The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom developers had a problem: The land of Hyrule kept falling apart.
Anyone who has played Tears of the Kingdom might be able to guess why. Some of the game’s big advances—Link’s Ultrahand and Fuse abilities, which allow players to create any tool they’re clever enough to stick together—required a lot of new and intricate development. Nintendo wanted to build something bigger and better with its Breath of the Wild sequel, but as the team worked on the game, the tools that would allow players to make all those shield skateboards and log bridges broke it. A lot. It was, programmer Takahiro Takayama says, “chaos.”
During development, Takayama would often hear devs exclaim, “It broke!” or “It went flying,” Takayama said Wednesday at the Game Developers Conference. “And I would respond, ‘I know. We’ll deal with it later.’”
The problem was the physics of it all. “We realized removing all non-physics-driven objects and making everything physics-driven will lead us to the solution we were looking at,” Takayama said.
The second fix was to create a system that allowed for unique interactions between objects, without any specific additional needs. That meant that players who wanted to make a vehicle, for example, could tinker with different tools instead of being restricted to something basic like a wheel and a board.
All that hardcore programming paid off. Ultrahand and Fuse are now fan-favorite tools, something players use to create flamethrowing penises and hacks used in speedruns. No matter how hard they tried, Hyrule never broke.
Those tools also meant players could solve puzzles in a variety of ways. “Regardless of what the player does, we had a world free from self-destruction,” Takayama said.
A new Pokémon Legends game is coming to the “Nintendo Switch family of systems” in 2025. Pokémon Legends: Z-A, announced Tuesday with a brief teaser trailer, is an “ambitious new entry” into the series that will launch simultaneously worldwide. It’s also fuel for the fire that a new Nintendo Switch console is coming next year.
The first Pokémon Legends game, Arceus, launched in 2022. Arceus was new ground for the franchise: the first open-world game in the series, something for which fans had long clamored. The Pokémon Company offered little in the way of details on Z-A, which will take place in Lumiose City of the Kalos region, the France-inspired setting introduced in Pokémon X and Y. In Pokémon Legends: Z-A, “an urban redevelopment plan is underway to shape the city into a place that belongs to both people and Pokémon.”
Wording around the game’s launch, specifically that it will come to Nintendo “systems,” has already caught the eye of some fans. While that could refer to variations on the Switch—the Switch Lite, the OLED model—reports earlierthis month suggest that the Switch successor is expected in 2025. VGC reports that the delay could be a push to give Nintendo time to line up “stronger first-party software.”
Anticipation for a new Nintendo console couldn’t be higher. It’s been nearly seven years since the company introduced the Switch and more than two since the OLED version dropped. All the more reason for fans to speculate about when the next system might come. Following Tuesday’s Z-A announcement, “Switch 2”—the name commonly given to the (presumably) forthcoming console—began trending on X with fans posting “I can care about Pokémon again” and “The Switch 2 has to be next year because I just know they don’t want us playing the new Pokémon game in 30 [frames per second].”
The new Switch’s existence is hardly a secret these days; during GDC’s 2024 state-of-the-industry survey, 8 percent of polled developers said they were working on games for its successor. It’s not a question of if the Switch 2 exists; it’s when Nintendo will finally announce it.
A player can find tons of cute or capable Pals on a tour through Palworld’s Palpagos Islands, but in order to fill out their Paldeck, they’ll need to dabble with breeding. Breeding is a surprisingly deep part of Palworld, and it’s quickly become a rabbit hole — or a Caprity hole, if you will — for my group on our shared server.
Once I got past the original hook of “What if survival game, but Pokémon?” in Palworld, I was surprised to find that I was still engaged. I’m on a server with my friends, and we all handle different roles. I pump up my carry weight and bring Pals who could help haul, and I’m constantly loading up with tons of ore to smelt into valuable ingots. My buddies Jake and Matt pitch in, too; Jake is a forward scout, whereas Matt runs what we politely call “Pal Resources.”
Pal Resources is the name for our breeding camp. Now that we have the ability to build ranches and bake delicious cakes, Matt is off to the races. It’s entirely possible to just casually dabble in breeding, but we are now entirely engrossed by the process. There are three main reasons to breed. The first is that by combining two seemingly unrelated Pals, a third Pal can be born. If you want to fill out your Paldeck and be a proper collector, breeding is essentially mandatory.
But while creating new Pals was a fun trick, what really snagged us was perfecting our existing roster. For instance, the Relaxaurus is an adorable dope of a dinosaur — but with the power of Pal Resources, we were able to create an electric variant who keeps our infrastructure running. Breeding can create new elemental types of existing Pals.
Image: Pocketpair
Sometimes, this offers utility. Sometimes, it’s just nice to have a little bit of variety in my life. Why roll around with one bouncy, cuddly Kingpaca like an absolute fool when I can have two Kingpacas, one of which is an Ice type?
