Loot boxes are everywhere. They're in shooters, RPGs, card games, action games and MOBAs. They also take the form of packs, chests and crates. They're filled with voice lines, weapon skins, new pants or materials to get you more loot boxes. They're in free games and paid ones, singleplayer and multiplayer. They can be free to open and paid for with real money. You may feel an almost violent antipathy to the very idea of them, but you've probably also opened a fair few.

The appeal isn't hard to grasp. Opening a loot box is a rush: a moment of anticipation followed by release. That colourful animated flurry is often accompanied by disappointment, but is sometimes with the joy of getting exactly the item that you wanted. And then you feel the gambler's pull to open another, pushing you back into the game to grind or digging into your wallet to earn or buy your next one.

"It's that moment of excitement that anything's possible," Ben Thompson, art director on Hearthstone, tells me. "In that moment I could be getting the cards I've been looking for for ten or 20 packs. That anticipation has always been a key point in games in general; successful games build on anticipation and release, whether a set of effects or in gameplay."

Loot boxes' ubiquity might be fairly new, but they've been around rather longer than you might think. Economic sociologist Vili Lehdonvirta has suggested that they appeared in their modern form first in the Chinese free-to-play MMO ZT Online in around 2006 or 2007. A Chinese newspaper described how for a yuan you would buy a key: "When the key is applied to the chest, the screen will display a glittering chest opening. All kinds of materials and equipment spin inside the chest like the drums on a slot machine as the wheel of light spins." Yep, sounds like a loot box. 

But they've also been around far longer in the form of baseball cards and Magic: The Gathering packs, and, if you think about it, even in identifying magic items in D&D. In each case you experience the same notes of suspense and reveal, and also the way the reward is separated from the action you took to earn them. That's an important distinction. Loot boxes aren't quite the same as the shower of loot you get for killing an elite monster in Diablo. There's more of a build-up, and rather than being focused on moment-to-moment play, your view is being pulled out far wider, into the meta game, into the larger systems that give you reasons to keep swinging your sword.

The psychology of loot

Why do loot boxes provide such a dark compulsion? Psychologists call the principle by which they work on the human mind 'variable rate reinforcement.' "The player is basically working for reward by making a series of responses, but the rewards are delivered unpredictably," says Dr Luke Clark, director at the Center for Gambling Research at the University of British Columbia. "We know that the dopamine system, which is targeted by drugs of abuse, is also very interested in unpredictable rewards. Dopamine cells are most active when there is maximum uncertainty, and the dopamine system responds more to an uncertain reward than the same reward delivered on a predictable basis."

What's more, the effect of variable rate reinforcement is very persistent. Psychologist B.F. Skinner conducted trials during the early 1930s in which he conditioned animals to respond to certain stimuli in closed chambers that became known as Skinner Boxes, and showed that even when the rewards were removed, the subject would continue responding for sometimes hundreds of trials, trying to recreate the circumstances in which it got its reward before.

"Modern video games then amplify this idea by having many overlapping variable ratio schedules," says Clark. "You're trying to level up, advance your avatar, get rare add-ons, build up game currency, all at the same time. What this means is that there is a regular trickle of some kind of reinforcement." Whether you're watching your XP climb up to the next level in Overwatch, or you're collecting scraps in Battlefield 1 by breaking down skins, there's a constant sense of reward leading to reward.

The clever—or insidious—bit is how a loot box is wired into a game, and how it doles out its baubles, keeping a player on the knife-edge between feeling hungry and feeling rewarded. One such system is Battlefield 1’s Battlepacks. Standard Battlepacks are earned by playing multiplayer matches. They used to be randomly awarded, but they recently switched to an Overwatch-like progression bar system for more regular drops. Each one is a guaranteed weapon skin or one of a number of pieces of a unique weapon. So that would seem satisfying, if it wasn’t for the scrap system.

Here, you can turn your skins into scraps an in-game currency called Scraps, which will buy you more Battlepacks. And they’re the only way without spending real money that you can access Superior and Enhanced Battlepacks, two upper tiers which have rather better chances of dropping Distinguished or Legendary weapon skins. The result is a system which ekes out rewards and then asks you to question them and wonder: should you dispose of them in the interests of getting better stuff?

It’s a complex system with a lot to get your head around, and remember: Battlefield 1 is meant to primarily be an FPS, not a lottery game. In other games, loot systems sit more centrally, and few are more central as the card packs in Hearthstone. Since it’s a collectible card game, they’re perhaps so fundamental to the game that it's inaccurate to consider them loot boxes in the same vein as the controversial packs of skins and items added to recent big-budget games like Destiny 2 and Middle-earth: Shadow of War. Still, they're a great example of the loot box's principles. 

How Blizzard designs loot boxes

You can buy packs in Hearthstone with an in-game currency called gold. There are several ways to earn it, but the key methods are that every third game you win awards you with 10 gold, and for each daily quest you complete, such as winning games with a certain class, you'll get at least 40 gold. A card pack costs 100, so you can expect to earn at least one every couple of days. This system is subtly integrated into play; most quests gently encourage you to try classes and playstyles you're not used to, while also rewarding you for simply playing the way you like. Or you can just buy card packs with real money. Classic card packs cost $3 for two, $10 for seven, and the scale goes up to $70 for 60. Despite the pride some take in being free-to-play, most will spend money at some point, while those who don't get the reward of telling themselves they're saving money by playing. 

