer was given the opportunity to hail Switch as a strong and uniquely designed competitor – the strongest of the three consoles in terms of unit sales, even. And when he was passed back to the FTC for a final round, the FTC took the rather strange tactic of pointing out repeatedly that the Switch was listed last in Microsoft’s report, a move which did not seem to sufficiently prove anything of relevance.
A similar discussion was had regarding another “relevant market” definition, but this time with the FTC trying to demonstrate that the deal would be anti-competitive in the United States specifically because of Xbox’s comparatively larger market share (as opposed to its weaker position in Asia and Europe). Meanwhile, Microsoft gave Spencer the opportunity to argue that no one – neither console makers nor developers – is operating in a regional vacuum, but is designing everything with a global market in mind. Neither party spent much time on this specific line of questioning.
But we did to hear a delightful response from Spencer when he was asked by Weingarten if Xbox had “lost the console wars.”
“As the console wars is a social construct, with the community, I would never want to count our community out, they’re big fans,” Spencer replied. “If you look at our market share in the console space over the last 20+ years, we’re in third place. We’ve remained in third place for quite a while.”
Content Is King
Microsoft’s cross-examination, on the other hand, was far more cohesive. With Spencer more comfortable speaking at length under Microsoft counsel Beth Wilkinson’s questioning, they were able to lay out a coherent guide to Xbox’s attempted strategy in acquiring Activision Blizzard. The two covered all of Xbox’s greatest hit arguments here, including why it would make no sense financially for a developer to purposefully degrade a video game on another platform (“like designing a movie for Omaha and making it worse for New York City”), and why pulling Call of Duty from PlayStation would cause “irreperable harm” to the brand in the eyes of gamers.
One especially interesting segment, though, was Spencer’s outline of Xbox’s mobile strategy. Much of this we’ve heard before in filings earlier this year, but here Spencer had the opportunity to dig in deep on how Activision would be a balm to Xbox’s near-absence from the largest gaming market. He began, though, by what was almost an apologia for xCloud, which he explained had been a strategy to help Xbox compete in the mobile market. A strategy, he admits, that didn’t work out so well thanks to issues such as latency, screen size, and controller support. “Turns out there are a lot of barriers to console games being displayed on a phone screen,” Spencer said.
“Turns out there are a lot of barriers to console games being displayed on a phone screen.
“Our solution here is not customer led really,” he wrote in a 2019 email. “It’s led by what we have and a hope. I don’t like this but I’m not smart enough to come up with anything else. If I ask mobile gamers what they want, they won’t tell me that it’s to play Halo on their phone with a Bluetooth connection to an Xbox controller. That’s probably as far from what they want to do on their phone as anything. They also don’t pay for any games, all the mobile games are F2P. So even the business model around our games that mobile players don’t want is wrong.”
Spencer confirmed that Xbox tried to acquire Zynga to solve this problem, but realized they needed something even bigger. Then, in November of 2021, the Activision opportunity arose. As the biggest publisher of mobile content, Activision – largely via mobile subsidiary King – had the properties and the development chops to make big enough games that it could help Xbox realize its ambitions of breaking into the massive mobile market and becoming a real competitor. And it would do that not just through publishing mobile games, but through building its own mobile storefront:
“We believe there is an opportunity to create a gaming storefront on mobile phones for Apple and Google phones where people can come to find games to play, and a storefront that would really tailor toward players on Google and Apple’s platform,” Spencer said. “Now Google and Apple will fight us to do this. They don’t openly allow other storefronts on the largest gaming platform. So as we talked about, we started with this strategy of xCloud, maybe through the cloud, outside of their store, we’d be able to deliver content to them. This is an approach of having a native storefront on a phone where people could come to find our games and third-party games.”
With Activision’s games such as Call of Duty mobile and Candy Crush in its chamber, Xbox could drive its audience toward its mobile storefront and establish a meaningful presence on both mobile platforms, something it’s not able to do with its current portfolio by any stretch. This explains Xbox’s specter-like presence in the backdrop of the Epic v. Apple trial over Apple’s walled garden a few years ago, and could be a harbinger of more, similar disputes to come should the deal be approved.
