The organisers of the Game Developers Conference have released a report on the results of their latest “state of the industry” survey. Their usual annual survey happened in March, but this extra one was solely about the impact of the ongoing pandemic.

The results are on the face of it rather grim, with some job losses and game delays and lots of struggling people. But they’re not half as bad as you might think, and some are even getting on relatively well as they adapt. Let’s have a look.

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I am big into weird stuff. My tastes lean towards being surprised over being moved, and my favourite games and films and books reflect that. Give me wild fantastical sci-fi first, interesting character arcs second.

So far Death Stranding has given me a very quiet yet very grumpy man while frontloading some of the most delightful nonsense I’ve seen in videogames. I am here for it. I will take all the canister babies Hideo Kojima and his team can throw at me.

Except it might also be a bit much.

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Microsoft Flight Simulator

is going to be so darn large that you’ll be able to fly all over the world and land on a gagillion airstrips but the world is not enough, eh Mr. Bond? That giant simulation won’t stop creators from adding to and tweaking the game. Asobo Studio say they know how important unofficial add-ons are for Flight Sim, so they’re adding an in-game marketplace that will allow approved developers to sell their work to players.

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Continuing to buy studios like they’re releasing DLC, Paradox Interactive today announced they’ve acquired Iceflake Studios, the Finnish studio who are making post-apocalyptic city-builder Surviving The Aftermath. They’re becoming Paradox’s ninth studio. Paradox talk vaguely about Iceflake helping make more games in their “core genres” so I guess they’ll be continuing with strat-o-build-a-sim-y-RPG things.

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SSD prices have remained pretty much static this week, but there are still some good SSD deals to be had here and there, with this week’s top SSD deals happening on the WD Black SN750 and the Samsung 970 Evo. So, to help you find the best SSD prices for as many of our [cms-block] recommendations, I’ve rounded up all the best SSD deals I can find below. You’ll find SSD deals covering a wide range of size capacities and form factors, from cheap 2.5in SSDs that can be had for as little as £35 to super fast NVMe SSD deals. Whether you’re looking for the best SATA SSD deals or the biggest savings on today’s super fast NVMe SSDs and portable SSDs, here are the cheapest SSD deals of the week.

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Are you looking forward to the Assassin’s Creed Valhalla soundtrack just as much as the actual game? If so, then you should check out our latest music quiz, which focuses on all things Assassin’s Creed.

Because the masses have been eating up online quizzes during lockdown, RPS’ video wing has been testing the waters to see if you, the video game playing public, also enjoy them. And it turns out you do. And that’s lovely.

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A man wakes up in a hotel room with no idea who he is, an unconscious woman bound in the bathtub, and the TV saying he’s wanted as a serial killer. That’s the setup for Death Come True, a new interactive movie written by Kazutaka Kodaka, the writer and co-creator of visual novel horror series Danganronpa. He does like his weird spooky murdermysteries. Following its debut on Switch and pocket phones last month, Death Come True launched on PC today.

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Buying a new graphics card can be an expensive proposition for would-be PC upgraders, so to help you get the best price on today’s [cms-block]s, we’ve rounded up all the cheapest graphics card deals you can buy right now. And to help sweeten the deal, Nvidia have started a new free game bundle on any RTX card purchase, getting you a copy of Death Stranding if you buy one before the end of July, while AMD are bundling in Godfall and World Of Warcraft’s Shadowlands expansion with all RX 5000 GPUs.

Graphics card deal prices haven’t moved a huge amount this week, but generally they’re heading in the right direction (that is, downwards), so to help you keep track of what’s around going on right now, we’ve put together this list of all the best graphics card prices so you can see exactly how they compare against one another. Regardless of whether you’re upgrading your PC or building a new PC from scratch, here are the cheapest graphics card deals on offer this week.

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The 25 pictures in a cluster foxer are arranged in 5 discretely/discreetly themed clusters. Pictures in a particular cluster must be cardinally contiguous to be valid. For example, a1, b1, c1, d1, d2 is a possible cluster, unlike a2, b2, c2, d2, e3. To fully defox today’s enlargeable puzzle identify the themes and constituent images of all five clusters. (more…)

Watching the audience during the Flare Path Film Club showing of Greyhound was almost as interesting as watching the movie. The collective nod of approval when the bubble-spewing Bold canister made its appearance… the widespread chin-scratching when the wolfpack taunted the convoy over the radio… the outbreak of nose-wrinkling when the director tried to suggest that two escorts versus a crippled/surfaced U-boat was a nailbiting contest… all highly revealing. (more…)