The five cards you get in each pack will be taken from across all the game's classes, at least one of which will be 'rare' quality. "We're just straightforward with it," says Thompson, but it has other benefits. "People are more inspired to try different and new things. So if I get a number of Shaman cards, maybe it's interesting for me to start to build a Shaman deck? Or I can craft them into cards I do want in the game. We allow player agency to dictate it, but we also avoid putting them in a position where they choose themselves out of experiences." 

The loot box's place in Overwatch is quite different since they contain cosmetic items—skins, emotes, voice lines and victory poses—rather than the very thing you play with. But you acquire them in a similar way: play with any character and you earn XP, with various bonuses granted, for example, by playing with friends and for good performance. Level up, which is possible every hour or so, and you earn a loot box.

"We aimed for players earning a box or two in a gaming session, so that you wouldn't walk away from a session empty-handed," principal designer Michael Heiberg tells me. "An earlier version of the game's progression system had per-hero experience levels, with rewards at various hero levels. In testing, though, we saw players picking heroes based on these hero level rewards instead of picking based on what the team needed, or even what they felt like playing. It was a bust, and we knew we needed to disassociate your hero picks from the rewards. Based on that, we shifted to a system with randomized rewards that you could earn by playing as any hero."

Overwatch's loot box is a masterpiece of audio-visual design. "It's all about building the anticipation. When the box is there you're excited at the possibilities of what could be inside," says senior game designer Jeremy Craig. Click the ‘Open loot box’ button and the box bursts open, sending four disks into the sky. Their rarity is indicated by coloured streaks to further build the suspense. "Seeing purple or gold you start to think about what specific legendary or epic you've unlocked. This all happens so fast, but it was those discrete steps that we felt maximized excitement and anticipation."

Hearthstone's opening animation is likewise engineered to trigger anticipation, and also to make the cards desirable objects and to imbue them with a sense of value. From the start it was important that they'd evoke real collectible cards. As Thompson says: "Ripping that foil pack and feeling it give, that moment of excitement that anything's possible."

Rather than hitting a button and watching, as you do when opening most loot boxes, from Battlefield 1 to Overwatch, you have to drag a pack over to what Blizzard calls the altar. There's a brief moment as blue magical power builds, and then, in the case of the classic packs, the cards suddenly burst out in a shower of glitter and gold. With Journey to Un'goro packs, they emerge in a crackle of lightning (which echoes its evolve mechanic), and a shattering of ice in the Knights of the Frozen Throne packs.

The challenge was to design a sequence that would feel special to those opening a single pack while not wearying those opening 50 in a row. "If you buy that many you don't want to spend half your day opening them, you want to get them open and start building decks and experience the real focus of the game," says Thompson. "As much ceremony as we want to put into the pack opening, we need to keep it concise." The sweet spot, it turns out, is about two seconds. 

As Overwatch does, Hearthstone indicates the rarity level of the cards you'll be getting before the cards are actually revealed. Mouse over their backs and you'll see a colored glow on rare, epic or legendaries. "We don't immediately flip them, we let player agency take a seat in the sense of controlling what order they flip them in, how they flip them, the time between each flip."

Loot makes you superstitious

That hint of control is quietly important to the design of Hearthstone's card packs. "What we found in talking to people is that superstition sets in," says Thompson. "What you'll find in psychology is that if the outcome is of high import, you know like, 'Gosh I hope I get a legendary in this,' and if player agency is unclear in terms of your ability to manifest any kind of change in the outcome and there's a little bit of randomness involved, superstition takes hold. That agency and sense of involvement and choice is super important in terms of the experience and the enjoyment of it." 

You've probably dabbled in something like it too, by performing some kind of personal rite before opening a loot box. Here's YouTuber Jordan 'Kootra' Mathewson mass-opening Team Fortress 2 crates his own way. This behaviour is actually common across many species: Skinner discovered in 1947 that even pigeons exhibit it. He observed that they’d practise little rituals in the hope that they’d cause food to appear, including turning around in their cages or nodding their heads, and yet the food was given to them at entirely regular intervals. The absence of any explanation of why the food appeared had conditioned them to believe their actions caused it. On a deep level, our own minds work the same way.

Overwatch and Hearthstone contrast with the common way loot boxes are presented. The Counter-Strike: Global Offensive model, in which the gun skins in the crate scroll by, slot machine-style, is a direct evolution of the old ZT Online design. Their distinct lack of visual pizazz is compensated for with the graphic way they show you what you could have won, and when the needle just misses the item you wanted, it's hard not to reach for another go, even though as far as CS:GO is concerned it's as black and white a result as rolling a die.

