Paste Magazine's the Best Games of 2023

Don't believe anybody who says 2023 was a great year for videogames. Yeah, a lot of good games came out this year, across the whole spectrum of the industry, but the big story of 2023 has been the near-constant layoffs and studio closures that have left thousands of developers out of work, even as companies continue to make billions of dollars. It feels hollow to celebrate the work these developers do and the games they create knowing that so many of them are currently out of the industry, with a significant portion unlikely to ever work professionally in games again. And then there's also the huge number of games journalists who lost their jobs this year, too, amid the larger contraction of media sites and positions that also defined 2023. This wasn't a good year for games; it might actually be the worst in a good 40 years or so.