Ana Diaz

Ana Diaz is a internet culture and video games journalist based in New York. Her work investigates the intersections between consumer trends, internet culture, games, and fandom.

Polygon •

The best ways to take notes for Blue Prince, according to Blue Prince fans

Here at Polygon, we aren’t strangers to the video game notebook. Handwritten notes can create a physical place that can serve as a guide and aid in our own game experiences. They can also enhance enjoyment of a game. Our staff has created assassination bullet journals and argued that taking notes can make games more fun. Now, Blue Prince — the hottest puzzle game of 2025 — has taken that inclination and set it on fire.In Blue Prince, you explore and construct a sprawling mansion estate room by r...
mixed feelings •

video games are fanfiction's next frontier

welcome to strong feelings! Essays by writers we love, in which they share their most impassioned opinions on a given subject. In today’s strong feelings, writer Ana Diaz explores how fan-made games are pushing the limits of both fanfiction and video games at large.Satoru Gojo, a 2D heartthrob from the anime Jujutsu Kaisen (JJK), put on his best outfit for me in the game, Teacher’s Pet: Winner Takes It All. He’s wearing black-tinted sunglasses and a button up tucked into his pants. It might soun...
Polygon •

Death of the Reprobate combines potty humor with high art

In Death of the Reprobate, I assume the role of a young tyrant named Malcolm the Shit. His father, Immortal John, is dying. Usually, that would be good news for a spoiled heir like him, but his plans to assume the throne hit a snag when his daddy tells him he must perform seven good deeds to earn his right to rule the land. Malcolm, however, is the equivalent of some sort of Renaissance-era fuckboy who likes to order the execution of his subjects. It’s up to me to usher him along on his path to...
Polygon •

What does the future of Vtubing look like? Cover’s Yagoo has the answer

Motoaki Tanigo: In anime, you don’t really have just one important character, right? You have their friends and their group, and what we learned from that is how we debut our unique characters in a unit. So we have a sense of a unit and community. And one season of animation could be like one generation, one unit.Polygon: What do you think is the most important factor to successfully growing Vtubing in a new place? Is it picking the right talent? Is it finding the right way to bring merch to new...
Polygon •

I went to a Hololive concert and now I’m convinced VTubers can do anything

As I walk to the Kings Theatre in Brooklyn, New York, a line of people wraps around several city blocks, many wearing merch with blown-up fan art of anime girls. I enter the stately theater, with its ornate gilded plasterwork and luxurious stage draperies, and find my chair. A concertgoer holds up an Austrian flag with the orange-haired VTuber Takanashi Kiara printed on it. The crowd breaks into a thunderous roar, with people waving glowing orange light sticks in the air and chanting: “Kiara! Ki...
Polygon •

We can thank Hideki Naganuma for putting Malcolm X in a Sonic game

I think video game history will remember Hideki Naganuma for many reasons. Fans might lovingly bestow upon him the title of “Twitter weirdo.” Others — especially modern music producers — might cite him as an important influence in video game composition. That’s more than fair; the man is responsible for his fair share of video game bangers. Tracks like Jet Set Radio Future’s “The Concept of Love” — which stuffs warped vocal samples, bright electric guitar riffs, and rushing synthy drums — still...
Polygon •

The Wandering Village is proof of TikTok’s impact on games

Sprinkled into TikTok’s endless feed of videos, you can find all sorts of content related to video games. You can see lore analysis videos, cool tips and tricks, cosplay, and, if you’re lucky, thirsty edits of characters like Leon Kennedy. The platform has become a place where people can learn about the games they love and discover new ones. Some games, like The Wandering Village, have specifically flourished thanks to TikTok and have found millions of viewers on the app. But now, that could all...
Polygon •

Maitreyi Ramakrishnan says Twitch will give her chill ‘creative control’

Best known for playing Devi Vishwakumar, the lead role in the Netflix sitcom Never Have I Ever, Ramakrishnan has shown off her own personality over the years through posts on TikTok and Instagram. And video games are part of it, whether she’s posting from Super Nintendo World or cosplaying as Lisa from Genshin Impact. On Friday evening, the actor will take that interest in a new direction by hosting her first-ever official livestream on Twitch. Polygon caught up with Ramakrishnan to talk about h...
Polygon •

