Latest articles by Austin Wood
A Fallout 4 QA tester nuked the RPG so hard that Zenimax executives got emails about it
News "I am professionally stupid in a way that a machine could not even dream of"
Marvel Rivals devs are careful with balancing because "you have a vocal minority screaming the loudest"
News "Someone figured out all you have to do is just jump"
"What if we could just drop 30 new heroes into Overwatch?": Marvel Rivals "definitely had an impact" on Blizzard
News "What would player reaction to that be?"
Overwatch director celebrates no longer being "the lowest-rated game on Steam" but he's not sure how to reach positive
News "We're only a few percentage points away from 'mixed'"
Arc Raiders dev uses clip of Shroud summing up "game dev in a nutshell" to reinforce how Embark "failed"
News Embark went through the wringer to get Arc Raiders out
Pocketpair lead says "apologies to all the professional Palworld haters," but "it's not really our problem"
News "There's a couple accounts out there that make it their life's mission to, almost daily, go after us. But at this point, just, who cares?"
Arc Raiders devs spent 3 years fighting "on a daily basis" over whether it was "a battle royale" or "a co-op Soul game"
News "Internally, we thought the game was deeper, more fun, better than we actually had in our hands"
"A lot of games would be canceled": Arc Raiders lead recalls cutting all but 25 people in "desperation"
News "We agreed that this game deserved another try"
Arc Raiders testers told Embark "they didn't like the PvP" after the game pivoted, and looting wasn't any better
News To PvPvE or not to PvP?
Palworld devs are "happy to hand the IP over" to the right studio for a spin-off but draw the line at "Palworld Balatro"
News Pocketpair draws the line at "Palworld Expedition 33"
The Arc in Arc Raiders have multiple "brains," and they all love pursuing you because Embark gives them "rewards"
News The Leaper just wants to say hello
Dispatch leads faced down publishers telling them single-player narrative games were "niche, or worse, dead"
News "Just because we can make an open-world action RPG, doesn't mean we should"
Steam expert advises devs stick to the "Little League" section with friendslop before attempting anything like Mewgenics
News Start small, think friendslop
Dispatch is lying to you about RNG just like XCOM, but don't worry, it's for your own good
News Adhoc "landed on anything that had over a 76% success chance would automatically succeed"
Valve pleads for "a line on a bunch of RAM, we are in the market" as AI makes building Steam Machines a challenge
News Good memory is hard to find
Pocketpair publishing head reacts to Pokemon and Palworld ripoff Pickmon: "Someone is a fan of the genre, I guess"
News "Pocketgame – very good, very good, very clever"
Slay the Spire 2 has delayed Palworld 1.0 "at least a whole day," jokes publishing head
News "We all knew he was going to be obsessed with it, but I don't think we realized the extent."
Peak devs originally borrowed from Zelda Breath of the Wild's climbing, but "everything changed" 1 week into development
News "It was a beautiful time"
"Parrying was not easy": Clair Obscur devs had to turn to sound to fix an integral part of the J'RPG's combat
News Sandfall created a clever way of making things simpler
Marvel Rivals devs felt "panic" at the thought of going into the live-service graveyard that just claimed Highguard
News "Live-service games are hard"
"I wouldn't rule out a Palworld 2.0," says Pocketpair publishing head, but don't expect a "No Man's Sky situation"
News "Even World of Warcraft had that stat squish years and years ago"
Peak came about after a bet between Content Warning and Another Crab's Treasure leads to see whose game would sell more
News "Content Warning blew us out of the water"
"The first track spoils the whole game": Clair Obscur Expedition 33 dev confirms it was filling your ears with spoilers
News Luckily, it's very hard to understand what's being said
