Video game company Electronic Arts, known as the maker of the “The Sims” and “Madden NFL,” is being acquired in a $55 billion deal.
The California-based company said Monday it had entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by a consortium of companies including Affinity Partners, PIF and Silver Lake.
“The transaction positions EA to accelerate innovation and growth to build the future of entertainment,” the company said in a statement.
Mary Cunningham is a reporter for CBS MoneyWatch. Before joining the business and finance vertical, she worked at “60 Minutes,” CBSNews.com and CBS News 24/7 as part of the CBS News Associate Program.
ROG Strix is Asus’s performance-focused subbrand. This is where the company’s thicker, more conventional gaming laptops are found. Pricing can range widely, as it includes affordable options like the ROG Strix G16 with the RTX 5050, which starts at just $1,300.
TUF Gaming is the company’s entry-level gaming laptop subbrand. These TUF gaming laptops used to be some of the most affordable gaming laptops you could buy, but they’ve gone up in price over the past few years. There aren’t any Asus gaming laptops under $1,000 that feature the latest RTX 50-series GPUs, though you can find plenty of older models for less on Amazon or Best Buy.
Dell’s gaming laptop lineup is fairly sparse these days. All of Dell’s gaming laptops fall under the Alienware brand, which the company acquired back in 2006. Alienware has been through many cycles of reinvention with its gaming laptops, but in 2025, there’s really only four laptops in the stack right now: the Alienware 16 Aurora, Alienware 16X Aurora, Alienware 18 Area-51, and Alienware 16 Area-51. I like the simplicity of the new lineup, which focuses on what Alienware has always been known for: its brash, gamer style and higher-end performance.
The Alienware 16 Aurora is the company’s attempt to reach a cheaper demographic, starting the laptop at just $1,100 right now for an RTX 5050 configuration.
HP’s Omen gaming brand has been around for over a decade, but it really feels like the company has started to build some momentum around it over the past few years. Interestingly, HP breaks down its options into three categories of thickness and performance. Omen Max is the chunkiest at almost an inch thick, and supports up to an RTX 5080. Omen 16 is the middle ground, capping out at an RTX 5070. Omen Transcend, which offers a 14-inch model, still supports up to an RTX 5070, but brings the thickness down to 0.7 inches. There are 16-inch size options available across all three subbrands; however, none of the laptops are as thin as some of the competition. There’s also an Omen 16 Slim, which blurs the lines a bit.
Apart from Omen, HP also launched its “Victus” subbrand in 2021, which represents its budget-oriented options. HP only has a few configurations of the HP Victus 15 and Victus 16 available right now.
Razer, MSI, Acer, and Others
Photograph: Luke Larsen
Razer is solely committed to PC gaming, unlike many of the laptop brands on this list. Its Blade gaming laptops have become iconic in the industry for their minimalist aesthetic. Like many companies, Razer has a Blade 14, Blade 16, and Blade 18, which all have an identical design, but scale up in terms of size and performance.
MSI has made quite a name for itself in the gaming space, especially with its high-end, performance-focused, monster gaming laptops like the MSI Titan HX. Beyond Titan, MSI has a mind-boggling amount of other options, though, including the Raider, Stealth, Vector, Katana, Sword, and its budget-oriented Cyborg series. There’s a lot to dig into.
Acer’s Predator line has its own fanfare about it. Predator Helios is its high-end, performance-driven line with tons of options across 14-inch, 16-inch, and 18-inch sizes. Triton is its thin-and-light sub-brand, but it hasn’t been updated in 2025 so far. The company also has its Nitro budget brand, which comes in 14-, 15-, and 16-inch options and with support up to an RTX 5070.
Beyond these mainstay brands, you also have PC gaming companies that have dipped into gaming laptops, such as Gigabyte, Origin, and Maingear. Just stay away from the no-name brands that have popular listings on Amazon despite lacking discrete graphics cards—like this.
Gaming on Non-Gaming Laptops
Photograph: Luke Larsen
Photograph: Luke Larsen
Photograph: Luke Larsen
Photograph: Luke Larsen
While there’s an entire ecosystem of laptops marketed toward gamers, that doesn’t mean you can’t play games on other devices. Laptops with dedicated graphics cards can often play games just as well as gaming laptops, but they’re often targeted more at creatives who need better graphics to run creative applications. These include laptops like the Dell 14 Premium, Acer Swift X 14, and the Asus ProArt P16.
If you’re buying a laptop primarily to play games, though, I wouldn’t recommend one of these. They usually don’t support the higher-tier GPUs like the RTX 5080 or 5090, and you won’t get super-fast refresh rates beyond 120 Hz. If you’re more of a casual gamer and just want a high-end laptop that can do it all, these are good options. They’re especially good if you despise the “gamer” aesthetic and want something a bit more subtle.
“Panic gave the platform a playful and friendly character from the start, and promoted an openness that other platforms simply don’t have, allowing anyone to cheaply and easily make games for it with a variety of different tools,” says Nicola Cocchiaro, a veteran developer and software engineer. After working on Red Dead Redemption 2, he set up his own studio Synaptic Sugar in 2022, “to explore options to make my own games: smaller in scope but still polished, centering around hopefully interesting mechanics.”
Alongside wife Kimberly, Cocchiaro is developing Agents of Groove, an upcoming “story-driven rhythm game” set to be a Playdate exclusive. “For us, the openness has represented an opportunity to dive in, learn how best to make a game together, and put our art out into the world,” he says. “The relative youth of the platform and its SDK, as well as its intended experimental nature, also put some roadblocks in our way on occasion. But I like to think that through our experience and collaboration with the developer community, we helped make the development tools and the platform stronger.”
Courtesy of Panic Inc.
Both the unique form factor and the restrictions of the Playdate hardware are part of the appeal for some developers.
“When I discovered the Playdate, I knew that its capabilities would leverage creativity,” says Ludovic Bas, founder of indie studio Lugludum. “Since I have succumbed to scope creep in the past, I thought Playdate could put me on the right track. A one-bit screen, no shaders and limited RAM are definitely part of appeal. It allows developers to focus on the gameplay instead of spending a lot of time in a very complicated art pipeline.”
Fittingly, Bas’ first game for Playdate, 2024’s The Scrolling Enigma, was highly experimental. A string of microgames that tap into vintage gaming memories, it’s also a puzzle box, challenging players to figure out which of Playdate’s hardware features, including the accelerometer and mic, to use to master each one. Bas calls it “not really marketable, a niche game on a niche platform,” but it’s also something that could exist only on Playdate. His newest game, Crankstone, continues that experimental streak, offering a Wild West shooter crammed with Warioware-style minigames.
Community Center
Another factor that has kept Playdate going strong over the past three years is a dedicated community. This is partly by design—Panic’s weekly rollout of games was intended to make for water-cooler moments as players discussed each week’s titles. It never quite panned out, as supply issues meant even early adopters didn’t necessarily get their consoles at once, and jumping in now means missing out on what I can only imagine was shared mass confusion over what season two’s cable-TV-channel-hopping sim Blippo+ even was.
A thriving fan scene emerged nonetheless, one vibrant enough to warrant at least two dedicated print zines, Uncrank’d and Cranko!, annual community awards, and regular themed game jams. The latter is especially important for developers, not only as a way to hone and showcase their talents but also because the Playdate fanbase is keen on putting money into creator’s pockets.
None of that means you’re going to get good battery life, though. I was only getting around four and a half hours in a very light video playback test. That’s pretty short, limiting the laptop’s viability as a hybrid device for travel, work, or school.
