You are telling me that every single reviewer on the planet found this game perfect? It seems like they push certain games in our throats rather than an honest expression.

It is clearly obvious that every game isn't everyone's cup of tea. For example, games like The Witcher 3 and Red Dead Redemption 2 may be too long and slow for many gamers whereas games like Elden Ring are too challenging to keep up with. JRPGs like Persona? Good luck pressing X to watch hours of dialogue (btw I love Persona). But come on, these are 10/10 games, you have to play them!

Perhaps, this rating system is outdated.

I'm referring to the ring of Gyges allegorgy that Glaucon presented to Socrates in order to challenge his philosophy of justice.

As quick as possible: The shepard Gyges finds a ring that turns himself invisible. Rather than using the ring for good, he immediatly forges and excecutes a plan to seize the throne and become king.

We've seen this argument, in its core formula, unfold at the mainstream level by the Lord of the Rings books and movies. Tolkien's answer is in favor of Socrates. Frodo is capable of delivering and destroying the ring of power because his ambitions are small. Even though Frodo gets close to corruption, a greater and/or wiser individual would not endure as long as him for their ambitions and desires are greater.

But what if you have the ring of power? That's the question that can be explored perfectly in this medium, yet I don't know where this question was really presented. Only Baldur's Gate 3 [story-structure spoilers] comes to my mind, giving you a special ability that lets you manipulate enemies without obstacles. You can increase the power of this ability, but the cost is that you'll become proned to corruption, leaning more into selfish and destructive choices. But in hindsight, does the game really test you with this ability? We know now that increasing this ability has no direct negative effect on the narrative. There are also plenty of alternative abilities that are also quite powerful without the moral drawback. I happen to find that being a good person in Baldur's Gate 3 does not make the game more difficult or makes the ability more seductive to use. It mostly feels more like a lore-flair than a test.

I suppose this is where my question turns to you. Who's correct? What games have you seen and/or played that you can base your answer on?

Making a dungeon must be the most difficult thing in the world for an open world ARPG and it seems elden ring is the only one who has figured out how to do it.

After playing dragons dogma 2, Crimson desert for 180 hours, breath of the wild/tears of the kingdom, one thing is on my mind: Where are the dungeons for me to use my powers and combat skills on?

Botw/Totk have 4 each, yet they should have dungeons scattered everywhere in the world... I loved crimson desert but I don't think there is a single true dungeon in the entire game. Same with dragons dogma 2. Please? Where are the dungeons??

The Journey was a brilliant idea on EA's part, but they never quite nailed it. Let's be clear, it's not The Journey itself that's bringing the game down, but this mode reveals how EA has changed the way they work, and for the worse.

First, with The Journey comes Frostbite. It's automatic; if the idea is to create a story, the story will have to be driven, subject to a lot of scripting. Hence the decision to change the graphics engine. Ignite was inadequate, lacking the advanced tools for fiction, cutscenes, facial animation, and character management. Frostbite, on the other hand, has these tools for creating and curating interactive storytelling. Someone will ask me, and what's the problem? Well, if you switch from a graphics engine designed to simulate a soccer match to a graphics engine designed to provide narration, gameplay in non-narrative modes collapses. Animations become too heavy, collisions become more scripted, responsiveness becomes less, and defense becomes less positional. So you lose simulation to narration.

Then with The Journey, a new problem became evident. To cover the costs of actors, writers, directors, dedicated motion capture, and complex cutscenes, they had to cut budgets to the game's foundations, namely AI, physics, defensive features, career mode, etc... so if you change the graphics engine to a game, and in doing so you don't focus on re-establishing the gameplay and adapting it to the change, but you only focus on narrative modes and Ultimate Team new features, then gamers will have a half-baked game on their hands, almost at the level of a beta. Then, considering that, in addition to the expensive The Journey, UT is the mode that brings EA a lot of money, all that is optimization, historical modes, gameplay, etc... ends up becoming secondary. So the game becomes less enjoyable, less coherent, less cared for.

