In September 1991 Sid Meier launched Sid Meier's Civilization and changed strategy games forever. Its headline feature was the tech tree, the 4th X in 4X, every new researched advance of which would partially rewrite the game's ruleset as you played, staggeringly increasing the game's complexity and possibility space, and making every run vastly different. The cherry on the top was the theme: mankind's entire history! The entire planet! With all its heroes and villains! In a single game! Impossible to return to traditional strategy games after that. Even the best-crafted, most charming of them seemed like minigames and could no longer be taken seriously. One played them if one played EVERY strategy game that came out; and only until the next 4X title released (which would take forever because these were super-complex games). The 3X and below were just snacks to tide you over in between the main meals and nothing more beyond that point. If you also liked other genres besides strategy, like I did, you didn't even need them since you had plenty of other stuff to play while waiting for the next 4X event. And that's why I all but stopped playing and paying attention to 3X and below games after 1991.
But this is the story of my entire gaming history. I was only loyal to a genre until a superior genre appeared. When, a year after Civilization, Dune II appeared, I had a new favorite genre, and there was no way a turn-based strategy game would ever fully satisfy me again. Once you saw those little units animate and move around the map, you would never be satisfied with a static JPEG again unless you were retarded (or colorblind? animation-blind? Whatever that disease is called.) And I certainly am not. It was only because the RTS's scope was vastly diminished compared to the 4X's (as it had to, in order to introduce the real-time) that I kept playing 4X games after that, but my true passion became RTS and no 4X beyond that point could get me as excited for a new release as a new RTS could, through Command & Conquer, WarCraft II (the first was shit no matter what you hear), and beyond.
And so on and so forth from Pong (the first videogame I played) all the way to today's VTTs and GMRPGs, which are the only thing that really gets me excited today, like TaleSpire and Blade Runner RPG. The pattern never changed, and it's pretty much identical with my infamous popularity vs. quality graph. In fact, that's how I arrived at the graph: by sketching out my changing genre preferences.
But when I moved to Japan in the mid-2000s, I dedicated a lot of time to arcade games simply because... I was in Japan, and it just made sense since I was practically surrounded by them. I could hardly even go to the laundry without passing an arcade, so of course I am going to play a couple credits while waiting for my clothes. And that's where I learned to PROPERLY play arcade games, after noticing that unlike White players, the Japanese players never continued. Moreover, the arcades happened to be undergoing a renaissance at the time, with their most complex genres, the STGs and FTGs, leading the way. And that's how, after decades of playing these games but playing them WRONG, I finally figured out how to properly play them, i.e. no longer credit-feeding and button-mashing through them, but building up my skills methodically. On top of that, this phase of my life coincided with my decision to launch a videogame site, so of course I am going to cover the arcade location tests that the big sites would ignore. It's not that I preferred arcade games to RTS or FPS—I certainly didn't—it's just that, since the major sites were mostly ignoring these genres, they gave me an opening into the journalism world where I could gain an edge and dominate. When, some years later, the arcade renaissance had come and gone, I switched my attention back to the 3D "cinematic" genres and games like Gears of War, Far Cry 2 and so on, simply because, at that point, those were the best games and genres in existence, plus I had moved away from Japan so no longer had the arcade bug, and edge into that world. But this change surprised the crowd that had assembled in and around my site largely due to my arcade coverage, and some of them alleged that I had "sold out", and so on. A bunch of people who didn't know me and knew nothing about me and my history, and who'd become acquainted with me through a mere window of time when I happened to be living in the land of the arcades, suddenly passed judgement on my entire existence for merely doing what I had been doing my whole life: jumping from genre to genre as the genres complexified and the standard of immersion increased.
A decade later the pattern would repeat when the new crowd that big-budget gaming coverage had gathered around me was surprised when I ditched them for survival-builders like Rust and FP4Xes like Life is Feudal, which another decade later I would ditch for the metaverse of Star Citizen and ultimately my own in Alex Kierkegaard's Battlegrounds, finally getting into development in order to create the greatest game ever, since no one else would, because let's face it, no one else could.