Close Competition
Photograph: Luke Larsen
The RTX 5060 model is available only at Best Buy, starting at $1,870. I would not buy this right now—at least not at this price. Currently, the better deal is over at Lenovo.com, where you can pick up an RTX 5070 model for $1,795 on sale. Though I haven’t tested it (and both GPUs come with only 8 GB of VRAM), stepping up to the RTX 5070 is certainly worth it. Both configurations get you 32 GB of RAM and one terabyte of storage.
The Legion 7i Gen 10 is one of the most expensive gaming laptops to use the RTX 5060. You’re paying extra for the keyboard backlighting, faster HX-series Intel chip, higher-resolution OLED display, and superior design. These all add a lot to the laptop experience, but they are, for the most part, quality-of-life additions. For example, the Alienware Aurora 16 (a laptop I’ll be reviewing soon) also starts with an RTX 5060 and a similar resolution screen, but it’s IPS instead of OLED.
Just be careful with the cheap RTX 5060 laptops out there, such as the Gigabyte Aero X16, which is on sale for just $1,150 right now. I haven’t tested it yet, but it uses the 85-watt variant of the RTX 5060, which will mean a significant drop in performance compared to the Legion 7i Gen 10. That’s rock bottom for RTX 5060 gaming laptops. Lenovo has its own version of a cheaper RTX 5060 right now, the LOQ 15, which will be available in October, gets you an RTX 5060 for close to $1,000, but comes with a standard 1080p IPS display.
With that in mind, the Legion 7i Gen 10 is clearly not for those who value performance above all. But it’s one of the nicest looking gaming laptops I’ve reviewed lately that isn’t a Razer Blade, and it has enough performance and high-end features to make it worth the money—just make sure to opt for the RTX 5070 while it’s still on sale.
Anime fans can identify the signs of a shonen show. “Shonen” is a genre that’s geared toward boys and has a wide-eyed male protagonists who gain a surprising power. That’s echoed in shows such as “My Hero Academia” or “One Piece.” It’s a formula that’s perfect for video games, and it’s one that’s in the DNA of the “Mega Man Star Force Legacy Collection.”
The upcoming title brings the action-role playing series to a new generation of fans. The “Star Force” series is a follow-up to the “Mega Man Battle Network” franchise, but those unfamiliar with either can jump in without knowledge of the prior entries.
ADVENTURES AWAIT The games follow the adventure of Geo Stelar and his EM ally, Omega Xis, as they battle threats to the planet. These enemies come in the form of EM viruses and other alien entities that exist in an invisible world that can only been seen using a device a called Visualizer.
Like the previous entries, the “Star Force” series maintains its mix of card-based gameplay, in which players choose a card from a series to use as attacks, and employs them in a 3-by-5 grid, in which players move left to right blasting at enemies while using their card abilities. It’s an approach that will be novel for beginners but will be old hat to veterans of the “Mega Man Battle Network” games.
Players battle on a 3 by 5 grid in the “Mega Man Star Force Legacy Collection” games. (Capcom)
IMPROVEMENTS From what I’ve played, the visuals look drastically improved compared to the original Nintendo DS version, with sharper sprites and art. The graphics hold up while the gameplay is novel for those who haven’t tried a “Mega Man Battle Network” game. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to try the online component, which was a key feature of the Nintendo DS games.
The major element making the game more accessible is that the “Mega Man Star Force Legacy Collection” has all the shonen tropes that will make it easy to jump into. The formula makes it predictable, but it will hit the spot for gamers looking for an anime experience that will last through a three-game package: the original “Mega Man Star Force” which comes in three variations a la “Pokemon” — “Pegasus,” “Leo” and “Dragon;” “Mega Man Star Force 2,” which has two variations — “Zerker x Ninja” and “Zerker x Saurian” and “Mega Man Star Force 3,” which has two variations — “Black Ace” and “Red Joker.”
“Mega Man Star Force Legacy Collection” is scheduled to be released in 2026 on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X and Series S, Xbox One and PC.
If you’re building a new gaming PC, I’ve got a sweet deal for you on a graphics card. The PNY Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti OC (7/10, WIRED Review) is currently marked down to just $379 at Walmart. While prices have been in flux since launch, this is anywhere from $50 to $100 off the usual price, a discount that makes it a much more appealing purchase for gaming at 1080p.
Photograph: Brad Bourque
PNY
GeForce RTX 5060 Ti OC
This is the most modest entry from Nvidia’s 50 Series that I think is worth your time, but that doesn’t mean that you’ll be disappointed. The 16-GB card can chug right along in most modern games at 1080p, beating 60 fps in every game in our test suite with the settings cranked up and the ray tracing turned on. It struggled to keep up at 1440p, at least with everything set to ultra, but a little tinkering, or Nvidia’s latest tech, can help with that. Common games like Minecraft, Helldivers 2, and Marvel Rivals all ran over 90 fps, which is great news for weeknight Squirrel Girl enjoyers like myself.
As an RTX 50 Series card, the 5060 TI supports the latest version of DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) which includes Multi-Frame Generation. For every traditionally rendered frame of gameplay, the GPU can use machine learning to generate up to three extra frames with low overhead. The result is a much smoother experience, with big fps jumps each time you turn up the setting. The tradeoffs are a slight increase in input lag, as well as the occasional tiny artifact, which I feel makes this a great option for slower, cinematic games, but less optimal for twitchy shooters.
This PNY example isn’t the flashiest, with a plastic housing and only two fans, but I think a lot of gamers will be satisfied with it. It does feature the classic 8-pin PCIe power plug, so it could be an upgrade for an older system too, but I don’t think the performance jump would be that noticeable from the higher-end 30 or even 20 Series cards. If you want to check out your other options, I’ve got a full GPU buying guide that covers the latest from both AMD and Nvidia, from this card all the way up to the $2,000 RTX 5090.
GUANGZHOU, China, September 24, 2025 (Newswire.com)
– LilliLandia Games, an indie studio under Tencent Games specialising in the life simulation genre and integrating both development and publishing, is proud to announce its upcoming title, Animula Nook, a fantasy life simulation game set in a lilliputian world. Blending whimsical characters with richly interactive environments, the game aims to offer players an enchanting, creative and cozy experience.
Inspired by the charm of modern animated cartoons, Animula Nook transforms everyday objects into fantastical landscapes. From towering coffee mugs to sprawling bookshelves, players become tiny explorers in a giant’s world. They can navigate and interact with oversized, real-world objects, build their own homestead, collect elements such as raindrops and wind to help with crafting, and grow crops in flowerpots.
Animula Nook offers players a haven where they can explore, create and forge friendships. The game also supports online functionality, allowing players to share their creativity and experiences with their family and friends.
Key Features of Animula Nook:
Discover a tiny yet immense world: Venture into vibrant landscapes hidden in plain sight. Explore lush, resource-packed houseplant forests, delve into the mysterious depths of a forgotten well, and navigate other awe-inspiring (and sometimes perilous) corners of your home. Every expedition is an adventure, whether you are unearthing rare materials or meeting a new friend.
Collect beyond the ordinary: In this tiny world, sunlight, raindrops, gentle breezes-even forgotten scents-become precious materials waiting to be discovered. Coins, buttons, and other small wonders are scattered throughout the land – each one not just a resource, but a lost treasure waiting for a new purpose.
Build with everyday objects: Milk cartons become charming houses, teacups turn into bustling cafés, and spice jars transform into tiny, glowing shops. Use the objects around you to build, decorate, and customize a miniature haven with unique furniture and personal touches. Start on your desk, then expand your creations across windowsills, cabinets, or even inside a vibrant, living vivarium.
