At a time when the video game industry could use some good news, former Arkane Austin head Harvey Smith and longtime collaborator Ben Horne have formed Black Pony Immersive, a studio focused on building narrative-rich first-person action RPGs. This is the genre Smith is known for, as the designer of the original Deus Ex and co-head of the Dishonored series. Horne has worked with Smith for eight years, recently as production director of Redfall at Arkane Austin. Additionally, Redfall, Prey and Dishonored creative director Ricardo Bare is on board as design director of Black Pony Immersive. The new studio is staffed with veterans from Insomniac, Epic, Avalanche and Volition studios, and it's based in Austin, Texas, with remote workers tagging in from across the United States.

The world's most powerful people have started to realise that games have immense influence - why else would the White House post an image of Trump as Halo's Master Chief? The world's most powerful people have started to realise that games have immense influence - why else would the White House post an image of Trump as Halo's Master Chief? State of play: who holds the power in the video games industry in 2025? I love playing video games, but what interests me most as a journalist are the ways in which games intersect with real life. One of the joys of spending 20 years on this beat has been meeting hundreds of people whose lives have been meaningfully enhanced by games, and as their cultural influence has grown, these stories have become more and more plentiful. There is another side to this, however.

The idea that video games are not "serious things", says Ross Symons, overlooks the benefits they offer to gamers feeling isolated. "One thing that struck me during Covid is that games were the way that people connected and stayed together." The chief executive of Big Ant Studios, a Melbourne-based game developer, recalls when in 2010 the then opposition leader Tony Abbott dismissed the national broadband network as being for "internet-based television, video entertainment and gaming". Symons says that dismissiveness of the video game industry has not stood the test of time. Last year alone, Australians spent 3.8bn on video games, according to the Interactive Games and Entertainment Association (IGEA).

On Wednesday, members of the Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, or SAG-AFTRA, voted to ratify a new contract for video game performers, officially bringing an end to a nearly yearlong strike. A majority, 95 percent of members, voted in favor of the contract, which guarantees annual raises for three years, increased compensation, and guardrails designed to prevent game companies from giving their work to AI. Actors in the video game industry had been on strike for 11 months as part of a fight to secure protections against AI, a sticking point that held up negotiations for most of that time. Every other issue in the contract, including compensation and working conditions, was already resolved months ago, says SAG-AFTRA's national executive director and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland. The strike was temporarily suspended in June, pending contract ratification. According to Sarah Elmaleh, a voice actor who also serves as a SAG-AFTRA committee chair, actors in the games industry have been wearily eyeing AI for years--even before tools like ChatGPT exploded in use.

The video game industry loves to tout figures: record-breaking sales numbers, astonishing revenue growth, dazzling quantities of concurrent players. It makes sense that the people who make and play games love numbers: They're proof that someone is winning. We have a new incredible number from the world of video games: In spite of an alarming price tag, it took only four days for the Nintendo Switch 2 to become the fastest-selling home video game console of all time, with 3.5 million units sold over the weekend following its June 5 release. This is tremendous business, enough for investors to take note and consider Nintendo a safe haven in a moment of extreme economic volatility. This kind of success is typically a point of pride to proponents of the video game industry, hard data proving the medium's significance to any doubters.

In 2025 we will enter a new era of safety by design for our digital playgrounds. Online games are spaces where billions of people worldwide come together to play, socialize, and unwind. However, they are also environments where harassment, hate speech, and grooming for violence and sexual exploration frequently occur. Today, most players of online games report being a direct target or witnessing one or more of these actions. A 2024 report found 82 percent of players report being a direct victim, and 88 percent report witnessing some form of so-called "toxic" behavior.

"Races" are now "species" in the beloved game Dungeons & Dragons, which recently marked its 50th anniversary, irking some loyal fans. "Some character traits have been divorced from biological identity; a mountain dwarf is no longer inherently brawny and durable, a high elf no longer intelligent and dexterous by definition," a report in The New York Times explains. "And Wizards of the Coast, the Dungeons & Dragons publisher owned by Hasbro, has endorsed a trend throughout role-playing games in which players are empowered to halt the proceedings if they ever feel uncomfortable." The company also now suggests that extended Dungeons & Dragons campaigns begin with sessions allowing players to lay out their expectations and which topics they wish to avoid, which could include sexual assault or drug use, the Times writes. "What they're trying to do here is put up a signal flare, to not only current players but potential future players, that this game is a safe, inclusive, thoughtful and sensitive approach to fantasy storytelling," said Ryan Lessard, a writer and frequent Dungeons & Dragons dungeon master, according to the report.

A new Chinese video game has created a buzz worldwide after it sold more than 10 million copies within three days, becoming the most successful game of all time to emerge from the country. According to 2023 estimates, China's gaming industry is roughly worth 40bn. Black Myth: Wukong, produced by developer Game Science (GS), has already generated an estimated 800-900m in revenue to date and will help project Chinese culture to a global audience. The game, believed to be China's first AAA video game, was developed at a reported cost of about 70m over six years. AAA is a classification used to denote a high-budget or high-profile game from a large video game developer.

More than 300 video game performers and Hollywood actors picketed in front of the Warner Bros Studios building on Thursday to protest against what they call an unwillingness from top gaming companies to protect union voice actors and motion capture workers equally against the unregulated use of artificial intelligence. Standing before the crowd, Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, national executive director of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (Sag-Aftra), said that AI has become the most challenging issue in many of the union's negotiations. "We've made deals with the studios and streamers. We've made deals without a strike with the major record labels and with countless other employers, which provide for informed consent and fair compensation for our members," he told the Associated Press. "And yet, for some reason, the video game companies refuse to do that and that's what's going to be their undoing."

Video game workers--whatever their job, employer, or status--have clearly had enough. This month alone, the labor movement has made some of its biggest advancements ever in organizing the techies, artists, and creatives who keep the largest, most culturally significant sector of the global entertainment industry running and thriving. First, on July 19, came "wall-to-wall" union approval at Fallout-maker Bethesda Game Studios, which meant that everyone from engineers to artists could establish a comprehensive unit with the Communications Workers of America. They quickly earned recognition from parent company Microsoft, marking the first wall-to-wall effort to succeed at any of the Big Tech firm's gaming studios. On July 24, even more company workers got into the game.