Matt also discovered that you can breed two of the same Pals together, and their traits will pass down to their offspring. This is the third, and arguably the most potent, reason to get into breeding. Sometimes, the process doesn’t work out — nobody needs a pyromaniac Pal running around endangering the whole base. But if you have a diet-loving, burly-bodied workaholic Pal — boy howdy, you don’t even need to get on the platform and cruelly command your Pals to get to work.
Our bases are now staffed by a set of Pals, all several generations deep into breeding, who tend to our every need. Have a large work order to complete? Don’t even bother; Anubis will run over and finish that for you in seconds. Hungry? Why not go into the fridge, chilled by a tiny hedgehog, and grab yourself 500 omelets? Such a bounty is nothing to us.
Pal breeding reminds me of the Chao Gardens from Sonic Adventure 2, which served as a place to bring and hatch eggs, and then raise the ensuing Chao. What is meant to be a side thing has now become a full game in and of itself, where we dutifully bake cakes and cart massive eggs to and fro, all in the service of building our empire on the Palpagos Islands. As for the Pals that don’t make the cut — don’t worry about it. We’ve found a big, open field where they can run, and play, and definitely don’t get put into the Goodbye Tube to get turned into meat sluice to strengthen our A-team. That simply doesn’t happen! It’s fine.
Something that always stuns me are the ways dedicated players find ways to push the limits of the games they play. Whether it’s Animal Crossing designers who know the perfect way to line up buildings to fake certain perspectives, or a Tears of the Kingdom player who created an ultra-fast flying machine by holding the fan up in a particular way, I’ve always appreciated the commitment and creativity that goes into pushing a game to its limit. I was doing the rounds on Reddit when I saw something that truly astounded me: Reddit user Scalhoun03 created a completely wind-powered airship in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
The airship requires no energy to fly — meaning no Zonai charges or energy cells are needed to run it. It can fly through the air and sustain sustain flight at high altitudes seemingly indefinitely. The original post shows the ship flying through the skies of Hyrule with no input or energy. It’s only interrupted at the end when Scalhoun03 said they accidentally bumped the control stick. You can see a video of the build in action below.
The contraption appears to defy the laws of (Zelda) physics itself. Energy cells are a crucial and foundational aspect to building machines in the game. If you want to use Zonai devices like a fan or flame emitter, you have to increase Link’s maximum energy cell capacity. This is why you see so many of the top builders with big, long rows of tiny battery icons as they run their massive machines.
So how does a ship fly with no Zonai charges or any energy elements? According to its creator, its propulsion relies upon a twisting forced generating by its steering stick. “Basically it uses the steering stick’s energy to power the props. When you move the steering stick it puts a twisting force on the entire build. This force is transfered to the wagon wheel axles thus running the [propellors],” Scalhoun03 said via Reddit DMs.
Getting the materials required a journey of its own across Hyrule. Scalhoun03 scrounged up propellers from Gemimik Shrine in the Akkala Highlands region and journeyed to the Depths to collect the raft and rails. Then came the actual building.
“The hardest part was finding the balance to keep the props spinning without interfering. The props have to be in the right positions or they hit each other. When building with auto built parts you have to be careful about how you break them off or they disappear. The raft is an auto built part and if the props are in the wrong places you risk breaking your raft.”
Scalhoun03 emphasized how important the Hyrule Engineering subreddit and larger community was in the process of building the ship. Throughout its design, others contributed their own innovations that helped the builder hone in on its design. For example, YouTuber KingX discovered a person could build a machine that launches without any “catalyst,” like rockets or sending a ship off the side of a floating island. Others would provide feedback on clips.
“Without the suggestions of the community, things like this are a lot more difficult to make. The community has given me motivation to keep working on powerless flight builds and I hope everyone can try them out and have fun flying around Hyrule without having to worry about anything except having fun flying!”
The year 2023 gave fans a standout year in sizzling romance. Baldur’s Gate 3allowed players to fall in love — and then make love — with its sexy and eclectic band of misfits. The Resident Evil 4 remake gave Leon Kennedy a head-to-toe makeover and turned him into a bona fide internet babygirl. Outside of games, longtime fan favorite Satoru Gojo made his long-awaited reappearance in the Jujutsu Kaisen anime.
I love it all, but sometimes the source material isn’t enough. It never hurts to add a bit of extra spice to the stories. We simply want characters to kiss each other! Sometimes… it’s just a little more fun to ship.
Whether it’s a steamy slow-burn fanfic or sharing perfectly edited clips of characters online, shipping characters helps build out our favorite worlds in exciting ways. Ships and all that romance provide the fuel to ignite the roaring engine of fandom. So with that, we’ve decided to round up our favorite ships and romantic pairings from 2023.