Befriend the world’s tiny folk: This miniature world is full of life. Meet a delightful cast of residents, from tiny humanoids to whimsical beings you’ve never seen before. Exchange gifts, create memories, and watch as your bonds deepen over time. As you grow closer, their stories will unfold in more personal and surprising ways. With enough care, you might even convince them to move in – just be sure to build them a space they’ll love.
Define yourself in every detail: Customize your character, express yourself creatively, and make the world truly yours. With an endless assortment of outfits, accessories, furniture, and tools, everything you create is a reflection of you.
Convenient creative tools: Bring your ideas to life with intuitive tools that make creativity effortless. Sketch blueprints for builds, dismantle objects into modular components, and see your imagination come to life with ease.
Animula Nook will make its first appearance at Tokyo Game Show this week, September 25th to 28th. Attendees can visit the booth in Hall 6 06S02 to get a first look at gameplay and secure exclusive gifts.
Animula Nook is available for wishlist on Steam, Epic Games Store, and PlayStation, and will be available for Switch 2 and Mac. Players who wishlist the title will receive updates on upcoming announcements, release timelines, and exclusive content reveals.
Join the official Discord server, to become part of the Alpha testing team. Get early access to community events and rewards and hear from the development team.
For more information about Animula Nook, check out the website or follow the game on social channels: Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok or YouTube.
About LilliLandia Games
LilliLandia Games is an experienced studio with mature cross-platform global development capabilities, built by a core team of veterans who specialise in platform development and multiplayer experiences. The team focuses on making games that provide social connection and comfort, creating beautiful worlds as a sanctuary for the global gaming community.
Think of a keyboard switch like light switches. They have a fixed point where they activate, and all they can report is whether they’re in one of two states. Hall effect switches are more like light dimmer knobs. They know exactly where they currently are and can report that information back to the computer, which has a number of advantages over traditional keyboard switches.
For starters, you don’t have to settle for a fixed actuation point like you do on most keyboards. You can use the software to set the keys to be super sensitive, or require them to be almost all the way down, or even set keys to send different button presses depending on how hard they’re pressed. If you like to play video games, you can set keys to act like an analog joystick or trigger, letting you easily steer in racing games or walk in RPGs without picking up a controller.
The software has a lot of options, but is well thought out and easy to use, although you do need to plug it in to make changes. It’s QMK-based, but Keychron provides their own web-based launcher to make things even easier, particularly if you’re not well versed in that customization software.
It’s a premium mechanical keyboard throughout. The switches themselves are made by Gateron, and our reviewer noted that they’re exceptionally smooth, thanks to the pre-lubed rails and magnetic sensor. The gasket mount design and full aluminum body work together to provide a soft, deep, typing experience. Unless you’re already using linear switches, you might miss some of the crispness and feedback you get from a tactile or clicky mechanical switch.
While the larger Keychron Q6 HE currently sits at the top of our list of favorite mechanical keyboards, if you don’t need the num pad, you might appreciate the extra desk space you can reclaim with the Q1 HE. They’re otherwise extremely similar boards, and you’ll save $50 in the process.
The Nintendo Switch 2 is not the most powerful game console, not by a long shot. Instead, it is powerful enough to give developers the breathing room to port modern games to it. Where the original Switch forced developers to pare back visuals, Star Wars Outlaws, which launched on Nintendo’s handheld on Sept. 4, signals what players should come to expect with Switch 2 ports. It still has the best parts of what made the game beautiful in 2024. On handheld, it may finally be worth slogging through the Ubisoft open-world formula.
Star Wars Outlaws on Switch 2
It’s one of the best ports I’ve seen to a handheld, though some may enjoy the game more than others.
Pros
Stable 30 fps in all environments
Ray-traced lighting effects even in handheld
Beautiful environments and effects
Minute-to-minute gameplay is fun
Cons
Disjointed story
Relies on the open-world Ubisoft formula
Uses game-key card
I’m still floored by how well Cyberpunk 2077 runs on Switch 2, and Star Wars Outlaw is a very well-optimized port. The game maintained a stable 30 fps frame rate throughout the hours I spent playing the game over the past week. I never experienced a hitch or a dip. Ubisoft’s Snowdrop engine, which boasts excellent ray-traced lighting effects, is still in full effect on the Switch 2 version of Star Wars Outlaws. The neon lights of the game’s many cantinas bloom off the polished bar tables while outside lights beam in through broken slits of saloon windows. There are so many great effects to enhance the gritty tone of the game, such as the faux dirt bespeckling the screen—as if you were filming each scene in a dustbowl.
No, it doesn’t look as good as the game running on a full desktop PC with a high-end gaming CPU and a discrete Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 GPU. There are subtle fluctuations and an odd, blurry aura around Outlaws’ protagonist Kay’s hair. The anti-aliasing, which reduces jagged edges in scenery, is less smooth than the game running on a high-end PC. I also experienced multiple instances of flickering shadows. That, I would attribute to issues caused by the game relying on DLSS, Nvidia’s version of AI upscaling that renders the game at a lower resolution and uses AI to make it appear at a higher resolution.
All these issues are minor compared to the spectacle of the game running so damn well, both in 1080p in handheld mode and at 1440p when docked and connected to a TV. In handheld mode, I could see a few more jagged outlines and more flickering, which is likely due to the game rendering at a much lower 540p resolution before being upscaled. The draw distance is also scaled back slightly, and you’ll see more textures and shrubbery “pop in” as you roll across these open environments. In either case, I was amazed at the number of effects still present in the game, especially when the wind shuddered the grass in long waves in the game’s open-world sections. The game suffered a bit more during cutscenes, where I spotted some instances of odd textures when we got too close to some characters. Regular gameplay proved much smoother.
Some commentators online seem to think that the game running this well is a small miracle. It’s not. It’s an effect of what happens when developers put effort into a port. Star Wars Outlaws was built first for Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PC. The game cannot run well on a Steam Deck. It’s a title that will prove difficult to maintain stable frame rates on more powerful handheld PCs like the Asus ROG Ally X, even at 25W or 30W TDP, or thermal design power. The game relies on ray tracing by default, which means it will also lean on upscaling technology such as AMD’s FidelityFx Super Resolution 3. Even then, Outlaws was not built for small devices. It can’t maintain a stable frame rate.
The Switch 2 runs at a much lower TDP than high-end handheld PCs and even lower than the Steam Deck’s max 15W. And still, it looks damn good. Developers at Massive Entertainment, who created the first game, worked with Ubisoft Red Links for the port. The extra time and attention paid off. There are a few extra features included, such as touchscreen support in some Wordle-like puzzles. You won’t miss much playing in docked or in handheld mode, anyway.
Nintendo has the pull to push publishers and developers to design games around the handheld hardware, even if it means losing out on 4K assets available for higher-end consoles. However, it comes at the cost of game preservation. There is no physical version of Outlaws like there is with Cyberpunk 2077. It’s either a game-key card or digital download for a mere 21GB (the PC version is closer to 60GB). Massive Entertainment may have an excuse for why there’s no physical version. Rob Bantin, the audio architect for the Snowdrop engine, wrote on Bluesky that the game relies on fast disk streaming for its open worlds, and the flash storage on Switch 2 game cards isn’t fast enough. “I think if we’d designed a game for Switch 2 from the ground up, it might have been different,” Bantin said.
