It’s Friday, so let’s take a look back at the week. We’ve taken a break from some of the year’s biggest releases to write about video games for you, so consider yourself loved.
Happy reading, and have a great weekend!
Pieces of flair and opinion
The DeanBeat: In VR industry, a thousand startups will bloom. Most won’t make it
Watch us play Star Wars: Battlefront
Watch us play StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void
My mom reviews Call of Duty: Black Ops III
Pornhub’s traffic dipped significantly the day Fallout 4 came out
Unity has democratized game development
How Dead Secret became a virtual reality horror game]
How Friday the 13th: The Game exploded from Gun Media’s fun horror ideas
Arnold Schwarzenegger stars in Machine Zone’s modern warfare game Mobile Strike (updated)
Fallout 4: a tour of the buggy, janky mess — and why I don’t want Bethesda to ‘fix’ it
Steam Link is a good idea, but I’m not buying into streaming PC games yet
Valve’s Steam Controller is a weird mutant with potential
Wrapping up a 17-year narrative, StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void finally goes live
BlizzCon 2015 in pictures: Warcraft film cast, cool cosplay, and more
Tales of Zestiria is one Japanese role-playing game trope after another
AR VR there yet? The experts weigh in on the growth of augmented and virtual reality
Above: Epic CEO Tim Sweeney at VRX.
Image Credit: Dean Takahashi
News
StarCraft II: Blizzard explains why Legacy of the Void isn’t the end of the series
Today’s tiny World of Warcraft news: Gnome hunters
Unity has democratized game development
Epic’s Tim Sweeney believes virtual reality will evolve more like console games than mobile
Bethesda says it shipped $750M and 12M copies for Fallout 4’s launch
Gambling on virtual reality: the online casinos of the future
New Xbox One backward compatibility tutorial takes a cheeky swipe at Sony
October 2015 NPD: Halo 5 leads gaming to $805M month
Xbox One outsold PlayStation 4 in October thanks to Halo
Nintendo Direct trailer roundup: Zelda HD, Cloud in Smash, and more
Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam gets January release date
Cloud from Final Fantasy VII joins Super Smash Bros. as DLC
Pokémon Red, Blue, and Yellow are coming to 3DS with wireless trading
Fire Emblem Fates gets February 19 release date and $80 special edition
Dragon Quest VII and Dragon Quest VIII are coming Stateside to the 3DS in 2016
Star Fox Zero gets new April 22 release date
Pokémon Picross is real and is probably the game of the year
Super Mario Maker is making it easier to find levels
Zelda Wii U is still coming in 2016 — for real
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess gets the HD treatment for Wii U
Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft — The League of Explorers guide: How to beat Temple of Orsis
Gameforge hits North America with its Hearthstone competitor, Hex: Shards of Fate
Hearthstone’s League of Explorers adventure is now live
Microsoft’s HoloLens gets its first augmented-reality rival: Asus
How Friday the 13th: The Game exploded from Gun Media’s fun horror ideas
Eve: Valkyrie creator CCP Games raises $30M for virtual reality games
Street Fighter characters are invading DeNA’s Blood Brothers 2 strategy game
Huuuge Games raises $4M from Korean firm to make casino games more social
Hands-on with the 10-vs.-10 Total War: Arena multiplayer brawl
How to make easy money in Fallout 4 with this vendor glitch
Watch epic performances of popular video game music by a Finnish orchestra that kicked off Slush
How to get the New Xbox One Experience tonight
Scopely partners with mobile startup Redemption to make ‘top-grossing games’
Xbox Live is down intermittently and preventing Fallout 4 players from uploading screenshots (updated)
Last episode of Telltale’s Game of Thrones arrives on November 17
Study finds American families love playing games together on consoles
‘Star Wars’ director’s Bad Robot is making a game with Infinity Blade studio Chair
Disney Infinity 3.0 launches on Apple TV
Eyefluence raises $14M for eye-popping eye-tracking technology for
Brain game maker Lumos Labs gets a different brain in new CEO Steve Berkowitz
Call of Duty: Black Ops III sets record with $550M sales in three days
Game engine startup MaxPlay scores its first customer: Finger Food Studios
Faster hard drives help with Fallout 4’s stuttering Xbox One performance
Why game developers need smaller teams and more diverse projects
Improbable’s new software brings huge games and VR simulations to life via the cloud
Iceland’s Sólfar Studios gets $2.1M for VR games from Asian and Nordic investors
Hearthstone’s League of Explorers add-on is its most risky adventure yet
Rodea the Sky Soldier reaches lofty heights but can’t soar over its pitfalls
Rise of the Tomb Raider enables your Twitch viewers to control part of Lara Croft’s adventure
