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It is my birthday this week. And while that may not sound like a worthy subject for Pushing Buttons, bear with me.<\/p>\n
I am now 54 \u2013 and so officially in my mid-50s \u2013 and I still write about video games for a living. I play video games every day; I work in a home office where I\u2019m surrounded by video games. When I\u2019m not playing them, I\u2019m probably thinking about them. But at times like this, I think: maybe should I stop someday? Is there an upper limit on how long someone can do games journalism? Certainly I only know of a handful of people my age who are still writing about games on a full-time basis. Some of my friends outside the industry still play games, but usually only one or two a year \u2013 EA Sports FC, maybe, the latest blockbusting narrative adventure, Nintendo with the kids. If you\u2019re not careful, life has a way of shepherding you away from your interests.<\/p>\n
I now find it difficult to keep up with some areas of the industry. The world of esports feels utterly alien \u2013 the multitude of leagues and competitions, the emerging superstars, the controversies. Following it all is a full-time job, one that is more suited to a sports writer. I\u2019m also way behind on influencers and content creators \u2013 I don\u2019t watch Kai Cenat, LazarBeam or QuarterJade, though I have a vague sense of who they are and how important they have become as arbiters of taste. When I go on press trips to see new games, I\u2019m old enough to be a parent to most of the young writers and creators I meet.<\/p>\n
The thing is, I\u2019m still obsessed with how games work and how they\u2019re made. I belong to a generation that assumed games would always be for kids, but they\u2019re patently not now. From the nostalgic adventure Lost Records: Bloom and Rage, which deals with middle-aged regret to the God of War series with its study of parenthood and legacy (and part of the \u201cdadification of games\u201d trend, which started when a certain generation of developers started to have kids), video games now tell stories that span a whole lifetime. So we need journalists of all ages to write about them. Consider film journalism. Roger Ebert wrote about film for the Chicago Sun-Times until his death in 2013; the Observer\u2019s late, great film critic Philip French officially retired at 80 but kept writing about cinema until he died two years later. They never stop watching and enjoying movies, so why should they have stopped writing about them?<\/p>\n
<\/span>Nostalgic adventure \u2026 Lost Records: Bloom and Rage.<\/span> Photograph: Don\u2019t Nod<\/p>\n I now have a longer history in games playing than a huge majority of the younger writers I read, commission and admire. I played Pac-Man when it first arrived; I owned a Commodore 64 and a Mega Drive; I reviewed a game on the Virtual Boy, for god\u2019s sake. At the risk of this becoming a self-indulgent take on Roy Batty\u2019s closing speech, I\u2019ve seen things you people would<\/em> believe, but perhaps didn\u2019t actually witness. If history has taught us anything, it\u2019s that first-hand experience is vital in understanding sociocultural impact. And while, today, anyone can load up Space Invaders on an emulator, the experience of seeing<\/em> that game in 1978, in its context of disco, the early home computing revolution and Star Wars mania, has a kind of emotional patina that is hard to conjure in 2025.<\/p>\n I often say how vitally important it is to keep playing \u2013 whether you\u2019re playing video games, chess, football or historical battle re-enactments. It\u2019s also important to keep asking questions about the world and the things we enjoy. And when you\u2019ve been doing that long enough, you get to know how the stories often end. Currently, we\u2019re worried about censorship in games, thanks to the machinations of payment processing companies. But I\u2019ve been here before \u2013 I\u2019ve been through Mary Whitehouse and Jack Thompson and a 100 tabloid moral panics. It\u2019s reassuring to know that this too shall pass.<\/p>\n You are always an active part of what you enjoy \u2013 the books you read, the teams you support, the gigs you go to. Life is a network of experiences between which we get to draw our own connections and conclusions, and create our own maps of the vast, dizzying cultural landscape we live in. This is as true at the age of 95 as it was at 16, or in my case, at age 54.<\/p>\n In short, you\u2019re stuck with me. The game, I hope, is far from over.<\/p>\n <\/span>Retro \u2026 Gradius Origins.