Crafting a world that begs to be explored is a tricky thing to do, especially when the world is kind of sucky, doubly so when it’s woven mostly through words with only supplementary imagery to provide a broader context. Yet Citizen Sleeper’s is one I’m often thinking about because amongst all the grand sci-fi concepts is a grounded sense of reality that you’ll always find in the best of the cyberpunk genre. And here I am, a year on from the second game’s release, tempted to return once more, but this time in a form based on its tabletop origins.
There are not enough games in the world where it feels like the initial concept was born from the thought, “wouldn’t it be funny if…” I’m no fool, I know this is because developing a video game is akin to getting hit by a car, miraculously coming away from it unscathed, only to be hit by six more cars as you continue your journey. In any case, this is still how I would like to imagine Trust Me, I Nailed It was born, a turn-based strategy game where you have to make cool video edits of some warrior to make him seem like a monster slaying legend.
You know, I’m surprised that EA has never made a Sims reality show where contestants have to act out odd, Simish challenges on a Truman Show-esque production lot, given how much the games themselves feel like simulators for the trashiest (said lovingly) TV show genre. In the meantime, while it isn’t at all themed reality shows, The Sims 4’s next expansion, Royalty & Legacy, seems like a perfect fit for a fictitious one of your own making.
RuneScape: Dragonwilds just held its 2026 summit this week, and with it came a bevy of details about future updates and plans for the survival game. Oh what joy for you scaper or runes! The main thing that got a look-in was the game’s next big update, Dowdun Reach: Madness of Zamorak, which certainly has an air of someone looking at any section of a given Dark Souls and thinking “yeah, I want a fortress like that.”
I’m sure there’s been many a Dweet and forum post about Highguard is already a dead game or some such silly thing to say about a game that’s not even a week old, but it does at least seem like developer Wildlight is paying attention to some of the more constructive bits of criticism about the game. Namely, that many aren’t fond of the shooter’s 3v3 Raids simply because it feels like there aren’t enough people for such large maps. So in turn, there’s already an update adding in an experimental new raid mode.
Are you more of a supervan wrecker or a bone stock maniac? Can you be best described as a British couch racing champion, or is your calling more in the realms of Finnish folk? These are the sorts of questions you’ll have to pose to yourself whenever you fire up Wreckfest 2‘s still-in-the works career mode, which devs Bugbear Entertainment have just laid out a bunch of plans for.
The Turtle Beach Burst II Pro’s raison d’être is to bung a Valorant esportist’s Christmas list of premium features into an ultra-lightweight gaming mouse; a class of peripheral that’s more accustomed to jettisoning luxuries than hoarding them. Thus we have a desk rat that weighs 57g, less than half of the apparently immortal Logitech G502 Hero, while packing pleasantly clicky optical switches and an 8K polling sensor – meaning it sends its latest positional info to the PC eight thousand times a second. That’s Windows 11 levels of notification spam.
One of the games which wasn’t among the cancellations was long-in-development sequel Beyond Good and Evil 2, and its director has now confirmed as much, offering a brief message to reassure fans and encourage folks to support devs affected by Ubisoft’s bloodletting.
GDC have released their 2026 State of the Game Industry report, comprising survey results from thousands of quizzed developers on the craft and business of gamesmaking. As in the 2025 report, this year’s responses signal a growing discontent with generative AI tools, with opposing sentiments tipping into simple majority status for the first time: 52% now say GenAI is having a negative impact on the industry, up from 30% in 2025 and 18% in 2024.
Before we start celebrating the moral arc of the universe, this opinion-hardening appears to correlate with neither an overall decrease not increase in the adoption of GenAI tech. Asked if they or someone in their company used these tools, 52% said yes and 35% said no, both unchanged from their 2025 survey levels. However, optimistic views are becoming harder to come by, with the percentage of respondents who thought GenAI is having a positive impact dropping from 13% in 2025 to a mere 7% in 2026. Presumably that’s made up of Tim Sweeney, Larian’s Swen Vincke, half the people on my LinkedIn feed, and that one dentist out of ten who doubts toothpaste.
Well, World of Warcraft developers Blizzard have decided to have a bit of extra fun with all the junk that’ll fill up the new player houses rolling out in full with March’s Midnight expansion. The MMO’s getting a prop hunt mode dubbed Decor Duel, designed to act as a “small diversion” from the whole Xal’atath-led void invasion business.
