A big ol’ N for little ol’ me As 2022 drew to a close, I was possessed by the spirit of unrealized desires. I set a new goal for myself: I would watch 50 movies in a single year. I’ve always been good at delaying gratification, so much so that I often put off culturally and intellectually enriching activities just because I’m worried I’ll enjoy the…

Might be time for a design refresh, methinks. Here we are: 15 years to the day since our first post. In traditional marriage anniversary terms, we’ve celebrated our wood, tin, and now our crystal milestones. And, oh boy, isn’t marriage quite the allegory for a collaborative partnership lasting 1.5 decades? We’ve fought, we’ve triumphed, and we keep…

This is the first Final Fantasy where they can say “fuck,” and they’re very proud of that Listen to this article below, including additional commentary on the nature of game criticism from the author. Want to get every podcast and article reading sent straight to your device? Subscribe to the Silicon Sasquatch Podcast on iTunes, Overcast, or your f…

There was a moment in Cyberpunk 2077, probably about 20 hours into my first run through the game, where I thought I was playing a triple-A artifact that had dislodged itself in time and arrived on my doorstep years in advance. You might gather from this feeling that I waited to play the game until it had been out for about a year and thoroughly un-…

Photo by Ted Eytan The details of the January 6th, 2021 insurrection attempt and attack on the United States Capitol grow more horrifying each day. Doug and I felt compelled to chat about what happened, both to grapple with the shock and for the sake of posterity. This episode asks a pointed question: Did Gamergate contribute to the riot in Washing…

Our Game of the Year award is the industry’s highest honor.* But how do we make those tough calls and scientifically** determine which games are the best? Listen in and discover why it’s so remarkable that we still speak to each other, much less voluntarily associate on a regular basis. *Not actually the industry’s highest honor. **No science has e…

It’s like the McLaughlin Group, but for video game opinions. Join us for an inside look as we review our categories and decide which games are the best fit for our 10 awards—with an extra-special eleventh award added this year only! Please enjoy our exceptionally long debate session. Or don’t. We won’t hold it against you. Note: Some profanity and …

We’re all kinda just stunned we even pulled this off. But yeah, here it is: the complete deliberative process behind our top 20 games of the 2010s. Enjoy! Don't miss out on our Game of the Year coverage! Check out our full schedule to see what's coming up and follow us on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook for instant updates. We've also got some GOTY…

Well, here it is: the part where we choose our top 10 games and crown our Game of the Year. Allow us to don our best James Lipton impression and take you…inside the GOTY studio. Note: Once again, profanity and mild bickering are present, but at least we're not jerks. Don't miss out on our Game of the Year coverage! Check out our full schedule to se…

With our ten Category Awards out in the open, it's time to open up the workshop doors and welcome everyone in for a guided tour. Here's the five of us talking through each of the categories and deciding which games are the best fit for our ten awards. We hope you enjoy this look inside the process and that any grievances about slighted games are fo…

Here it is: the debate where we determined our top 10 games of 2018. As usual, expect plenty of spoilers here. We had a great time discussing the games that resonated the most with us last year, and we hope you’ve enjoyed coming along for the ride. Once you’ve finished this podcast, don’t forget to check out the rest of our Game of the Year 2018 co…

We’re back with another podcast! In this episode, you can hear the five of us debating who should win each of our Category Awards — accolades we give out to games that do something really outstanding in a specific area, such as visual art, music, or storytelling. Once you’ve finished this podcast, don’t forget to check out the rest of our Game of t…

To kick off our tenth Game of the Year feature, we're exhuming our prior work to look at it again as older and (ideally) wiser people. In this episode, we go year-by-year, list-by-list, and ask ourselves whether we made the right choices at the time, or if other games wound up reflecting our mission better. Thanks for listening, and please don’t fo…

What do we love? Video games. What else do we love? Sports! And as the inaugural season of Blizzard's Overwatch League is getting underway, Nick, Doug and Spencer have a reason to discuss the combination of those two great topics. Nick and Spencer still actively play Overwatch at a high level, and Doug is a sucker for anything where they keep score…

Well, hey there. It's been a while! And boy, have there been some games coming out this year. But who has time for all of 'em? Certainly not the hard-working grown adult humans who comprise the Silicon Sasquatch team. But if they teamed up somehow — combined efforts, in a sense...what could they accomplish? As it turns out: they can record a podcas…

I had a chance last weekend to chat with Joseph "Wick" Perry, an independent game developer who's working on Crescent Loom, a game he describes as "Kerbal Space Program crossed with the cell stage of Spore." We talked about all kinds of stuff: Portland's game-development community, how frog brains work, supporting independent artists, and more. Que…

As a nice end-cap to Doug's study of the original Xbox's legacy, we close out the 15-year anniversary of the lumbering giant's release with a new podcast. Doug and I discussed our earliest memories of the console, from its unusual unveiling, through its many highs and lows, and to the launch of the Xbox 360 just four years into its life cycle. Ques…