Shadowheart and Lae’zel from Baldur’s Gate 3
Image: Larian Studios via Polygon
If I had a nickel for every sprawling RPG with romanceable options that had a super-duper compelling sapphic enemies-to-lovers ship that was so good that I couldn’t find it in my heart to come in between the pairing with my player character, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird it happened twice.
Anyway, Shadowheart and Lae’zel from Baldur’s Gate 3 have earned a place in my shipper’s heart right next to Miranda Lawson and Jack from Mass Effect. They have such a delicious chemistry, the sort of antagonism that comes from actually being in super similar positions but refusing to acknowledge that, because that would mean acknowledging one’s own faults and shortcomings. Also, I love a spicy knife-to-the-throat scene!!!!!! —Petrana Radulovic
Zelda and Link from The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon
Justice for Link and Prince Sidon shippers!!!!! Nintendo really did the Prince Sidon and Link romance dirty this year when it released Tears of the Kingdom. Apparently Sidon is not only straight, but engaged to some lady named Yona? Link didn’t even ride Sidon AT ALL. Boo! Regardless, I actually do love this game for the way it portrays such a beautiful and unending love between Link and Zelda. It was the first time that I felt like I truly understood Zelink shippers, and why I would now count myself among them. —Ana Diaz
Leon and Luis from Resident Evil 4
Image: Capcom via Polygon
Most people playing Resident Evil 4 — either the original 2005 game or the recent remake — ship its dreamboat protagonist Leon S. Kennedy with either the looks-barely-legal-but-she’s-20-something-actually Ashley Graham or the mysterious femme fatale Ada Wong. These two women conform to the typical Madonna/whore dichotomy, and what’s more boring than that? Furthermore, Leon always seems so awkward as a person that I always saw him as a semi-closeted queer guy who swipes through Grindr on the DL. (OK, back in 2005 it was Craigslist and not Grindr, but you’re following nonetheless.) For all those reasons, I see Leon’s true love in RE4 as Luis, the flamboyant Spanish babe who even gets a few more lines of dialogue in the remake. The only problem with their relationship becoming more serious (because I can only assume they’ve hooked up) is that they won’t have enough room for each of their respective hair products in any ordinary-sized bathroom. —Maddy Myers
Janine and Gregory from Abbott Elementary
Image: ABC
It’s no secret that Janine and Gregory are meant for each other in Abbott Elementary. Sure, this ship is predictable and maybe not that exciting! But also consider this: Both characters fucking rule.
They’ve long been my endgame, like so many other sitcom couples — the same way we all knew Nick and Jesse were fated in New Girl, and that Chidi and Eleanor would end up together in every life in The Good Place. Since those shows ended their runs, I’d waited for another slow-burn romance to come onto the scene. Abbott’s slow burn is refreshing because it doesn’t rely on pure hijinx or plot contrivances to keep its leads apart. Janine and Gregory are both full of heart, carrying around so much (matching) baggage, and trying their best to show up for their students every day. They’re just so profoundly awkward that they struggle to read each other’s signals, and yet they keep trying — because their relationship is built on a bedrock of friendship and trust.
This friendship also means they are excellent scene partners, whose conversations go from flirty banter to serious and consequential very fluidly. Gregory helps pull Janine back from her naive improvement projects, while she helps him gain confidence. I think often of the scene where Janine gently calls out Gregory’s office-supply store decorative classroom posters. Gregory then shares all of the drawings his students make of him; viewers realize he has no idea how beloved he is. Janine — who already knows this — helps him see it, and maybe he starts to believe it a little himself. —Nicole Clark
Literally all of the Owl House ships (Luz and Amity, Hunter and Willow, Eda and Raine)
Image: Disney
I simply cannot pick one! Am I in the mood for a rivals-to-friends-to-lovers where a mean girl goes from being rude to being in love with the plucky hero? Or for a prickly guy who’s secretly super soft and a soft girl who’s secretly a badass, who are both outcasts in their own way but find solace in one another? Or a decades-long friends-to-lovers-to-exes-to-estranged-acquaintances-to-reconciled-allies, all while mutually pining for one another after their relationship fell apart all those years ago? The Owl House kept us fed. —PR
Bronya and Seele from Honkai: Star Rail
Image: Hoyoverse via Polygon
I haven’t even played the other Honkai games, but apparently Seele and Bronya are lesbians in every universe. I literally adore these two. One is a tough punk leader of an underground grassroots organization that helps the poor, and the other is a world ruler who was originally raised to be ignorant of the cruelty of the state. It’s a match made in heaven! —AD
Haymitch Abernathy and Effie Trinket from The Hunger Games
Image: Lionsgate
