Why Emulation Matters for the History of Games
Emulation is often framed only as a legal gray area, but as an archival technology it is one of the few practical…
Video Games Editor · Pro Slot Games
PC and console games — reviews, previews, industry analysis, retro & preservation
Devin Cross runs the video games desk at Pro Slot Games, the widest beat in the building. Everything that happens on PC and the major consoles is his responsibility — from the RPGs and immersive sims he gravitates toward personally, to the shooters, platformers, and strategy games that make up the modern release calendar. His remit spans reviews, previews, industry analysis as it touches the games themselves, and the retro and preservation coverage he treats as a genuine editorial priority rather than a nostalgia sidebar.
Cross approaches games the way a good design critic does: he wants to understand why something works, not just whether he liked it. When he writes about a landmark like Baldur's Gate 3 or a genre pillar like the immersive sim lineage, he is interested in the mechanics underneath the experience — how systems talk to each other, where a designer made a hard choice, what a game asks of the player and what it gives back. He is skeptical of hype cycles and allergic to marketing language dressed up as analysis. He would rather explain a mechanic accurately than rate it dramatically.
His standards on the desk are strict about the line between analysis and reporting. Pro Slot Games publishes evergreen explainers and retrospectives about real games, and Cross holds his writers to that framing: no invented playthrough hours, no review scores presented as if they settle an argument, no player-count figures that cannot be grounded. When a piece cites a fact about a studio, a release, or a platform, that fact has to be true and checkable. He treats the games as the authority — the actual design on the screen — rather than the discourse around them.
Preservation is where Cross is most openly opinionated. He believes games are a medium worth keeping, that delisted titles and abandoned online services represent real cultural loss, and that a serious gaming publication has a duty to cover the people and projects trying to save them. That conviction shapes the desk's coverage priorities as much as any new release does.
Across all of it, his editorial voice is knowledgeable and unhurried. He is comfortable being critical of games he admires and generous toward ambitious ones that stumble. What he will not do is pretend — to expertise he lacks or to enthusiasm he does not feel — which is exactly the honesty he thinks the medium deserves.
12 articles · editorial@proslotgames.com
Emulation is often framed only as a legal gray area, but as an archival technology it is one of the few practical…
When a digital-only game is delisted, it doesn't just leave the store — it can vanish entirely. The industry's shift to digital…
For every breakout indie success there are thousands that vanish. The games that break through tend to share a small set of…
From sprawling but empty maps to worlds designed around curiosity and systems, the open-world genre has spent two decades learning that size…
Most open worlds guide you with markers and checklists. Elden Ring succeeds by doing almost the opposite — trusting curiosity, sightlines, and…
The classic computer role-playing game was written off as a relic more than once. Its durable comeback says something real about what…
Supergiant's Hades solved the roguelike's oldest problem — narrative — by making death itself the engine of the story rather than an…
Larian's adaptation of Dungeons & Dragons didn't just revive a dormant series — it reset expectations for how reactive and generous a…
Dark Souls is remembered for difficulty, but its lasting influence comes from something subtler: an interlocking world, deliberate feedback, and respect for…
The shift from finished products to perpetually updated platforms changed how consoles are used, how games are budgeted, and what it means…
The immersive sim is one of gaming's most influential and least understood genres. Its defining trait isn't stealth or shooting — it's…
Valve's handheld did more than put a PC in your hands — it forced the entire ecosystem to treat Linux, verified compatibility,…