This design closely mirrors the near-misses in many forms of gambling, from horse racing to roulette. As psychologist Luke Clark has said, "A moderate frequency of near-misses encourages prolonged gambling, even in student volunteers who do not gamble on a regular basis. Problem gamblers often interpret near-misses as evidence that they are mastering the game and that a win is on the way."

In most countries, including the US and UK, loot boxes are not legally considered gambling because the winnings have no intrinsic value outside the game (in China, laws have actually forced developers like Blizzard and Valve to publish the drop rates of their loot boxes). But in being expensive to buy and based on the same psychological principles, we have to treat them with the same care.

Why do we love collecting stuff?

Loot boxes also plug into another facet of psychology: collection. In 1991, Dr Ruth Formanek in the Journal of Social Behavior and Personality suggested five reasons we feel the compulsion to collect, including 'extending the self' by obtaining knowledge or having sole control over one's collection, the social benefits of collecting leading to meeting like-minded others, creating a sense of continuity in the world, financial investment, and addiction or compulsion. Alternatively, Freud suggested that it's rooted in a deep desire to reclaim the poo you excreted as a baby. 

Whichever theory you go with, loot boxes are almost always filled with collectibles. Overwatch's boards of sprays and percentage counts for completion rates on characters remind you of what you've accrued, and Hearthstone is a collectible card game. Games as a whole highlight an interesting distinction between freeform and structured collection. Collecting, say, baseball caps is freeform collection because you can accrue them indefinitely. But games present a very structured form of collection, tapping into several powerful motivational principles. You're working towards a clear and achievable goal and you can see your progress towards it. During matches you get to show it off to others who are also immersed in collecting the same items, a chance to feel both kinship and bask in the status your collection confers. 

And there are systems of scarcity, driving value towards certain items. But managing them is a delicate art. "We use rarity levels primarily to control the frequency of getting our most exciting content," says Overwatch principal designer Heiberg. "We don't want players getting frustrated because they're earning none of the best rewards. We also don't want players getting bored because they earned all of the best rewards at once. Rarity levels give us some control over the pace of these rewards."

Both Overwatch and Hearthstone's designers are careful not to dictate value. "We learned that the value of our cosmetic content varies widely from player to player, and that no distribution of rarities was likely to really jive with everyone," Heiberg continues.

"Some players are super excited about that rare card and the legendary doesn't mean so much, and similarly you'll have someone trying to build an all-Murloc deck and they're going to be more excited about a common Murloc as opposed to the legendary of a class they're not after. We let those moments be fun at every level and not focusing on legendary cards being awesome and how you should get all of them, but rather let the player get excited about any aspect of the opening."

It's easy to feel uncomfortable with loot boxes. They have a powerful capacity to manipulate your behaviour and extract considerable amount of time and money from you with systems that aren't the core game you actually want to play. The bad ones use these tricks to make you value in-game items that you might not choose to in the cold light of day. They can pull you to do things to acquire them that you’ll regret in the long term. But the well-designed ones give you space to find your own value in the trinkets they dole out. That's an indicator that they respect you, and a sign that they recognise—correctly—that collection should be a reward in itself.

"Pack opening is an area that took a fair bit of time to develop because it's a moment players will spend a lot of time with," says Thompson. "More importantly, they'll spend money there and any time our players are investing time and money we want to give them a very fair and honest return. We want people to walk away feeling they got value from it, and that value can come from not just a return on that time or money but also fun. We say we make decisions in Hearthstone based on how much fun players are having, and pack opening is no less of that."

In Far Cry 5 there’s always music in the air. The apocalyptic cult that runs this slice of rural Montana spreads its message through song, and everywhere you go you hear their hymns: through loudspeakers, echoing from churches, hummed by enemies. The hymns were written by Dan Romer, a producer, songwriter, and composer whose work you may have recently heard on Netflix drama Beasts of No Nation. Audio is rarely the focus of promotion for a game, so it’s telling that Ubisoft is making a point of explaining the philosophy behind this aspect of Far Cry 5, which goes beyond merely sounding good.

The idea of the songs is that, if you don’t listen too closely to the lyrics, you’ll find this gospel-style music beautiful, almost inspiring. But as you get to know the cult, their teachings, and their beliefs (chiefly that the world is about to end and anyone who doesn’t join them is doomed), the songs take on a sinister new meaning. “When the world falls into the flames,” I hear a soaring choir sing. “We will rise again!” The songs were recorded with a real choir in Nashville, which gives them a suitably epic sound.

The hymns also echo in the game’s score, which changes depending on which region of the world you happen to be causing trouble in. When you’re somewhere safe, an area where the cult has been pushed out, you’ll hear nostalgic country music. In Holland Valley the soundtrack has a glam rock feel; the kind of music you might hear blasting out of someone’s truck. Around Whitetail Mountains the music will be droning and industrial. And in Henbane River it’ll be influenced by ambient and post-rock.

It’s a bold mix of genres, and I wonder how Ubisoft Montreal will segue between so many different styles and still sound coherent. “That was one of the puzzle pieces we had to put together,” says audio director Tony Gronick. “I wanted each region to have its own distinctive flavour. I kinda look at it like the game telephone, where you tell a friend a story, then they tell another friend, and so on, and at the end the story is a little different, but still kinda there. And the music in the game is the same.”

