Supermassive Games knows the appeal of a good horror story. Millions of the studio’s fans have jumped and screamed through Until Dawn and the Dark Pictures games. But the developer recognises that not everyone enjoys horror in the same way. That’s why The Quarry, Supermassive’s upcoming spiritual successor to Until Dawn, has multiple different game modes in order to allow a whole spectrum of horror fans to join in. It can, of course, be a choice-based story game. But, much like the spookiest of shadows, it can morph into other guises.

If you want, The Quarry can be a movie you just sit back and watch for ten hours. Or it can be a movie you direct, where you instruct your cast ahead of time on how they should respond to the adventure’s many threats. And, should you not want to endure the scares alone, The Quarry can even be a multiplayer game.

“The Quarry has probably the widest range of modes that we've done,” says director Will Byles. “We wanted to go and open this up to a much wider audience than just traditional gamers.”

While by its very nature horror will never genuinely have something for everyone, Supermassive Games is determined to offer the right options to allow as many people as possible to experience The Quarry. That effort begins in the main game itself, which as you’d expect plays much like Until Dawn, The Dark Pictures, and games from the likes of Telltale and Quantic Dream. Prominent among these games’ traditional mechanics are moments in which you must quickly react under stressful conditions, something Supermassive Games recognises may push some people away from playing.

Byles offers a hypothetical example of the way The Quarry addresses this problem. “I want to play it through, but QTEs really frighten me and I don't like those, they stress me out,” he says. “So you can turn those off.”

Supermassive has included on/off toggles for not just QTEs, but almost every major mechanic in the game. Combat, clues and evidence collection, dialogue interactions… all of these and more can be tailored to be interactive or automatic. This is an incredibly helpful addition, both in terms of accessibility and approachability. For some people, horror is an intense experience that’s difficult to endure. For others, a disability may make quick or precisie button inputs a challenge. These toggles ensure that The Quarry can be played by as many people as possible.

But what if you want to turn all those toggles off? The result is Movie Mode, and it’s exactly what it sounds like. The game plays itself, rendering the interactive movie just a movie. But that’s not to say you don’t have a little control over the experience.

“You can pick a style,” explains Byles. “You can have an ‘everybody lives’ movie, you can have an ‘everybody dies’ movie. Or you can have my favorite one, which is the ‘gore fest’ movie.”

If that’s not quite enough control for you, then there’s Director’s Chair mode. This is, once again, another mode where you watch The Quarry as a movie, but you get to make four important decisions for each of the nine playable characters before the story starts. What do they do under pressure? How do they approach conversations? Do they cope well in fight or flight situations? And how attentive are they to the world around them? These four aspects allow you to tailor each character into whatever kind of personality you want, from horror stereotypes to subversive trend buckers.

“Are they a bit clumsy? They would probably fail QTE's,” Byles says. “Are they argumentative? You set a whole bunch of these little parameters for every character and then you just let them go and see what happens in that movie… It's the closest to literally directing somebody. If you tell an actor to just be clumsy the whole time, that's what they'll do. That's the way they'll play it through.”

Real directors have the ability to shout “cut” and re-film a scene, something which choice-driven games have typically shied away from in order to provide a more genuine sense of consequence. However, The Quarry has a limited ‘lives’ system that will allow players to rewind a maximum of three times and make a different decision. To preserve the shocks and permanence of the branching story, this can only be done on a replay (or on your first playthrough by buying the Deluxe Edition).

“It's just in case you did something and you think, ‘Oh, I really didn't want to do that one’,” says Byles. “You get a choice and a little thing will pop out saying ‘Do you want to use one of your lives?’ There's also a little warning that when you die, it's not because you may have done something just now. It may be because you did something three chapters back. We have to give you a warning that if you do use your life, you’ve got to go all the way back to that point.”

The Dark Pictures Anthology introduced a welcome new addition to Supermassive’s horror formula: co-operative multiplayer. It returns for The Quarry in the form of Couch Play, which supports up to eight players. This pass-the-pad mode allows each player to control the game when perspective switches to their character. It’s a fun spin on a classic house party movie night, and Supermassive has been careful to ensure everyone can join in, even those who don’t usually play games.

