The whole thing, with a search box because the back catalogue has finally earned one.

Games · Gamescom 2026 · 4 September 2026 · 6 min read

Alex Jordan: AI Is Taking the Jobs Voice Actors Build Careers On

At Gamescom, ‘The Alters’ actor Alex Jordan explained how one word can separate two versions of the same man — and why the voice jobs disappearing to AI matter far beyond adverts and TV announcements.

Gamescom 2026 · 3 September 2026 · 6 min read

You Can’t Have Hans Zimmer for $50

At Gamescom, VP Production co-founder Ruslana Kruchek explained what happens when indie studios remember audio after the budget is already gone. Audio branding paid for her ticket to tell me about it.

Games · Gamescom 2026 · 3 September 2026 · 5 min read

Fortune Fragments Makes You Earn the Dialogue Choice

At Gamescom, Runoi Games founder Jussi Meriläinen showed me a visual novel where character trouble reaches the hex grid. Unfortunately, Gamescom is also where a game like that gets about ten seconds before somebody has to be in Hall 7.

Games · 4 August 2026 · 8 min read

Gamescom Is Sold Out. The Games Industry Is Still Laying People Off

Before Gamescom 2026 opened, its sold-out halls were already carrying an industry that had spent the summer laying off thousands. A pre-show essay on the reset behind the spectacle.

Games · Revival · 31 July 2026 · 3 min read

Nintendo’s Two Cancelled Virtual Boy Games Require a $25 Cardboard Visor

Europe never received Nintendo’s red 3D machine. Thirty years later, its lost games arrive with a subscription and some assembly required.

Screens · Revival · 27 July 2026 · 4 min read

Spaceballs Found the Money

Rick Moranis came back, Mel Brooks found the money, and 'Spaceballs' arrived at Comic-Con with an eleven-phase cinematic universe. The flamethrower now looks restrained.

Screens · Argument · 24 July 2026 · 3 min read

The Big Bang Theory Shows Up at Comic-Con Dressed as You

The Stuart spinoff premiered at San Diego Comic-Con in July with the laughter gone at last. The return gets a fair hearing here. The old show has run out of appeals.

Essays · Argument · 21 July 2026 · 9 min read

A Machine Took My Job, So I Audited Reality’s Books

A true story about the moonwalk, Tom Bombadil, the layoff at the end of the universe, and why you're on the clock right now.

Games · Argument · 17 July 2026 · 3 min read

Nobody Wanted the Train That Does Kickflips

'Denshattack!' launched to some of the best reviews of 2026 after every publisher who saw it spent a year saying no. On the industry's most reliable instinct: rejecting the only ideas anyone remembers.

Games · Ledger · 16 July 2026 · 4 min read

The Only Thing Xbox Ships On Time

Developers marched at six Xbox studios at once against the one Microsoft product that never slips its date. On the layoff as an annual release, the accounting that files hits as losses, and the $190 billion going to AI instead.

Games · Ledger · 15 July 2026 · 4 min read

Pokémon With Lawyers

Twenty-two months into Nintendo's lawsuit, 'Palworld' put the same game into Steam's all-time top 15 for the second time. One analyst puts the realistic remaining payout at about $30,000.

Screens · Revival · 10 July 2026 · 4 min read

Moana, Again, Already

Disney's live-action 'Moana' opened in July 2026 to a mid-thirties Rotten Tomatoes score. Seen from a country where no film called 'Moana' has ever existed, the ten-year turnaround looks stranger still.

Essays · Argument · 8 July 2026 · 7 min read

Your Duolingo Streak Outlived the People Who Made It

Duolingo staged a funeral for its owl and an offboarding for its translators. Only one got a resurrection. The streak explains why nobody left.

Games · Love Letter · 6 July 2026 · 4 min read

The Best Tournament of the Summer Is Played Sitting Down

Summer Games Done Quick 2026 ran for a week of round-the-clock speedrunning for Doctors Without Borders. From Stockholm, the best seats were the ones an ocean away.

Essays · Drugs, Frankly · 1 July 2026 · 9 min read

You Realize You're Confessing Right Now

I ordered sleep gummies that were legal in the Netherlands when I bought them, and earned my first criminal record at forty-eight. On Sweden's drug-policy problem, and the cocaine its lawmakers can't keep out of their own parliament.

Essays · Love Letter · 29 June 2026 · 12 min read

The Hero Turtles

In Germany they were the Hero Turtles, the censored cut with the nunchaku edited out. A love letter to the Turtles and the 1990 film, and a wary eye on the 2028 reboot.

Machines · Ledger · 25 June 2026 · 7 min read

The Steam Machine Costs $1,049 Because a Data Centre Outbid You

I bought both Steam Decks on day one, so the misgiving comes from inside the cult. The Steam Machine's price is not about games. It is about who is bidding against you for memory.