“We start with the Father (the leader of the cult), and as it branches out there are different interpretations of that music by other family members. So when you get to a region, it might sound more industrial than Americana. But the music still matches, because you know the hymns. You know the songs, the melodies. So there is a cohesiveness there. You won’t hear the score and the hymns competing, but you will hear familiar melodies in the score. In the industrial region, it’ll take a bit more investigation to hear the connection.”

 As you play the game, you’ll find yourself singing the hymns and subconsciously absorbing the message of the cult. And to give the world a sense of scale and variety, the hymns will have different meanings to different sects of the group. “Each region has all ten hymns, but really it’s like thirty because there are three different interpretations of them,” says Gronick. “At first we thought, let’s make the music as annoying as possible so people would really wanna kill the cult. But when we started making it more beautiful, we began to understand how someone who truly believes could be inspired by this music. And I do find myself humming and singing these songs myself.”

And as well as the hymns and score, you’ll hear licensed songs on the radio when you drive one of the game’s vehicles. In Holland Valley the music is described as ‘your favourite driving mixtape’, while you’ll hear ‘50s doo-wop and pop while driving through Henbane River. “There’s a different feeling driving around shooting out of the window of your car to something like Earth Angel than heavy metal,” says Gronick. “It’s the same action, but it’s a different emotion.” The song list isn’t finalised yet, but in a presentation at Ubisoft Montreal I heard snippets of Bobby Day’s Rockin’ Robin and Barracuda by Heart, which should give you some idea of the songs you might encounter.

The family at the heart of Far Cry 5 might be a bunch of zealous, militant cultists, but boy do they have some good music. And I fully expect their hymns to bleed into my subconscious as I play the game. Hopefully that doesn’t result in me standing on street corners ranting about the end of the world, but then I am suggestive like that. We’ll have more on how Far Cry 5 actually plays in the next few months, and more access to the developers, but audio is a quietly important part of a big game like this, and it’s good to see Ubisoft giving it some depth. You might not notice it when you play, but your brain will.

If you look at Steam's most-played games, it's hard to tell Call of Duty is one of the biggest game series on the planet. Only Black Ops 3, released in 2015, hangs out near the bottom of Steam's top 100 games by concurrent player count, in the company of 2007 strategy game Medieval 2: Total War and 2010's Fallout: New Vegas. There's no sign of 2016's Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, and while every game in the series does still have at least some active players, none have had the staying power of PC-focused shooters like Team Fortress 2 or Arma. Sledgehammer Games and Raven Software see Call of Duty: WWII as a chance to change that.

"The World War II setting, and this game in particular I think, is very well suited for the PC community, in the way some of the recent releases haven't [been]," said Raven CTO Dwight Luetscher, when we talked about COD: WWII's imminent open beta.

"We're really trying to focus on the PC, and more importantly focus on the PC community, and deliver a title that really matches their expectations for what Call of Duty is and should be, and make sure that we respond to what they want as a player. I think this year there's a renewed energy around the PC, throughout this entire title, both at Sledgehammer and Raven. We really believe this is the year where the PC is going to excel. This is the year that we're going to give it our best shot to win the hearts and minds of the PC community."

Call of Duty: WWII's PC beta starts this Friday, and I visited Sledgehammer to try it out a bit early—you can read more about that here. After a couple hours of multiplayer, I spoke with Luetscher and Sledgehammer studio head Michael Condrey about how they hope to earn a larger PC audience, and what features we can expect in the PC version.

Luetscher walked me through COD:WWII's PC build, which includes a great range of graphics settings. There's an FOV slider (vertical FOV, which defaults at 65 and tops out close to 100, though he says they're open to feedback on that). The framerate tops out at 250 fps. The game supports 4K and ultrawide resolutions, which is a nice touch. The final build will also include a video memory bar to show how much VRAM your settings will gobble up.

One of the most noteworthy changes to the PC version, this time around, is actually something that's been removed: autoaim for players who plug in a controller. The developers have instead added the option for customizable analog sensitivity for each stick, and a separate pair of sensitivity sliders for each stick for when you're aiming down the sights. The PC beta is a chance to test how well controller players respond to life without sticky aim. Another nice touch: mouse sensitivity also has the option for a separate ADS setting.

"Just in general, I think we've made a lot of what I'd call control tunings for the PC version that are very specific to the PC version, so it'll be interesting to see how people respond to that," Luetscher said.

The PC beta follows a console beta from early in September, and Condrey talked about some of the feedback they've already acted on. The biggest changes center on the map Aachen, set in the bombed-out German city.

"Aachen was one where we were really trying to capture the destructive nature of this urban warfare in World War II," Condrey said. "That map was really meant to encourage a more open set of conflicts, a little more dangerous style, maybe it was a little more inspired by some of the early franchise maps. And while it was particularly effective at that, from the console beta, the community felt like it was too porous. It was hard to really understand your threat lanes, and they were frustrated by feeling unable to master the map that made it feel strategic.

