Editor's Note: This piece was written to expand on some points made in my preview of War Thunder for ACG.

In my preview of War Thunder for Armchair General, I touched on some comparisons with its natural rival, World of Tanks and the whole World of . . . series. Both are Free to Play (F2P) MMO arenas and War Thunder is, with its air/land/sea game modes is setting itself up explicitly to take on Wargaming's World of Tanks, World of Warplanes, and World of Warships, all in one game. I think it's worthwhile to go into a little more detail comparing and contrasting how the two games work, especially in terms of their economies and research models. They clearly both have a lot to learn from each other and offer contrasting solutions (or lack thereof) to the same F2P problems.

Paradox has been one of my favorite studios, going all the way back to Europa Universalis II. They occupy kind of a unique niche - grand strategy games that are full of historical detail, but have an epic scope. They're not easy games, not are they for everybody, but once you get hooked into Crusader Kings/EU/Victoria/Hearts of Iron, it's really hard to go back to playing Civilization.

I've uncovered a game I never thought I'd enjoy as much as I do. I don't play flight sims and I've never cared for the Free to Play (F2P) model, so imagine my surprise at becoming addicted to War Thunder over the last couple of weeks.

This is an entirely self-indulgent news post -

Rock Paper Shotgun has announced that GOG.com is now, right this minute, selling an updated, DRM free version of System Shock 2. There's a lot of legal detail about copyright and the collapse of Looking Glass and so on in that article, but here's the short version: Go buy it.

I no longer have any excuses or reasons to hide it – I want to work in the games media industry.