Trigger warning gifts parents may want to commandeer. Trigger warning gifts parents may want to commandeer. The Guardian's journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. G amers can be a difficult bunch to buy for.

Serious gamers take note, the Arctis Nova Pro is feature-packed and ready for anything. All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links. In the world of high-end gaming headsets, the SteelSeries Arctis Nova Pro Wireless (8/10, WIRED Recommends) stands out with an impressive feature set and excellent audio. Right now, you can pick up the wireless model for just $300 from Amazon, an $80 discount off the usual price.

Profiling gamers provides critical insights for adaptive game design, behavioral understanding, and digital well-being. This study proposes an integrated, data-driven framework that combines psychological measures, behavioral analytics, and machine learning to reveal underlying gamer personas. A structured survey of 250 participants, including 113 active gamers, captured multidimensional behavioral, motivational, and social data. The analysis pipeline integrated feature engineering, association-network, knowledge-graph analysis, and unsupervised clustering to extract meaningful patterns. Correlation statistics uses Cramers V, Tschuprows T, Theils U, and Spearmans quantified feature associations, and network centrality guided feature selection. Dimensionality-reduction techniques such as PCA, SVD, t-SNE are coupled with clustering algorithms like K-Means, Agglomerative, Spectral, DBSCAN, evaluated using Silhouette, Calinski Harabasz, and Davies Bouldin indices. The PCA with K-Means with k = 4 model achieved optimal cluster quality with Silhouette = 0.4, identifying four archetypes as Immersive Social Story-Seekers, Disciplined Optimizers, Strategic Systems Navigators, and Competitive Team-Builders. This research contributes a reproducible pipeline that links correlation-driven network insights with unsupervised learning. The integration of behavioral correlation networks with clustering not only enhances classification accuracy but also offers a holistic lens to connect gameplay motivations with psychological and wellness outcomes.

A significant challenge in this integration is maintaining the interpretability of the additive model component.

Is a Hiking Game That Trolls'Slightly Problematic' Men The walking simulator, launching September 23 on PlayStation and Steam, stars a jobless 35-year-old "privileged, white male" whose pride stops him from getting help. Game developer Bennett Foddy was watching a Greek myth unfold in front of him. A playtester for his latest project,, was struggling to navigate the game's lead--Nate, a 35-year-old "failson" in a stained onesie--up a slippery hill. Each time, the terrain proved to be too much, and Nate skidded uselessly down it. Foddy has a reputation for making onerous games that take a little bit of masochism to master.

Two summers ago, the Santa Monica-based company behind the popular video game "Call of Duty" sent a letter to a 24-year-old man in Antioch, Tenn., who went by the online handle "Lerggy." Known in real life as Ryan Rothholz, court filings say, he is the creator of "Lergware," hacking software that enabled Call of Duty players to cheat by kicking opponents offline. A lawsuit filed in May against Rothholz and others allegedly involved in the hacking scheme is the latest salvo in years-long campaign by Activision-Blizzard and other companies to rid their games of cheating. The war is being waged in the Central District of California civil courts, but the defendants are scattered across the country and as far away as Australia. An immersive "first-person shooter" game, Call of Duty takes players into simulated, realistic military combat.

There was a time when certain shops would resemble nightclubs at about midnight: a long queue of excitable people, some of them perhaps too young to be out that late, discussing the excitement that awaits inside. The sight of throngs of gamers looking to get their hands on the latest hardware when the clock strikes 12 is growing increasingly rare. But if you happen to walk by a Smyths toy shop at midnight on 4 June, you may encounter a blast from the past: excitable people, most in their teens or 20s, possibly discussing Mario Kart. They will be waiting to buy the Nintendo Switch 2, the first major games console launch since 2020 and potentially the biggest of all time. What's particularly notable about this launch isn't the queues but just how few there will be.

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. There are plenty of negative stereotypes about games and gamers. And it's true that focusing on gaming to the detriment of all else will have negative effects--there's a reason that the World Health Organization recognizes video game addiction as a mental health condition. In the 50 years since Atari unleashed Pong on the world, there's been plenty of research on the effects of video games on our brains, and it's not all bad. Here are a few of the potential benefits of gaming, according to research. A research review published in American Psychologist in 2013 by Isabela Granic, Adam Lobel, and Rutger C. M. E. Engels at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, looked at decades of research and highlighted the various benefits found in gaming.

Microsoft just announced the pending availability of Copilot for Gaming, an AI-powered assistant that's being advertised as a novel way to help players get better at their favorite titles. The company says it will accompany people through games, offering tips, guides and useful information along the way. Microsoft boasts it can also help folks download and launch games, solving the eternal problem of, uh, pressing a button. Copilot for Gaming will be available as part of the Xbox mobile app, so it's being positioned as a second screen type of thing. Copilot for Gaming Soon you'll be able to turn to it for everything from game setup, to tips for finally beating a tough level, wherever you play on Xbox.