Overwatch impressions, Part 3: the three new BlizzCon heroes
How an injury drove one artist to make a tower defense-meets-Pokémon game — and a woman-led studioDigi-Capital unveils its first global best-in-class AR/VR benchmarks
The new $100 Oculus-powered Samsung Gear VR opens for preorders in the U.S. today
Maingear’s Drift PC brings 4K gaming and the SteamOS to the living room
The Call of Duty: Black Ops III cover star is actually a Phoenix reserve police officer
How Logitech’s betting on bold design to ditch its ‘mice and keyboards’ legacy
Steam Controller left me grumpy in 2014, but now I’m open to these alien-feeling controls
Steam Link is a good idea, but I’m not buying into streaming PC games yet
Valve’s Steam Controller is a weird mutant with potential
Wrapping up a 17-year narrative, StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void finally goes live
Twitch finally adds two-factor authentication to boost livestreaming platform’s security
Playfield.io launches to stop the ‘indiepocalypse’
World of Warcraft: Legion’s Demon Hunter class — the complete starting experience
BlizzCon 2015 in pictures: Warcraft film cast, cool cosplay, and more
Tales of Zestiria is one Japanese role-playing game trope after another
AR VR there yet? The experts weigh in on the growth of augmented and virtual reality
100,000 students and counting: Google brings VR kits to schools in 15 more cities
Twitch fans watch 545.9M minutes of famous painter Bob Ross making art
Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang says that VR’s 250 startups remind him of the dawn of graphics chips
Call of Duty: Black Ops III is the best shooter game of 2015
From VentureBeat
Customers don’t just get irritated when you screw up cross-channel personalization. They jump ship. Find out how to save your bacon on this free research-based webinar with Insight’s Andrew Jones.
Mobile and social
Unity has democratized game development
Epic’s Tim Sweeney believes virtual reality will evolve more like console games than mobile
Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft — The League of Explorers guide: How to beat Temple of Orsis
Gameforge hits North America with its Hearthstone competitor, Hex: Shards of Fate
Hearthstone’s League of Explorers adventure is now live
Huuuge Games raises $4M from Korean firm to make casino games more social
Scopely partners with mobile startup Redemption to make ‘top-grossing games’
Last episode of Telltale’s Game of Thrones arrives on November 17
Study finds American families love playing games together on consoles
‘Star Wars’ director’s Bad Robot is making a game with Infinity Blade studio Chair
Eyefluence raises $14M for eye-popping eye-tracking technology
Brain game maker Lumos Labs gets a different brain in new CEO Steve Berkowitz
Game engine startup MaxPlay scores its first customer: Finger Food Studios
Why game developers need smaller teams and more diverse projects
Improbable’s new software brings huge games and VR simulations to life via the cloud
Iceland’s Sólfar Studios gets $2.1M for VR games from Asian and Nordic investors
Hearthstone’s League of Explorers add-on is its most risky adventure yet
Playfield.io launches to stop the ‘indiepocalypse’
AR VR there yet? The experts weigh in on the growth of augmented and virtual reality
100,000 students and counting: Google brings VR kits to schools in 15 more cities
Above: HoloLens is leading a future of AR devices.
Previews and interviews
Epic’s Tim Sweeney believes virtual reality will evolve more like console games than mobile
How Friday the 13th: The Game exploded from Gun Media’s fun horror ideas
Eve: Valkyrie creator CCP Games raises $30M for virtual reality games
Huuuge Games raises $4M from Korean firm to make casino games more social
Scopely partners with mobile startup Redemption to make ‘top-grossing games’
Why game developers need smaller teams and more diverse projects
How Logitech’s betting on bold design to ditch its ‘mice and keyboards’ legacy
Playfield.io launches to stop the ‘indiepocalypse’
AR VR there yet? The experts weigh in on the growth of augmented and virtual reality
Reviews and impressions
Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft — The League of Explorers guide: How to beat Temple of Orsis
Overwatch impressions, Part 3: the three new BlizzCon heroes
Steam Controller left me grumpy in 2014, but now I’m open to these alien-feeling controls
Steam Link is a good idea, but I’m not buying into streaming PC games yet
Valve’s Steam Controller is a weird mutant with potential
Wrapping up a 17-year narrative, StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void finally goes live
World of Warcraft: Legion’s Demon Hunter class — the complete starting experience
Call of Duty: Black Ops III is the best shooter game of 2015