Gaming

What do you look for in a video game? Excitement? Immersive escapism? A sense of achievement? Or to be reduced to a blubbering mess? My youngest daughter, Sharkie, said I would get all of that from What Remains of Edith Finch.

You might have heard the news: Microsoft has announced plans to acquire gaming behemoth Activision Blizzard King (ABK) and its subsidiary development studios. The deal is valued at $68.

With Microsoft’s acquisition of Bethesda early last year, the service added a host of beloved games like Skyrim and Fallout 3.

it has been, once again, a year. Set aside the pandemic and you still had the chip shortage, console resellers, and the seemingly never-ending saga of Activision Blizzard.

15 WildermythA genuinely inventive tactical role-playing adventure that uses procedural generation to allow for player-created stories, all taking place in a fantasy world constructed from luscious papercraft set-pieces – like a digital board game.

It’s time to talk about the top games of 2021, but first... It’s a miracle when any video game is finished. But during the age of Covid? Every developer who successfully shipped a game this year deserves at least a couple of statues. Especially when they turned out to be great.

A lot of games get sold on their pulse-pounding action or their deep, lush stories. This year, we guided Master Chief around yet another Halo and took on evil Nazis in Call of Duty: Vanguard.

If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement. Getting a new gaming PC is a bit like opening Pandora’s Box when it comes to deciding what to play.

In the winter of 1996, I almost lost my job because of the acclaimed management sim Civilization II. I was supposed to be reviewing it for the video game magazine Edge, where I was a fledgling staff writer. But I got so hooked, playing it was all I did for three weeks.

What’s kept you going during the pandemic? For some people, it’s been an exercise kick. For others, the day’s first glass of wine. For me, it’s been a game of “let’s pretend” with a conclave of imaginary wizards. It takes all sorts, but my survival mechanism has been to play games.

If you’re reading this, congratulations: You made it to 2022. It certainly wasn’t easy, but some of 2021’s best games helped us get through another 365 days of ups and downs. While 2021 was another rough year for just about everything and everyone, many of us found refuge in games.

It was cute at first. When Xbox head Phil Spencer took the stage at E3 2018 and announced the acquisition of five notable studios – Undead Labs, Playground Games, Ninja Theory, Compulsion Games and The Initiative – the air inside the Microsoft Theater turned electric.

The bride wore a flower crown with a gray, buttoned skirt fit for a midtown office. The groom resembled Jeff Bezos. At the reception, there were guests and a stage and a photo slideshow. Everything was familiar, except the venue.

Nick Bowman gestures to the old-fashioned gaming consoles littering his desk. Bowman, an associate professor of journalism and creative media industries at Texas Tech University, has a vast collection of consoles and hundreds of cartridges and discs.

So, what does Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard really mean for regular game developers — and game platforms? Well, firstly — it’s fractally complex. No one deal like this is transformative, and no one deal can significantly hasten the path to “the future.”