Channel Zero isn’t just one of the best shows of 2018 — it’s two of them. Channel Zero and Twin Peaks also use the suburbs as a locus of horror. Speaking of negative space, doors are another image that recur quite frequently in Channel Zero. Has it been a big gear-shift from working on something like Channel Zero to working on something based on true stories? Channel Zero airs on both SYFY and Shudder, and The Act is for Hulu, so you have a foot in both worlds.

Star Control: Origins, the latest title from independent developer and publisher Stardock, is no longer available for sale on Steam or GOG. Three years later, in 2016, Stardock revealed that it was developing Star Control: Origins. “Not [Star Control or Star Control 2: The Ur-Quan Masters], the unreleased [Star Control 4], packaging art — none of that was included in the auction.”For that reason, they argue, the similarities between Star Control: Origins and Star Control 2, which they claim to o

Five former members of Blizzard Entertainment, all of whom worked on the company’s digital card game Hearthstone, have a new studio and a newly announced deal with Marvel Entertainment to make games. The studio, Second Dinner, is working on an unannounced game for Marvel with some financial help from NetEase, the Chinese internet company. Second Dinner was founded by Ben Brode and Hamilton Chu, the former game director and executive producer of Hearthstone, respectively. They left Blizzard in 20

Today, it’s the next esports league, and that may be its future as a spectator sport. “It’s certainly not lost on us that there are fewer people in the grandstands, and there are less people watching the [Monster Energy NASCAR] Cup racing on TV,” said Ed Martin, 704 Games’ president. Mainly, that it will stage shorter and more suspenseful events that are still attached to real-world race teams. “There’s no way to spend your way to a championship in our league,” Martin said. Real-life teams such

The CEO of Slightly Mad Studios, maker of the Project CARS franchise of simulation racing games, is teasing a new video game console on Twitter. “It’s the most powerful console ever built… It’s literally ‘Mad’… You want 4k, you want VR at 60FPS? You have it.”Reached for comment, Bell said that the console would be compatible with the cross-platform game engine that Slightly Mad has used in the past, the Madness engine. Slightly Mad’s marketing materials stress that it is especially well-suit

From rollicking combat games to quieter indie explorations of the soul, here are 50 games (listed alphabetically) that we’re excited to see, coming in the year ahead. It’s a top-down combat game in which a gorilla thumps and sneaks its way through enemy-infested mazes. Based in a Soviet-era installation, it’s a creepy combat game, packed with Fallout-esque monstrosities and a distinctive visual wit. Windows PC — mid-2019Real-time strategy gets the Conan treatment in this production from Petrogly

With Super Smash Bros. Barrios first started playing fighting games competitively as a “very poor kid in a third-world country” with Super Smash Bros. Melee and traveled abroad for Super Smash Bros. Brawl tournaments with help from Los Angeles-based sponsor vVv Gaming. But it was the 2014 release of Super Smash Bros. for Wii U that turned him into a legend. But Nintendo’s surprise Super Smash Bros. Barrios says there’s no way he can skip out on Super Smash Bros.

Undertale creator Toby Fox’s latest project is something of a surprise: a match promo video for New Japan Pro Wrestling star Kenny Omega. That game looks and plays a lot like Fox’s Undertale, pitting Omega against his rival Hiroshi Tanahashi. As wrestling promos go, it’s one of the more charming ones, and references Omega’s love of Street Fighter 5 and Undertale. (The wrestler named Undertale his favorite game of 2018 in one of Giant Bomb’s end-of-year awards.) Omega and Fox met at this year’s T

For most of this console generation, Ubisoft’s stock-in-trade has been the open-world game. The first Watch Dogs was both an admirable expedition and still a critical miss, sort of like the first Assassin’s Creed. It was good, not great, with most of its shortcomings exemplified by the lifeless Chicago presented by Ubisoft Montreal. The gist of it is that Watch Dogs’ Chicago is not necessarily bigger, but more alive and involved. This eight-minute trailer (at top) gives a better sense of the gam

Super Smash Bros. Nintendo’s support site indicates that Mii Fighter costumes will also be in the mix, sold separately from the larger downloadable content bundle. These 75-cent purchases will include a single costume for the game’s Mii Fighters, which are customizable characters that players can design from head to toe. But just as Super Smash Bros. for Wii U before it, Ultimate’s catalogue clearly has room to expand. For comparison, the previous Smash game had six waves of new Mii Fighter outf