"And it was good feedback. Our design intent was right, but the execution needed some work. It didn't take much, but we boarded off a few windows, we added some more cover placements to reduce the amount of cross-lane firing, there were a couple chunks of the map where we had to rethink the approach to these lanes, so you couldn't get cheap kills with these glitchy moments. And now it's in the PC beta, and it's a great opportunity to see how fans react."

There have been balance tweaks galore since the console beta: UAVs are now harder to shoot down with rifles, the molotov killstreak gives you fewer flaming death bottles to throw, weapon damage numbers have shifted, the number of points it takes to activate some killstreaks has changed. Even features that have been standard to Call of Duty for a decade at this point still need to be reexamined every year.

"One of the ones in the PC, which may sound minor, but the hit marker sound effect, which is a really important cue for players on whether you made a hit on someone, wasn't working," Condrey said. "We thought it sounded amazing, going into the beta. The community did not, so we completely reworked that system, and now it's in the PC beta. Some of those might sound like little nuances, but on the holistic sort of offering, there's a lot that has changed."

"It's so many details, and you've got to get them all right," Luetscher said with a laugh.

"So many details," Condrey added. "And lessons you learn, and then things that change. Like early on in the game, we were like, 'why are the grenades so damn strong?' Nothing had changed in the grenade values. Oh yeah, because you can't boost away from them. Because you don't have an evasion mechanic anymore. Just simply removing thrust, it seems obvious now, but at the time, we were like, what happened? So you start unwinding the check-ins, and figure it out…

"So yeah, everyone of these games gets more ambitious, and the settings changed, and lessons you learn and unlearn. It keeps us on our toes for sure."

Call of Duty: WWII is out on November 3rd, and the PC beta is going on now. You can grab it on Steam.

Call of Duty multiplayer exists as two distinct experiences, in my mind. The new: from Modern Warfare onward COD has been the essence of slick, with instant respawns, rewards for every kill I get, matches that are more about moment-to-moment action than larger narratives. And the old: Call of Duty 2 battles dominated by sneaking and bolt-action rifles, the tension of stalking a map with only one life in Search & Destroy. This week I played about two hours of Call of Duty: WWII, which launches its open PC beta today, and mostly felt the familiar pacing and presentation of modern Call of Duty.

But one mode stood out: War, an attack-and-defense contest that lines up a series of small objectives in a map that unfolds as the offense accomplishes each goal. On the War map available in the beta, this culminates with the PC gaming community's favorite activity of the past few years: ignoring the damn payload.

The War match I played sets the Allies on offense, first trying to capture a control point in an Axis-controlled villa, then on to construct a bridge across a gully, plant a bomb at a supply depot, and escort a tank through hazardous streets to the Germans' anti-aircraft guns. It's like a greatest hits compilation of shooter modes, and nothing is particularly complex—you hold a button to construct the bridge, sit on a spot to capture a point—but stringing them together adds a satisfying variety to Call of Duty's typically straightforward multiplayer matches. It's essentially a recreation of Unreal Tournament's Assault mode, but there's no mistaking the Overwatch influence at work here. Thanks to Blizzard, objective game modes are back in vogue.

Every Overwatch player is used to objective modes now—primarily capturing control points and escorting the payload, an agonizingly slow vehicle, along a fixed path. And yet somehow our universal familiarity with escorting the payload hasn't exactly translated to universal acknowledgement that everyone needs to push the payload. The final stage of Call of Duty: WWII's War mode replaces the payload with a tank, but mechanically it's identical: if no one on the offensive team stands near the tank, it starts retreating backwards, eroding progress and buying the defense precious seconds for teammates to respawn.

It may sound like Call of Duty has just jumped on board a popular trend, but I think it's a fascinating inclusion. Call of Duty multiplayer lends itself to being a kill-focused, lone wolf affair. Of course there are pro players who make callouts and coordinate just as tightly as Dota or Overwatch players, but for the masses, that's not the Call of Duty experience. And for the most part, that kind of teamwork isn't as vital, because Call of Duty doesn't have tank classes that need to lead the team into combat, or healers who need to offer support at the exact right moment. Everyone has a weapon that can dish out death in the space of a second. If your hand is faster and your aim is better, you're probably going to win.

Unless you need to escort the payload. Good aim won't push the tank to the finish line: that takes teamwork. CoD:WWII also encourages more team thinking with Divisions, its class system replacement for the more freeform "Pick 10" system of the last several Call of Dutys. Infantry focuses on rifles, Airborne on submachine guns, Mountain on snipers, and so on. Without a balanced team, some objectives in War mode are going to be especially hard to pull off.

At one point on defense, I held down the bridge and racked up at least a dozen kills with a window-mounted machine gun nest, mowing down Allied soldiers before they had a chance to throw down smoke grenades. They kept rushing in with infantry, and it finally took a patient sniper to pick me off.

Moments like that, and the payload, give War mode the chance to swing momentum backwards and forwards that's missing from most of its matches. It's not about reaching a set point value or number of kills, and some of Call of Duty's now-famous features have been stripped back. Killstreaks, for example, are gone in War mode, replaced by much less frequent air supply drops. 

