Austin Wood
Austin has been a game journalist for 12 years, having freelanced for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree. He's been with GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize his position is a♓ cover for his career-spanning Desti🔯ny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a lot of news and the occasional feature, all while playing as many roguelikes as possible.
Latest articles by Austin Wood
24 years later, RuneScape gets its own survival game – RuneScape: Dragonwilds turns the MMO into a co-op game with RPG juice and Valheim energy, and it's out this year
News RuneScape: Dragonw🐟ilds will launch in Sღteam early access this spring
"Minutes after Palworld released," Pocketpair was already getting game pitches from "some really big names" before it even set up its own publisher: "No one has money at the moment"
News "we're kind of open t🐽o helping people with their weird little ideas because they have them"
Valve leads considered making a "mediocre" game before Half-Life to build the team up, but original marketing exec said "if you do that, the company will fail"
News "I told Gabe that I thought the onl🗹y way that Half-Life was really goᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚing to work was if it was named Game of the Year"
The lead UI designer on Metaphor: ReFantazio had never designed for a game before – he just rolled up and made some of the best UI I've ever seen in a JRPG
News "Hyᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚper stylish" became the guiꦐding light for Metaphor: ReFantazio
Behold, the most intimidating demo I’ve had in 12 years of covering video games: playing "literal walking simulator" Baby Steps in front of Getting Over It mastermind Bennett Foddy
Feature Baby Steps𝓡, from Bennett Foddy and the Ape ༒Out crew, is a singular experience
Ex-Bethesda dev says his new studio isn't making a "little Skyrim," but does channel a key part of the iconic RPG: "Stuff got built because somebody cared about building it"
News Soft Rains has a first-persoꦰn 💧sci-fi game in the works
"There is an expectation we're gonna make a little Skyrim": Ubisoft and Bethesda veterans form new studio headed by Skyrim and Fallout designer, debuting with first-person sci-fi and "crunchy mechanics"
Feature Soft Rains studio head Joel Burgess s♑ays "it would be unfun and foolish not to use our strengths to challenge our weaknesses"
When Destiny 2 "weekly active users dropped lower and faster than we'd seen since 2018," Bungie assembled an A-Team to put out some fires: "We needed to do something"
News Before Lightfall's problems, Bungie "leadership꧃ got worried" about the state of 𓂃the MMO
Lies of P director loves FromSoftware and respects the Soulslike tag, but says "I'm really serious, I'm not lying, I'm very truthful, our focus is to create our own style of game"
News "I am a big fan of Bloodborne, and we believe that it's🌞 ac෴tually a very attractive game"
Lies of P director says Overture DLC is at least 15 to 20 hours long for "experienced" players, packing tons of bosses and ideas the devs couldn't fit at launch
News Lies of P Overture almost sounds like the final t🥂hird of the game𒀰
"Will today’s players still enjoy a game from 30 years ago?": JRPG icon Kei Shigema says he was thrilled to see Lunar getting a remaster even after all this time
News "When I saw Grandia be꧟ing remastered first, I thought, 'That’s so nice. I’m jealous!'"
CD Projekt boss says "cutting-edge single-player games" – you know, like The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2 – will "continue to enjoy great popularity" despite industry shifts
News Si✤n✱gle-player games update: not going anywhere, it seems
Monster Hunter Wilds Title Update 1 is out April 4 and looks stacked: Zoh Shia returns, the Grand Hub adds a social space, plus Arch-Tempered Rey Dau, arena speedrun contests, and Mizutsune
News T🍸he Zoh Shia armor might be the best-looking 🔯set in the game
Half-Life devs worried Gabe Newell "promised things that they couldn't possibly deliver" for the iconic FPS, but "they just didn't know" that they'd be able to do it yet
News The game was awarded 'Best Action Game' at E3 19ꦜ98
Helldivers 2 boss says "death and rebirth" is a natural part of the games industry, but it's "unnecessarily brutal" right now "because we don't diversify enough"
News "A lot of publishers try to play it safe by taking safe 🌠bets, but one thing that's guaranteed is those safe bets are a death sentence for the studios that ไtry to make it."
Helldivers 2 players "became obsessed" with Malevolon Creek, but it was Gabe Newell who really kicked off one of Super Earth's bloodiest battles
news The rally we didn't know we needed
Former Valve exec recounts the meeting where Half-Life's publisher almost killed the iconic FPS: "Half-Life would quietly die. I was stunned"
News Half-Life might have just been an unde꧒rappreciated gem if ex-CMO Monica Harrington hadn't put her foot dow🅰n
Palworld devs tried, but the "certain franchise plus guns" brand in the West "has stuck with us to this very day despite our best efforts to shake that off"
News Things changed quickly for little Palworld
"Valve would never ship another game": Former exec forced Half-Life publisher's hand by saying Gabe Newell and the team would pivot away from game dev
News "I knew Gabe had interesting idea𓂃s that had nothing to 💎do with games"
Helldivers 2 boss outlines the single design trick that eventually led to his breakout success: "This works, I think we're gonna be rich someday"
News "This 'it could happeౠn' approach✃ to design is super powerful"
Valve literally gives Half-Life away now, but 27 years ago it was carefully crushing its angry pirates: "None of them had actually bought the game"
News The launch of Half-Lif๊e, straight from Valve's founding CMO
"Don't tell Valve I told you this": Industry expert warns devs that Steam "is an engine that turns magic into money," and you can't break into "Real Steam" until you have the magic
News Chris Zukowski loves Real Steam
Helldivers 2 director says "balance is a myth," and devs shouldn't spend more than 5% of their time on it: "If you balance out all the chaos, you've made an uninteresting game"
News Arro🎃whead's Johan Pilestedt says if you spend all of your time on game balance, "you're an idiot"
Helldivers 2 boss told launch players not to buy until servers calmed down, and it "took 5 minutes until I got a call from the friendly people over at PlayStation asking what the f*** I was smoking"
News "'Don't recommend that people do not buy your games'✱ - it's incredibly cဣonventional wisdom"