Then there's the structural problem with The Journey, which marks another major change for EA: the loss of vision. The mode was nice, but it wasn't integrated into the FIFA ecosystem, and here too, you ask me, where's the problem? It's an end-to-end mode, with limited longevity and limited impact. It didn't allow you to reuse Alex Hunter in other modes, such as player career or pro club mode. It would have been a way to increase longevity and replayability, because after the story mode, you would have continued the journey your way. Instead, EA decided it had to be a narrative island, which once finished, It wasn't very replayable due to its closure and rigidity. The same was seen years later with Volta from FIFA 20 to FIFA 23. In that case, its online potential was even greater than that of The Journey.

The Journey is therefore the symbol of the new FIFA. It's a shift in philosophy on EA's part. The cinematic aspect dominates the gameplay, leading to increasingly arcade-like gameplay, with long animations, scripted, and poorly optimized. The game stops evolving to become a centric Ultimate Team, and everything else becomes secondary and stagnant. The company loses vision and planning, squandering the potential of ideas like Volta and The Journey. This mode showed us all how EA stopped investing in football simulation.

Thank you to everyone who read this, and I apologize in advance for the papyrus. I hope you'll appreciate my thoughts.

One thing I’ve been noticing across a lot of horror games is how quickly they reveal everything.

You start a game and within minutes you’ve already seen the threat clearly, understood how it behaves and what to expect. After that, the fear shifts from tension to just dealing with mechanics.

Some of the more memorable horror experiences I’ve had didn’t rely on constant encounters, but on uncertainty.

Not knowing what’s there.
Not knowing if something is even there.
Spaces that feel off without explaining why.

It feels like once a game fully explains itself, it stops being scary and starts being predictable.

Curious how others feel about this.

Do you prefer horror that stays ambiguous for longer, or games that show you the threat early and build around it?

Hi — I’m a PhD researcher at the University of Leicester (UK), conducting an ethics-approved study on how players understand and respond to different uses of AI in games.

I’m currently in the final stage of recruitment and only need a few more participants to complete the study, so I’d really appreciate any help.

My focus is mainly on generative/LLM-related or machine-learning-driven uses of AI that players actively notice or care about in current debates — for example, AI-generated dialogue or assets, AI-assisted writing/tools, adaptive player-facing systems, or other visible uses of AI in game production or play.

Interview invite: I’m currently looking for a small number of adult participants (18+) for a 45–60 minute 1-to-1 online interview. The format is flexible: Discord voice or Zoom.

Participation is voluntary. You can skip any question or withdraw at any time. Data will be anonymised and handled in line with GDPR and University ethics requirements. Any recording or note-taking will only take place with your consent and will be stored securely for academic research.

Institution: University of Leicester (UK)
Contact: ys386@leicester.ac.uk (DM is also fine)

If you’d like to take part, please message me with:

• your time zone
• whether you prefer voice or text

A few discussion prompts, in case you’d also like to reply here:

• Which uses of generative AI in games feel reasonable or useful to you, if any?
• Which uses feel inappropriate, misleading, or immersion-breaking?
• Does your view change depending on whether AI is used during development, in the final released game, or directly in moment-to-moment play?
• What kind of disclosure or transparency would matter to you, if at all?

Thanks very much — I’m very close to finishing recruitment, so a few final volunteers would make a real difference.

I’ve been playing Pragmata lately, and it’s struck me as a rare example of a AAA title that balances technical polish (the RE Engine) with a genuinely mature, human-centric narrative. I wanted to share some thoughts on how this game navigates the 'reluctant guardian' trope through both its narrative and its mechanical design, and I'm interested in hearing how others feel about this approach to storytelling in modern games. Here's my thoughts so far ...

A Masterpiece of Self-Discovery and Innovation Pragmata is, without a doubt, one of the most refreshing gaming experiences I’ve had in years. It manages to balance a profoundly emotional narrative with a gameplay loop that feels genuinely new.

The Narrative: Finding Yourself The story is beautiful, focusing on the connection between Hugh and Diana and their journey to understand the world and their place in it. There is a deeply powerful, quiet moment near the end of the game where they look out over the Earth from the lunar station, and Hugh delivers a line that perfectly encapsulates the game's theme: "You learn it's not enough to hear or read about a thing; sometimes you got to live it." This game truly changed the way I view things. It’s a powerful reminder that we can’t just sit back in a state of paralysis; sometimes we have to stop overthinking, take what we know, and just get out there and do our best. It’s a rare story that pushes you to take action in your own life, and it elevates the entire experience from a standard sci-fi adventure into something truly moving.