“Each [character] can have accessibility options associated with it,” explains Byles. “So if you want to play with your gran who has never played with a controller before, you can dial hers right down and you can dial yours right up.”

Alongside this is online co-operative multiplayer, which makes a few deviations from tradition in order to make the interactive movie format work. Rather than a group controlling a different character each, a host player controls the game and up to seven other players can provide input on the choices made.

Supermassive Games has clearly put a lot of effort into diversifying the kind of experience The Quarry can be. For most people, it’s likely going to be a lot like Until Dawn. But for many others, it may well be remembered as an animated horror movie, a modern version of those early 2000s choose-your-own-adventure DVDs, or perhaps even the first horror game they were ever able to play.

“Stories in film are very vicarious,” says Byles as he reasons why it was important to make The Quarry playable by so many different kinds of people. “They're third person, you sit and watch them, and you empathise with a character. Games have a lot of agency and are much more about who you are. Mixing those two things together is a really, really good thing. Mixing this third person narrative with first person emotion is really, really powerful. I think a lot more people would appreciate it who normally would have a barrier about just playing a game.”

For more from The Quarry, check out our hands-on preview, our breakdown of how a creepy scene of the story was made, and how Supermassive wrote a game with 186 different endings.

Matt Purslow is IGN's UK News and Features Editor.

Obi-Wan Kenobi director Deborah Chow has revealed which movies and shows influenced the new Disney+ Star Wars series, citing two modern westerns as points of reference.

Speaking to Total Film for the new issue of the magazine, per GamesRadar, Chow shared more about her creative vision for the Obi-Wan Kenobi series and the surprise inspirations behind the first season, naming Andrew Dominik's The Assassination of Jesse James and John Hillcoat's The Proposition as two "gritty, poetic westerns" that she looked towards.

The Proposition, released in 2005, and The Assassination of Jesse James, released in 2007, blew out any signs of tumbleweed in the midst of a modern western film boom. Both films offered a very unique visual style, with the former set against some "sprawling and striking landscapes," and the latter capturing "the bleak reality and mythic allure of the Old West."

While the Star Wars franchise has often paid tribute to spaghetti westerns, it has also been heavily influenced by Japanese cinema and pop culture. One need only watch Akira Kurosawa's 1958 film The Hidden Fortress to see the seeds of what would become Star Wars. Chow admitted that she turned to the work of Kurosawa once more for Obi-Wan Kenobi.

"I love Kurosawa," Chow declared. "There's such a strong correlation for me between the Jedi and the Ronin – particularly in this period where all the Jedi are being hunted. I was really looking at what you do if you're the last samurai. You're more than just a warrior. There's also an ethical code that goes along with it, in a world that's vastly changed. That really had a pretty big effect on what we were trying to do."

Obi-Wan Kenobi picks up ten years after Revenge of the Sith, with Ewan McGregor returning to his Star Wars role (alongside Hayden Christensen as Darth Vader) for the first time in 17 years. McGregor said the series is arriving amid a wave of positivity for the prequels, though he admits he got more out of his Disney+ return than the "first three movies put together."

The Obi-Wan Kenobi series will premiere on Disney+ on May 27 with two episodes. Alongside McGregor and Christensen, the series stars Joel Edgerton, Bonnie Piesse, Moses Ingram, Indira Varma, Rupert Friend, and Sung Kang. Deborah Chow is directing the series and Joby Harold is the showrunner, with John Williams and Natalie Holt composing the score.

Adele Ankers-Range is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.

Earlier this week, Elon Musk followed through on his promise to acquire Twitter, with the social media company announcing the acceptance of Musk’s $44 Billion offer.

By most measures, Twitter is not the most popular social media site. Metrics often have Twitter trailing other social platforms like Facebook and Instagram by considerable margins. That said, Twitter has become an integral platform within the games industry as both individual game developers and companies use the platform heavily to promote their work, their games, or share any and all thoughts they deem fit to tweet.

“Twitter is generally a great networking tool for developers — trending hashtags, asking for advice, the ability to retweet work or portfolios, and just casually replying to tweets has helped many folks connect with each other,” says Victoria Tran Community Director for Inner Sloth, the developers of Among Us.

