Steam, a PC gaming platform from Valve Inc. has evolved not only itself continuously over the years, but also the gaming industry as a whole through its own process of innovative marketing, community engagement and technological expansions. One way Steam has changed the gaming industry, is its support of “indie” small developer published games, which have a wide variety of genre possibilities, the most well known being casual games (games with low stakes of the traditional aspect of “losing” and little time constraints). For this blog post, I would like to explore: how has the popularity of indie and casual games compared to other genres changed over time?

ARC Raiders is a 2025 extraction-shooter game centered on collecting the last of a post-apocalyptic Earth’s resources while surviving dangerous AI-sentient robots called ARC, and also happens to be my current obsession. Due to the structure of the game, one community joke is that the game is secretly a social experiment observing players’ actions when given choices of risk vs reward and cooperation vs competition against a common enemy. As someone with a natural playstyle of caution and logic, how differently do I behave in this hypothetical post apocalyptic world? How do different configurations in weapons, gear investment and party size affect my success in-game?

NYC is undoubtedly the most famous city in America. The ability to live in NYC is coveted by many but held by few, between native NYers and newcomers alike. Catching the eye of landlords, brokers and housing managements alike, constant migration has been utilized as a tool for rental exploitation of all kinds, but especially for new leaseholders, who are often expected to pay three times the rent at initial lease signing (first months, last months, brokers fee).