CoD:WWII played flawlessly on PC in my time with it, on a GTX 1080 Ti running at a locked 4K 60 fps. I spoke with developers at Sledgehammer and Raven about how they're making a bigger push this year to embrace the PC community, and loads of graphics settings in a quality PC build are part of that equation. I don't know that War mode will be a powerful selling point on its own, because it's nothing new in the history of shooters. But it is something new for Call of Duty, and given how much we love to yell about the payload, that might be enough to make a Call of Duty that actually sticks on PC. 

Despite restructuring its schedule, PUBG has received three updates in the last two weeks—one fog-related, one grenade-related, and now one bug and UI-related. The latter is the battle royale 'em up's 27th Weekly Update, and it's now live. 

As outlined in this Steam Community post, the latest patch introduces enhanced breathing animations in Spectator mode, as well as a new feature that lets players adjust the zoom-in and zoom-out speed on the World Map. 

Bug fix-wise, the Weekly Update 27 targets a graphics bug that occurred when players left the game while still in the starting airplane, and another which stopped players from seeing the full alias of their teammates. 

Syncronisation between player aim and spectator aim has been tweaked, and a bug that prevented teammates' marker direction in Free Look mode has been quashed. Shadows will no longer vanish mid-game, too. 

And on another note entirely, PUBG developer Bluehole is now said to be worth over four billion US dollars. According to this Bloomberg article (via Shack News), Bluehole Inc. is said to be valued at around $4.6—a figure reflected by the runaway mega hit's ever-increasing success.

The slap has come to define Absolver. Technically called the Calbot, it's completely out of place in this game of fluid martial arts beatdowns and dances. Tyler called it "the most useless move in the game: a standing slap that's hard to land and does 15 damage (players have over a thousand HP). The first time I was slapped I was so thrown off I practically surrendered the fight."

Players love the slap precisely because it's out of place. Absolver is a game of masked mystic warriors in pursuit of excellence, so to see them resort to silent-movie slapstick is hilarious.   

But it almost wasn't in there. The slap was thrown in as a gag during development, and fortunately the developers thought it was as funny as players do. "Initially it was just a joke from one of our animators," Sloclap's creative lead Pierre de Margerie explains, "which ended up staying in the game as an Easter egg! It did create some pretty funny situations." 

Absolver's players have also embraced something else: codes of honor. In an online game without chat, where the only way to communicate is with a wheel of emotes, people are helping each other. Those who've finished its PvE mode and are marked by the cloaks they've earned seem particularly motivated to lend a hand. With them I've fought the NPC bosses called Marked Ones, and survived against overwhelming odds.

Players are also responding to Absolver's setting, with videos and Reddit posts where they try to explain its backstory (Pierre shoots down one of their theories, confirming that the mountain you teleport to Adal from is in the same dimension, and not in the past or future). He's been pleased to be sent fanfic written by a player too, though he does mention it was "only three paragraphs long," so maybe get on that, Absolver fans.

PC Gamer: I have to admit, I almost bounced right off Absolver. I restarted and managed to get into it this time, I started again as a Windfall character.

Pierre De Margerie: OK, good!

But the first time I played the absorbing class and I was terrible. But I did go back and I've managed to get better and started really enjoying it.

Nice! When did you pick it up again?

Last weekend. 

Cool. We did make a couple of changes, notably to how NPCs spawn and are spread in the different environments. We did see that when we released the game people got ganked by NPCs a bit too much and it made the experience pretty hard and not as fun as it can be, because although the game works well when you're one-versus-two—obviously you're locked on an opponent, the core is one-v-one—but it works well when you're one-versus-two. When you're one-versus-three and everybody beats you up in a second, well, you have ways of dealing with that but especially if you're a beginner it can be frustrating, because you get your ass kicked and feel like you can't do anything about it. 

The balance is important though, you want to have those moments when you're outnumbered and need somebody's help because that encourages people to work together. I've had a lot of fun with people leading me to Marked Ones, to where cairns are, helping me fight three or four people at once. 

Awesome. That's exactly what we're aiming for, which is that the encounters that you make in the world generate stories. It's true that if you weren't under pressure and challenged by the enemies you meet it would be less interesting to fight enemies. Myself I do that often, just stand there and watch, especially when I see it's a new player fighting NPCs, seeing if he or she handles themselves. And if I see that they're in difficulty then I jump in and come to the rescue. 

It's always great to see someone with the cloak. It's a great visual touch, if they jump in to help you out you know, OK, I'm going to follow this person. They've got the cloak: they know what they're doing. 

More things like that coming down the line! But the cloak, we wanted to have one strong visual indicator that if you had managed to reach the top of the Tower of Adal and become an Absolver then you could immediately show it to others. 

The code of honor that's emerging, how much did you plan for that and how much has just been a bonus? Someone will feel bad about the fact they won by pushing someone off a ledge and then they jump off in the next round as a way of saying 'Sorry!' Is that kind of thing what you were hoping would happen? 

