Dan Conlin

1 month ago | thegamer.com | Dan Conlin

The very nature of open-world games tends to lend itself more often to fantasy and other less high-tech settings. It's not easy to emphasize exploration of a vast and rich world when you've got flying cars and dense forests of skyscrapers obstructing the view. But in some cases, those advanced wonders can be their own view. Meanwhile, in other cases, storytellers understand that a sci-fi setting doesn't mean you can't have a fun and wild region to explore on foot.

1 month ago | thegamer.com | Dan Conlin

While not quite as ubiquitous as the genre has become today, open world games enjoyed a bit of a popularity surge in the 2000s. Consoles were becoming more powerful, so developers finally had more freedom to stretch their limits, which often included a wide-open setting to mess around in.

1 month ago | thegamer.com | Dan Conlin

GTA 5 features Mario-inspired mushrooms outside Franklin's house with colors and sizes resembling Mario and Luigi. The Plumber in Ratchet & Clank finds a Mario-style pipe in Clank's subconscious, referencing the iconic green tubes. A Hat In Time has a familiar red and white Brewer hat variant as a nod to Paper Mario's Vivian, a trans gaming icon. It's hard to dispute the influence the Mario series has had on video games as a whole.

1 month ago | thegamer.com | Dan Conlin

It's no secret that video game development has been a largely male-dominated field since its inception. Even though the industry wouldn't be where it is today without lots of influential women driving it forward, the imbalance is still rather apparent, and a history of harassment against women in gaming doesn't help.

1 month ago | thegamer.com | Dan Conlin

Most cozy games out there tend to congregate in a rather specific set of genres like life sims and farming games and, appropriately, don't often step out of that little comfort zone. It's understandable, really. Have you seen the world outside of comfort zones? Seems hardly worth the effort, to be honest.