After I saw The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, I went on a bit of a Hunger Games bender and reread the original trilogy. And let me tell you, reading these books as an adult makes you zero in on Haymitch as the hottest character. The movie trilogy had already seeded some Effie and Haymitch in my mind, but my reread made me want to write a fic from Haymitch and Effie’s point of view, where everything is mostly the same except they’ve been secretly hooking up the whole time. —PR
The player and Rusty from Armored Core 6
Image: FromSoftware/Bandai Namco
You simply gotta respect a ship for which almost every single piece of it is something that’s been invented wholesale by the fans. Rusty and the player character in Armored Core 6 have chemistry, don’t get me wrong — but you never even see this character’s face in the game! In the mercenary hellscape of AC6’s post-apocalyptic, corporate-controlled gig economy, though, any friendly voice in your ear is enough to make you fall in love. Every single piece of fan art I’ve seen of Rusty depicts him as gorgeous. But who cares about his literal physical form! No player actually needed that, turns out, in order to believe that Rusty believes in us. —MM
Geto and Gojo from Jujutsu Kaisen
Image: Mappa/Crunchyroll
Do you ever love your bro so much that you let it radicalize you into hating the entire human race? No? Well, this is kind-of sort-of not really what happens with SatoSugu, a popular pairing that matches the infamous Satoru Gojo with Suguru Geto in the anime and manga Jujutsu Kaisen. Their love story is one of a teenage bond gone wrong. I’m still sad they broke up, but hey, at least the Mappa is great at delivering us hot characters. —AD
Keefe and Kelvin from The Righteous Gemstones
Photo: Jake Giles Netter/HBO
The best ships sneak up on you, and none more so than Kelvin and Keefe on The Righteous Gemstones. Every character on this show is such a weirdo, not only because the Gemstone family is rich (yeah, rich people are weird, I said it), but because the family business is televangelism. Kelvin is one of the three adult siblings vying to inherit his family’s megachurch mantle, but he’s so far in the closet that he had my gaydar readings going haywire for the whole first season. Super-closeted Christian adults are like this in real life, and it’s not that funny, although The Righteous Gemstones manages to make it funny, and even heartwarming as Kelvin’s reliance on his ex-Satanist BFF Keefe grows stronger and stranger. Will God forgive them? According to me, an agnostic: Yes!! —MM
Kaveh and Alhaitham from Genshin Impact
Image: Hoyoverse via Polygon
Sometimes the best ship is one that feels the most real. This is why I love Alhaitham and Kaveh from Genshin Impact. Together, the two act like an old bickering couple. Kaveh will make snide remarks about the decor and Alhaitham will groan like an old bear. It’s not exactly steamy or hot, but it feels stupidly domestic and entirely possible. It’s basically canon, right? —AD
Even small games can reveal delightful surprises years later. Now, roughly two years after its release, Unpacking fans are suddenly discovering a previously revealed secret mode after a TikTok video brought it back into the public eye. The mode is called Dark Star, and it basically forces players to beat the game by tossing objects on the floor instead of neatly putting them away like in the main mode.
In Unpacking’s standard mode, players complete levels by pulling objects out of a box and finding an appropriate spot to store them. If, for instance, you put toilet paper in the kitchen sink, the game will highlight the item with a red line and won’t let you complete the level. However, once you beat the game the regular way, you can enter Dark Star mode, where you beat each level by making sure every single item is placed incorrectly and highlighted in red. Once a player misplaces every single item, the game will award them with a darkened star and let them progress to the next level.
Developer Witch Beam teased Dark Star as a secret mode prior to the official reveal, then shared a video documenting it as part of an April Fools’ Day post in 2022. “So many people thought it was a fake feature for April Fools’ until they tried it for themselves,” Tim Dawson, a co-founder of Witch Beam and technical director of Unpacking,told Polygon via email.
Since that official reveal, some content creators have even streamed their Dark Star runs. Still, it’s clear that many fans didn’t know about the mode. After Dec. 22 Witch Beam TikTok went viral, fans shared reactions like, “THERE’S A DARK STAR MODE?!?!” and “I have 100% this game and I DIDNT KNOW THIS!? WHAAAAAT!?” Another wrote, “dude I beat this game like 10 times and i am just hearing abt this?!”
Dawson told Polygon that the secret mode lets players find new ways to experience the game’s puzzles. In the comments, several fans commented on how difficult Dark Star mode can actually be.
“I think what makes Dark Star so interesting is initially it feels like a gag,” Dawson said. “But after a few levels, it sets in how much work it is, and continuing can feel absurd, transgressive, or cathartic. But in the end, it’s just another way to think about items and how they relate to our lives and the spaces we live in, which is what the game is all about.”