<\/span> Photograph: Konami<\/p>\n As I\u2019m in a nostalgic mood, I would like to recommend the retro collection Gradius Origins<\/strong> from Konami and developer M2, the undisputed expert in updating classic titles to modern machines. Origins gathers all six instalments in the revered arcade shoot-\u2019em-up series, including Gradius 1-3 and the spin-off Salamander titles, including Japanese, North American and often prototype versions, and it adds an impressive new addition, Salamander 3.<\/p>\n These are superlative side-scrollers with cool spacecraft, excellent weapon power-up systems and surreal biomechanical landscapes and bosses. Enemy attack patterns are intense yet beautifully choreographed, the action precise and unforgiving (although you do get to save your progress this time round, unlike the originals). Alongside the games, there are tantalising digital galleries including arcade flyers, concept art and guides to all the enemy ships. It\u2019s a wonderful blast down memory lane.<\/p>\n Available on: <\/strong>PC, PS5, Switch, Xbox <\/span>Breaking the fourth wall \u2026 Death Stranding 2: On the Beach.<\/span> Photograph: Kojima productions<\/p>\n I enjoyed this article by Maddy Myers about Death Stranding 2\u2019s fourth-wall shattering moments<\/strong>. I\u2019ve put 100 hours into Hideo Kojima\u2019s weird masterpiece, and his nods to the artificiality of the world have been refreshing reminders about the hyperreal nature of modern games and the role players have in completing the illusion.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Variety has a wide-ranging interview with Electronic Arts Entertainment\u2019s president, Laur Miele. It seems there are plans for an Apex Legends movie<\/strong>, to go alongside the publisher\u2019s Sims film that is in the works. Personally, I\u2019d rather see a Mirror\u2019s Edge or Titanfall movie, or even better a new Mirror\u2019s Edge or Titanfall game.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Over the weekend, the video game retail site GOG offered 13 mature-rated games for free<\/strong>, including Postal 2 and House Party \u2013 and one-million players took them up on the offer. Its intention was to raise awareness of censorship in gaming, after the controversy regarding payment processing terms and NSFW titles. Eurogamer has more.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Sign up to Pushing Buttons<\/span><\/p>\n Keza MacDonald’s weekly look at the world of gaming<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n <\/span>Back to the 90s \u2026 Fear the Spotlight.<\/span> Photograph: Blumhouse Games<\/p>\n Here\u2019s one from Kohigh Mathy on Bluesky:<\/p>\n \u201cWhy do some genres, like music, real-time tactics and point and click adventures, seem to vanish <\/em> for years, only to resurface<\/em>? Is it market fatigue, tech shifts, or something else?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n There are a number of reasons, I think. In a similar way to how certain movie genres continually disappear and return, partly it\u2019s do with generational cycles of influence<\/strong>. A game developer who loved a genre as a child may, as an adult, seek to re-create it \u2013 part of the reason we\u2019re seeing so many low-poly survival horror games now is that the creators grew up playing Resident Evil on the original PlayStation.<\/p>\n There\u2019s also a cultural, <\/strong>even sociopolitical element<\/strong> \u2013 developers are inspired by the world around them and it could be that some contemporary events or themes are best realised by specific game genres. So we may see a sudden boost in military real-time strategy games during periods of global instability and conflict. I think there are technical influences<\/strong>, too. When a new console or graphics card is released, there is a rush to produce classic genres on that platform, because veteran players who fondly recall those game types like to see them reinvented.<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s the interplay between nostalgia and innovation<\/strong> in the rediscovery of old genres. In a market where everyone is making Souls-likes, hero shooters and deck-building games, there\u2019s value in producing a new take on, say, a 1990s-style interactive movie game, or a graphic adventure, or a button-bashing multi-sports sim \u2013 this way, you\u2019re producing something a little different while still harking back to much-loved archetypes. It\u2019s a win-win situation.<\/p>\n If you\u2019ve got a question for Question Block \u2013 or anything else to say about the newsletter \u2013 <\/em>email us on pushingbuttons@theguardian.com.<\/em><\/p>\nWhat to play<\/h2>\n
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