Twitter is easily accessible to developers and instantly connects them with their players, content creators, and journalists, Tran says. And for corporations, there are advantages to Twitter that don’t exist on competing platforms.

“Twitter is also relatively low lift in terms of producing content — it focuses on words, while other platforms like Instagram and TikTok require more work with images or video,” Tran adds. “It’s a quicker way to connect, and unlike Facebook, you don’t necessarily have to friend request people in order to chat with them,” though this last part comes with its own problems of course.

But for the most part, game developers from indies to AAA find value in Twitter’s approach to social networks. Two AAA game developers currently employed at major studios who wished to remain anonymous said they got some of their first big game industry jobs through Twitter

But news of Musk’s acquisition of Twitter has caused a flurry of reactions across Twitter’s most prominent users, including those working in the video game industry. Musk, who is best known as the founder of the electric car company Tesla, is a prominent Twitter user himself who takes to his account to post musings about his many businesses, unsolicited advice on public transit, and sometimes memes. Can this person change Twitter, and if so, what will happen?

Musk describes himself as a “free speech absolutist” and has tweeted out ideas of what he would like to see changed about Twitter in the past. Musk has repeatedly espoused the virtues of “free speech” and has called Twitter a “digital town square,” including in his statement following the acquisition.

One area Musk could expand on this idea is by loosening rules around what users are and aren’t allowed to Tweet. Short of illegal content, Musk has said recently at a TED conference that he would let “gray area” Tweets exist which could give license to harassment and trolls.

This is the most concerning possibility after the Musk takeover for professionals who run Twitter accounts for some of the largest video game companies.

One Social Media Professional at a North American AAA studio tells IGN, “We can already see a very cautious response from the Twitter userbase, especially among those who are victims or witnesses of harassment and abuse on the platform.”

The employee, who wished to remain anonymous given that their company has yet to put out an official statement, adds that from a professional view, any loosening of standards could lead to a loss of audience.

“We spent months and years cultivating our audiences on this platform, we’re very concerned that they might choose to leave it behind in fear of even more abuse at the excuse of ‘free speech.’ The same goes for brands, as it’s still unclear what some of these features would mean for content moderation and reporting, which is already an issue today.”

Musk’s rhetoric has spooked social media professionals who already contend with changing algorithms and shifting trends on a daily basis. While Twitter is not perfect, the Musk acquisition threatens to put people who work with social media daily into unknown waters.

“Twitter has been the go-to platform for video game developers and publishers for a long time now and its ease of use and accessible audiences made this platform important to rely on,” says Colin Cummings, who runs Social Media and Community for Evolve PR. “If anything disrupts this, or makes this worse, then my role as a community and social media manager just got more important.”

To be clear, Musk’s takeover of Twitter has yet to be finalized and it’s unclear exactly what changes are coming to the service. So far, Musk has only promised to enhance Twitter with new features, including making the algorithm open source, defeating spambots, and “authenticating all humans.”

But for professionals who use Twitter for work, the concern is that there just aren’t viable alternatives to Twitter available right now. “There is no perfect replacement for Twitter and we’ll have to work extra hard to build our audiences, curate a community, and to establish our core communications like blog posts or newsletters,” says Cummings.

The concern is that “the gaming community that has been centralized on Twitter will fracture and spiral off into a dozen different places.”

“He bought Twitter for a lot of money and I feel like it is naive to say nothing is going to change. We just have to hope it’ll be for the better or just a lateral move.”

For others, social media is such a chaotic field, to begin with, that Musk’s takeover of Twitter is just the latest sea change impacting a vital job the uninformed believe is done by interns.

“Social media sites come and go,” says Tran. “Facebook was the place to be, now its organic reach is almost gone. TikTok is the hot new thing. Vine is dead. Just another billion-dollar corporation — or person, in this case — duking it out while everyone else gets tossed in the waves. Just another Monday.”

Matt T.M. Kim is IGN's News Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.

Facebook's parent company Meta has announced a new virtual reality headset more powerful than the Meta (previously Oculus) Quest 2 - but it's for work, not games.

Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed Project Cambria in the company's latest earnings call before going into more detail in a Facebook post spotted by PC Gamer.

"Later this year we'll release a higher-end headset [than the Oculus Quest 2], codenamed Project Cambria, which will be more focused on work use cases and eventually replacing your laptop or work setup," Zuckerberg said.

"This premium device will have improved ergonomics and full colour passthrough mixed reality to seamlessly blend virtual reality with the physical world," he continued.

"We're also building in eye tracking and face tracking so that your avatar can make eye contact and facial expressions, which dramatically improves your sense of presence."

Zuckerberg promised that more details on Project Cambria would be revealed in the coming months, but made clear that this is a point of entry for the company's current focus: the metaverse.

Various companies, including Fortnite developer Epic Games, have declared interest in the metaverse but the concept is still in its very early stages with different investors having different ideas.

Meta's version appears to be a complete digital existence, with Zuckerberg hinting that customers' entire workspace will now be within a virtual, or at least augmented, version of reality.

While Project Cambria isn't about gaming, last week's Meta Quest Gaming Showcase made clear the company is still pursuing a more traditional gaming route.

Ghostbusters VR and Resident Evil 4 - The Mercenaries VR were both announced for the platform alongside new virtual reality games based on Among Us, The Walking Dead, and the NFL.

It's not all about the digital space though, as Meta's first retail store, set in the real world (specifically in Burlingame, California) will open next month.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

Ex-Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé is a big believer in blockchain technology.

But blockchain, which is used to trade and record cryptocurrency and NFTs, can't just be used by developers as a money making scheme, Fils-Aimé said. Instead it should be player-focused.

Speaking at last month's SXSW event in Texas, as spotted by Nintendo Life, Fils-Aimé said "I'm a believer in blockchain, I think it's a really compelling technology."

"I'm also a believer in the concept of 'play to own' within video games," he continued. "And I say this as a player where I may have invested 50 hours in a game, 100 hours in a game, and there are some games I've invested 300 hours in" he continued. "When I'm ready to move on to something else, wouldn't it be great to monetise what I've built?

"I bet I'd have some takers here today if I wanted to sell my Animal Crossing island from the latest Nintendo Switch version. I'd like to be able to monetise that."

Blockchain would allow that to happen, Fils-Aimé said, but he later clarified that it needs to make sense for the player above all else.

"It can't just be an approach by the developer [who thinks] that it's interesting or it's a way for them to make more money. In the end it's got to be good for the player. But I see an opportunity."

Blockchain, cryptocurrency, and the metaverse have been widely growing and controversial topics within the games industry in the last year.

Companies including Worms developer Team17 have announced NFT projects before backtracking completely following fan and staff backlash, while a Ubisoft executive said simply that "gamers don't get it".

While a number of companies have also invested in the Metaverse, Fortnite developer Epic Games seems to lead the charge in the gaming sphere with Sony and LEGO's parent company KIRKBI investing $1 billion each earlier this month.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

Sony has seemingly disabled the ability to redeem PlayStation Plus codes from third-party retailers, or via the PlayStation Store.

Some users have tried to extend their PlayStation Plus membership after news broke that those with simultaneous PS Plus and PS Now subscriptions will get upgraded to PS Plus Premium in June, with the length of the new subscription being equal to their longest current memberships.

But, after purchasing a PS Plus code, users then reported the codes being rejected after an attempted redemption.

This is now a widespread issue, with some evidence that Sony support will also not accept the codes. Examples of this can also be found on ResetEra forums, with one user being told: "On this case right now you will be unable to add those codes to the account since we have disabled the option to redeem PS Plus codes." IGN was also contacted by a user who reported the exact same line being given to them by support.

Stacking a membership is where a user can use pre-paid cards to redeem an extension to their current membership. For example, a user with 12-months left of PlayStation Plus could previously buy another 12-months, stacking their membership to 2-years, even before the subscription expires. This is typically common practice when PlayStation Plus codes are discounted during sale events.

It is now believed by some in the PlayStation community that Sony has blocked this to prevent users from further taking advantage of making any savings on the revamped PlayStation Plus service. Sony has offered no official word, so IGN has reached out for comment.

