Rick Lane

Contributor

Rick has been fascinated by PC gaming since he was seven years old, when he used to sneak into his dad's home office for covert sessions of Doom. He grew up on a diet of similarly unsuitable games, with favourites including Quake, Thief, Half-Life and Deus Ex. Between 2013 and 2022, Rick was games editor of Custom PC magazine and associated website bit-tech.net. But he's always kept one foot in freelance games journalism, writing for publications like Edge, Eurogamer, the Guardian and, naturally, PC Gamer. While he'll play anything that can be controlled with a keyboard and mouse, he has a particular passion for first-person shooters and immersive sims.

Latest articles by Rick Lane

Dominic Armato in front of a Monkey Island backdrop
Dominic Armato, voice of Guybrush Threepwood, has always loved LucasArts' adventure games, but there's one he still can't get into: 'I get 10 minutes in and I'm like, oh, this is tedious, man'

By Rick Lane Published

Mighty pirate The actor and food critic guides us through the games on his PC.

Mighty pirate
The player parries an undead guard's attack with their sickle in The Citadel Project.
Inspired by Dark Messiah and Thief, this stealth game sees you sneak through a medieval megastructure prowled by undead guards

By Rick Lane Published

News The Citadel Project will be released next week.

News
Two Skyrim thieves in leather nightingale armor regarding camera.
This massive mod essentially turns Skyrim into a persistent MMO 'where player actions create lasting consequences'

By Rick Lane Published

News Aurbis converts Bethesda's fantasy adventure into a shared multiplayer world, with all the systems that entails.

News
Wardogs
As Wardogs Season 3 looms, Bulkhead claims to have built 'one of the world's most sophisticated anti-cheat systems', assisted by 'machine learning and AI'

By Rick Lane Published

News Season 3 also brings a new map and multi-path unlocks.

10 Comments
News
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - JUNE 09: Todd Howard, Director and Executive Producer at Bethesda Game Studios, speaks during the Bethesda E3 Showcase at The Shrine Auditorium on June 09, 2019 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
Todd Howard's game design power is knowing when to make things 'simple and digestible' according to Skyrim's lead designer

By Rick Lane Published

News Howard is "very good at putting himself in the seat of your typical player" says Bruce Nesmith.

21 Comments
News
Zero Company protagonist Hawks looking quizically at camera
After furloughing its developers and then hiring some of them back, Star Wars Zero Company developer has laid off an unspecified number of staff

By Rick Lane Published

News "While it stings, I'm really proud of what we built together."

9 Comments
News
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Nier: Automata developer is 'currently investigating' a bizarre update bug that drastically inflated the game's file size from 50GB to 366GB

By Rick Lane Published

News Square Enix is 'working to resolve the issue'.

News
Composer and designer Lena Raine explains how Pigstep altered Minecraft's approach to music: 'The prompt I keep hearing is "Oh, Pigstep was such a banger that they want more bangers"'

By Rick Lane Published

November Raine The composer for Celeste and Minecraft guides us through the games on her PC.

November Raine
Selaco Protagonist hiding in cover as guy shoots at her.
'An absolute behemoth': Wildly ambitious FPS Selaco is getting a massive update that doubles its size and adds 'a heavy machinegun that fires literal explosions'

By Rick Lane Published

news Selaco: The Machines of War arrives later this month.

news
A still from the Chronicles: Medieval announcement trailer.
Chronicles: Medieval developer faces imminent closure after losing funding: 'What makes it hurt is how close we are. Early access is in reach'

By Rick Lane Published

news But the studio says it is "not going down without a fight".

11 Comments
news
Ryan Gosling looking worse for wear looking up lit by purple light
It's not just Steam: New game pages created per day on Itch.io have doubled in the last two months, with AI slop the likely culprit

By Rick Lane Published

news "The number of downloads and purchases has *not* doubled."

news
Arc Raiders Dog Collar locations: A close-up of Scrappy, a rooster, wearing a cowbow hat against a dark purple background.
I spoke to one of the world's only gaming political scientists and he taught me how to avoid getting murdered in Arc Raiders

By Rick Lane Published

Field tested "Players want to feel like they're powerful and can do something cool."