Every group of game fans I left behind throughout the whole journey felt betrayed, because they didn't know who I am, and never realized that I WAS on a journey: they confused my stops along the way to a destination: themselves. The destination, meanwhile, had always been IMMERSION above all, not some retarded lifelong obsession with any given stupid genre. Yes, 2X or 3X strategy games were great in 1986. But it's no longer 1986, and I am no longer 8 years old, I am 48, and could drop dead next month for all I know. And you want me to spend my remaining time on earth playing the same games I was playing 40 years ago? How would that make sense? The videogame industry is growing, and I am growing along with it, and it is now 2026. Why should I pretend it's 1996, or 2006, or 2016? How would that make any fucking sense?
I am NOT saying that those old games and genres are suddenly BAD. They're all as great as they have always been, and I could even enjoy ARKANOID right now if I was trapped in a room with it with nothing else to play. But I am NOT trapped in a room with Arkanoid for fuck's sake, and I have PLENTY of far more complex and therefore more immersive stuff to play, ON TOP of the fact that I am also currently DEVELOPING MY OWN, which occupies the majority of my gaming time. But trust me when I tell you that whenever I see someone playing a Biohazard game on Steam, or an Onimusha, or the new Pragmata, or pretty much any of Capcom's new stuff (except the MonHun games, I can't stand those), I am ENVIOUS and I wish I had the time to be playing them too! But you do realize that those are the exact same games they were in 1996, and 2001, and even Pragmata I have no doubt is just another action-adventure from 2005, even though more slick-looking and higher-poly than them. But the mechanical complexity is identical to the by-now decades-old originators of these genres: nothing at all has changed in this regard. So how can I get excited about them when genuine modern gaming sounds like this (reposted from Reddit [ > ]):
They Should Have Sent A Poet
Reposting this here from r/StarCitizen, I figured you all might want to enjoy what I have to say about my experience yesterday during a private VR demo of SQ42.
So after being up all night last night making my post about how SQ42 is going to be VR Game of the Year, I am now doing the same thing but to tell you about a SQ42 mission I got to play in VR.
After I finished the CIG studio tour, Silvan pulled me aside and took me to a very special room.
So it seems that me, Morph, tenpound42, and about three others including Mark Hamill got to play one of the SQ42 missions in VR.
But that's not all.
We got to play the mission in VR ON A D-BOX HAPTIC FEEDBACK MOTION CONTROL VIRPIL SIM COCKPIT.
I never thought VR could get better than it already is.
I was completely wrong about that assumption.
Here are my thoughts in order about all of the things I did and saw.
-The Rig
Full-haptic feedback motion control sim on an 80/20 aluminum frame
Virpil HOSAS
Steam Frame VR headset
Same 5090 beefy rig we were using the other day
Pendulum flight yaw pedals (didn't bind or use since I had HOSAS, but was very fun to fiddle them with my feet :)
-The Devs
Tyler, Yogi, Silvan, and Benoit were all there right behind me giving me key tips/insights, and helping me through the demo due to differences in gameplay between SQ42 & SC. Also I am blind to the controls due to VR and never used Virpils before. They were all just as charming and amazing as you think they are in person and every single one of them was incredibly proud of the work they have achieved, and also very helpful to get me up to speed as fast as possible for the mission.
-The Big D-(BOX)
There are no words strong enough to convey how absolutely mindblowing and incredible the VR D-BOX experience is with SQ42/SC/StarEngine.
They should've sent a poet.
However, I will try my best to explain.
Every single input you give into the system reacts back to you. Slam the ship into a left strafe, your body rocks to the right.
You hit the afterburners and your entire cockpit shakes and shudders as you hold it down.
You turn off the ICFS Core and the entire thing JOLTS and then feels like you are floating/gliding through space compared to before.
You put the front landing gear down to toe-into the pad, you feel the front of the cockpit dip, and when your back legs touch down the entire rig levels out flat.
I have been flying SC in VR for more than a decade now, and in all that time I have never felt more in tune with my ship, how it handles and how I feel flying than I did today playing on that rig.
AND THEN I WALKED AROUND IN FPS WITH THE D-BOX!!
The devs were explaining to me that the more armour/ammo you carry, the more violently the D-BOX shakes with each step.
The FPS weapons in yesterday's demo not only felt punchy but also sounded punchy (sound 11/10).
The same with the haptics, except now you FEEL each shot, so it's even better.