Dawson also says that while the mode “started as a joke,” the developers now appreciate it as an extension of the game. “Because we decided not to extend Unpacking with DLC or a sequel, we often mention Dark Star mode when fans contact us asking if we’ll make more levels,” he said. “In many cases, it gives them another way to experience the game.”
Personally, I think Dark Star mode speaks to the ways our own media diets and specific bubbles of the internet can sometimes preserve a sense of surprise in a game. For Dawson, this kind of surprise can lend a sense of character to a game.
“I think secrets help give games their personality,” he said. “They’re the twinkle in the eye that suggests that these virtual worlds we spend time in might just be a bit bigger than you think. I love that we were able to come up with a good one for Unpacking.”
Which could easily make you forget everything else that happened. Below, please find select things that really seriously actually happened over the last 365 days that no one would judge you for forgetting.
The M&Ms had a spokescandy controversy that ended with a Super Bowl
The year kicked off with the de-sexification of the green M&M, conservative pundits yelling about melt-in-your-mouth-not-your-hands candy, and then a Super Bowl commercial that only added to the chaos. 2023 promised to be a year!
Shrek was rumored dead
Image: DreamWorks
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish was a late-December 2022 surprise, so we spent a lot of time thinking about what it meant for Shrek in January. Our leading theory: Shrek died. Eventually we got to ask the directors for comment. Believe them if you must.
Two dudes tried to steal $300,000 worth of GenCon goods and got extremely busted
We do not condone theft but if you were gonna walk into GenCon to pilfer a pallet of MTG cards, wouldn’t you wear a mask? Well, two New Yorkers who thought they were the Danny Oceans of the collectible card game scene did… not do that.
E3 imploded
E3 2023 was a no-go, but at least in April 2023, the organizers believed there was hope for the legacy gaming event. But alas, by the fall, E3 was 100% dead. Time to reminisce about the very first E3!
Amouranth, Seinfeld, and the Pope all had an AI moment.
The War Thunder Discord was somehow at the center of another classified document leak
The FBI arrested 21-year-old Jack Teixeira earlier this year over leaking documents that contained information about Russia’s war on Ukraine, amongst other classified topics. Note to all gamers: Git less gud at leaking!!
People got super weird about Oppenheimer’s sex scene
The Barbenheimer double-feature reinvigorated movie-going, yet a few people left the theater worried that it was unnecessary for Cillian Murphy and Florence Pugh to be naked with each other. C’mon folks, it was July and really hot outside.
Post Malone bought Magic the Gathering’s $2 million Lord of the Rings One Ring card
Colleen Ballinger aka Miranda Sings performed a ukulele song to respond to toxic workplace allegations
There’s a lot of sensitive material in this report on Ballinger’s year of controversy, but perhaps the most sensitive thing is your ears as they listen to a classic YouTube response vid backed by a small stringed instrument.
“Planet of the Bass” exploded as a listenable shitpost
Kai Cenat incited a riot in New York City in attempted PS5 giveaway
The streamer power is real, and as Cenat taught us all this year, potentially dangerous if wielded without much thought. Cenat in particular has become a subject of curiosity, and as we wrapped up the year, was worth exploring.
Kojima did a Kojima thing just before calling it a year
With most of the major game releases in the rearview mirror, Hideo Kojima took to The Game Awards to really melt brains with the unveiling of OD, a… game? Experience? Horror thing? Kojima and Jordan Peele babbled for a bit after airing a cryptic trailer and when it was all over we collectively forgot everything that happened in 2023, thus this round-up.
Now, this is your moment: What has the world collectively forgotten from the past year?
Xbox just announced a new version of one of its most famous gaming peripherals, this time produced in partnership with Warner Bros. to celebrate a forthcoming movie. I’m talking about an Xbox controller made entirely out of chocolate. No, you can’t actually play games with it. Yes, you can eat it, since it’s made out of 100% chocolate. And of course, it’s wrapped in a gold wrapper — a reference to the infamous golden tickets that Charlie and company had to find in order to enter Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. The film, called Wonka, is a prequel to Roald Dahl’s classic Charlie and the Chocolate Factoryandstars Timothée Chalamet as the chocolateer himself.
To win the “(X)box of Chocolates” — or so the Xbox release calls it — fans have to enter a sweepstakes. The terms, unfortunately, require following Xbox on X (formerly called Twitter) and retweeting the tweet announcing the context. It runs from Nov. 13 – Dec. 14. You don’t just win a chocolate controller itself. You also get five other chocolate truffles, each themed to Xbox: Achievement Hunting, Button Masher, Your Citrus Sidekic, Xtra Kick, and Wonka for the Win. You can also potentially win a replica Xbox Series X that similarly appears to be made entirely out of chocolate.
