Rick Lane

@ricklane.bsky.social

1236 Followers 380 Following

Freelance journalist, critic and consultant. Bylines at The Guardian, PC Gamer, NME, Eurogamer and more. FPS sicko. Immersive sim geek. Contact: rick@ricklane.co.uk

Willem Dafoe looks up toward the heavens.
An image of text that reads as follows: "Back then, if you wanted to know about snowboarding, you went to a snowboarding website. If you wanted to go to message boards about a videogame, you searched up the videogame and went to the websites," he says. "Nowadays, the entire internet has transferred to these big corporations. A lot of the Jedi Knight community and snowboarding communities are now on Reddit or Facebook or whatever, so you don't have an individual identity for your Jedi Knight playing versus your snowboarding."
An image of the God of War: Laufey key art, showing Laufey overlooking a panorama of the Afterlife with her cube companion. The title text reads "Mum's Had Enough" in large bold lettering.
An image of Edge Magazine issue 424, with an orange cover and the cover line "AI: Rise of the Machine."
An image of a British road sign that reads "Heavy Plant Crossing."
An image of text from a PC Gamer feature on the making of Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza that reads as follows: But Holtslander had ideas of his own. During our video chat, Holtslander showed me a pitch document for a singleplayer game based on Marvel's The Punisher. "We were hoping that Fox would work out a deal with Marvel," he says. Crucially, this game would have featured subscription-based content, where new missions and experiences would have been added into the game in an exchange for a monthly fee. "It's like new issues of the comic adventures," he says. "You pay [a] subscription. We continue to bring out content for it. Nobody had been doing that. That was just before EA came out with Majestic, which was a success."
A ridiculous tuxedo cat loafing awkwardly in a papier mache bowl (part of an unfinished crafting project) while his massive, comfy bed is less than two feet away.
An image of Milhouse from the Simpsons saying "I'm the one with Stigmata" from the episode "Brawl in the Family". The image is edited so that he is holding a PS5 copy of Pragmata and saying "I'm the one with Pragmata".
A screenshot of an email headline that reads "Easter at home? A choice you might regret".
You and your team are infected by Sludge while running a high-risk delivery mission for a scientist of dubious ethics, and the only way to cure the infection is to kill the Sludge God, the world's largest slop monster outside of OpenAI.
A screenshot of text cropped from a PC Gamer webpage that reads as follows: I write all of my videogame scripts in Scrivener, unless there's an actual tool, which is rare. I wrote all of Void Bastards in Scrivener. I wrote all of Ghost Town in Scrivener. A lot of it is just because it can organise text in a really useful way. It also has screenwriting format, which is easy for actors to read from. It's mainly because, unfortunately, game engines like Unreal have literally no narrative tools. I think the great shame of videogame engines is that they do not ship with any form of narrative tool. It's a disgrace. Even if you are a sound designer, you can work within Unreal's very basic sound design tools to put sounds in, and most people have a desire to work in Wwise because it's a standardised tool. There is no standardised tool for a narrative designer or a writer in videogames.
An image of a BBC headline that reads 'Engineer' beavers released into the wild
An image from an episode of the Simpsons, depicting a malibu stacey doll wearing a hat in a pink box. The text on the box reads "Malibu Stacy: with NEW hat!"
An image of the painting The Elephant Cebes, with a Dark Souls style boss health bar showing the name "Henry, Lord of Dust."
A screenshot of a comment on PC Gamer by Goblin Queen, in reference to a story about the schmup game Sektori. It reads "Saw screenshots, saw housemarque dev, immediate purchase."
A gif of Jose Mourinho saying "I prefer really not to speak. If I speak - big trouble."
A picture of a daft tuxedo cat sat down wearing a purple bow tie with a pumpkin pattern.
Part of a horrible, bad, awful, terrible abominable, evil, not very good AI generated image depicting water conservation that reads "Rain Rain Barkels".
A pair of menu buttons which read "Submit" and "Stay Offline".
An image of an old copy of James and the Giant Peach.
An advertisement for Mafia: The Old country showing box art and screenshot of the game. At the bottom is text that reads £0 to pay today & choose a plan to suit you. Representative 29.9% APR (variable).
An image of the golden balls, telly addicts and are you smarter than a 10 year old Nintendo DS verdict.
An image of a section of a Steam purchase history page showing the following games: Peggle Deluxe, Audiosurf, The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition, and two purchases of Braid, one a gift copy.
A screenshot of text that reads: As news of the CompUSA version spreads, the questions begin to turn into opinions. On September 26, in a thread titled "Daggerfall: CompUSA and musings", user Todd A Carter writes: "Creating a special "enhanced" version of Daggerfall for one particular store (CompUSA, for the uninitiated) sucks. Especially for those of us who bought it elsewhere." Following this, user Nunya@m.f replies "I will NOT buy Daggerfault because of this marketing strategy….What a crock of shit."
An image of a hand holding up a black tub of Palace fast drying wall filler. The text on the tub reads "Ready mixed filler: All purpose fast drying filling compound."
An image of text that reads: Centrist Dan wins in Romania, centre-right party ahead in Portugal.
An image of text that reads as follows: "Once you've gathered your forces and followed all the obligatory breadcrumbs Lost Ark lays out, you return to the fortress and a cutscene plays. As a lone watchman overlooks the Rift of Mayhem from the fortress' battlements, purple portals begins to appear in the sky, and the heavens start raining clowns. I'm not talking about a drizzle or a summer shower here, either. I'm talking a full-on, category-five clown typhoon."
Image of text that reads as follows: Why did I do this? Well, if I felt like justifying it, I'd write something like "The Thief series is synonymous with excellent level design, so deliberately trying to make a bad Thief map is an interesting experiment, one that may yield fascinating insights into what precisely makes Thief levels great." Yes, that sounds convincing.
A list of custom Worms names in Worms WMD. In descending order: Big Daddy, Vidder, Mayhem, Idiot, Poppy, Fat Pig, Blister, Tatty Doughnut
An image of the double-page spread of PC Gamer's "Paradise Frost" feature exploring the making of Crysis, depicting two octopus-like aliens prowling around a ruined cabin in a jungle wreathed in ice and snow.
A screenshot of a section of Steam's "Best of 2024" Bronze Tier top sellers, which includes Project Zomboid, Silent Hill 2, Balatro, Metaphor: Refantazio, and Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
An image of a section of the contents page of A Profound Waste of Time issue 4, describing Rick Lane's feature on the making of Streets of Rage 4, and Jeremy Peel's investigation into reviving long defunct games consoles.