The game is a looker. If that’s all that matters to you, it’s worth the trip to the outer rim to see the sights. Whether Star Wars Outlaws is the game for you should depend wholly on how well you can stomach the prototypical “Ubisoft formula” of open-world game design. The protagonist, Kay Vess, is a strangely naive scoundrel who seems to stumble from big-name job to big-name job like a drunk confused about how they ended up working for the galaxy’s largest and most dangerous crime syndicates. In usual Ubisoft fashion, players are forced to interact with all the game’s many, many systems slowly over time in what can only be described as extra-long tutorials.
One mission asks you to upgrade your speeder—the main way players zip around the open world. That mission requires players to travel to three separate points on a map, and then when you finally find the lone speeder mechanic who can install the most basic upgrade to your device, you then have to crawl around an Imperial base to get a lone part just to trudge back and finally fix up your bike. All the while, Kay “ummms” and “uhhhs” her way through conversations in a way that makes her seem like the most alien creature in a universe filled with blue-skinned Chiss, humanoid guinea pig-faced Chadra-Fan, and a literal talking fish in a jar that you break out of prison. It doesn’t help that the lip syncing often doesn’t match up to characters’ speech. Kay grows more confident over the course of the game, but in an effort to shoehorn players into the main gameplay loop, Outlaws loses a chance for players to grow alongside Kay in more than mere upgrades to her blaster or spaceship, the Trailblazer.
It’s the kind of game that will fill your journal with enough quests and missions to play for dozens or hundreds of hours, but I can only stomach so much of the game’s quest design. Star Wars Outlaws can feel overburdened with choice and still all too simple when each quest revolves around the same “go here, sneak into base, steal object, leave” quest design. They’re similar problems for Ubisoft’s other open-world series, from Far Cry to Assassin’s Creed. Cloaked in Star Wars’ high-tech, low-society aesthetic, Outlaws feels familiar in two ways that gel together but never truly stick.
On the Switch 2, where I can take Outlaws with me for short stints of sneaking and stealing, the game feels at home. It also marks a high-water mark for Switch 2 ports. Now with Cyberpunk 2077 and Star Wars Outlaws running so well on the system, other developers have less of an excuse if we end up with titles that can’t hit playable framerates. This sets high expectations for upcoming ports of games like Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade and Elden Ring. Borderlands 4, which is facing a small player rebellion over performance issues on both consoles and PC, is set to hit Switch 2 on Oct. 3. It will be up to developers to make sure their games play well on the handheld.
Remember Super Mario Galaxy (not the upcoming movie)? You better. It’s one of those games that came out for Nintendo’s oddest console, the Wii, built for the system with a controller shaped like a TV remote. It was more than innovative for the time. No other game has managed to replicate Galaxy’s complicated gravity simulation. Every jump and leap sends Mario orbiting around a planetoid, the camera barely able to keep up. It’s as magnificent now on the Switch 2 with a big 4K television as it was back in 2007, played on my old, boxy CRT TV. It looks better, but does it play better when we replace the Wii Remote with a Joy-Con 2?
Nintendo invited me to play through a single level in both Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2. The company is selling each game separately for $40, or you can buy them both together for $70 at a “mama mia”-level price for an 18-year-old game. The Mario maker implied this is a good deal since you’re getting new storybook chapters, enhanced textures, and 4K resolution at your regular 16:9 aspect ratio. There’s also a new “Assist Mode” that adds extra health and will automatically rescue Mario if he falls into a black hole. It’s a recreation, and based on my brief experience with it, it’s a good one.
Gyro isn’t quite the same as the Wii Remote
The original Super Mario Galaxy used the Wii Remote plus Nunchuk attachment to enable Mario’s normal suite of jump attacks, plus the pointer to pick up the candy-colored sprites and launch them at enemies. Galaxy’s controls were notably simplified compared to Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine to make up for the lack of face buttons on the Wiimote. Now on the Switch 2, we can only approximate what the original game felt like.
The Joy-Con 2 controllers use the built-in gyroscopes to simulate the pointer on screen. You can use the motion controls or the X button to complete Mario’s spin attack and the ZR shoulder button to launch sprites or grab onto “Pull Stars.” In Super Mario Galaxy 2, the gyro is also how you aim Yoshi’s tongue for licking enemies (both in terms of swallowing them and tossing them around).
You can also use Nintendo’s Switch 2 Pro controller or any other third-party gamepad with a gyro built in. Based on my experience with Galaxy, holding up the controller and swishing it around is more uncomfortable than lounging with a Joy-Con 2 in each hand. Unlike the Wii, which used an infrared sensor bar to track your remote, the Switch 2 doesn’t have that capability. If you lose the sensor or shift your controller, you’ll reset the cursor by hitting one of the R buttons. This means you don’t have to point the Joy-Con 2 directly at the screen, though you may lose track of your cursor if your hand starts to drift.
I experienced a few issues with the Joy-Con 2 registering with the game, though Nintendo told me it may have been an issue with so many Switch 2 units around, and it shouldn’t be a problem with the final game. I’m keen to believe them; Nintendo had already rereleased the original 2007 on the first Switch with the limited run of Super Mario 3D All-Stars. The title on Switch 2 is certainly the better version. The pastel colors seem jarring today when you compare the original’s 480p resolution to the modern version at 4K and native widescreen support. The game looks like a storybook, with every color big and bold, surrounded by the glow of space and a sea of stars. There’s an ethereal quality to the world and its characters. Once you show the game side by side with its older version, you can see how much the updated textures make a difference.
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond plays great with gyro and mouse
I only wish the game came with mouse controls as well. Such a feature seemed like a shoo-in when Nintendo first showed off the game at last week’s Direct. The fact that it’s missing from the Switch 2 version leaves potential gameplay off the table. I also managed to play the first level of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond—a game I have been awaiting for so many years. It’s the same demo Nintendo showed off before the Switch 2’s debut, but it may be one of the games emblematic of everything the console has to offer.
Metroid Prime’s classic lock-on mechanic combines with gyro controls that edge closest to Metroid Prime 3: Corruption on the original Wii. Then, with the added mouse controls, you can seamlessly switch between gyro and precision mouse aiming just by putting the Joy-Con 2 down on a flat surface. Easy swapping to and from mouse controls is the one element missing from the otherwise excellent port of Cyberpunk 2077. Now I can’t help but think of how I want sequels to the incredible Metroid Prime: Remastered, but with options to enable Metroid Prime 4’s controls.
Metroid Prime 4 will cost the same $70 as the Galaxy remake.
Albert Einstein himself indicated they are the most elevated form of investigation. He knew games are avenues for something deeper and more meaningful than a childish waste of time. Games promote situated learning, or in other words, learning that occurs in groups of practice during immersive experiences. Oftentimes, playing games are the first method children use to explore higher-order thinking skills associated with creating, evaluating, analyzing, and applying new knowledge.
This article is written in two parts. The first, written by Ryan Schaaf, Assistant Professor of Technology at Notre Dame of Maryland University, introduces gamification in an educational context, its many elements, and some products that emulate gamified practices. The second part, shared by classroom teacher and coach Jack Quinn, provides a firsthand account with perspective from a gamified learning practitioner. Below are our combined insights.
Gamification In An Educational Context
Games have many elements that make them powerful vehicles for human learning. They are commonly structured for players to solve a problem; an essential skill needed for today and tomorrow. Many games promote communication, cooperation, and even competition amongst players. Some of the most immersive games have a rich narrative that spawns creativity and imagination in its players. Finally, depending on how they are designed, games can both teach and test their players. They are incredible packages of teaching, learning, and assessment.