The Gameplay and Performance: On the gameplay front, Pragmata hits a home run. The combat is incredibly addictive, blending high-action gunplay with a unique puzzle-hacking system that feels like a fresh twist on "snake-like" mechanics. The way the game forces you to balance tactical, snake-style maneuvering during intense firefights is unlike anything I’ve played before. The customization is also deep, with a massive amount of freedom to tailor your playstyle through various weapons, modding, and distinct loadouts. Perhaps best of all, the performance is phenomenal. Built on the RE Engine, it is a technical marvel—a refreshing change of pace in an era where so many titles launch in poor states. I’m playing in 4K on my 5070 Ti laptop with DLSS and Ray Tracing enabled on high settings, and it runs beautifully. It is easily one of the most well-optimized experiences on the market right now.

Verdict: Pragmata is a rare gem that marries heart and high-octane mechanics perfectly. It’s a unique experience that isn’t afraid to be different, and that’s exactly what makes it a must-play. If you appreciate games that respect your intelligence and give you the tools to play exactly how you want, do yourself a favor and pick this up. Score: 10/10 – A new benchmark for the genre. Easily goty 2026.

I'm curious to hear from the community: Do you think Pragmata’s method of using gameplay mechanics (like the puzzle-hacking) to reinforce the emotional stakes of the story is the most effective way to handle narrative? Are there other recent titles that you feel have handled the transition from 'reluctant protagonist' to a mentor figure as effectively as this one does?

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I noticed that recent exposure to real life AI that can pretty convincingly fake human conversation and even human emotions completely changed my perspective on robots and any artificial intelligence in sci fi.

For example when I played Detroit: Become Human I was fully on robots side and there was no doubt in me that they were sentient and should be free. But now playing Pragmata and interacting with Diana made me question her every move and I cant seem to form a bond with her.

I have this constant question how different is this from people pretending to have relationship with AI. How do we know Diana is actually a sentient being with her own will, acting freely and making her own choices, rather than just an AI created by a corporation to behave like a child, simulate an inner world, and emotionally manipulate us?

Because of that, I find it much harder to bond with Diana than I would have in the past. What used to feel emotionally straightforward in sci fi now feels uncertain and suspicious. Instead of immediately accepting an artificial character as conscious, I now keep wondering whether I am just watching a very advanced performance designed exactly to manipulate me. While bot itself not having any inner world.

So what I am curios is are here other people who had similar change in perspective and because of that find it hard to bond with Diana?

I adore The Witness. I think it is one of the most beautiful and intelligent games I've ever played. I often find myself thinking about, its one of those games that really left its mark on me.

And I think the discourse surrouding this game is pretty terrible. It has built up a reputation of being pretentious, postmodernist nonsense, and I don't think that reputation is fair. It saddens me to see so many people dismissing this game out of hand. Now, I also understand that a lot people are angry at the game's creator Jonathan Blow. I know nothing about this guy — I have not researched him and don't really care to. From what I've heard, he sounds like an asshole. But I'm not interested in talking about Jonathan Blow. I'm interested in talking about The Witness. Bad people can still create beautiful things.

I think the game is fundamentally quite simple in what it's trying to say — indirect, but simple — and some people end up missing the forest for the trees. The Witness is an exploration of the human search for meaning. That's it. I think that everything in the game can be contextualized under that fundamental idea, and then things start to fall into place.

Most of the audio logs have something to do with Science, Religion, or Art, all of which are ways that people try to make sense of the world. These audio logs are the butt of many a Witness joke, but their purpose is pretty simple. They are food for thought as you go about your journey, and they ask you to reflect on the various ways that people look for meaning. If they seem random and unrelated, it's because the game is trying to capture the vastness of its central idea.