As the FPS stuff was only the last 30 secs of my demo, I wish I could give you more info, but that's all I got (shooting my Gladius with my P4-AR and experiencing Maelstrom at a small scale was also VERY cool).
This isn't a gimmick anymore, this is the closest fucking thing you WILL EVER GET to being Luke Skywalker.
And speaking of, Mark Hamill used the headset right before me and I was the last person of the day to experience the SQ42 VR demo.
So I have Luke Skywalker's sweat on my face.
As a kid who burned through three VHS BOX SETS of the OG Star Wars trilogy, today was the best day of my life.
My new life goal is to get D-BOX support on my mobile VR cockpit that I take to Bar Citizen events and CitizenCon (when it's back...) so as many citizens as possible get to try SQ42/SC in VR with the full gamut of tech at their fingertips.
Thanks to all who will help me on this journey to reach my goal.
-The VR
The Steam Frame is a solid headset, comfy and looks good as any 2K headset out there.
The Diopter Slider easily let me set my IPD to where I needed it from where Mark Hamill had it set before (just love to keep mentioning him btw...)
Sound was a bit lacking until they cranked the volume on the stock speakers on the Frame, and then it was fine, BUT I CAN'T STRESS THIS ENOUGH, was NOWHERE near the quality of the cans we had yesterday using full 7.4.1 Dolby Digital Surround Sound.
I now have to get a good set of cans for the first time in my life because the sound design is that good in SQ42.
HOWEVER, the image quality in the Frame was nowhere near my Dream Air which is to be expected since it is a 4K per eye experience compared to 2K per eye on the Frame.
This is important to bring up specifically because we were playing the Desktop Demo yesterday on 4K monitors and I could already tell that textures weren't popping as hard as they were on the 2K Frame vs. the 4K Desktop.
Having said that, I never once dropped a single frame that I could tell while playing the entire time, no game pauses, or input lag, everything with the feeling of the flight combat felt perfect.
There were some bugs that I encountered, yes, but they seemed minor in comparison to what sights I was beholding using that sim rig, and I can barely think about them due to how fucking insane the mission was in VR.
The FoV on the Frame is decent at up to 110 degrees, but this all depends on how close you can get your face inside the gasket. It's not an ultra-wide FoV compared to other units on the market and I think most people will get about 108 degrees of FoV, and that was perfectly fine, but there are some who swear by ultra-wide VR resolutions (sim racers).
Those that have managed to get into the queue for the Steam Frame will be very pleased experiencing SQ42 in VR.
-The Mission
So I started out right next to a small random station that had two rings on top of each other vertically. I immediately powered up the Gladius, ignited the engine, and started blasting as fast and hard as I could in, through, and around those rings on that station.
The D-BOX turned this into complete euphoria.
As I explained above, the system reacts to your every input and throws it back in your face, you start to realize the limits of the engine and handling WAY more than you normally could.
I could feel the strain on the frame of the ship when I pushed to the limits.
This experience was only intensified by the high-quality metal Virpil sticks I was using, as the weight and heavy feel to them compared to the plastic I'm used to made it seem like I was actually operating military hardware.
With the VR headset on, there is no escaping the game world.
There isn't a direction you can turn and not see the ship/world/environment.
Since I couldn't visibly see that I was sitting in the CIG offices playing on a simpit, my entire afternoon felt like I just came back from a sortie that I actually got to fly.
And again, from my previous post, if the goal of SQ42 is to make you FEEL like you are the main character in a movie that you get to play inside of, VR has convinced me that no outside world exists and that I AM THE HERO making these choices and doing these things in this world.
Like I said, they should've sent a poet, it's just pure bliss if this is what you have been looking for your entire life.
The mission had me kill some pirates, but most importantly it HAD A CUTSCENE IN VR!!
At any point during the cutscene I could chose to look around WHEREVER THE FUCK I WANTED TO!!
You get RIGHT up to Mark Hamill's face (not unlike how I was using the same headset as him...) and then you can turn around AND SEE THE ENEMY TALKING BACK TO HIM ON THE MFD!!!!!
There is a stop sign welded into the left side of the Basher cockpit, did you guys know that??
Flying and killing the pirates was a blast as always in VR, but now with the D-BOX everything actually FELT for the first time.