The structural elements of games are also especially suited to serve this current generation of learners. Commonly known as gamification (or gameful design according to Jane McGonigal), this approach of adding game elements such as storytelling, problem-solving, aesthetics, rules, collaboration, competition, reward systems, feedback, and learning through trial and error into non-game situations has already experienced widespread implementation in such fields as marketing, training, and consumerism with rampant success (see http://www.cio.com/article/2900319/gamification/3-enterprise-gamification-success-stories.html) for more details.
In the education realm, gamification is starting to pick up steam. With success stories such as Classcraft, Class Dojo, and Rezzly leading the charge, the potential for gamification to spread to more and more classrooms is a forgone conclusion. There are also pockets of educators in the teaching landscape that are designing their own ‘gamefully-designed’ learning environments. The next section explores such an environment by sharing Jack’s experiences with his own class.
I have been involved with gamification for quite some time now. In my 9 years of experience, I’ve found games are great at resolving several common classroom issues such as: student participation/talk time, student engagement, differentiation, data tracking, and increasing student achievement.
As an ancillary language teacher on Jeju Island in South Korea, gamification helped me increase student talk time by 300%. My 250 students completed over 27,000 ‘quests,’ a.k.a. additional homework assignments they chose to do. My top 10% of participants spent an hour outside of class speaking their target language daily. I was even startled on more than one occasion to arrive early to work and find my students had beaten me there and were eagerly awaiting my arrival so they could begin their daily quests.
As a classroom teacher in the Houston Independent School district serving schools with a 95% free and reduced lunch population, I have taught both 3rd-grade reading and 5th-grade science. Each of these is a state-tested subject (that I taught for two years).
On average in my first year of instruction, my students have performed 1.39 times the district norm and 1.82 times the district norm in my second year teaching the subject. Or put another way, traditional methods would take 14 to 18 months to achieve what I can do with games in 10.
I credit much of this success to following the advice of Gabe Zicherman from his Google Tech Talk, Fun is the Future: Mastering Gamification, where he advises game designers to “incentivize whatever you want people to do.” (Zicherman, n.d.)
As such I strive to identify the key actions my students need to practice then build games and reward systems around those actions.
20 Examples of Gamification in the Classroom | TeachThought
Gamification in education uses the mechanics of games—points, levels, competition, challenges, and rewards—to motivate students and make learning more engaging. Below are 20 practical, classroom-tested examples of gamification that teachers can use to boost motivation and participation.
1. Giving Points for Meeting Academic Objectives
Do students need to cite details from the text and support conclusions with evidence? Award 1 point for an answer without evidence, 2 points for one piece of evidence, and 3 points for multiple pieces of evidence. This makes evidence-based thinking measurable and motivating.
2. Giving Points for Procedural or Non-Academic Objectives
Want to shorten the time it takes to check homework? Award 2 points to every student who has their work out before being prompted. This gamifies procedures and encourages self-management.
3. Creating Playful Barriers or Challenges
Introduce fun obstacles—puzzles, riddles, or time-based challenges—that students must overcome to unlock the next step of a lesson. These barriers increase engagement and mirror the challenge-reward loop in games.
4. Creating Healthy Competition in the Classroom
Try Teacher vs. Class: Students earn points collectively when they follow rules; the teacher earns points when they don’t. If students win, reward them with a 1-minute dance party, extra recess, or reduced homework.
5. Comparing and Reflecting on Performance
After a project, provide students with a performance breakdown—badges for creativity, teamwork, or perseverance, plus statistics like “most questions asked” or “highest number of drafts.” Reflection is a core element of gamification.
6. Creating a Range of Unique Rewards
Offer tiered rewards that appeal to different personalities. For example: sunglasses for 5 points, shoes-off privilege for 10, a positive parent text for 15, or the right to “steal” the teacher’s chair for the highest scorer.
7. Using Levels, Checkpoints, and Progression
Track points over multiple days or weeks and let students level up at milestones. Higher levels unlock privileges, mentor roles, or bonus challenges—mirroring video game progression systems.
8. Grading Backward
Instead of starting from 100, let students earn points toward mastery. Each correct answer, skill demonstration, or positive behavior moves them closer to 100. This approach reframes learning as growth rather than loss avoidance.
9. Creating Multi-Solution Challenges
Design tasks with more than one valid solution and encourage students to compare strategies. Reward creative or unique solutions to encourage divergent thinking.
10. Using Learning Badges
Instead of (or alongside) grades, offer digital or paper badges for achievements like “Critical Thinker,” “Collaboration Pro,” or “Master of Fractions.” Badges make learning goals tangible and collectible.
11. Letting Students Set Their Own Goals
Allow students to set personalized goals, then track their progress visually on a class leaderboard, sticker chart, or digital tracker. Self-directed goal-setting is motivating and teaches ownership.
12. Helping Students Assume Roles or Personas
Use role-play to have students act as judges, designers, or historians while working on assignments. Role-based learning taps into the immersive nature of games.
13. Classroom Quests and Storylines
Wrap units or lessons in a narrative arc (e.g., “Survive the Ancient Civilization”) where students unlock new “chapters” by completing assignments.
14. Time-Limited Boss Battles
End a unit with a collaborative review challenge where students must “defeat the boss” (answer a set of challenging problems) before the timer runs out.
15. Randomized Rewards
Use a mystery reward system: when students earn enough points, let them draw from a reward jar. The unpredictability keeps motivation high.
16. Digital Leaderboards
Create a leaderboard for cumulative points, badges, or completed challenges. Public recognition motivates competitive students but should be framed positively to avoid shaming lower performers.
17. Power-Ups for Positive Behavior
Introduce power-ups such as “extra hint,” “skip one homework problem,” or “sit anywhere pass.” Students can spend earned points to activate them.
18. Cooperative Class Goals
Set a shared objective—if the entire class meets a point total, they earn a group reward like a read-aloud day, a project celebration, or bonus recess.
19. Daily Streaks
Track daily participation or homework completion with streak mechanics like those used by language-learning apps. Breaking a streak resets progress, encouraging consistency.
20. Unlockable Bonus Content
Provide bonus activities or secret levels (puzzles, videos, enrichment problems) that students can unlock after meeting a point threshold. This gives advanced students additional challenges.
Why Gamification Works
Gamification turns routine tasks into engaging challenges, encourages intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and provides continuous feedback. When applied thoughtfully, it promotes mastery, collaboration, and a sense of progress.
Draw or project a seating chart onto a whiteboard/screen, and then award students points for all activities that you want to incentivize with sustainable rewards/recognitions at different point levels.
Conclusion
Make sure to be creative and respond to student interests. In my class, students don’t take practice tests; they battle the evil emperor, Kamico (the maker of popular test prep workbooks used at my school). We don’t just test objects for conductivity; we search out the secret object which will turn on the alien spaceship’s ‘prepared to launch’ light.
While students are collecting points, leveling up, and competing against each other, I am collecting data, tracking progress, and tailoring the rules, rewards, and quests to build positive class culture while pushing student achievement. Students become eager to participate in the activities that they need to do to improve, and when students buy-in, they make school a game worth playing.
References & Further Reading
McGonigal, J. (2011). Gaming can make a better world. | TED Talk | TED.com [Video file]. Retrieved from: ted.com/
Schaaf, R., & Mohan, N. (2014). Making school a game worth playing: Digital games in the classroom. SAGE Publications.