Tears of the Kingdom devs are amped for Zelda’s post-Switch era

As soon as players had Tears of the Kingdom in hand, they tinkered with Link’s newfound building powers to delightful and chaotic results. Fans constructed mega bridges and skateboards and, if they were skilled enough, even Godzilla-like kaijus. Outside the world of the game, fans dove into Hyrule and its history; they theorized about what would happen and lamented lost romance. If Breath of the Wild set a new gold standard for open-world exploration in games, Tears of the Kingdom proved all ove...
Polygon •

Home Depot made hundreds of skeletons before perfecting its 12-foot star, Skelly

Even if you’re from an urban area devoid of lawns, it’s still likely you’ve seen the 12-foot skeleton in question, which has become the center of viral internet fame time and time again. Videos starring the bony lawn fixture, which can garner as many as 16.4 million views, aren’t all that complicated; a lot of times, people just share the different ways they use the skeleton, whether dressing it up or driving it around town. Still, the decoration is so large that even the simplest videos lend a...
Polygon •

Inside Magic: The Gathering’s Lost Caverns of Ixalan, a set driven by a love of Latin America

Long before Wizards of the Coast senior art director Ovidio Cartagena and his team of artists conjured up cavernous depths populated with jade merfolk and fungal tyrants, he would ride the bus back and forth to school each day in his hometown in Guatemala. In his day-to-day life, Cartagena saw Mayan pyramids and statues of warriors who fought the conquistadors. Fast forward several years, and he’s now living in the United States, but those experiences live on through the art of Magic: The Gather...
Polygon •

Fionna and Cake creator says Marceline — and Marshall Lee — were always Black

But Fionna and Cake debuted Marshall Lee as a Black character — the first time fans saw either depiction of the vampire as visibly Black in the Adventure Time universe. Fans celebrated the new design on social media by reacting to the first trailer of the show and sharing cosplay. To Adam Muto, executive producer on both Adventure Time and Fionna and Cake, “it would have felt harder to rationalize not showing [Marshall Lee] that way.”Some fans long questioned if she was actually Black or not. Wh...
Polygon •

Stardew Valley creator ConcernedApe has gotten better at drawing beds

It might be indulgently silly, but I — and many others in the Stardew Valley community — have a years-long obsession with one particular bed. It’s not some rare item with a low drop rate, nor does it have any special powers. I’m talking about Grandpa’s bed, which is shown in the early cutscenes of the game.For those unfamiliar, Stardew Valley starts off with your grandfather bequeathing you a plot of land where you can build a farm. In one of the early cutscenes, the game shows your grandpa lyin...
Polygon •

Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom’s blood moon has a secret purpose

The blood moon in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is one of the game’s creepiest moments. Scarlet clouds paint the sky and a ghostly aura reanimates monsters from the dead. The scene is among one of the scarier parts of the game, but beneath its red ooze, this event hides a practical application: The blood moon functions as a way to refresh the game’s memory use and stop Link from pushing the Nintendo Switch to its limits.The regular (non-glitched) blood moon rises every 168 minutes, t...
Mn Artists •

Against the “World Wide Three Places”: A Conversation with Marina Kittaka – Mn Artists

I first encountered Marina Ayano Kittaka’s work at Play/Test, a monthly event hosted by the local games organization Glitch where game developers can demo works in progress. Since meeting Marina in 2018, her video games, writing, and digital projects have helped me, and others, imagine new possibilities for how to exist in the wider video games industry and digital life. Marina Kittaka is a Twin Cities-based game developer and artist, most known for her work at Analgesic Productions, a game deve...
Polygon •

Disguised Toast is expanding beyond streaming, but it’s coming at a cost

Jeremy Wang, known as Disguised Toast on Twitch, has long been known as a shitposter. The streamer got his start doing trick plays and trolling players on the digital card game Hearthstone. In 2017, he joined OfflineTV, a content creation group co-founded by Pokimane and Scarra. Over time, he amassed some 2.8 million followers on Twitch and 3.7 million on YouTube by streaming games like Among Us alongside other talent like Valkyrae and Corpse Husband. Now, he’s trying something new. He’s the fou...
Polygon •

