Push to Talk is a weekly newsletter about the business of making and marketing video games, written by games industry veteran and marketing director Ryan Rigney. Subscribe here for eclectic and spicy interviews and essays in your inbox every Friday.Of the hundreds of indie games released on Steam each week,...
Common Side Effects’ creators talked to a lot of people to get their conspiracy just right
The thrust of Common Side Effects, Adult Swim’s new animated show, is a big one: What if you found a mushroom that would cure anything — any ailment, any illness, any wound? Marshall (Dave King) has done exactly that, and he has found that the result is a lot of...
Stranger Things: The First Shadow’s creators explain how their Broadway show ‘complicates’ season 5
Stranger Things is everywhere, now more than ever as the series heads into its fifth and final season. After the show blew up on Netflix, you could find Stranger Things-branded everything: $64 waffle necklaces, Demogorgon tiki mugs, Funko Pops, and more. You could live like it was 1985 again with...
Karlach’s actor is just as obsessed with her as you are
Samantha Béart is obviously not a seven-foot-tall Barbarian in real life, but the actor says they do share some personality traits with one. Béart is perhaps best known for their role as Karlach in Baldur’s Gate 3 — the flammable, lovable Tiefling who became one of the most-romanced characters in...
A Disney-style live-action Wallace & Gromit? Creator says ‘NOOOOOO’
The cheese-loving stop-motion comedy duo Wallace and Gromit have been stumbling into invention-fueled hijinks since 1989’s Oscar-nominated short A Grand Day Out. This January, the characters return in A Vengeance Most Fowl, a feature-length adventure that’s basically a full-blown action movie. At this point, there’s seemingly nothing original creator Nick...
Inside the explosive ‘brainrot’ game that’s got millions of kids crashing out
Right now, the number one game on Roblox is called Steal a Brainrot. It’s exactly what it sounds like. The entire premise of the game is to rob the other players. Despite that being the point of the game, though, children are having a hard time dealing with the repercussions...
Companion star Sophie Thatcher accidentally teased its first twist in its first scene
For Companion hero Iris (Heretic’s Sophie Thatcher), the movie begins as a fairy-tale romance by way of rolling fruit: She and Josh (Jack Quaid) lock eyes in a grocery store produce aisle. He tries to be smooth, but fumbles and knocks over an entire display of oranges. They laugh together,...
Absolute Martian Manhunter’s mind-bending finale stunt only works in physical copies
All of DC Comics’ Absolute titles have been swinging for the fences. The line, featuring classic characters reinvented for a darker universe than the main DC timeline, has been packed with stellar work. This past Wednesday, though, the final pages (or… page?) of Absolute Martian Manhunter #1 took things to...
Could the next Among Us be this co-op game about an Irish urban legend?
The burgeoning “friendslop” genre isn’t prepared for its scariest — and most personal — entry yet. Eyes of Hellfire is an upcoming co-op horror game in which 3-5 players must collectively survive in a house of horrors while working to deduce who they can and cannot trust, and the developers...
Skeleton Crew required ‘an army’ to get this one Star Wars-y touch right
Skeleton Crew is about a lot of things: A band of kids who discover a buried starship and get lost in space when they flukily hit hyperspace. It’s a view of the post-Empire, pre-sequel-trilogy Star Wars universe, far flung from the Skywalker Saga. But in its first episode it is,...