Young gamers (age 13-17) are the most eager consumers of metaverse-style games, according to a recent study from Bain & Company. Metaverse games incorporate 3D virtual worlds, an avatar stand-in for the player, and focus on social connection. Currently popular games in the category are Minecraft, Fortnite, Roblox, and World of Warcraft. The metaverse-lite concept – divorced of VR headsets and full immersion – has had successful practical products within the video game sphere for decades, including early titles like Second Life and Habbo Hotel. Practical VR integration, like the metaverse, has also had viable use cases in gaming for years; today and in the future, business people like Mark Zuckerberg will attempt to extend the concepts outward to make online shopping and remote work meetings more cumbersome.

It's been a busy month for nostalgic video game compilations. Sonic Origins collects the first four Sonic the Hedgehog titles, the Capcom Fighting Collection brings together various titles from the Darkstalkers and Street Fighter ranges as well as a couple of rarities, and Pac-Man Museum gathers an astonishing 14 Pac-Man games from the past 40 years. Cynics may suggest we live in an age of endless nostalgia and brand regurgitation, but compilations have always been a staple of the video game industry. I know, because I've bought most of them. Back in the home computer era of the 1980s, game compilations were a common way of scraping just a little more revenue from titles that had slipped from the software charts.

China has ordered its online gaming companies to further reduce the services they provide to young gamers, in a move intended to curb what the authorities described as "youth video game addiction". Under the new rule, young gamers are only allowed to spend an hour playing online games on Fridays, weekends and holidays, according to the official Xinhua news agency. The rules, published by the National Press and Publication Administration, said users under the age of 18 would be able to play games only from 8pm to 9pm local time on those days. Online gaming companies would be barred from providing gaming services to minors in any form outside those hours and would need to ensure they had put real name verification systems in place, said the regulator, which oversees the country's video games market. The latest move followed reports that children were using adult IDs to circumvent rules.

'Fortnite' has become a cultural phenomenon and mega-hit for video game developer Epic Games, boasting 125 million players around the world. What is it that makes this game so immensely popular, and how did it come to be? A chain of gyms in Europe is hoping to help kids fight the flab with Fortnite-inspired classes. David Lloyd gyms is the latest to jump on the "Fortnite" bandwagon with its "Emote Royale" classes, in a bid to get kids to "swap controllers for choreography." The classes were designed with the help of a number of 12-year-old "consultants" who ensured the accuracy of the dance moves being taught.