It’s been a year of blockbuster collaborations with really strong branding, and this is especially true for brand names that appeal to kids. Some of these were all-encompassing, like the inescapable number of Barbie branded items, ranging form hair clips to pool floats to inline rollerblades. And, of course, The Super Mario Bros. Movie opened up the opportunity for tons of new toys and game merch.
I don’t know precisely what types of branded merch I expected for Wonka. I assumed, of course, that there would be candy involved — chocolate even, and probably in a golden wrapper. But chocolate in the shape of an Xbox controller? Do we think Chalamet will be a gamer in Willy Wonka? If so, I presume Xbox would be his console of choice.
Goth fashion isn’t new, but fashion associated with the vampire scene has seen a resurgence as the vampire has once again grown in popularity through the success of the 2022 adaptation of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, as well as the Castlevania franchise seeing a resurgence with its Netflix series. Once again, the vampire has permeated the mainstream, sinking its fangs into an entirely new generation, coupled with an interest in historical fashion and what this timeless creature has come to represent. In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, sometime in 2021, while cleaning out my wardrobe, I decided to dress like I could fit into one of Koji Igarashi’s Castlevania games.
The look of the vampire is ageless but hard to define. It exists somewhere between Victorian fashion and goth subculture, and has morphed into different subsets and microtrends over the past few decades. It can be black frocks or Tom Cruise’s frilled shirts and brocade vests in 1994’s Interview with the Vampire. It could be one of Ayami Kojima’s gorgeous oil painting illustrations of Alucard and various Belmont family members from the Castlevania series.
It was my interest in period fashion and various subcultures that brought me to dress like a Castlevania vampire for a year. (That and having disposable income as an adult.) Would I have dressed this way as a teenager? Probably. The modern vampire has often been associated with androgyny, and it’s something I’ve always personally gravitated toward. Naturally, there are also some subsets to this. There is the more industrial goth that is sometimes blended with mid-’80s aesthetics, extremely heavy makeup and all, or the “romantic” goth associated with ruffled shirts, corsets, and modified pieces of Victorian clothing.
The vampire is associated with so many various interpretations that it’s hard to pin down just what exactly defines it — outside of fangs, odd-colored eyes, and a penchant for the night. (I didn’t end up ordering a pair of fangs — I’m a little too self-conscious about my teeth — but someone else I know wears their pair almost religiously.)
Photo courtesy of Kazuma Hashimoto
Photo courtesy of Kazuma Hashimoto
Image: Konami
I scoured the internet for sellers that would provide exactly what I was looking for: linen shirts with ruffles, tightly-laced corsets, leather trousers, knee-high boots, everything I associated with the gorgeous Gothic designs Kojima incorporated in art of characters like Alucard and Mathias Cronqvist, and in one-off illustrations she’s done that feature these ephemeral creatures. I packed my closet with velvet capelets from Dark in Love, scoured secondhand shops for antique Victorian brooches and silk ribbons I would tie my then-shoulder-length hair with. To cement the vampire image, I ordered matte black lipstick to use exclusively on my upper lip, in combination with full-coverage foundation to get that perfectly flawless countenance coined as “vampire skin,” which appeared as a full-blown trend in 2022. Naturally, I also wore colored contacts and heavy eyeliner to further accentuate the look.
I felt great assembling these outfits, spending the time to practice and perfectly apply my makeup, and walking around in clothing that made me feel extremely comfortable. I would get stopped from time to time by random passersby, but since Germany has a history of a thriving goth subculture and scene, I never received any disparaging remarks. It was all compliments, which further cemented my confidence in walking around dressed to the nines, inspired by one of my favorite artists and game series of all time.
Many others are drawn to the way the vampire aesthetic lets self-expression and various interests converge. “Being into Victorian fashion, architecture, and even smaller subcultures like Visual Kei when I was a teenager was sort of how I got my start into vampire fashion,” said Storm, a former member of the fang community (slang for vampire communities, or in some cases even clans) when asked about what drew them to the subculture. “My interests in fashion and subculture merged with my nerdiness when I discovered the game Vampire: The Masquerade.”
Photo courtesy of Kazuma Hashimoto
Photo courtesy of Kazuma Hashimoto
Image: Konami
Don Henrie, “The Human Vampire,” was a popular internet personality in the early 2000s, and was even featured in a National Geographic program and appeared on SyFy’s Mad Mad House. He was one of the first glimpses into what bridging the vampire lifestyle and fashion movement was like during that era. There was also the (moderate) success of Queen of the Damned, Van Helsing, and Underworld roughly around the same time. The website VampireFreaks began in 1999, functioning as a MySpace for goths; it still exists today, now as an online shop that sells goth-related apparel and goods.