The brilliance of the Witness is the way that it ties its gameplay into this. From the very moment you boot up the game, not a single word is spoken to teach to you how to play. There is nothing resembling a tutorial or hints of any kind. You are forced to discern the mechanics of the puzzles simply through observing the puzzles themselves. In other words, the game is replicating the experience that it is reflecting on, by forcing you to make sense of its mechanics yourself, forcing you to search for understanding. The puzzle mechanics are mostly about being curious and learning to think in new ways, rather than the more mathematical precision and mechanical depth that most other puzzle games ask for, which reinforces this experience.

This is also why the game is intentionally obscure and confusing at first. It wants you to be confused. It wants you to search for meaning, that's the whole point. "The Witness" refers to anyone who is witnessing the world — or the game, for that matter — and trying to find meaning. The artist, the scientist, the religious person.

Then there are the environmental puzzles. At a certain point in your playthrough, you will suddenly realize that the entire world of The Witness hides the same circles and lines that form the puzzles you have been trying to solve. You'll find them in the sun, in the clouds, on buildings, in the water — anywhere you can think to look. It's such an awe-inspiring realization, that the whole island contains these secrets — if you search for them, you'll find them everywhere. The metaphor is clear.

Anyway, if you found The Witness overly abstract and confusing, I hope this helped. A game this true to its own vision comes along very rarely, and I worry that a lot of people were primed to dislike this game from the negative discourse surrounding it.

Thanks for reading.

I have been spending a lot of time lately researching specific mechanical depth in competitive games and I have noticed a massive shift in how I find reliable data. If you try to use a standard search engine for anything related to gaming systems, you are immediately met with a wall of AI generated articles and sponsored content that lacks any actual substance.

It feels like we have entered an era where traditional search results are no longer trustworthy. I find myself adding "reddit" to every single query because I need to see a human consensus. This applies to everything from frame data in fighting games to finding a high reward entertainment service that is actually legitimate for some downtime.

The difference in transparency is staggering. When you search for a reliable platform with fast payouts here, you can actually see real people discussing their experiences with withdrawals and site integrity. On Google, that same search just gives you 50 affiliate sites that look like they were made by a bot. We have reached a point where finding a digital service that is actually functional and honest feels like a game of chance.

I want my online experiences to be like a well designed game engine. Consistent, transparent and doing exactly what is advertised. I spend way more time now digging through threads about which high reward platforms people actually trust because the rest of the web is becoming an unplayable mess of marketing fluff.

Is this the future of the internet where we only trust peer-to-peer verification, or is there a way for traditional information hubs to win back our trust? How has your research process for games and services changed in the last couple of years?

Hey, all!

In this thread, the rules are more relaxed. The idea is that this megathread will provide a space for otherwise rule-breaking content, as well as allowing for a slightly more conversational tone rather than every post and comment needing to be an essay.

Top-level comments on this post should aim to follow the rules for submitting threads. However, the following rules are relaxed:

• 3. Specificity, Clarity, and Detail
• 4. No Advice
• 5. No List Posts
• 8. No topics that belong in other subreddits
• 9. No Retired Topics
• 11. Reviews must follow these guidelines

So feel free to talk about what you've been playing lately or ask for suggestions. Feel free to discuss gaming fatigue, FOMO, backlogs, etc, from the retired topics list. Feel free to take your half-baked idea for a post to the subreddit and discuss it here (you can still post it as its own thread later on if you want). Just keep things civil!

Also, as a reminder, we have a Discord server where you can have much more casual, free-form conversations! https://discord.gg/truegaming

I've been playing Crimson Desert on PS5 lately and kept running into the same frustration — when I get stuck or want to know where something is on the map, I end up bouncing between Reddit, YouTube, random blogs, and wikis just to get one answer. It works, but it's messy.

That got me thinking: why doesn't a single, dedicated platform exist that brings all of this together? Something where gamers can:

- Ask questions and get answers fast (ideally with video or map references baked in)

- Share guides, tips, and walkthroughs in one place

- Discuss strategies and help each other out

- Stay up to date on new releases without the info being scattered everywhere

I know things like Fextralife wikis, IGN, GameFAQs, and game-specific subreddits exist — but none of them feel like *the* destination. Fextralife is notoriously unreliable, IGN feels corporate, and subreddits are great but fragmented by game.