Schell, J. (n.d.) When games invade real life. | TED Talk | TED.com [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/jesse_schell_when_games_invade_real_life
Zicherman. (n.d.). Fun is the Future: Mastering Gamification [Video file]. Retrieved from youtube.com
Looking for an impressive gaming monitor to match your powerful desktop? The 32-inch version of the Samsung Odyssey G8 (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is currently marked down from $1,300 to just $1,100. Only the beefiest gaming rigs can dream of powering its 3,840 x 2,160-pixel resolution at the full 240-Hz refresh rate, but those who can will be hard-pressed to find anything stronger.
Photograph: Brad Bourque
Photograph: Brad Bourque
Photograph: Brad Bourque
Photograph: Brad Bourque
Samsung
Odyssey OLED G81SF 4K 240Hz Gaming Monitor
I got to spend some time with the 27-inch version of this panel and was extremely impressed with its incredible image quality, whether watching movies or playing games. A big part of that is the QD-OLED panel, which is capable of producing perfectly dark black levels, as well as bright, vivid colors.
While streaming services might have limits when it comes to utilizing that kind of screen, most video games can take advantage of a panel like this without any extra work. The result is immersive, lifelike scenes, particularly in more cinematic and detailed games. Playing Cyberpunk 2077 on a screen like this is a rare delight, available only to those with thousands to spare on their battle station.
Even my supercharged gaming desktop, which features Nvidia’s top-end RTX 5090 (7/10, WIRED Recommends) couldn’t get anywhere close to 240 Hz in any game with the settings turned up. You’ll likely need to turn the quality down, or rely heavily on multi-frame generation, in order to reach 200+ FPS at 4K in modern titles.
In fact, I wouldn’t even consider using this monitor unless you’re on an RTX 3000 Series GPU or newer, the first generation to support the HDMI and DisplayPort connectivity needed for 4K at 240 Hz. Thankfully, the G81SF does support both FreeSync Premium Pro and Nvidia G-Sync, so AMD users on Radeon RX 6000 Series or newer cards might give this a look as well. Anything older than that and you’re better off checking one of our other favorite gaming monitors.
If you’ve got the scratch, and the rig to match, this Samsung is absolutely one of the most premium gaming monitors available, and a noticeable discount to help cover the cost of a GPU upgrade is particularly welcome.
The busy actor, who appeared this summer in such films as Naked Gun and The Fantastic Four: First Steps, will star alongside previously confirmed castmember Austin Abrams in Sony Pictures‘ new take on the franchise. The feature hits theaters Sept. 18, 2026, and adapts the popular video game series about an elite task force battling zombies.
Cregger, who had a hit this summer with Warner Bros.’ Weapons, will helm Resident Evil from a script he is co-writing with Shay Hatten. Plot details have not yet been disclosed for the project that hails from Constantin Film.
Producers include Robert Kulzer for Constantin Film, Roy Lee for Vertigo Entertainment and Asad Qizilbash and Carter Swan for PlayStation Productions. TriStar Pictures president Nicole Brown oversees the movie for the studio.
Based on the Capcom video games, the Resident Evil film franchise launched with Sony’s original 2002 feature that starred Milla Jovovich. The movie series has surpassed $1.2 billion at the global box office.
During an interview last month with The Hollywood Reporter, Hauser explained why he tends to be choosy about his projects. “I feel way too competitive and way too hungry to eat garnish and pretend it’s a meal,” the actor said about waiting for interesting roles. “I would rather hold out for the right thing. On the day, I’m just going to be all hungry, and then I’m going to look stupid, and then I’m going to feel awkward.”
Illinois Tech digital humanities and media studies professor Carly Kocurek says that while masculine tropes aren’t inherently bad, “they can limit the types of stories that get told and the kinds of ideas that make it to market, which can really dampen creativity and innovation.”
“A lot of pop culture stories and media rely on a shared pool of influences,” says Kocurek. She points to movies like Star Wars that follow the hero’s journey, or fantasy characters like dwarves and elves that have been popularized by J.R.R. Tolkien and other writers. “We get certain ideas about what a hero is, what a man is, and we see them again and again.”
Consider iconic game characters like Halo’s Master Chief, Metal Gear’s Solid Snake, or even Nintendo’s mustachioed plumber, Mario. “Even Spider-Man is kind of represented as a jock in video games,” says Foddy.
Foddy, who developed Baby Steps alongside Ape Out developers Gabe Cuzzilo and Maxi Boch, says that most often, players adopt this role of a savior character—someone capable and self-sufficient who reflects a heroic ideal. Gender doesn’t always matter; Aloy, the heroine from the Horizon series, exhibits just as many masculine ideals as Nathan Drake of Uncharted. When it came to Baby Steps, the team wanted to go in the opposite direction: a character who’s trying to live up to those expectations but just isn’t capable of it.
Still, Foddy says the game is sympathetic to its lead. He’s up to the task and by the game’s end will have scaled an entire mountain; he just doesn’t begin his journey very well equipped.
“He’s a nerd, as is everybody who made the game,” Foddy says. “We’re also gamers, so you know, we’re not out to get gamers.”
Part of Baby Steps involves Nate, who comes from a wealthy family with plenty of opportunity, grappling with his own troublesome behavior. “He’s part of the privileged, white-male default group,” Foddy says. “That’s making his situation more burdensome for him because it underscores that his failures to accomplish success are of his own making.” But the team was not interested in parroting stereotypical bootstrap advice. “We really wanted to resist the kind of boomer morality play of ‘what you really need to do is get a job and start meeting your responsibilities,’ and ‘you’re just lazy and you’re too oriented to pleasure.’”
In playing this character, Foddy hopes people might reflect more on their own motivations and behavior, the why of what they’re doing. During his time as a developer, Foddy has noticed that there is a certain subset of gamers who refuse to take help. They’re the stereotype of a guy who won’t ask for directions or, for example, skips every in-game tutorial.
Others, he says, are of the “git gud” mindset—a slang way to say that you suck at video games and should try harder. Discussions around difficulty and skill have haunted video games spaces for more than a decade, whether it was about playing in online spaces or challenging series like Dark Souls; arguments about player skill versus how hard a game should be are already taking place in the Silksong community, roughly a week after its launch. “Many games really lean into competition as the primary experience,” Kocurek says, “and there is a kind of feedback loop because you get games that embed certain ideals and values that attract certain players who like those.”
Foddy’s games often challenge what he calls “masculine pride” by repeatedly subjecting players to failure. Baby Steps is just a little more open about it in its narrative. Will the lesson land? Hard to say. The playtester determined to conquer the mudslide never did manage to brute-force it. “He started to feel like he was boring us after, you know, half an hour of it,” Foddy says.
Foddy can relate; he too has found himself climbing difficult areas with no reward in other games. “Did I do that for masculine pride,” he says. “Or did I do it because I was actually taking pleasure in the moment-to-moment play? I don’t think we even know why we’re doing it half the time.”
Nostalgic for beloved gadgets from your childhood? One easy and uncommon way to celebrate these gizmos is to frame them up on your wall. Grid Studios has been deconstructing old-school gadgets for 5 years now, and to celebrate its anniversary, the company is offering a 20 percent off sitewide discount with code GRID5, though the sale event ends September 17.
Grid says the products deconstructed in the art frame are original parts, and some of them may even show some wear and tear; however, the company uses fake batteries to prevent any hazards. Its studio is located in China, and it has warehouses in China, the US, and the Czech Republic. The frames come in two sizes, rectangular (11.7 x 16.4 inches) and square (13 x 13 inches).