This style of fashion has also created a community. “I ended up becoming part of an online community in the early 2000s, which was super into all of the Vampire: The Masquerade clans. It’s actually how a lot of ‘vampire clans’ in the physical world formed,” Storm said. One of the more popular “vampire clans” was featured on Buzzfeed in 2018, where host Selom received her own pair of vampire fangs. Vampire fangs can definitely be a fashion statement; I know a few people who wear them without joining a clan, as they’ve become more accessible through sellers like Kaos Kustom Fangs. But for clan members, it’s more or less a lifestyle they subscribe to. I never joined a clan myself, and only learned the inner workings of them through friends who had participated in the culture, but living in a major metropolitan city meant that I definitely wasn’t alone in dressing outside of the norm. I was friends with former cyber goths, and while they had more or less toned down their looks, they still dressed in mostly all black and gravitated toward voluminous black dresses with heeled boots.
Having orbited those circles and now seeing the resurgence of vampire media, it feels like the scene is in the middle of an upswing. Would I dress like a “vampire” again? The answer is maybe, mostly because where I live now doesn’t accommodate it all that well. (Wearing black velvet in sweltering summer heat doesn’t bode well for anyone.) But it was definitely one of my favorite periods of personal fashion, and a fulfilling period of self-expression. So maybe I’ll throw everything together for a night at the club. Regardless, it’s great to see this subset of goth subculture still alive and well.
Surrounded by a sizable, colorful cascade of plushies — largely Nintendo-themed — and an impressive retro game collection, Ash goes live on Twitch five days a week. She’s played everything from Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion to Sierra Entertainment’s Quest for Glory,focusing on games that evoke a sense of nostalgia. The one thing that stays the same each stream is the way Ash ends them, with a message to her viewers: “Don’t forget to tell your friends Ash said hi!”
When Ash, who goes by AshSaidHi online, first envisioned her Twitch channel, she started with the name. “I knew I had to have a tagline or a call to action,” she told Polygon. “That’s where the name AshSaidHi comes from, because I wanted it to be like, Oh, that friend, they told me to tell you hi. It sticks in your brain a little bit.”
Over the years since Ash started her Twitch channel in 2019, she’s worked to build a community and a business that matches her values — a place where she could have a work-life balance that her previous career didn’t allow for, and a community of support Twitch can provide.
“People go to Twitch to connect about the things they love and find other people that are into the things they love,” Ash said. “That’s how I built an engaging community.”
Ahead of TwitchCon 2023 in Las Vegas, Polygon spoke to Ash about how she’s carved out her own space on Twitch.
[Ed. note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.]
Polygon:First, I just want to let you know I love the collection in the background.
AshSaidHi: Thank you! That’s years and years of work. My parents got me into video gaming when I was really young. Even my mom, she still plays video games. I texted her the other day and was like, “Did you download Lies of P?” and she was like, “Yeah, but I really like Lords of the Fallen.” And I was like, “What?”
She’s a big Soulsborne, like Elden Ring, player. She just bought a PS5 and was like, “When are you getting a PS5?” I was like, “Mom, I play retro games on Twitch. OK?”
I know you started your Twitch channel in 2019. What prompted you to start streaming?
I was working in an industry where I didn’t have a work-life balance. And after I left it, I was like, Oh, I want to get into content creation. And I got into a different industry. It allowed me time to create content. So I was like, I think I’m gonna start on Twitch. I have a degree in advertising. The first thing I wanted to do was create a concept for my channel. And I knew I had to have like a tagline or a call to action. So that’s where the name AshSaidHi comes from, because I wanted it to be like, Oh, that friend, they told me to tell you hi. It sticks in your brain a little bit. And so it’s like, “Oh, don’t forget to tell your friends Ash said hi.” That’s how I always wanted to end my videos.
I started on Tetris 99 and Breath of the Wild. Those were the first games I broadcast on Twitch. But I have this big backlog of video games. Why don’t I start getting into retro games? And that’s how it it really snowballed. I got into a retro games, and the community was wonderful. They taught me the ropes, I met a lot of friends — friends that I still have to this day. It changed my life for the better in so many different ways.
I really, really love being a creator on Twitch. The magic is in the sense of community that you get when you meet people and they share the love of the same things. I met like people who were into Amiga 500 gaming, and Commodore and NES and Super Nintendo and all that kind of stuff. I knew I found my people.
Do you stream full time?
It’s what I mainly spend my time doing. It’s always a funny question because when people say “stream full time on Twitch,” they imagine it means eight hours a day, five days a week. But I think it means that I put all my focus on it. I do a lot of sponsorship work and a lot of offline work for my channel. So technically, yes.
How long did it take to get to the point where you could spend that time on Twitch and the business behind it?
I started in 2019 and then I got Twitch Partner in November 2020. And I was like, OK, wait a minute, people really like what I’m doing here. I have an engaging community, I try to never miss a message in chat — I literally have chat up on like three or four screens.
