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GamesRadar
GamesRadar
Technology
Jordan Gerblick

In the age of AI and layoffs, playing old games in 2026 is about more than nostalgia

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I didn't realize I'd stopped playing new releases until my wife pointed it out one day. "You've been playing a lot of super old games lately," she remarked to me, and I didn't think much of it at first. But her words echoed long enough to make me stop and ponder exactly why I'd been snubbing new games in favor of old. I've come to the conclusion that I'm using them as a security blanket of sorts.

Writing about video games for a living in 2026 means generative AI and mass layoffs consume up to 100% of my headspace on any given working day. Whether it's another big company like Xbox announcing hundreds of redundancies or a C-suite executive extolling the dubious virtues of artificial intelligence, I log on for work each morning fully expecting to learn about something terrible to research and communicate to you, dear reader.

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