Early next year, they’ll embark on one of the largest and most dangerous journeys ever undertaken in the game. I decided to upgrade my frame shift drive, which will allow me to navigate some of the most challenging sections of the Distant Worlds 2 expedition. For Distant Worlds 2, the fleet will be even larger, second only to the 3,000 player space battle that I documented in 2017. The amount of planning that’s gone into Distant Worlds 2 is extraordinary. To add color to the experience, the team

The founders of BioWare have been named members of the Order of Canada, that nation’s highest honor for civilians who have made contributions to society. Dr. Ray Muzyka and Dr. Greg Zeschuk, both of Edmonton, Alberta, join more than 100 others appointed to the Order this year. In an interview with CBC News, Zeschuk said he believed the honor was conferred because BioWare started, and has remained headquartered, in Edmonton. Honored to be named a Member of the Order of Canada with my friend @Doct

Atlas, the latest game from Ark: Survival Evolved creator Studio Wildcard, has a reputation that unfortunately precedes it. And after a week of complaints and disappointment from once-excited players, the developers are finally offering an apology. “You could say that we were off to a stormy start!” begins a lengthy post on Atlas’ Steam community page, focused largely on patch notes. But stabilizing the servers is the highest priority for Studio Wildcard. Atlas continues to trudge ahead; it’s on

Modder TerminusEst13 has just the concoction for you: Hellshots Golf. And in my professional opinion, Hellshots Golf is a perfect representation of what golf would be like on Mars with Pain Elementals impolitely playing through your round. In Hellshots Golf the player gets three clubs: heavy (a driver? Hey, it took Henry Fownes a year and two dozen mules to build Oakmont, so don’t sell yourself short, my dude. Hellshots Golf works on the ZDoom/GZDoom/Zanondrum mod platforms and is available now.

The project is for Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon, an elaborate board game by Poland’s Awaken Realms, the same team behind This War of Mine: The Board Game. Tainted Grail feels like a game that only Awaken Realms could produce. Making the project even more ambitious, Awaken Realms will also be internally developing a digital version of the game. This is Awaken Realms’ eighth Kickstarter campaign overall. Its next most successful effort is a cooperative science fiction-themed horror board game

A look at gaming controversies in 2018 reveals the ongoing story of large, powerful organizations struggling to cope with the consequences of their worst impulses. Via social media and an increasingly assertive specialist media, consumers demand that game companies display commonly held standards of decent behavior. While some gamers care little for social justice, the entire gaming community gets animated by the notion that it’s being sheared. It’s the sort of resolution that game companies are

Black Mirror’s first full-length movie is Bandersnatch, a period piece set in the middle-1980s wheelhouse of Europop music, new-wave hair, and PC video gaming. It’s worth noting that Charlie Brooker, the show’s creator, was a contributing writer to PC Zone magazine in the 1990s. So this choice of topic and time period (Brooker is 47) seems at least somewhat personal. A year ago, its fourth series premiered with another episode in which a video game was adapting a larger work of popular entertain

“By the end of 2019, you’re going to see some public campaigns,” said Emma Kinema, one of the co-founders of Game Workers Unite. How exactly all this will work, legally and logistically, is being handled on a case by case basis with Game Workers Unite providing guidance and training. Kinema said that several groups are currently working in partnership with Game Workers Unite and an existing labor union. However, the majority of groups are relying solely on Game Workers Unite and independently or

Nintendo isn’t releasing many new games for Switch this week, giving players who may have received the hardware as a present time to get caught up on games like Super Smash Bros. This $39.99 release is just the thing if you want to make sure you get everything with one purchase. You’ll also want to make sure you register your copy of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate if you haven’t already, since you only have until Jan. 31 to claim your free Piranha Plant fighter. Here are all the games coming to Nint

It’s only fair that Persona fans would clamor for a Nintendo Switch version of the excellent Persona 5, following this month’s reveal that Joker will be a Super Smash Bros. Atlus has only encouraged the fervor with a recent slew of domain registrations — and now Masahiro Sakurai, Smash Bros.’ director, is adding more fuel to the fandom’s fire. It’s all in untranslated Japanese, although translations from viewers on Twitter suggest the interview is all complimentary toward Persona. The company re