The Firewall Collapsed In 2025, And Not Just For Video Games

Generally speaking, the bigger a subject being reviewed, the more likely the person reviewing it is to skew white and/or wealthy. Based on purely anecdotal evidence—I am not doing “reverse eugenics” or whatever—I have found that wealthy whites get first dibs on writing about important things. And because this year was the one where a critical mass of people started saying stupid shit like “DEI must DIE” (they thought they were sooooo clever for that one), well, a lot of my queer and BIPOC (am I still allowed to say “queer” and “BIPOC”?) peers were pushed out of any job where they could authoritatively comment on anything. Which means a regression to the way things were before we guilted enough CEOs into hiring outside of their college polo club for a couple years: A media landscape where the median opinion on politics, entertainment, culture, and economics all comes from a small lily-white and well-off world. 

Despite my propensity for doing things like “reading The New Yorker” and “watching HBO dramas,”  I am neither of those things, and this, thank Christ, is not a fancy magazine. Here, you get to hear from the riff-raff (me) who, for once, will get to declare What The Year Meant for everyone else, on a video game website where they can safely ignore it. I, however, needed a check (remember: not wealthy) and I was able to haggle the rate up to the lowest price I will always say yes to, so here I am. Reviewing a year, like I’m Dave Barry. 

Not to get controversial, but I would call 2025 a bad year. Showing my work a little: I find 2025 bad because it 1.) was worse than the year before it, 2.) was just straight-up miserable to live through, and 3.) did very little to set up 2026 to be much better. In fact, it did the opposite. 

I know it’s kind of verboten these days for a critic to be so openly hostile and negative (“Kotaku should’ve found a fan of 2025 to review it,” I can hear you typing) but the nice thing about the foolish task of anthropomorphizing a year and assigning it all manner of awful traits is, well, that year can’t do shit about it. Nothing it hasn’t already done, at least. 

Have I been vamping? Sorry. I was looking for a metaphor to torture. 

For a little while, I thought it would be funny to not mention video games at all in this consideration of the year. A little zig where most expect a zag, you know? But I think video games are actually a useful tool for examining the year. 

One of the perennial problems facing gaming as a whole is the strange way the scene can be isolated from the wider culture. This has persisted in spite of massive economic growth and increased validation from other legacy institutions, namely Hollywood. It’s not so much that games are not mainstream now, it’s more that there are multiple streams and only some of them regard video games with any importance.

They are influential in so many other ways, though: In acclimating the public to gambling mechanics via gacha games and loot boxes; in how they sold out to private equity and Saudi money; in their constant innovations (AI will do it!) in laying off developers and shuttering studios in spite of record profits. 

This is real trailblazing stuff, and the folks in charge of massive companies like Electronic Arts, Sony, and Microsoft don’t get enough credit for it. Every field looks like this now, and video games beat most of them to the punch. 

For all the palpable insecurity that still haunts the games industry as it vies for cultural legitimacy by bragging about impressive profits and awards show viewership, the industry has also benefited from the cultural firewall around it. It’s why publishers and players alike can claim games are apolitical, why the industry’s self-appointed spokesman is happy to take his ball home when the beneficiaries of his own initiative seek to use their platform to acknowledge the state of the world. 

It’s also why it has been extremely easy for so many, as People Make Games’ Chris Bratt has illustrated, to avoid even acknowledging one of the most horrific tech stories of our time: the Israeli Defense Force’s extensive use of Microsoft services to conduct its staggering and comprehensive surveillance and violence against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank, a business relationship that has elicited an ongoing and multi-faceted response that includes a consumer boycott of Xbox, actions taken by developer unions, and reporting from outlets like The Guardian. 

That firewall has collapsed in 2025, and not just for video games. The forces that are accelerating our collective decay—economically, politically, morally—have converged (with gamer memes, even), and there’s no more hiding. The rot, as they say, has been monetized. So thoroughly, in fact, that there’s not much left for anyone to make a profit on. Not in the ways they have before, at least. What comes next won’t be pretty.

If 2025 were a sound, it would be that of a door slamming shut. As if a powerful storm you saw building on the horizon was finally here, animating all the trees, turning the world an eerie green. You left your windows open, and a gust of wind has swept away whatever tranquility came to rest in your home, yanking any open doors behind it. That kind of slam. 

This is an ending. One that we could all see coming but only few bothered to acknowledge, or do anything about. Whatever is next didn’t have to be as bad as it will be, we could have done better for each other and ourselves. And now we’re stuck here, facing it. The door is shut. 

I’m leaving out a lot, I know. You probably want to know more about 2025’s gameplay, skill trees, writing, that sort of thing. If there’s a post-game. (Yes. Therapy.) If I will answer the most pressing question facing a video game review: But is it fun? I’m very sorry, but I will not. There will be no breezy recap of Good Things about this year for balance, not because they didn’t happen and I don’t believe in optimism (believe it or not, I write downers because I’m an optimist) but because this, I think, is the lesson of 2025: You have to really look at the ugly shit, and have an answer ready for when the devil shows up at your door. Or your neighbors’. 

A common response to negative reviews, no matter the subject, goes something like this: “Well, what would you do to fix this?” Normally, I would answer this with some kind of rude joke about how the purpose of criticism is not to tell you how to fix your sink, or capitalism. I leave that work to the YouTubers. But this time, I’ll make an exception. I will tell you what I am doing to fix all this. 

The answer is: Nothing. 2025 is over! It can’t be fixed. Isn’t that nice? Did you fuck it up? Cool. So did I. I could’ve done so much more. I could have been more kind, less lazy, more engaged and involved. I could have written a better goddamn review. 

I am leaving this year the way I entered it: Alive. The fire in my chest still burning, my vision clear, my hand outstretched. I am right here with you. We can do this again, better, together. We’ve got to. 

This has been the Kotaku review of 2025. See you next year.