Having a pirate fly at max speed over your nose, to then INSTANTLY turn and follow/track them through the bubble dome of the Gladius, WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY pulling back into the stick, flipping and rolling all while firing that afterburner and the D-BOX shuddering and shunting through all of it to line up the shot and FEEL the Brrrrrrrrrrrrr of the gatling gun on the nose.
Firing a missile off was a big jolt and I'm not sure but I think I also felt the shockwave of the explosion from the pirate at close range, but there was a LOT going on very quickly and I only had so much time with the setup so I can't say for sure.
Then I got to fly down to a planet.
I've flown down to planets thousands of times, and they all are great and cool in VR.
But HOW I had to fly down to the planet was the single most incredible moment of my entire gaming life.
I don't care how much NPC/object density there is at the beach in GTA, I don't care how big the titties are at the strip club in GTA, NOTHING that you would do in a GTA game will compare to what I did in this mission flying down to the planet.
That's all I will say for now to keep the surprise for when you guys get to try it yourself!! (PACE YOUR AFTERBURNER!! -tip from Yogi (I think, I couldn't see) I was told on the way down.)
After getting down to the planet I had a nice leisurely cruise having fun dodging some obstacles flying close to the ground while I made my way to my pad to land, nothing crazy... (you all are gonna fucking LOVE what you get to do down there!!!!)
Anyways, after I landed, I got to do the FPS portion of the test walking around on the ground and shooting my ship, feeling the D-BOX thump as I took each step, and brrrrrrr when I went full-auto on the side of my Gladius with my P4.
Again, Maelstrom was working at a small scale, and as I shaved bits of hull off the ship I started to reveal the 3D frame of the Gladius, and being amazed that there was a frame underneath it all and not just being a surface-level skin change.
Then I shot it with an electric rifle and the damage turned to heat/fire/scarring/melting texture instead of piercing like the bullets did. This was very cool.
All in all, just an absolutely incredible experience and once again due to VR and now D-BOX, my gaming life will never be the same.
Oh and atmospheric flight and control surfaces tech was fully implemented, so I guess there's that too, no big deal or nothing, it's whatever... ;)
Anyways, it's 4 AM and def can't sleep tonight after all of that, so ask me any questions you have about VR, SQ42, or SC and I'll try to answer what I can as I fail to pass out before the last town hall event of the weekend here in the morning.
I'll be back at the hotel after the town hall to answer any questions that I missed, so thanks for being patient.
Thank you all for the voodoo that you do!!
Stay Safe, & FLY Right o7
(Did I mention Mark Hamill was there??)
Note that this is STILL mostly early-2000s design. It's only the hardware that's cutting-edge, but the rest of Squadron 42 is still just another linear campaign from 2005, albeit mixing space, ground and naval traversal to an extent that no previous game has done. Plus the most star-studded cast in the history of even movies, let alone games. So it's definitely the most cutting-edge linear campaign ever, but it's still just a singleplayer linear campaign you finish in a week in pretty much the same exact fashion as everyone else who's played it, so it doesn't get me too excited. So I will only play it because it's part of the metaverse I am playing, and therefore needed to fully appreciate it, otherwise I would have said cool but I don't have the time for it, same as with the latest Biohazard or whatever else. And when I don't have time for THAT cool stuff, you expect me to have time for a GTA6 where the mechanics are still from 2001? You want me to get excited about that? I had already given up on GTA halfway through Vice City in 2002 because it was just more of the same with worse story, and you want me to get excited about the TENTH (or whatever) iteration of the EXACT SAME THING but now with everyone in the game looking and talking like an idiot, because they are latino?
I am sorry but I have 139 IQ. I don't know what else to say. I am just not interested in the same stuff that 100 IQ people are interested in. If you don't like this, you're on the wrong website, and there are infinite sites out there for the kind of content you're looking for, but only mine for 139 IQ. Can we not have ONE site in the world for high-IQ (and T) gaming? All we're asking for is one! Does EVERY site in the world have to have the same exact slop? (which, on top of being slop, is now also brown, as if white slop wasn't bad enough, and had to somehow be made worse).