Everyone has a shiny Pokémon now

Shiny Pokémon used to be a prized possession of Pokémon fans everywhere. These rare Pokémon that sport an alternate color scheme have a 1 in 4,096 chance of appearing in the wild in more recent games. Because of this, the special Pokémon long served as an emblem of a dedicated trainer that would put the hunt for rare monsters above anything else. Catching a single shiny Pokémon could take multiple sessions of grinding for hours at a time. But that’s starting to change, as recent mainline games h...
Polygon •

The ‘GentleMinions’ trend, explained

If you were within spitting distance of a movie theater this weekend, or just scrolling through TikTok, you might have noticed a new Minion-related trend: young adults and teens dressing up in formalwear to watch Minions: The Rise of Gru in theaters. The trend soared to ridiculous heights, with individual videos garnering as many as 24 million views and the “#gentleminions” tag on TikTok exceeding 24 million views as well. The “GentleMinions” trend is fueled by a commitment to shitposting that b...
Polygon •

In defense of the JojaMart route in Stardew Valley

To many that play the farming simulator, the JojaMart route appears to contradict a core premise of the game. Stardew Valley kicks off when the protagonist, a disillusioned office worker at JojaMart, inherits their late grandfather’s farm in the small community of Pelican Town. Throughout the process of building your farm, the player is given the choice between buying important upgrades to the town from JojaMart or by rebuilding a community center. To support JojaMart would be to betray your gra...
Polygon •

Andrew Hussie, the reluctant cult leader, on life after Homestuck

Hussie’s Psycholonials, a “visual novel” released in the spring of 2021, follows Zhen and Abby — two girls who must figure out what to do with a mess of a revolution and empire that they themselves prompted. In the first chapter of Psycholonials, Zhen, the novel’s main character, shoots and kills a cop. As it goes in the story, she was drunk driving, and after the cop gets physical with her, she grabs the gun from his holster and shoots. This event kickstarts her own story and accelerates the de...
Polygon •

Break-ups, porn, and bakas: The legend of the Barnes & Noble manga section

When Heather was 13, she dreamed of meeting a boyfriend. She didn’t want anything too special, just a pretty boy who shared her interests. When she finally entered high school, she thought she’d find the perfect guy — but no such boy arrived. So she started dreaming about bumping into her imaginary crush while out shopping for books, similar to the stories that she used to read in her favorite shojo manga. That’s when she started looking for love in the Barnes & Noble manga section. She fantasiz...
Polygon •

For some, Wii Fit’s legacy is body shame

Released in 2007, Wii Fit offered a suite of sporty minigames played with a balance board peripheral that you stood on like a weight scale. The minigames had you doing silly antics, such as leaning on the balance board to control a soccer player or jumping on it to mimic a ski jump. The aim wasn’t to transform you into an athlete, but to help you hone your inner balance. A message in Wii Fit warned, “A particularly unbalanced lifestyle could lead to fat accumulation… and even trigger a condition...
NPR •

Make Love, Not War: Five Years Of 'Undertale'

An orchestra files onto stage. A crowd of onlookers watch virtually on YouTube as the first chair violinist walks out last, holding a large, memory foam plushy of a pixelated dog. The crowd goes wild when they see the derpy looking dog and they start spamming chat with emojis: The dog is, in fact, the conductor. Now that he's here, after hours of waiting, the concert can finally begin. What is it all about? This orchestral event celebrates the five year anniversary of the video game Undertale;...
The Verge •

How public arts funding helps developers make unique, more diverse games

Film Victoria, which was founded by the Victorian State Government in Australia, started investing in games over 25 years ago and is one of the oldest public video games funds. Throughout that time, it has provided a crucial resource to game developers starting out: a clear, accessible path to funding. In doing this, government programs like Film Victoria have changed who gets the means to make games and opened up opportunities to more game makers from nontraditional backgrounds. This, in turn,...