There was a time when it was possible to play pretty much every interesting video game released in a given year, from nailed-down 9/10 blockbusters to that divisive horror curio. That’s not the case now – not only because games have gotten longer and more involving, as I wrote about last week, but also because so many of them are released. The publisher model, where a few big companies controlled the release calendar, has given way to a mix of legacy megaliths (Sony, EA, Nintendo, Microsoft), indie publishers (Devolver, Annapurna, Team17), self-releasing developers and everything in between. How is a player supposed to keep up?
Good curation is one of the most useful things a games critic can offer in 2022. But even though it’s my job to know what’s going on in video games, stuff flies under my radar all the time. There used to be a few days of game announcements a year at big conferences such as E3 and the Tokyo Game Show (and Nintendo Space World, for fans of a certain vintage). Now there is a year-round stream of announcements, updates and teases. Sometimes I’ll have kept an eye on an interesting game for a year, only to discover that it was surprise-released two weeks ago. It drives me nuts.
