Category: News

Technology Doesn’t Save Projects. Focus Does.

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Blog, News

Brendan Greene's PlayerUnknown Productions has announced layoffs, cancelled further development of Prologue: Go Wayback!, and is downsizing its team while continuing work on its proprietary terrain-generation technology, Melba. The studio says the decision was driven by the costs associated with developing the technology, which is also intended to power its future MMO project, Artemis. On the surface, this looks like another unfortunate downsizing story in an industry that has seen far too many of them. But underneath it sits a problem that affects studios of every size. Sometimes the technology becomes the project...

South Australia’s Games Sector Received $500,000 in Funding

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Blog, News

South Australia’s games industry has received a major boost, with the South Australian Film Corporation committing $500,000 across 11 local game projects through its new Digital Games Fund. The program is designed to support original, innovative games, help local studios grow, and increase the number of South Australian-made titles reaching the global market. Alongside the funding, SAFC has also established a new Games Industry Advisory Group to provide strategic direction across its games programs. This is a strong move for the local industry because it does two things at once. It funds actual projects, and it builds the advisory structure needed to support the sector long-term. That combination matters. Funding without guidance can become scattered. Guidance without funding becomes symbolic. Together, they create a much stronger foundation...

Xbox’s Leadership Restructure Shows the Industry Is Entering a Strategic Reset

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Blog, News

The most interesting part of Xbox hiring Matthew Ball and Scott Van Vliet isn’t the individual appointments themselves. It’s what those appointments represent. For years, the games industry operated under a relatively stable assumption: bigger budgets, bigger subscriptions, bigger acquisitions, bigger ecosystems. Scale was the strategy. That strategy is now under pressure. Xbox bringing in industry analyst Matthew Ball as chief strategy officer and former Azure OpenAI infrastructure lead Scott Van Vliet as CTO signals something important: Microsoft no longer sees the current games market as a straightforward growth problem. It sees it as a structural problem. And honestly, that’s probably accurate...

Ken Levine Believes Art Direction Trumps Realism and He’s Right

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Blog, News

For years, the games industry has treated graphical realism like an inevitability. Every new hardware generation promised more detail, more lighting accuracy, more polygons, more rendering techniques, and more expensive ways to simulate reality. The assumption was simple: better technology equals better immersion. But the industry is starting to hit a wall. In a recent interview, Ken Levine argued that we’re reaching diminishing returns with bleeding-edge graphics technology, pointing specifically to why games like BioShock still hold up visually today. Not because they chased realism, but because they chased style. And honestly, this is one of the most important conversations happening in modern game development...

Griffin’s $100M Indie Fund Could Signal a Major Shift in How Games Get Financed

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Blog, News

The biggest part of this story isn’t the number. It’s the structure. Griffin Gaming Partners launching a $100 million fund dedicated to indie developers matters because it directly challenges one of the most damaging patterns in modern game development: funding models that leave studios carrying most of the creative risk while receiving the least long-term security. The newly announced Special Opportunities Fund will finance games in exchange for a share of revenue rather than taking equity in the studio itself...

AGDAs 2026 Are Open – And That’s Exactly What the Australian Industry Needs

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Blog, News

Nominations for the 2026 Australian Game Developer Awards (AGDAs) are now open, with the ceremony set to take place on October 7 in Melbourne as part of Games Connect Asia Pacific. On paper, this is a standard industry announcement. In reality, it’s a signal of something far more important: stability, recognition, and momentum for the Australian games industry at a time when it needs it most. The AGDAs aren’t just about celebrating finished games. They are one of the few national-level mechanisms that validate creative work, build visibility, and connect developers to broader opportunities. In an industry facing economic pressure globally, that kind of recognition becomes structural, not symbolic...

Xbox Cuts Game Pass Pricing – But Redefines the Value

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Blog, News

Xbox has reduced the price of Game Pass across its major tiers, bringing Ultimate down from $29.99 to $22.99 per month and PC Game Pass from $16.49 to $13.99. On the surface, this looks like a straightforward correction - a response to growing concerns that the service had become too expensive. But the more important change isn’t the price. It’s what’s being removed. Future Call of Duty titles will no longer launch day-one on Game Pass. Instead, they’ll arrive roughly a year later. That decision reshapes the value proposition of the entire service...

AI Tools Aren’t Solving Your Problems. They’re Just Adding More

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Blog, News

The AI gold rush in game development is accelerating. New tools are appearing daily, each promising faster production, cheaper pipelines, and smarter workflows. On the surface, it looks like a revolution. In practice, it’s something else entirely. According to Keywords Studios’ Head of Transformation, after testing over 500 AI tools, only a handful were actually useful in real production environments . That’s not a minor gap. That’s a structural failure between what AI is promising and what development actually needs...

Developers Are Going Quiet. That Should Worry You

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Blog, News

Lucas Pope, the developer behind Papers, Please and Return of the Obra Dinn, recently revealed he isn’t sharing details about his next game. Not because of marketing strategy or timing, but because of AI. The concern is simple: if ideas are exposed too early, they can be absorbed, replicated, and redistributed before the original work even ships. That changes something fundamental about how games are made. Not technically, but culturally. It reshapes the very essence of game development, influencing not just the design processes and methodologies, but also the way diverse communities interact and engage with gaming...

AI Won’t Free Your Developers. It Will Standardise Them.

Posted on by Myles Blasonato in Blog, News

Nexon’s recent announcement around its “Mono Lake” AI initiative frames a familiar promise: less time writing code, more time innovating. The idea is that by leveraging decades of player data and billions of gameplay sessions, developers can make better decisions, faster. On paper, this sounds like a breakthrough...