Screens · Ledger · 22 June 2026 · 3 min read

The Amazing Digital Circus Beat Hollywood in Cinemas, Then Posted the Finale for Free

A free YouTube cartoon topped cinema charts across Europe, then posted its finale online for nothing. How The Amazing Digital Circus beat the studios at their own game.

Games · Futures · 22 June 2026 · 6 min read

Grand Theft Auto VI Is the Most Successful Game Nobody Has Played

Grand Theft Auto VI is the most valuable entertainment product of the decade, and it does not exist yet. How anticipation became an asset class you can bet on.

Screens · Handover · 17 June 2026 · 3 min read

Pixar Built the Screen, Then Cast It as the Villain

The villain of 'Toy Story 5' is a tablet. The studio warning your kids about screens is the one that taught a generation to sit still and watch.

Games · Anniversary · 15 June 2026 · 3 min read

Ten Years of Other People's Monsters

Dead by Daylight turned ten and is bigger than ever, the live-service game that lived while the blockbusters died. On how a cheap horror game outlasted Bungie and Concord by renting everyone else's monsters.

Screens · Handover · 12 June 2026 · 3 min read

What Scorsese's Name Is For

Martin Scorsese has become an adviser to the German AI firm Black Forest Labs, and the film unions are furious. A note on what a famous name actually buys.

Games · Revival · 10 June 2026 · 4 min read

You Cannot Remake the Greatest Game of All Time

Nintendo announced an 'Ocarina of Time' remake for Switch 2. A note on why remaking the game with a Metacritic 99 is a different kind of risk entirely.

Pages · Argument · 8 June 2026 · 3 min read

The Lost Tolkien Work Is Homework

A lost Tolkien work has surfaced in the Bodleian: an unpaid translation of an 800-year-old sermon, done for no one, and worth more than another saleable myth.

Essays · Argument · 5 June 2026 · 7 min read

The Machine Can't Make Your Game. It Can Still Take Your Job.

EA cut staff at DICE in Stockholm months after 'Battlefield 6' topped US sales. How the games industry turned the promise of AI into an alibi for layoffs.

Games · Festival Dispatch · 4 June 2026

The Game Industry Solved the E3 Problem by Having Eighteen E3s

The games industry replaced E3 with eighteen showcases in eight days, clustered around Los Angeles hours. What Summer Game Fest fixed, and the one thing it quietly broke.

Games · Ledger · 3 June 2026 · 3 min read

The House Always Owns

'Balatro's publisher has been sold to the private-equity group that also owns Metacritic. What happens when the people who keep the score start owning the games.

Games · Ledger · 28 May 2026 · 3 min read

EA Sports FC Has New Landlords

Electronic Arts is now owned by a consortium led by the Saudi Public Investment Fund. What the $55 billion takeover means for 'EA Sports FC', the most-played football game on earth.

Screens · Argument · 26 May 2026 · 5 min read

Fjord-Sitting: Europe Can Both-Sides Too

Sebastian Stan refused to laugh at a Trump question on Tuesday. Four days later, his director Cristian Mungiu won the Palme d’Or for “left-wing fundamentalism.” On what Cannes chose to crown.

Essays · Argument · 25 May 2026 · 10 min read

The Boys Who Cried Woke

Elon Musk called the finale of 'The Boys' "pathetic." He didn't notice it was about him. On a century-old Black American word the anti-woke crowd wears as a costume.

Pages · Essay · 22 May 2026 · 6 min read

Reading Tolkien Slowly, On Purpose

On reading 'The Lord of the Rings' the way the slow-reading communities now read it, and what the book does that adaptations cannot.

Screens · Review · 20 May 2026 · 4 min read

'Send Help' Is Sam Raimi’s First Real Raimi Movie Since 'Spider-Man 2'

A review of Sam Raimi’s 'Send Help': the first one in twenty years where his actual signatures are back.

Essays · Argument · 18 May 2026 · 10 min read

Franchises Were Always Going to Get AI First

How franchises spent twenty years building the exact pipeline generative AI now walks straight into. An essay on why nostalgia was always the first test case.

Games · Festival Dispatch · 13 May 2026 · 4 min read

Five Indies From London Games Festival 2026 That the Tube Ride Didn’t Erase

Festival dispatch from London Games Festival 2026: five indie games from New Game Plus that stuck three weeks later.

Essays · Manifesto · 12 May 2026 · 8 min read

I Still Love Pop Culture. I'm Just Tired of Being Managed by It.

The Popkulturist manifesto: why pop culture criticism needs less hype and more honesty, from a European critic who still loves the stuff.