Earlier this year, Microsoft laid off a lot of people and cancelled projects at various subsidiary game studios, as part of what company CEO Satya Nadella has whimsically called the "enigma of success". Elder Scrolls Online developers ZeniMax Online Studios were among those making cuts - they buried an unannounced project codenamed Blackbird, which was reportedly a nimble MMO shooter of some kind. In the process, studio head Matt Firor also left the company. Unionised staff members have described the reductions as "inhumane", demoralising and counterproductive, with one worker commenting that "a lot of practical knowledge just disappeared overnight".

Now, studio game director Rich Lambert and game director Nick Giacomini have been chatting a little about where ZeniMax Online Studios is going next. They still have plenty of ideas for new game projects, apparently, but for the moment, the focus appears to be on streamlining the update process for ESO.

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Many moons ago, I missed my chance to join a weekly Twilight Imperium play session. Missed my chance, or dodged a bullet? Twilight Imperium is an infamously complicated and backstabby boardgame, the kind of baroque strategy space opera that can swallow up entire days and expose any number of terrible character flaws along the way.

Thank goodness there's now a PC version in the works for Steam, which will at least remove the need to set up the pieces and remember what they do. Here's a trailer.

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It's been long enough since I last played an Ace Combat game that I can remember only two things about Ace Combat. 1) This Ace Combat 7 cutscene featuring what appears to be a wavy JPEG of a dog, which the Twitterati all thought was an exasperated animator's joke, but which I understand is actually a homage to a real staff member's dog who died before the game's release. And 2) you can 'powerslide' by wilfully initiating a stall, which I think might actually be a move from Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X.

Delivery Must Complete sort of builds a whole subgenre around the thrill of powersliding planes. How does it do this? The clue is that "DMC" is also an abbreviation of "Devil May Cry". Here's a trailer. I promise you there will be no further confusing/upsetting references to dogs.

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