When it comes to popular media, we love to look back towards "the good ol' days". But while this reverence for nostalgia can be great, often it also leads to some laziness.

Internationally, the world’s biggest brands are investing in esports. Locally, we’ve seen huge brand names like Samsung and Red Bull spending their marketing money on esports events. Can potential sponsors gain value from involvement in the South African scene?

Since pixels could bleed, charlatans everywhere have poured great zealous into their quests to create arbitrary connections between video game violence and cruelty from the youth. Their efforts have, predictably, been entirely fruitless and repeatedly disregarded.

Dark Souls seldom gives you the keys to the castle. Everything from the smallest victory to the game’s oblique narrative has to be taken from its clawed grasp. Story isn’t dished out in hour-long cut scenes or a 500-page codex. Like everything else in Souls, story requires effort, patience and dedication, as you extract information from cryptic dialogue and myriad descriptions.

I have not been to watch a movie at the cinema for a long time. It’s not that I especially dislike the experience, or that I don’t want to be part of the zeitgeist. It’s probably down to the fact that I don’t really want to spend R87 for my wife to nap for two hours. Still, there are things that annoy me about going to the movies, beyond the price of the tickets.

  Electronic Art’s Star Wars: Battlefront 2 led the charge, walking away with more than just greediest monetisation of the year nomination. It finally pushed the gaming community over the edge with its implementation of loot boxes and pay-to-win mechanics. It was an entertaining saga with EA’s AMA on Reddit breaking records for the most downvoted comment in the platform’s …

Games have gone mainstream, but we as players can still do more to make them inviting. If you see a new player in a competitive online game, cut them a little slack. Offer them five minutes of guidance and perhaps tell them not to worry.

What was your favourite game in your local arcade? What did you pump token into token after, mastering and etching your three initial name into the eternal scoreboards of? Was it Time Crisis and its superb mixture of light-gun duck and cover action?