TheRetroArcade
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Joined: Feb 2026
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The Sunday Papers is our weekly roundup of great writing about (mostly) videogames from across the web.
Sundays are for wondering why the neighbour’s cat is mad at you. I thought we were getting along well – I’ve been letting her into the block regularly, and we have a little ritual where she runs partway up the stairs, and I do Mousey Fingers through the bannister. We had a little ritual, anyway. The last few times, she’s hissed at me and run away. “Ho ho, you goofball,” I say, as my heart quietly implodes. “Cats are so weird,” I chuckle, tears dripping from my chin, as I hurry into my flat.
This week has been a one-two punch of sorrowful bullshit in games journalism. Firstly, a number of people have lost their jobs at our partners-in-Ziff Eurogamer, including Alex Donaldson, Tom Orry, and the amazing EG video team who kept so many people smiling during the Covid lockdowns. Eurogamer is probably the website that got me into videogame journalism – I started out with a FFXII write-up for their reader reviews section – and it’s bleak to see the site so depleted. Best of luck to the people leaving, and to the many fine critics and reporters who remain.
Not all the departing staff have spoken publicly about their future movements, but you can still find Alex over at the excellent RPGsite, while video producer Ian Higton remains fully armed and operational over at Platform32. Here’s EG’s latest What We’ve Been Playing, which includes a goodbye post from Orry.
That’s your first punch of bullshit. In other news, the company currently in charge of Videogamer – previously the home of Alice Bell, Chris Bratt and Matt Lees, among other greats - have taken to using generative AI to create fake writers. Here’s the Press Gazette’s Rob Waugh with a full write-up. I’ve reached out to Clickout Media myself to ask about the AI writer allegations, and whether they’re worried about e.g. being taken to court for some kind of fraud. I am just a simple country lawyer, y’honor, but I feel like inventing writers wholecloth so that you can publish what are characterised as a human being’s impressions of a thing other human beings may then buy would be some kind of fraud?
For the LRB, James Butler writes about the fall of UK politician Peter Mandelson, with some follow-through on the wider impact of the release of Epstein's private correspondence.
Analgesic’s Melos Han-Tani has written a blog post about exploration in Angeline Era, considering the usefulness of avoiding a sense of “completion”.
Over at Longreads, Compulsion Games scribe and The Nation music critic Bijan Stephen writes about the afterlife of a Youtube upload of a Donkey Kong Country 2 track that became a "checkpoint" for thousands of fellow travellers.
I’ll with a shout-out for Critical Distance, the site that curates and preserves games criticism. They’re having a funding drive in a bid to balance the books. Amongst other pressures, they’ve had to spend a lot of the past year fighting off generative AI crawlers who drive up their hosting and processing costs (RPS have had to fight off a few sizeable bot waves ourselves). Consider throwing them some pennies.
Searching for music appropriate to this week’s games journalism happenings, I find myself thumping and stamping along to the exquisite ham of Woodkid’s Iron. You might prefer to check out Saint Elizabeth, the new album from Problem Attic developer Liz Ryerson.
Rock Paper Shotgun is better when you sign in
Sign in and join us on our journey to discover strange and compelling PC games.Read more: Full article on www.rockpapershotgun.com
What do you think about this?
The Sunday Papers is our weekly roundup of great writing about (mostly) videogames from across the web.
Sundays are for wondering why the neighbour’s cat is mad at you. I thought we were getting along well – I’ve been letting her into the block regularly, and we have a little ritual where she runs partway up the stairs, and I do Mousey Fingers through the bannister. We had a little ritual, anyway. The last few times, she’s hissed at me and run away. “Ho ho, you goofball,” I say, as my heart quietly implodes. “Cats are so weird,” I chuckle, tears dripping from my chin, as I hurry into my flat.
This week has been a one-two punch of sorrowful bullshit in games journalism. Firstly, a number of people have lost their jobs at our partners-in-Ziff Eurogamer, including Alex Donaldson, Tom Orry, and the amazing EG video team who kept so many people smiling during the Covid lockdowns. Eurogamer is probably the website that got me into videogame journalism – I started out with a FFXII write-up for their reader reviews section – and it’s bleak to see the site so depleted. Best of luck to the people leaving, and to the many fine critics and reporters who remain.
Not all the departing staff have spoken publicly about their future movements, but you can still find Alex over at the excellent RPGsite, while video producer Ian Higton remains fully armed and operational over at Platform32. Here’s EG’s latest What We’ve Been Playing, which includes a goodbye post from Orry.
That’s your first punch of bullshit. In other news, the company currently in charge of Videogamer – previously the home of Alice Bell, Chris Bratt and Matt Lees, among other greats - have taken to using generative AI to create fake writers. Here’s the Press Gazette’s Rob Waugh with a full write-up. I’ve reached out to Clickout Media myself to ask about the AI writer allegations, and whether they’re worried about e.g. being taken to court for some kind of fraud. I am just a simple country lawyer, y’honor, but I feel like inventing writers wholecloth so that you can publish what are characterised as a human being’s impressions of a thing other human beings may then buy would be some kind of fraud?
For the LRB, James Butler writes about the fall of UK politician Peter Mandelson, with some follow-through on the wider impact of the release of Epstein's private correspondence.
Analgesic’s Melos Han-Tani has written a blog post about exploration in Angeline Era, considering the usefulness of avoiding a sense of “completion”.
Over at Longreads, Compulsion Games scribe and The Nation music critic Bijan Stephen writes about the afterlife of a Youtube upload of a Donkey Kong Country 2 track that became a "checkpoint" for thousands of fellow travellers.
I’ll with a shout-out for Critical Distance, the site that curates and preserves games criticism. They’re having a funding drive in a bid to balance the books. Amongst other pressures, they’ve had to spend a lot of the past year fighting off generative AI crawlers who drive up their hosting and processing costs (RPS have had to fight off a few sizeable bot waves ourselves). Consider throwing them some pennies.
Searching for music appropriate to this week’s games journalism happenings, I find myself thumping and stamping along to the exquisite ham of Woodkid’s Iron. You might prefer to check out Saint Elizabeth, the new album from Problem Attic developer Liz Ryerson.
Rock Paper Shotgun is better when you sign in
Sign in and join us on our journey to discover strange and compelling PC games.Read more: Full article on www.rockpapershotgun.com
What do you think about this?