Before I explore this idea further, I genuinely want to know:

1. Does something like this already exist that I'm missing? If so, what is it and how does it work?

2. Would you actually use something like this, or is the current scattered approach fine by you?

3. What would it need to have to become your go-to?

4. Are Reddit & YouTube sufficient?

5. It feels like ChatGPT and other AI platforms also aren’t trained on the latest games. So, this platforms value prop would be to be up to date with the latest games asap.

Not trying to sell anything — just exploring whether this is a real problem other gamers feel or just me. Honest feedback appreciated, even if that's "this already exists, you're late."

The central mechanic is memory collection. After each battle you pick a fragment (true or false, you have to piece that together) and those build into core memories that carry buffs, costs, or both. This came to me while (somewhat depresingly) reflecting on my life and the memories I had changed to deal with events, sometimes they were painted rosey, other times darkened for more weight, but it was a realisation that neither was right or wrong, just my story.

The design question I kept coming back to while making it was should the true/false split have a clean mechanical payoff? Should truth always reward and lies always punish? That would be legible (possibly more satisfying), but also probably what players would expect. So I landed on ambiguity instead, there's no reliable moral arithmetic, and that was a very deliberate choice.

The counter argument I guess is that clear consequences would teach players to actually engage with the choice rather than just optimise it, and I did take that seriously but ultimately rejected. My reasoning was that the ambiguity says something more honest about how memory actually works: the false version of something isn't always worse for you than the true one.

Curious whether this reads as meaningful design or a missed opportunity to make the choice matter more clearly. I'd genuinely rather hear the pushback first before I explain the thinking further.

Intentionally omitting the name of the game and links as per the self-promotion rules here - genuinely curious about your thoughts.

To start, i am by no means a professional, but i was looking for professional opinions to this topic. This subreddit, i thought, might be the best way to get those.

My friend and i just had a discussion about mods in online RPGs that improve UIs. I understand the need for them, i am using them myself for certain games, because sometimes you just need to see more detail on the screen than the vanilla game can provide.

Now my question to those who understand UI design on a professional level: Is it even possible and plausible to expect, well, not perfection necessarily, but to expect a UI that does not need to be modded by the majority of players? I understand that there will always be that small number of players who want to see even more, or want to move around details on their screens, but i am not talking about those. I am talking about the broad mass that will still opt for a mod to have even basic needs met when it comes to a game UI.

My friend thinks that it is illogical to expect this, because everyone has different needs, especially in games where you have a complex skill system. Personally, i would think that if so many players use the same UI mods, apparently it could be possible to create something that works for everything and is customizable via settings.

Is it really impossible to create a UI for a complex game that 90% of the players do not feel the need to mod? If it is, what are the reasons behind that? Would it be too complex in terms of programming, making it much harder to find and eliminate bugs? What other reasons would there be?

Please give this post a chance before you downvote, I’m not trying to antagonize anyone with that title. I’m trying to say that there’s a gap in how “girl gamer” research gets framed, and it’s skewing both the market and the conversation around it.

A lot of research focuses on women who already play male-dominated genres like FPS or competitive multiplayer, then studies why they feel dissatisfied. The conclusions are predictable at this point, toxicity, lack of representation, and yadda, yadda. We are all tired of it. Not because they are wrong, but because the solutions they propose (typically: to make existing games with male-dominated demographics more women-friendly) end up being unappealing to everyone lead to unnecessary culture wars and rage bait content.

But why is the question never flipped? Where are the AAA games that already align with female-coded interests but actually take action and mechanics seriously? There’s a whole segment that barely gets talked about, that of women who avoid those male-dominated game spaces, not because they dislike the gameplay itself, but because they don’t like the framing around it. So they are not against combat, competition, or complex systems, they just don’t connect with how those things are packaged.

I think that distinction matters more than it looks.

A lot of preference data gets taken as a zero-sum game. For example “women prefer romance” turns into “they want romance instead of gameplay” or “women prefer fashion” turns into “they want fashion instead of action.” I have been raised on magical girl media, so to me this is so obviously the wrong read, magical girls are very action packed series with lots of cute transformations and romance, I personally love the genre because it includes all these features, not just one of them. That’s why I think that in gaming, romance can be part of the system, not just flavoring for the story, or fashion can be part of the mechanics, not just cosmetics. There’s no real conflict here, they just rarely get built together.