The FTC Silenced
Throughout the day, the FTC introduced a number of questions that seemed to indicate misunderstandings of how the gaming business worked. While going back and forth with Spencer on why Minecraft had not yet been optimized for PS5, for instance, Weingarten seemed oddly focused about its lack of presence on PS Now or PS+, while Spencer evenly pointed out that Sony had never made an offer for the game to be on that service, and it wasn’t his job to dictate what content Sony had on its own subscriptions. Later, Weingarten repeated questions about a specific conversation Spencer might have had with Zenimax’s James Leder in fall of 2021 about game exclusivity – a conversation Spencer was able to easily enough claim he didn’t remember specific of, given that it happened two years ago and that he discusses the subject with his colleagues all the time.
And at another point, Weingarten questioned why Microsoft could afford a $70 billion acquisition but couldn’t afford to pay studios like Square Enix to make games like Final Fantasy exclusive to Xbox instead, which led to a truly fascinating exchange where the head of Xbox explained how the financials of acquisition works to an FTC lawyer.
“I would raise my hand. I will do whatever it takes,” he said. “We have no plan. I’m making a commitment standing here that we will not pull Call of Duty – it is my testimony – from PlayStation.”
It was a striking moment that stood out even after Spencer’s other repeated public pledges to do just that, but what was really curious was what followed when Weingarten returned to question Spencer further. Weingarten asked Spencer if he could still make that promise without looking at any of the “terms” involved. Spencer replied that this was not necessary – Xbox has shipped many games on PlayStation, he’s confident they can do it. Weingarten pressed harder.
“Can you swear under oath that you can promise that you’ll ship COD on all the future versions of PlayStation, for ten years, without knowing what the terms are?”
“I’m making a commitment standing here that we will not pull Call of Duty… from PlayStation.
The two went back and forth, with Spencer noting that it’s possible Sony changes the terms on Xbox in a way that makes shipping a game impossible, with the unspoken conclusion that this would be Sony’s fault, not Xbox’s. Weingarten clapped back, pointing out that in the ten-year agreement Xbox sent Sony, Sony asked for “significant commitments beyond the standard shipping of the game” that had caused the promise to remain unsigned, in limbo. Spencer said the deal was extraordinary, but was committed to bringing Call of Duty to PlayStation even without that specific contract signed.
Weingarten went on. Would Spencer make the same promise for all Activision content?
No, Spencer replied, that would not make sense, Activison has games currently that are on mobile or PC-only, like World of Warcraft.
What about Diablo? Weingarten went on. Can he commit to that?
It was at this point that Microsoft stepped in with an objection, and the judge urged proceedings on. But Weingarten came back to the same argument later, asking if Spencer would make the same commitment to Sony’s cloud gaming service, at which point the judge actively cut him off, clearly done with the discussion.
How It All Played Out
It’s admittedly difficult to imagine how someone unfamiliar with the gaming industry (as Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley self-admittedly is) might have felt about today. But from the inside, the FTC came out looking a bit ridiculous. Its lawyers repeatedly seemed to be unaware about basic business principles involved in bringing games to different platforms, and Spencer himself was able to hold up well under lengthy questioning. Microsoft, meanwhile, was at last given ample opportunity to outline the real reasons it wants Activision in front of a US judge, as well as counter a number of (it claims) non-reasons, such as making Call of Duty exclusive. And Microsoft still has multiple witnesses on the way next week when the trial resumes Tuesday.
It is still critical to remember that the FTC’s job isn’t to prove the deal is anti-competitive. At least not right now. It’s just trying to pause the deal long enough to take things to court against in August as it planned, rather than let the deal pass in July and have to fight to undo it down the line. With that in mind, Judge Corley outside perspective on the industry, and in light of recent US sleight of antitrust crackdowns, it’s still not clear which way the cards will fall, especially with both parties having the weekend to regroup. Even analysts aren’t fully convinced one way or another of the outcome, and it sounds like the answer won’t be here until sometime after the July 4th weekend.