The gadget is neatly laid out on the back of the frame, and there are labels pointing to and explaining what the parts are. On the Game Boy Advance, it highlights all of the buttons and internal parts, from the speaker and CPU to the L button and battery cover. At the top, you’ll also find the year of the product’s release (it’s been 24 years since the Game Boy Advance launched!). Some of the pieces have extra text on them—the iPhones come with quotes from Steve Jobs.
These make great gifts, or a fun way to decorate a room or home office. There are preinstalled D-rings on the back of the frame, so hanging the piece up is an easy affair. You just have to peel off the plastic cover over the plexiglass. The danger is that once you buy one, you’ll probably be ready to purchase another. Beats having these go to the landfill!
Despite including Bluetooth and ANC, I don’t think of this at the type of do-everything headset you might replace noise-canceling headphones with, and not just because the person next to you will wonder if you’re secretly talking to the pilots. These are so bulky and obviously for gaming that you probably don’t want to wear them outside the house. You’d certainly get some weird looks walking the dog or working from your local coffee shop.
Comfort and Fit
Photograph: Brad Bourque
In order to fit all those features inside, the BlackShark 3 are noticeably heavier than some of the other headsets I’ve tested recently. The Pro version with ANC comes in at 367 grams, a full 100-plus grams heavier than the Arctis Nova 3 at 260 grams. If you opt for the non-Pro model without ANC, it’s much closer to the SteelSeries at just 270 g, which is very appealing if you mostly game alone at home instead of in front of a crowd of adoring fans.
That weight doesn’t make them uncomfortable, at least for a few hours at a time, largely thanks to the ear cups, which have a pleasant mesh exterior and squishy interior padding. Razer says there’s a layer of pleather underneath to help the noise canceling, but I couldn’t tell it was there, which is a good thing, because I hate how hot pleather can get.
Still, I miss the ski-goggle band found on most SteelSeries headsets, which distributes weight more evenly across the top of the headband. Especially during long sessions, and on bigger craniums, it can help a lot with comfort. Even the similarly heavy Arctis Nova Pro, my previous upgrade pick, has a softer top-of-head feel.
Extra weight also means a bigger battery. I measured close to 50 hours with the active noise canceling on, and right around 60 with the feature turned off. In practice, I only had to plug in the BlackShark V3 Pro once a week or so to keep them topped up. The one time they got low in the middle of a WoW raid night, I was able to charge them up on our 8-minute break from about 4 percent to 11 percent, which was more than enough for the rest of the evening. They got a little confused if I plugged them into the computer just to charge, but an external charger worked just fine while playing.
The Best Microphone
Photograph: Brad Bourque
I rotate through a lot of gaming headsets, and most of the time I have to ask for feedback on my microphone quality. Some are better than others, but most are just gaming headset microphones, with a recognizable, slightly tinny vibe. The moment I sat down for my weekly Dungeons and Dragons game, my party members noticed how sharp and clear I sounded.
A video game that ushered in a new era of gaming has a new Minneapolis connection.
Video game fans will hear the work of musicians P.O.S. and Dwynell Roland under the newest version of the skateboarding game Tony Hawk.
They sat down with me to talk about the honor of having their music immortalized in a new way.
“Don’t ever play like I do, don’t play like I do,” said Dwynell Roland.
For Roland, this is a first.
“This is my first time literally playing, so to hear it is really dope, said Roland.
He’s played Tony Hawk before, but this is the first time he’s hearing “Duck Fat,” the song he recorded with his mentor, as part of the game.
Roland is a popular artist among many who follow the local music scene.
He has performed across Minnesota and in venues on the East and West coasts, most recently performing at the Minnesota State Fair.
For this Minneapolis native, making music is what it’s all about, but he says having that music immortalized on a popular video game is the best.
“A lot of this is Steph, and then I’m just on the hook,” said Roland, who added that his mentor, Stef “P.O.S.” Alexander, is the real star of the show.
“Both of us have been making music forever and ever, but we started working on this project about a year and a half ago,” said POS
POS is a giant in the music industry. Making music since his teens, P.O.S. has worked with many artists in several bands, his most famous collaboration being Doomtree.
First Avenue, that’s like home base to me, always,” said P.O.S.
P.O.S has two stars on the outside of First Avenue, one as a solo artist, the other with his band Doomtree.
“I’m old enough to play the first Tony Hawk demo, and I remember having every single song from that thing stuck in my head,” said P.O.S.
That’s why it’s so special to hear a song he wrote and performed with someone he considers family in the industry.
“I’ve been all over, I’ve done all kinds of stuff, and don’t matter that’s wild, that’s good. said P.O.S.
“He bought me on my first tour like before I knew anything about touring, he gave me a shot on the West Coast,” Roland said.
Both artists say that the deal that came down was unbelievable.
“To have somebody like hit you up like hey we want this song in this game is that cool we already did it,” said P.O.S.
Now they’ve officially merged their passions.
“It’s amazing for all the reasons I grew up skateboarding, I grew up playing video games, I grew up making music, it’s all of my favorite things all at the same time,” said P.O.S.
The fact is, now their music will be heard around the world by gamers who spend time on a video skateboard.
“The best thing about this is that this is forever, this is forever, there is no taking away from this, this is going to be in this game forever, said Roland.
And they aren’t finished.
These two artists have more collaborations in the works. They want to inspire other musicians and have some advice for those reaching for their dreams.
“Making art, making music for the sake of it is really important, so if you enjoy doing that, do that really hard,” said P.O.S.
P.O.S. and Dwynell say they are going to enjoy this moment in their careers and continue to concentrate on the music.
Reg Chapman joined WCCO-TV in May of 2009. He came to WCCO from WNBC-TV in New York City where he covered an array of stories for the station including the Coney Island plane crash, the crane collapse on the city’s east side, 50 shots fired at motorist Sean Bell by New York Police, and a lacrosse team assault at Fairfield High School in Connecticut.
On Friday, Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old Utah native, was identified by federal law enforcement as a suspect in the murder of Charlie Kirk. During Friday’s press conference, officials said that several bullet casings recovered from a hunting rifle found near the crime scene had messages inscribed on them.
During the press conference, officials appeared to take the inscriptions literally, to the extent they ascribed meaning to them at all. But the four messages apparently written by the alleged shooter instead seem to invoke a variety of memes and video game references.
One of the casings was said to be engraved with the phrase “Hey Fascist! Catch!” followed by an up arrow, a right arrow, and three downward-facing arrows. That sequence is an apparent reference to the “Eagle 500kg bomb” in the popular third-person-shooter game Helldivers 2. The bomb has become a meme in the Helldivers community for being comically excessive.
Arrowhead Game Studios, the developers of Helldivers 2, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from WIRED. Launched in 2024, the game has grown a cult following for its Starship Troopers–like storyline. The cooperative shooter allows teams of up to four players, called “Helldivers,” to spread “freedom” across a fictional universe—fighting bugs, robots, and squid-like aliens rather than other humans. Their form of managed democracy is “basically fascism,” says independent extremism researcher Harry Batchelor, who works with the Extremism and Gaming Research Network.
Helldivers 2 is satire, and the vast majority of players are in on it. The game, says Batchelor, “takes “the whole ‘pretending to be democracy while actually being a fascist government’ so seriously, it’s obviously a joke.” The community around the game has generally maintained a positive reputation, even working together to combat “review bombing”—coordinated negative reviews intended to hurt a game’s chance of success.
