Posts By Mat Growcott

My first reaction to the news that Microsoft were experimenting with in-game adverts for free-to-play titles was a resounding meh. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not thrilled, but come on. They won’t be the first ones, and they won’t be the last. Let’s face it, advertising is pretty sparse within the world of video games. If the people behind television had been in charge of the gaming industry, there’d have been banner ads ...

It’s rapidly becoming as popular as some of the biggest sports in the world. eSports are the next big thing – but how do you watch them? How do you figure out who to support? The truth is that there haven’t been many chances to get in on the ground floor of a new sport for a very long time. Our most popular physical pastimes – football, cricket, hockey and tennis – predate anybody living today. You’re not going to…

Kingdom Hearts 4 is officially official and while there isn’t much in the way of information so far, just confirmation that development is going ahead is good news. With a world totally unlike anything we’ve seen in Kingdom Hearts before, this latest entry is the start of a new storyline called the Lost Master Arc. If it lives up to the graphical prowess on display – great. Kingdom Hearts 3 had its issues. That was extra disappointing because ...

There’s a rumour that Sony may be about to announce another acquisition. Naturally, everybody is naming names – but some of the names are a bit too big. From Ubisoft to Warner Brothers and even the likes of Take Two, the list of fan acquisitions are wide and varied. This just isn’t likely. I’m not going to get into massive detail on what Sony can and can’t afford. That’s mostly because I think most major companies will find ...

We’re happy to announce today that PlayStation Plus Complicated will be available at some point in the near future. Maybe soon. PlayStation Plus Complicated takes all the simplicity and usefulness of two of our services – PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Now – and jams it together into one unwieldy, poorly named mess. The good news is you’ll get access to more games – around 400 more games to be exact. The bad news is ...

There are so many different types of games and so little time to play them. And yet, each year they’re all getting more and more popular. Today we’re going to run down some of the most popular forms of games of all kinds in the hopes of nailing down exactly what makes each of them so crowd-pleasing. From gambling games to the nichest of the niche, we’ll be exploring what attracts attention and why. We’re not keeping too serious a…

There are things in life that are inevitable: Death, taxes and Grand Theft Auto 5. It’s a meme – a joke – and yet the titan that killed Elden Ring’s chart-topping success is Grand Theft Auto 5. It’s close enough to ten years since we wrote about the announcement of Grand Theft Auto V on this very site, and here we are writing about it again. It has launched for a new generation of consoles and it has done quite…

Another week, another list of publishers and developers that have been accused of treating their staff abysmally. Add in Sony and Activision – and no doubt countless others – and it feels like the industry is just awful. Sexism, racism, abuse. These companies fly flags and issue press releases when International Women’s Day rolls around, but behind closed doors hate just about everybody regardless of anything. Equal opportunities abuse ...

At the grizzled old age of 32 sometimes I need help understanding the basics of the modern world. What is a dab? Why is TikTok a thing when it’s so obviously not a thing? And today, what the hell are vtubers? For a while now, there’s been a lot on the internet that I haven’t understood. Frankly, it’s only been getting worse. As someone who grew up in 90s chatrooms, I used to get the wild west nature of the…

A clever consumer is always on the lookout for a bargain. Luckily, if you’re also in gambling, it pays to always be willing to look around. That’s not just because you might get bored of what you’re already on, although that’s true too. There’s a rich collection of casinos on the internet that can scratch any and all itches you might have. But it’s also because a lot of the powers of these casinos want your money. They want ...