All Popkulturist games coverage, newest first. Reviews from someone who plays them long enough to know whether they're any good — and, now and then, a piece about the industry that makes them, which doesn't require playing anything.
A month after Cologne, one indie has doubled its wishlists, contacts made on the show floor are still alive and the games industry is still laying people off. So what did Gamescom 2026 actually change?
ROTxBLAU brought its strange family thriller to Gamescom with a playable build, a dying grandmother who controls the story and more than €10,000 riding on people noticing.
At Gamescom, Evoc8 studio head Dick Stanley gave me a one-word reason for building a co-development company: joblessness. He wants finishing a project to stop meaning starting another job hunt.
At Gamescom, the AI and Games founder showed why a process can run 25 per cent faster and still leave the people doing it with a worse job.
At Gamescom, the ‘Zoo Tycoon’ veteran kept coming back to the same problem: everybody wants the player’s time now.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Europe never received Nintendo’s red 3D machine. Thirty years later, its lost games arrived with a subscription and some assembly required.
'Denshattack!', the game where Japanese commuter trains do kickflips, launched to some of the best reviews of the year. Every publisher who saw it spent a year saying no, which remains the industry's most reliable instinct: rejecting the only ideas anyone remembers.
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.
Twenty-two months into Nintendo's lawsuit, 'Palworld' hit 858,562 concurrent players on Steam and put the same game in the all-time top 15 for the second time. Meanwhile the patents keep failing their inspections, and one analyst puts the realistic remaining payout at about $30,000.
Summer Games Done Quick 2026 opened with a 102% 'Donkey Kong Country 2' and ran for a week of round-the-clock speedrunning for Doctors Without Borders. A note on the warmest room on the internet, and why the small-hours runs landed in Stockholm over lunch.
It is the most valuable entertainment product of the decade, and it does not exist yet. On anticipation as an asset class, the Polymarket bet, and the week you could finally pre-order a game nobody has played.
Dead by Daylight turned ten and is bigger than ever, the live-service game that lived while the blockbusters died. A note on how a cheap, weird horror game outlasted Bungie and Concord by renting everyone else's monsters.
Nintendo closed its June Direct by announcing an 'Ocarina of Time' remake and calling it "reborn", the word you reach for when you would rather not say what you have built. A note on remaking the one game the whole medium agreed was the best, from a Nintendo kid who has a stake in it.
The games industry replaced E3 with eighteen separate showcases in eight days, clustered around Los Angeles hours. A note on what the new arrangement fixed, and the one thing it quietly broke.
The publisher of 'Balatro' is being sold to Integrated Media Company, the private-equity group that also owns Metacritic, the single most important number in games. A note on what happens when the people who keep the score start owning the games.
Some of my friends play 'EA Sports FC'. Electronic Arts is now owned by a consortium led by the Saudi Public Investment Fund. A note on the most-played football game on earth, from someone who doesn't play it.
You learn a games show by its handouts. London Games Festival's Pocket Guide was folded into thirds: a venue map of Level 1, a numbered key to ninety-six games, and the Playlist Rewards card. It fit in a back pocket.