The arrows that activate the Eagle 500kg bomb have been used in other memes to show that a user is “going to do a big, violent action,” Don Caldwell, editor in chief of Know Your Meme, tells WIRED. “That’s maybe a cheeky way of expressing it on the casing.”
Shortly after the Friday press conference about Kirk’s fatal shooting, moderators locked the r/Helldivers subreddit. “Due to recent events and the high amount of posts about the topic, we will be locking the subreddit temporarily,” a post on the subreddit reads. “We’re aware of what happened, our modteam doesn’t condone it.”
Helldivers may not be the only game reference on the casings. Another casing was allegedly engraved with lyrics to a famous Italian folk song called “Bella Ciao,” which translates directly to “goodbye beautiful.” The song, which has associations with postwar anti-fascist movements in Italy, has seen a resurgence on social media in recent years. Notably, “Bella Ciao” holds significance for rebel forces during a mission in Far Cry 6, a video game set on a fictional Caribbean island ruled by a dictator. A USB stick with the song is a collectible item labeled “Bella Ciao de Libertad,” a reference to the rebel group; the in-game description notes that the song has been “inspiring guerrillas and partisans for over a century.”
On Friday morning, Tyler Robinson—the suspected killer of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk—was taken into custody after a two-day manhunt. (According to an affidavit obtained by People, he’s likely to face charges including felony murder.) At a public briefing, FBI director Kash Patel and Utah Governor Spencer Cox revealed that the shooter’s bullet casings were allegedly inscribed with bizarre messages: One read “Notices bulges OwO what’s this?” Unfired cartridges in the magazine allegedly read “Hey fascist! Catch!”, followed by five arrow symbols: one up, one right, and three down. Two others read “Oh Bella ciao Bella ciao Bella ciao ciao ciao” and “If you read this, you are gay lmao.” Photographs of the ammunition have not yet been made public, and it’s possible that there are minor discrepancies in punctuation—but none that would make these phrases appear any less nonsensical. That is, unless you have a passing familiarity with gamer and internet-forum culture.
The “OwO” casing, for instance, appears to be referencing a popular meme making fun of furry culture, a niche lifestyle in which people create alter egos styled after anthropomorphic animals. The combination of arrows found on another matches the combination of buttons players use to call in a bomb strike in the video game Helldivers 2, a Starship Troopers-style parody of a fascist interstellar empire. The Italian words are the lyrics to “Bella Ciao,” an antifascist Italian folk song that was prominently featured in the Netflix series Money Heist. And that last phrase appears to be little more than a joke meant to antagonize or troll the reader.
As of yet, little is known about Robinson’s alleged motivations or ideology. But the few details surrounding the 22-year old point toward a troubling trend: young shooter suspects who communicate primarily via obtuse memes and digitally inflected irony.
All sorts of young adults are familiar with the culture of video games, Twitch streamers, and YouTube, speaking a language completely foreign to those who do not spend as much time online. Is that language inherently sinister? No more than, say “Skibidi Toilet,” a series of crude animated shorts about toilets from which talking heads emerge. (There’s a movie in the works.) None of the phrases Robinson allegedly wrote are known codewords for anything nefarious; they signal little beyond a connection to a contextless internet, where memes take on a life of their own and are used by the benign and malignant alike.
Some memes, however, aren’t so neutral. The young men who admired, and still admire, Charlie Kirk tend to be extremely online—which doesn’t necessarily mean that they all share exactly the same ideology. Internecine conflict between conservative factions is common, both on social media and at events for young conservatives. The most notable of these are the “Groyper Wars” of 2019. “Groypers” are fans of white nationalist agitator Nick Fuentes who like to hide their racism behind ironic jokes; when Kirk began making an effort to mainstream his ultra-right-wing Turning Point USA movement, Fuentes instructed them to publicly troll Kirk.
Authorities announced on Friday morning that they made progress in solving a mystery that has gripped the nation for two days: who murdered conservative activist Charlie Kirk with a rifle during a crowded event at Utah Valley University.
Utah Republican Gov. Spencer Cox told reporters that 22-year-old Tyler Robinson had been turned in by his family after he “confessed to them or implied” his guilt in the assassination. A roommate also showed police Discord chat messages from Robinson about hiding a rifle, according to Cox, who said that Robinson acted alone.
Without those tips, it’s hard to know how long the manhunt would have gone on for. The night before, authorities had signaled that they were completely stumped. Officials pleaded with the public for information based on a few grainy surveillance stills on Thursday night, and Utah Public Safety Commissioner Beau Mason told NBC News that authorities had “no idea” where the shooter was.
Progressive critics—as well as conservative consigliere Chris Rufo—have accused FBI Director Kash Patel of bungling the investigation. Patel had caused major confusion by implying on social media that the FBI had caught the shooter, only to announce that the “subject” had been released after interrogation. That man, who was completely innocent, suffered a flood of threats after his name and photo were publicized.
Adding to the confusion, police were also filmed escorting a local elderly gadfly out of the event while the crowd blamed him for the shooting. And to make matters worse, internet sleuths misidentified him as yet another innocent person who was nowhere near Utah at the time.
Of course, chaos and mistakes are an unavoidable part of crises. Thankfully, none of these mistakes led to anyone’s death, as they have in the past. It will take a while for the full story behind the Kirkinvestigation to come out, to understand which errors were understandable and which were inexcusable.
At the very least, the manner of Robinson’s arrest throws cold water on the idea that mass spying and heavy-handed police powers are the solution to dramatic crimes. In his post lambasting Patel’s leadership, Rufo also called for “a campaign to disrupt domestic terror networks” and “to investigate, infiltrate, and disrupt the violent movements—of whatever ideology—that threaten the peace in the United States.”
But it’s not clear that more aggressive political surveillance would have stopped or caught the suspected assassin. The photos that identified him came from old-fashioned security cameras in a hallway, which captured him walking up a stairway and then jumping off the roof after the assassination. Robinson’s father, a longtime sheriff’s deputy, reportedly recognized his son from the photos and told him to turn himself in.
Meanwhile, the release of the surveillance photos had led to a flood of tips that wasted the authorities’ time. At the Thursday night press conference, Cox said that authorities were sifting through 7,000 tips from the public.
“It is clear they do not know the name of the suspect, that they don’t have a cellphone track, they don’t have fingerprints, DNA, or digital footprint,” journalist John Solomon, who is close to Patel, told Fox News after the press conference. “And that’s why they’re putting so much personally identifying information up, to try to help get the public to find something that’s there.”
And the assassination did not come out of an organized political network that could be infiltrated. Although there are signs pointing to a left-wing motive—Cox said that a family member told police that Robinson was angry about Kirk coming to Utah because of his political beliefs—Robinson seems to be, like many other shooting suspects, a lone wolf who spent too much time on the internet.
An internal law enforcement bulletin, leaked to the press, initially reported that the shooter had written messages about “transgender and anti-fascist ideology” on bullet casings. Those turned out to be a mix of references to the video game Helldivers 2 (which features killing fascists) and lewd jokes. “If you read this you are gay LMAO,” one of the casings read. Another mocked the “furry” fetish subculture.
An eccentric personality with no criminal record who plays lots of video games and dislikes conservatives is a pretty broad profile, one that covers potentially millions of people. Most of them are neither violent nor members of organized political “networks” that could be disrupted. If the past few days are any indication, encouraging mass online reporting of anyone suspicious can actually make the police’s job harder.
Using Kirk’s murder to tighten government restrictions would not only be ineffective at preventing more incidents like it. It would also be an unfortunate rebuke to Kirk, who often preached freedom over control.