There are a lot of obvious combinations that almost never get explored. Imagine an FPS where relationships actually affect combat, not just as minor buffs but as core design. Paired abilities, shared risk, outcomes that change based on who you fight with. Actual battle couples, not just background lore.

Or action games where fashion is not a cosmetic layer but tied directly to stats, identity, and abilities. I took the example of magical girl genre, which already does this without issue, and has been doing this since 1992 with Sailor Moon. Yet, I can think of a handful of games today where they integrate this. The first is Final Fantasy X-2 in 2003, which was actually praised for its battle mechanics when it was first released, while at the same time criticized for everything else (including the designs of the outfits). Then it was *Infinity Nikki* in 2024, 21 years later, which become quite popular, which the ln led to *Love and Deepspace* in 2025, being a combat-focused romance game, which is even more popular. But why was there such a gap for developers to understand that there is a serious market for this? These genres have been kept apart for no reason. Yeah, they are not going to appeal to everyone, but what actually appeals to everyone?

If that kind of game design was more widespread, it would also take pressure off trying to retrofit existing male-dominated spaces, which is where a lot of the friction comes from. Women and men, for various reasons, develop different cultures, we like different things and that doesn’t have to be a negative thing all the time. Sure, it can be a negative, but it doesn’t have to in. every. single. context.

There’s clearly a market for girly action/combat/competitive gaming. It’s just not being taken seriously.

A big piece to chew on, but I think it’s an interesting discussion to have with how popular this once niche genre has gotten.

At this point it feels more like a broad approach to game design that can show up in almost anything. Not just farming sims and village life games, but puzzlers, management games, deckbuilders, exploration games, a whole bunch of multiplayer sandboxes (where gacha is fast encroaching here) and even games that I heard people describe as dark-cozy such as Cult of the Lamb.

That’s the part I find most interesting. For quite a while, cozy felt easy to define as a casual observer. Cutesy art with warm colors and no real pressure of failure, in 99% of cases decorating or some sort of farming or life sim management mechanics. But it’s obvious it becomes that the real common thread is not the mechanic set but the emotional contours. Were you ever told as a kid that looking at green stuff - even green walls - calms your mind? I think that’s the psychology behind the marketing impulse driving the popularity of the genre.

The craze itself, did it start with Stardew Valley I wonder? It does seem like it was the one hit wonder that opened wide the doors to indie devs who saw how popular such a game became and wanted to emulate it, or get a sliver of the same success.

I myself am not immune to it, because compared to some other niches - there does seem to be a whole bunch of good games to play here, and a bunch more upcoming ones that have considerable promise. My personally hype bandwagon is for Loftia, and I’m not even into these sorts of games usually, but I sometimes do (I also realized) just want a noncommittal place to chill with some friends, maybe make some if none of my irl buds are up for it, explore and feel part of a community that’s progressing together. Basically a modern Club Penguin, if you will, so I understand the impulse that drives even outsiders to games with this kind of aesthetic philosophy.

That said, I do think the term is getting stretched to the point where it’s just an easy tag to add to your game and hope the aesthetic (instead of the mechanics and gameplay) does the heavy lifting, and in worst cases excuse the jank and legitimately boring design. Not every game with soft lighting, a pastel palette, and a lowfi soundtrack is actually cozy. Sometimes the aesthetics are cozy but the systems are still grindy or weirdly anxious - or in the worst of cases, can turn into microtransactional gacha. And sometimes a game looks slightly strange, melancholic, or even creepy, yet still feels more cozy than the obvious stuff because it understands gaming for comfort on a much more basic level.

When a game gets those things right, cozy can exist in way more genres than people used to allow for. So… yes, I think I’d say I DO like the trend overall. I think it’s healthy for games. If anything, then because it’s good that more genres are learning that tension and punishment are not the only ways to make something engaging. Sometimes people just want a game to chill in, and that’s what these games provide.

My only real concern is that cozy becomes a marketing skin people paste over games that do not actually play that way. And this has already been underway for a while now, make no mistake. But I’ll stop my tirade here, said about all I wanted to say. How do you feel about cozy as a concept in gaming?