My wife and I started Westworld last week, before the election. As a couple we're fairly slow TV binge-watchers; balance is achieved between my all-you-can-eat buffet style and her properly portioned consumption. Historically, and if I don't jump ahead out of impatience (a cardinal sin, I know), we watch just an episode or two of a new show each we…

We're of several minds on BioWare's sprawling third entry in the Dragon Age series. On the one hand, the core of the experience -- the characters, the scope of the world and the depth of the choices you make -- are all compelling and well-developed. On the other hand, 80-hour RPGs just aren't what they used to be, and it shows in the repetitive nat…

Look, we're not unreasonable. We understand that big-budget, large-scale video game production is no small feat these days. Pretty much any game you buy in a store these days is going to require a substantial patch on day one to fix any lingering issues from its development cycle. But what happens when a game ships to market in such a buggy, broken…

You've come a long way, Call of Duty. From a well-polished World War II combat game to an unprecedented worldwide sales success, the series has undergone a series of dramatic transformations while still managing to keep a consistent core. Now that a new developer has stepped up to the plate, how does the series look and feel now? And where will it …

The times, they are a-changing – and so are our expectations. As we stand in the midst of yet another onslaught of massive, big-budget video games in the prelude to this holiday season, we decided to take some time to reflect on how our expectations as consumers and critics have changed over the years.Thanks for listening, and please don't forget t…

Image adapted from actuallyethics.tumblr.com It's been months since the term "Gamergate" entered our lexicon, but many of the debates and accusations are still alive and kicking. What has changed since the topic arose? Where are we now? And what is Gamergate's long-term impact on our ability to seriously discuss ethics in games writing, criticism, …

Illustration by Mark Farrell In our consumer culture, buyer's remorse is an all-too-familiar feeling. But it'd been almost a decade between the last generation and this new one, so you can imagine how a bunch of enthusiasts might've been on the hunt for a good reason--honestly, any reason--to pick up a shiny, new piece of hardware. The first year o…

In this week's episode, we gush about our favorite games of 2014 and make hefty predictions on which ones stand a chance of making it during our annual Game of the Year awards!Maybe we jumped the gun just a few months early. Listen as we debate the merits of everything from Destiny to Shovel Knight and lament the delays of episodic masterpieces lik…

With a (much-appreciated) quiet news week behind us, we decided to just have a casual chat about the games we've been spending the most time with. For Nick and Aaron, it's been nothing but Destiny, Bungie's vaunted online shooter; for Doug and Tyler, Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS just hit stores in Japan. Most alarmingly, Doug's been avoiding …

In honor of our 50th episode, we've got a massive podcast for you! Join PAX veterans Nick and Spencer as they talk about the dozens of games they played while Doug and Tyler grill them on the significance and potential future of the biggest public games expo in the United States.Thanks for listening – please subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher and tell…

On August 14th, Polygon posted an article about DICE's cops-and-robbers extension of the Battlefield franchise, Battlefield Hardline.Any other news day the article, "Is Battlefield Hardline the next eSports darling?," would have read like typical pre-release chaff, with a publisher keen on highlighting new features of an upcoming release to whet ga…

The Silicon Sasquatch staff rarely disagrees on the games we cover. Sure, we bicker and inject personal opinion into every post we publish, but Destiny incites a fervent desire within us to defend or deny the entire philosophy of this AAA giant.What we can agree on is Bungie, it seems, wants to change the rules with Destiny while paying homage to F…

For this episode, we ventured into some unfamiliar territory in an effort to educate ourselves. We're not experts when it comes to competing within the MOBA, or Multiplayer Online Battle Arena, genre, but even a casual bystander has to recognize there are some huge things happening within these games and the massive community of players and spectat…

There's a problem of diversity and representation in the games industry. It's widespread, ranging from development and publishing to marketing and journalism, and it's toxic.Doug, Aaron and Nick talk about why this matters and what you can do to help make gaming a safe space for everyone. Here are the articles we cited in the podcast, along with so…

There's this theme that's essential to so many classic tales of warriors and knights: the ideal of the "good death." It's the pursuit of an ultimate sacrifice that amplifies the protagonist's deeds and echoes into eternity.There's almost no such thing as a "good death" in games, mostly because player death is repetitive and often a crucial part of …

We all make mistakes. What's important is having the humility to own up to them.On this week's episode of the Silicon Sasquatch Podcast, Nick issues a mea culpa and embraces the fact that games like Mario Kart 8 can make for a great time even if they don't stray far from the mold. In fact, the whole gang is excited to see a Wii U game lighting up t…

Here's an existential question for you: if a multiplayer online game loses its online functionality, is it still the same game?The gang got together to try to draw some conclusions from the shutdown of GameSpy's online matchmaking systems, a move that has far-reaching effects for many first- and third-party game publishers -- even going so far as t…

