Steam is a Mess and We Use It Anyway
Bloated UI, shovelware, manipulative sales tactics, and we still open it every morning.
Your Favourite Game Got a Sequel and They Ruined It
The mechanics got smoother. The soul got lost.
Let’s Talk About Bad Ports
You know a port’s bad when modders fix it before the devs even acknowledge the problem.
I Don’t Play FPS Games Anymore and I’m Fine with That
Twitch reflexes, kill cams, and zero patience - no thanks.
Originally, this wasn’t meant to be a solo podcast. We had a team. A good one, too—different perspectives, different tastes, all equally annoyed about the state of gaming. The idea was to share the mic, have a proper moan, and enjoy the back-and-forth. But life got in the way. People got busy. Timezones didn’t line up. Energy drained. The usual story. Nothing dramatic. No rage quits. Just the slow decay of trying to organise anything...
What keeps us coming back to a platform that feels like it’s held together by duct tape and sunk cost? Steam is a disaster. We all know it. It looks like a dashboard from 2011. It acts like it was designed for CRTs. Half the features are buried in menus you forgot existed. It’s slow. It’s cluttered. It’s a landfill of fake games, Early Access corpses, asset flips, and live service updates nobody asked for....
What do you do when the sequel finally lands and it’s a watered-down shadow of what you loved? You waited years. The announcement trailer dropped. The name was familiar. The logo made your eyebrow twitch. But still, you hoped. You wanted it to be the return. The comeback. The thing you didn’t know you still needed. And then it launched. And you knew – ten minutes in – that they’d broken it. Not catastrophically. Not...
Why does it always feel like the PC version was handed off to the intern five minutes before launch? Remember when Arkham Knight came out on PC? Sixty quid for a PowerPoint presentation. It chugged like a Victorian steam engine and crashed harder than Batman’s emotional stability. They pulled it from sale for months. Months....
When did we decide a three-page control list was an acceptable trade for actual instructions? There was a time when buying a game felt like getting something real. You opened the box. You pulled out the disc. Then you picked up the manual and started reading while the game installed. Game manuals weren’t just instructions....
What do you do when your reflexes tap out, but the games keep getting faster? The last FPS I played properly was Unreal Tournament 2003. Not the remake. Not some nostalgic retro spin. The actual 2003 release. That was the last time I cared about accuracy, headshots, or keeping my mouse sensitivity dialled in like...
Why did we trade community for noise? Gaming forums weren’t perfect. Half the time the layout was broken, the colour scheme gave you eye strain, and the mods were just whoever had the most free time. But for all their flaws, they worked. You signed up, you stayed, and you became part of something. You...
When did games decide power was something you had to earn with your wallet? Back in the day, cheat codes weren’t just little secrets. They were part of the culture. Left-right-left-right-up-down-up-down-slap-the-cartridge kind of stuff. Infinite lives. All weapons. Unlock everything. Some of it was absurd. Some of it broke the game. And that was the...
When did using a map start being treated like a moral failing? Minimaps are just tools. That’s all they are. Not a design crutch. Not a sign of weakness. Not something that needs to be justified every time it appears in the corner of the screen. Just a tool. You want to use it? Great....
If horror games are more realistic than ever, why do they feel less effective? There was a time when horror games could scare the hell out of you with a static camera and three sound effects. You didn’t need photorealistic lighting or ray-traced blood pools. You needed tension. Atmosphere. The kind of pacing that made you dread opening the next...
Can you really call it a conversation if everyone’s reading their lines? I don’t use boards. I don’t use run sheets. I don’t do call times, beat maps, or pre-roll briefs. You’d think that’s a bad idea for a podcast. Maybe it is for some. But it works for me. This show runs on impulse. I get a topic. Discard...
Header and images courtesy of https://bigboxcollection.com – my new favourite website! Why did we stop treating game packaging like it was worth a bit of drama? There was a time when a game box had to work. It had to fight for your attention. It had to scream louder than the one next to it. And the louder it screamed,...
What does it actually take to get a podcast episode from “recorded” to “listenable”? Recording is the fun part. You hit the mic, talk rubbish for an hour, argue about minimaps, someone forgets to mute their dog, and everyone logs off feeling good about it. Then comes the bit nobody romanticises: the edit. Editing isn’t creative. It’s corrective. That’s when...
What happens when developers spend more time reacting to Reddit than finishing the game? There’s feedback, and then there’s addiction. Too many studios have crossed the line. What used to be patch notes and bug reports has turned into Twitter threads, Discord drama, and developers arguing in the comments section of their own trailers. You can see the cracks when...
Why are so many modern games still getting saving completely wrong? Saving a game used to be simple. You hit save. The game saved. Done. Now? It’s a mess. Auto-saves. Checkpoints. Limited save slots. Manual saves that only work at certain locations. Save systems tied to difficulty. Games that warn you not to turn off the console during saving like...
What’s more important—perfect gear or actually having something to say? There’s a whole online culture built around pretending podcasting is about gear. Endless posts. Gear roundups. YouTube breakdowns of which audio interface “punches above its weight.” People debating mic brands like it matters. It’s all noise. Here’s what you need to start a podcast: a microphone and the guts to...
If everyone’s doing video podcasts, why aren’t we? Everyone says the same thing. ‘You’ve got to do video.’ Apparently, if you’re not on YouTube or TikTok or whatever else people are scrolling through on mute, you don’t exist. Doesn’t matter how sharp the thinking is. Doesn’t matter how good the content is. If there’s no footage, it’s invisible. I’ve heard...
Most Star Wars games give you the spotlight. You swing a lightsabre. You lead a rebellion. You shape the fate of the galaxy in between explosions. TIE Fighter doesn’t do that. There are no heroes here. You start as a faceless Imperial pilot, flying the weakest ship in the fleet. No shields. No hyperdrive. No glory. You’re not here to...
How do you pick topics in a room full of strong opinions and low tolerance? Talking about games is easy. Choosing what to talk about isn’t. Every person on this team has at least ten ideas at any given moment, and at least five of those ideas are guaranteed to annoy someone else on the team. Topic selection sounds simple...
Why did split-screen gaming vanish when it was the most fun you could have on one screen? Local multiplayer didn’t vanish because players stopped enjoying it. It vanished because publishers couldn’t monetise it. You can’t charge four people for the same experience when they’re all in the same room. You can’t push seasonal cosmetics or track engagement through a sofa....
What do you call a podcast when you’re sick of the nonsense and too tired to pretend otherwise? I didn’t hold a naming session. I didn’t put it to a vote or ask for suggestions from the team. I just called it what it was. What I am. Grumpy Old Gamer. I’d love to say that it started as a...