We saw the beginnings of this during the beta. People were really respectful of each other, but we thought that it was probably because it was the beta. It was fans of the game and of the idea who had contacted us spontaneously and were in a way wanting to roleplay the Absolver experience. We thought the minute we release the game it's gonna be full of trolls and people beating you up all the time, etcetera.

Turns out that's not really the case. Especially in the beginning you had players who just beat everybody up that they encountered, but progressively it became more co-operative in the world and in combat trials. For instance, 90 percent of the games I do we bow to each other before we actually start fighting. That's something that happens spontaneously and I'm actually really happy about that because I don't see any other game out there where you've got taunts—you can taunt your opponent like 'come over here' or 'no, no, no' or that list of emotes—but what people use is the 'bow' emote. I really like that players have actually taken ownership of this martial arts, respectful, almost philosophical approach. 

The only emotes I ever need are the bow, the thumbs up, and the apology. For when I screw up. 

We've got more emotes coming also, down the line! But these few ones work well for sure.

What language do the characters in Absolver speak? Is it one of your own invention?

Characters speak Adalian, which remained the main language in most provinces, even after they became independant again after the fall of the Adal Empire: for example, both the Guides and Cargal and Kilnor, who come from the Tear, both speak Adalian.     

What's next for Absolver?

We're an an indie team, a small team, so we can't tackle everything at the same time. We need to focus on the priorites. We wanted from the beginning with Absolver, where the core gameplay is PvP melee combat, to make a game that was also about learning, teaching, meeting other players and creating relationships with them. We've sold around 250,000 copies at this stage—players like this idea. We'll start focusing on the core PvP so the upcoming updates focus on that.

We will do more PvE later but in the upcoming weeks and months there will be more one-v-one and three-v-three game modes, spectator mode is planned, and in an update soon—in a few weeks—we plan on releasing a prestige system which will give special rewards and incentives, high-level rewards to players who play combat trials and other things over and over. Exclusive gear, badges, etcetera. 

Also inventory salvage, because at the moment you accumulate a lot of elbow pads. That's coming.

I have a lot of pants.

You'll be able to salvage something out of them!

Good! Thanks for your time, Pierre. 

Bethesda has announced it will release a Survival Mode for Skyrim Creation Club, and while it hasn't released just yet, you can opt into the Steam beta right now. It's an appealing mod if you're keen on punishment: it adds hunger, fatigue and weather-oriented survival systems, and you can't fast travel either.

But it looks like the mod itself won't be free. According to the announcement, "both PC and console players will get Survival Mode free for one week once it launches on their preferred platform." While no price is specified, it does imply that you won't be able to subject yourself to this punishing mod unless you fork out.

Still, assuming you don't mind paying what will probably end up being a small fee (and assuming you can overlook the fact that similar community-developed mods are probably available free of charge), it looks pretty good. The map is split into climate zones, all of which will require different levels of preparation to tackle. You won't be jumping into rivers willy nilly in Survival mode, because if the water's too cold it can kill you.

Meanwhile, health won't regenerate, and levelling up will require sleeping in a bed (so no mid-game health replenishments when you hit that next milestone). Carry weight has been "significantly reduced" which, to be honest, sounds like torture to me. But some people love to survive.

There's a whole lot of detail involved: head over here to read about every way Survival mode will make your playthrough a living hell. Creation Club will roll out imminently for Skyrim.

2K Games announced a couple of days ago that the upcoming table-smashing sim WWE 2K18 will be released for the PC on the same day that it comes out for consoles—a first for the series. It also made mention of the Deluxe Edition of the game, which includes a few bonus rasslers—RVD, the Beast, and a couple of alt-Cenas—and the season pass, details of which weren't available but would be announced "soon." Which, as it turns out, means "today." 

The pass will include the Enduring Icons Pack, with the Hardy Boyz, Beth Phoenix, and The Rock 'n' Roll Express; the New Moves Pack, which adds new in-game moves including the Tie Breaker, the Crash Landing, the Swinging Sleeper Slam, and the Pumphandle Death Valley Driver (here's a video, in case you don't believe that's an Actual Thing); the NXT Generation Pack, with Aleister Black, Drew McIntyre, Elias, Lars Sullivan, and Ruby Riot; a MyPlayer Kick Start, which will provide "access to unlock and boost MyPlayer ratings and attributes made available at launch as part of the game’s MyCareer mode"; and an Accelerator that provides immediate access to all unlockable content (excluding DLC) at launch.   

The season pass will go for $30. and the contents will also be available for purchase separately: 

• Enduring Icons: $10
• New Moves: $4
• NXT Generation: $10
• MyPlayer Kick Start: $10
• Accelerator: $5

WWE 2K18 comes out on October 17. And now, here's a clip of the Rock 'n' Roll Express arriving at Matt Hardy's house for Apocalypto. Because rasslin.

Tabletop roleplaying is one of my favourite things that I almost never get to do. I struggle to even find the time to play through a single-player RPG outside of work, so arranging an evening of dice rolling and goblin slaying with equally busy people can be a bit of a nightmare. Divinity: Original Sin 2, then, is a blessing. With its co-op and Game Master modes, it’s not just a convenient alternative to a tabletop RPG, it’s occasionally an improvement. 