None of this changes that there are still tons of lower-genre games I am interested in. I still haven't had enough of Streets of Rage 4 or Satisfactory. I still haven't tried Dyson Sphere Program, or the new Shinobi. Absolutely there are new games today pushing boundaries. But these are LOWER-BRANCH boundaries. You are familiar with trees, right? And the concept of higher and lower branches? It's just not as exciting when a lower branch expands than when a higher one does. Because the higher one will reach higher! Exact same way the tree of life works: we can produce advanced dogs, but it's just not as interesting as producing advanced humans. Unless you are a dog, I suppose. And I am sorry, but I am not.
So I absolutely feel ENVY when I see someone on Steam play a cool traditional game like Cyberpunk 2077 or Kaettekita Makaimura or just about any modern or classic STG or FTG, and I promise you that every time I see this I say to myself, "Damn I wish I had the time for that!" But making time for them means taking the time away from the cutting-edge of gaming, and I just can't bring myself to do that since the latter is more fun. Keep also in mind that, unlike many gamers and especially the younger ones, I HAVE ALREADY PLAYED ALL THOSE GAMES. It's not like I haven't already spent DECADES playing CRPGs or arcade games or whatever. And I could keep playing them UNTIL THE END OF TIME if more complex genres were never invented, but they WERE invented, and they are WAY more fun for me, so it makes fuck-all sense to set them aside in order to just play stuff that I have already spent half my life playing.
Now if someone works 60 hours a week and sets aside 3 hours to play a game on a Saturday afternoon between his workout and his social obligations, I would be retarded to advise that person to START HIS OWN ULTIMATE EDITION METAVERSE for fuck's sake, or GM a Pathfinder campaign or whatever. That guy should AT MOST load up a linear campaign save and make some progress in it, or perhaps even better just play a few credits of his favorite arcade titles, and my website offers plenty of advice on which the best of those games are. Plenty of reviews and theory essays to read to understand those games better, and appreciate them. But... if your gaming time is restricted to 3 hours per week, you just don't have the time for cutting-edge gaming, while I have set up MY ENTIRE LIFE precisely so that I will have DOZENS of hours per week to sink into gaming! That's why I became a game critic lol! So I can play games all day and be paid for it! That's the "game journalism" dream, or at least it was before they started hiring gays. But... I am still straight, so the dream still lives in me. And you can't expect me to have the same preferences with someone who only plays 3 hours a week. I spend half of each DAY just THINKING about games, even when I am not playing them; and much of the time I am working on them now that I've become a developer above all, and even my theory work is now oriented towards analyzing and supporting my development efforts. And no way I am going to all this trouble just to play 3 hours a week. It just wouldn't make any sense. I too would be playing linear singleplayer campaigns and arcade games if I only had so little time to put into gaming.
So when I see one of my readers play a game from my GOTY list, it makes perfect sense: many of my readers are half my age and haven't played ANYTHING, relatively speaking. I too would be playing the games from my list if I had just discovered it halfway through life. But... I didn't discover my list. I built it, game by game, over 40 years of gaming. So I don't need to replay it, even though, believe me, I would love to! But it just doesn't make sense when there are games and genres and even entire freakin' metaverses to explore and build out today! So that is what I am doing. And when you see me obsessively post about some freakin SKIN, for pages and pages—more text for a fucking skin than I would give for entire new GAMES coming out today!—it's because that's where the cutting edge of gaming is. Games are so advanced today that the mere skins in some of them are worth more than entire games outside of them because that's how deep the metaverse pulls you, if you let it, and if you have the time for it of course. Which naturally few do, just like few had the time to travel to Bayreuth in the 1870s to watch an entire Ring cycle. It's art, and some people take it to extremes. And you expect the top art theorist of all time not to?
So, the internet is huge and you can find whatever type of content and analysis you want in it. My specialty is, and has always been, the cutting edge. Come to me if you want that. Come if you're curious about the current state of the cutting edge, even if you yourself don't have time for it at that point in time. Maybe some day you will. Either way, no matter where you are in your life or what you're doing, you know that icycalm will be spending half his day staring at a screen and trying to push the boundaries of games to the edge of the humanly possible, especially now when, in addition to playing them, I am also making them, so I can be proactive about it instead of simply lecturing and hoping for someone else to do the work, as I had been doing for decades.
So to answer the essay's provocative title: What is the coolest thing in gaming?
Whatever icycalm is into at any given moment.