Once I hit Partner, I found out about the Twitch Ambassador program, because I saw somebody with a check and I clicked it. I applied and talked about all the skills that I had learned. And I talked about why I was passionate for what I do. They called me back a few months later and were like, “We want to invite you into the program.”
I was announced March 2021, and at the time, they also had a billboard in Times Square. I’m originally from New York, but I no longer live there. They put my picture up on that billboard. And at that point, it kind of gave me a kind of sense that there’s credibility to what I’m doing, which is really important for me. I flew up from where I live back up to New York, and I told my mom and she was freaking out. It was such a surreal moment. For me, in my hometown — the crossroads of the world — here is a picture of me. Then it snowballed from there. I knew I wanted to take it seriously.
If you would have told me 2 years ago on this day when I had my VERY FIRST broadcast that just 24 months later I would be on a @Twitch billboard in Times Square, one of the most iconic places in the world & my home, I would have told you “NO WAY” yet here we are. Forever grateful pic.twitter.com/BSq5fiaa0X
One of the things that I do that helps me sustain my business is sponsored broadcast. Because of my professional background, and the way that I communicate — I work on trying to build good bonds with developers or marketing people. I make sure that I do my due diligence, to be on time and to be mindful in the moment and be professional. Whenever I’m called upon for a job, I put a lot of pride into what I’m doing. I knew things were getting serious when people started paying me to play video games.
I love that it allows me freedom to be able to travel to things like TwitchCon. And it allows me to go spend time with my mom, or to just take time to relax, like I can have that work-life balance and not have to request this time off or things like that. And my mom is really proud of me. When I talk about it to my family members, they’re always so happy for the things that I’m doing.
It’s cool to hear you talk about that work-life balance, because I think sometimes when you hear about people doing Twitch, it can be grinding out streams for 12 hours straight. It’s nice that you’re able to have a balance.
That’s key, right? I can’t do my best work if I’m not taking care of myself. I understand why that’s the mindset of constantly streaming, like you’re not discoverable if you’re not live sometimes. That’s the conundrum. But I do feel like if you put your time and effort into things like, I’m going to start writing a little bit, or I’m going to start making short video that I can post on social media so people can get a sense of who I am. Even when I’m not broadcasting, people can find AshSaidHi. When I’m not live, those things helped me bridge the gaps.
What have you learned since you started streaming about carving out that engaging community you mentioned earlier?
I learned to be authentically myself — be present in the moment. I always tell people this when they meet me in person, that you’re meeting the Ash that you see on camera. I’m always talking about my mom and my dad and how they got me into video games. I feel like I’m sharing the best parts of myself — what I grew up with.
I talk about food all the time on my channel. If you meet me, I know all the places in New York where you could get some good food, you know what I’m saying? Like, that is like a big part of who I am. I love Star Trek, I love Nintendo, I love drawing, I love all of those things. And I love sharing those things with people. Being excited about the things that we love… I think that’s key — being able to share the things about you would that you could connect with people.
I think that that’s also the magic of Twitch — connecting with people. It’s a people platform first to me. We go on there, we play video games — whether it’s playing video games or cooking, exercising, ASMR, chatting or whatever it is on Twitch. People go there to connect with people. People go to Twitch to connect about the things they love and find other people that are into the things they love. That’s how I built an engaging community.
What should people know about your career as a streamer, or about Twitch itself?
I would love to share the power of community on Twitch. There is the Twitch Women’s Guild, which is incredible, because not only does it connect women and empower women to be who they are on Twitch, but it’s a place where we cheer each other on. It is a safe space for us to kind of talk about the things that impact us in our daily lives as broadcasters.
I did a Creator Camp with some of the women that are in that group and it was incredible. And I also did a show called Streamer Strategies. I try to do a show once a month where we talk about different strategies that you might be thinking about for streaming. The first one I did was creative monetization. But the next one I did was collaboration. I feel like a lot of really wonderful opportunities come from being able to connect with other people like that. And it’s such a great program. It’s one of the best things that Twitch created because it gives us a space to learn. And it gives us a space to speak about our experiences. They also give a lot of tools to us to help us extend our skills.
Especially for women, Black people, people of color, things like that solidify the fact that we belong in this space. And I think that it is so important to inspire people who feel like they don’t know if they belong, right? Because we see so much of that. I’m really grateful for all of those opportunities that I’ve been given. I just want to make sure that people know how awesome those kinds of tools and resources are, because without things like that, you question whether or not you can do it.
How many times have you worked on something and people are like, “Oh, can you really do it?” They’re questioning your intelligence, or they’re saying, “You just got by on, like, certain qualities.” But no — there’s so many hardworking individuals that get a space because of things like that. I just love that space for us.
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