Co-op is straightforward, on the surface. You can play the entirety of the campaign with up to three other people and the rules are exactly the same as they are in single-player. But that means there are hardly any rules at all. Chaos and player agency reigns, with each individual choosing how to engage with the game. As I said in my review, Divinity: Original Sin 2 is the type of Game Master that lets you attempt almost anything. 

That’s why one player might be buying new skill books, while the rest of their party are either following leads or getting into fights. The game sets up all these crises, events and quests, but it’s up to you how you you approach them, if you don’t ignore them entirely. You don’t need to follow everyone else. And you might even end up competing, since you’re all heading towards the same objective.

It’s when you’re reacting to what your fellow adventurers have done where co-op really feels like a tabletop romp, though. When I first arrived in the initial hub, Fort Joy, my co-op pal and I became embroiled in a confrontation between some thugs and their latest victim. My partner in adventuring decided to side with the thugs, and being right next to him, I ended up being dragged into a fight where I was clearly on the wrong side. Morally speaking. So I started attacking the thugs. And even my partner. 

Things didn’t end up going my way, lamentably, but nothing stopped me from trying to save the situation. Later, I got my revenge by trapping us in a fight with a pack of bloodthirsty, teleporting crocodiles. We both died. Twice. But I still felt really good about my decision.

Ultimately, the thing that holds co-op together and makes it a great tabletop facsimile is Larian’s design philosophy. Larian made the game, but it’s the players who are in charge. If you think you can do something, you probably can, and with four players all trying to see how far they can push things, the game becomes a beautiful mess. 

Create a campaign

It’s the Game Master mode, of course, that is the most obvious nod to tabletop roleplaying. Contained within it are myriad tools, from character creators to customisable maps, that allow you to craft your very own campaigns, designed to be run by a GM. These campaigns are made up of small areas—houses, marketplaces, dungeons—connected by a map and custom vignettes that can be filled with story beats and choices for players, complete with assets and art that’s been imported, drawn from Original Sin 2, or created using the accompanying mod tools.

One of the big appeals of the mode is that you don’t need any programming skills or the ability to create scripts. If you can come up with or simply run a tabletop campaign, then you’ve probably got everything you need already: imagination and creativity. The tools that let you design areas, set up encounters and create quests are largely intuitive. Larian has provided some area templates that you can customise if making your own seems too daunting, and there’s a lot you can do with them before you even start running a game.

Once you do start the game, more changes can be introduced on the fly. This might be obvious things like possessing an NPC or activating a battle, but there are more than a few subtle ways to bring an area to life. The atmosphere options are especially handy, letting you change the weather, music and sound effects to match the tone you want to convey. And since players will inevitably do things you’d never considered, it’s helpful to have such a robust toolkit to react with.   

Original Sin 2’s combat system is one of the best in the genre, but it’s elaborate and, in my experience, very hard to balance when you’re making your own encounters. That’s not a problem in a game with a GM. If the whole map is covered in fire and it’s stopped being fun for the players, just add some rain to help them out. Alternatively, you could always add a narrative twist—maybe one of the enemies is a turncoat, perhaps another hero hears the sound of battle and jumps in to help. The mode embraces the idea that GMs aren’t adversaries; they’re there to spin an adventure.  

This seems like a great place to start for players who are entirely new to tabletop games. It can be easy to forget that, even though games like D&D have been simplified over the years, there’s still a bit of a knowledge barrier. But in Original Sin 2, there are no complicated rules to remember and no need to refer to a manual. Nothing gets in the way of playing the game, and what’s left are the best parts.

Nvidia has teamed up with Warner Bros. to include a Steam copy of Middle-earth: Shadow of War with the purchase of certain GeForce GTX 1080 and GeForce GTX 1080 Ti graphics cards. The offer also applies to some prebuilt systems and laptops.

Shadow of War is set to release in a couple of weeks on October 10, 2017. The bundle promotion runs a little longer, going through October 16. If you're interested in snagging a free copy, be sure to check out Nvidia's list of participating retailers—go here and then click on your region. You'll find a list of several recognize names, such as Newegg and Micro Center in the US, and Scan and Overclockers in the UK.

To run Shadow of War with the details settings on high, Nvidia recommends a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti for 4K (3840x2160) displays, a GeForce GTX 1070 for 1440p (2560x1440) displays, and a GeForce GTX 1060 6GB for 1080p (1920x1080) displays.

If you want to crank the settings to ultra, Nvidia recommends a pair of GeForce GTX 1080 Ti cards in SLI at 4K, a GeForce GTX 1080 at 1440p, and a GeForce GTX 1070 at 1080p.

"Our recommendations are based on extensive testing with Founders Edition graphics cards in Shadow of War’s built-in benchmarking tool, which accurately mirrors performance in the most demanding moments of the game. This ensures that our recommended GeForce GTX graphics cards deliver a fantastic experience from start to finish," Nvidia says.

Shadow of War was originally planned for an August release, but was pushed back to October 10 in order to "expand gameplay in every dimension."