Microsoft's vision of an interactive living room is forever changed: on May 13th, 2014, the tech giant announced it would offer a Kinect-free version of the Xbox One for a competitive $399. It bears mentioning that this news broke less than a year after the One's official unveiling, which lauded the advancements of the next-generation Kinect.So wha…

Our very own Nick Cummings recently made a sharp left turn in his life. He left an established position with a prosperous company, moved 2000 miles to Seattle, and is now hard at work pursuing a lifelong dream -- the dream of making games. In this episode of the Squatchcast, Nick sat down with Doug Bonham, and the two talked about the realities of …

Last week, Facebook announced its acquisition of Oculus VR, the Kickstarter-founded startup devoted to developing affordable and available VR technology. The public's response has been largely negative: some fear Facebook's intentions, some (including highly visible people like Markus Persson) feel disenchanted that a crowd-funded company would win…

Today we take a little diversion from our usual haunts in the world of digital videogames to visit our cousins in the tabletop pen-and-paper RPG world. Relax; they're your cousins, they're family, and they're not as gross and icky as those OTHER cousins you may have. (You know the ones.)For this podcast, we have an interview with Dan Phipps from Ca…

Streams. Who doesn't love them? Not big enough to be rivers but still flowing bodies of water, often cutting through forests or grasslands. Whenever I see a stream, I know it's bound to be a peaceful little slice of nature nearby....wait, you mean we're talking about a different kind of stream? Oh. Right. Jokes aside, the popularity of streaming yo…

Header image compares restoration of Spanish Ecce Homo fresco to updating of a certain Japanese RPGThe video game industry has more than 30 years of history now, so it’s only natural to look out for the future preservation of games we love. While old systems, emulators and re-releases are appreciated, there are always questions about what’s in the …

Developers have struggled in recent years to engage their players after the credits roll and the last achievement pops. The industry, more than ever, has focused on our fleeting attention spans. Daily challenges are one of the more-recent innovations attempting to lengthen the time our eyes are glued to a screen.But what exactly is a "daily challen…

Nintendo's financials are back from fiscal year 2013, and, well... it doesn't look so great. Not Virtual Boy-bad, by any means, but it certainly isn't 2006 anymore.With these numbers in hand, Aaron, Tyler and Doug got together and talked about Nintendo. How did the company end up in this financial situation? What do our staff expect from the mighty…

We're finally crawling out of our various dens, burrows, and apartments here at Silicon Sasquatch, weary from the holidays and our Game of the Year discussions. So, naturally, the first thing we decided to talk about was -- games! Specifically, the games we're excited about in the coming year. Join us (Nick, Aaron, Brit, and Spencer) as we each pic…

As we've released our 2013 Game of the Year content over the past couple weeks, you've probably heard and seen the term "making sausage" thrown around. It's an apt metaphor for our deliberations -- they're contentious to start, and quickly devolve into extended, bile-filled debates. They've never lasted less than a few hours, and have remained enti…

Photo courtesy Will Clayton Four of the original five members of our staff -- co-founders Aaron and Nick, and long-term editors Doug and Spencer -- join us on this very special episode of the Silicon Sasquatch Podcast. It's been a long road, and we have a lot of stories to share about our successes, our failures and the reasons each one of us is st…

Photo courtesy Mel B. Each December our staff spends hours in a grueling, no-holds-barred verbal sparring match to rank the top 10 games released over the year. This year is no different, but it's not all blood, sweat and (mostly) tears on the road to "GOTY." This episode Nick and Spencer and myself agree to civil discourse (because a week after th…

Here's an uncomfortable truth: we're all getting older. Even you! Right now, as you're reading this sentence, a small but still significant fraction of your life has slipped away.Sure, that's kind of a bummer outlook on things, but aging has its benefits — there are many more ways to spend your time and find value in life as you grow older. But wha…

With the holiday season just around the corner, we decided to take a look at the sales -- the sales of video games, specifically! Join Nick, Aaron, Tyler, and Spencer as they discuss the shifting landscape of video games distribution. How much has digital distribution changed the marketplace? Which companies have chosen to ignore this evolution? Fi…

The eighth generation is here, and the resounding cry from us here at Silicon Sasquatch is... "Hm." Listen in as Aaron Thayer, Brit McGinnis, Nick Cummings, Spencer Tordoff, and Tyler Martin discuss midnight launches, Black Friday, and breakdown of fanboyism -- plus the episode of South Park lambasting all of the above. We're avoiding the launch ni…

As the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One make their way to warehouses and retail outlets, the curtain is slowly beginning to draw on the seventh generation of console hardware -- the venerable Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Nintendo Wii.Join Tyler, Aaron, and Nick for a look at the trends that have emerged since 2005. What changed? What stayed the same? Wha…