9 Comments
Field tested
A Dune character in hood and mask
Dune: Awakening is getting a free DLC that adds a whole new map and swaps out sand for snow

By Rick Lane Published

news Funcom will also "continue expanding the game" through 2027.

news
id Software co-director says the Doom developer is 'working more closely with MachineGames than ever' after Xbox laid off 'about half of our studio'

By Rick Lane Published

news MachineGames is rumoured to be working on a third Wolfenstein game.

news
CHONGQING, CHINA - DECEMBER 29: In this photo illustration, a person holds a smartphone displaying the logo of “Claude,” an AI language model by Anthropic, with the company’s logo visible in the background, illustrating the rapid development and adoption of generative AI technologies, on December 29, 2024 in Chongqing, China. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a cornerstone of China’s strategic ambitions, with the government aiming to establish the country as a global leader in AI by 2030.
Anthropic updates Claude to 'steer it away' from letting users clone games following weeks of Steam being inundated with AI slop

By Rick Lane Published

news Anthropic updates Claude to 'steer it away' from letting users clone other games.

7 Comments
news
Jordan Thomas in front of Path of Exile's passive skill tree
Jordan Thomas, director of BioShock 2, played Path of Exile for over 7,000 hours while working on co-op horror game The Blackout Club: 'I was essentially awake all the time'

By Rick Lane Published

Immersive sins The co-founder of indie studio Question guides us through the games on his PC.

Immersive sins
JC Denton is surprised
This third-person mod for Deus Ex turns the classic immersive sim into Max Payne, introducing dual-wielding and shoot-dodging

By Rick Lane Published

News My vision is augmented.

News
Gilgamesh flexing in Civilization 7.
Civilization 7's game changing update was 'personally challenging' for its creative director, as being able to play as a single faction 'wasn't part of the original vision'

By Rick Lane Published

News Ed Beach says that players "had not been given full service by the game as the way it first shipped".

28 Comments
News
Liara T'Soni in Mass Effect: Universe trailer
Mass Effect 5 would have let players generate alternate timelines based on their choices in previous games, according to the series' technical director

By Rick Lane Published

"You had so many choices that you could plug your saves together to create parallel universes," Romain Toutain explained in a livestream.

19 Comments
Mass Effect
A man wearing mirror shades sits on a pedestal in Future? No Thanks!
'I drank from the chalice of blood': indie dev scrubs his game of AI-generated voice lines, having previously described the technology as 'anti-human and anti-art'

By Rick Lane Published

Refund offered for players who "still feel betrayed" over AI use in Future? No Thanks!

13 Comments
Game Development
A space platform rocketing into space in Factorio: Space Age.
After 14 years of development, Factorio's final major update is out now

By Rick Lane Published

Patch 2.1 brings "a big collection" of small yet significant changes.

Survival & Crafting
A Mon Calamari looks toward the sun setting over lush mountain ranges in Star Wars Galaxies
Star Wars Galaxies' Restoration project just received another massive update, including a huge visual upgrade and an overhaul to the Wookiees' home planet

By Rick Lane Published

News "We asked everyone: work on something that they loved about Galaxies, and showcase that to the world."

7 Comments
News
Ziegler in front of a Kingdom Hearts backdrop
'There were a lot of disagreements across the place': Former Marathon director Joe Ziegler on leading Bungie's extraction shooter, playing Path of Exile for 3,437 hours, and why he'll never uninstall Kingdom Hearts

By Rick Lane Published

Marathon man The former game director of both Marathon and Valorant guides us through the games on his PC.

Marathon man
Pinhead
Clive Barker says he's 'genuinely astonished' by Hellraiser: Revival: 'I'm proud as f**k at the end result'

By Rick Lane Published

News "I think what was achieved in the game is a wake-up call".

28 Comments
News
Two enemy NPCs
Outlast designer says that one playtester was so upset by the horror series they 'ran out of the studio to go cry outside' and didn't return

By Rick Lane Published

News "We always make sure that people are fully aware of the kind of content we create," says director Philippe Morin.

News
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