Many users had already stacked PS Now memberships, after it was announced those with a PS Now account would be upgraded to PS Plus Premium at no extra cost. This loophole was also quickly shut down, and PS Now memberships are no longer available to purchase.

Robert Anderson is a deals expert and Commerce Editor for IGN. You can follow him @robertliam21 on Twitter.

A group of quality assurance testers working on Dragon Age 4 have filed an application to unionise.

The employees, who work directly with developer BioWare but as contractors of supporting company Keywords Studios, are attempting to unionize over issues of poor pay, a return to work mandate, and more.

An anonymous source told Kotaku that Keyword employees would have to return to their Alberta-based office on May 9 despite cases of COVID-19 slowly rising since the start of April.

Keyword employees would not be entitled to sick pay if they had to quarantine as a result of COVID-19, the source said, while BioWare employees are allowed to work from home completely.

The return to work ruling was seemingly the final straw for the 15-20 QA testers who allegedly are already subject to poor pay. The source said some employees are being paid $16.50 Canadian dollars per hour - $12.82 U.S. dollars - which is considerably less than identical roles carried out by full BioWare employees.

Other issues were raised including gender-pay discrimination, a lack of useful performance evaluations, and a hostile response to unionising efforts.

The union application was filed on April 20 and is currently being reviewed by the Alberta Labor Relations Board until May 3. A vote to unionise will be held within the next two weeks, and the result will be confirmed by the board within another two weeks.

The source said the group is "very confident" it would win the vote, having taken inspiration from the recent efforts of Raven Software QA employees to unionise, allowing them to have more influence over their workplace.

They became the first union within Activision Blizzard despite alleged attempts from the developer to stop them. The workers were left out of recent pay increases at the company however, with Activision Blizzard saying it was "due to legal obligations under the National Labor Relations Act."

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

Xbox and Bethesda have announced that a summer showcase will air on June 12 at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern / 6pm UK.

This showcase will include upcoming games coming to Xbox and PC, as well as Xbox Game Pass. Currently, the biggest game Xbox has a set release date this year is the highly anticipated Starfield for November 11. So there's a good chance we'll get some more information on it. Arkane's Redfall is also scheduled to launch sometime in 2022, so a release date for it might be revealed too.

Save the date!

Catch the Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase on June 12: https://t.co/dmANSvXrbE | #XboxBethesda pic.twitter.com/AMFhrLhAtC

— Xbox (@Xbox) April 28, 2022

While Bethesda already announced The Elder Scrolls VI back in 2018, it might be a while until we hear anything else about it. Since it was annouced before Microsoft's acquisition of Bethesda, we could possibly receive confirmation of Xbox and PC exclusivity. MachineGames also announced last year that the studio was working on an Indiana Jones game, so more information about it could be shown as well.

One last possible reveal could be Deathloop's inclusion into Xbox Game Pass in this Fall when its timed-exclusivity period on PlayStation 5 expires.

George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @yinyangfooey

Always getting stuck on point-and-click adventure games? Return to Monkey Island has a solution.

During an interview with Ars Technica, creator Ron Gilbert confirmed that the game will have an easy mode, as well as a hint system.

“[One thing] that people really want in games today are built-in hint systems,” he explained. “If [players] don't have a built-in hint system, they're just going to jump over to the web and read a walkthrough.” Encouraging players not to do that, Return to Monkey Island will use a hint system that has been designed to make sense in-game.

It will be “more than just a walkthrough,” he added.

Of course, getting stuck is part of the fun of point-and-click adventures.

Back when The Secret of Monkey Island was released in 1990, I spent hours upon hours clicking around looking for ways to solve puzzles and growing increasingly frustrated when I couldn’t solve them.

But what you always remember is the satisfaction when it finally clicks.

"[There was] a lot of stuff that we did back then and didn't think much about—a lot of very obscure puzzles,” said Gilbert. “Hiding a piece of information somewhere with no clues about where to find it—that kind of thing just wouldn't fly today... Having hint systems means that if you make the puzzle just completely weird and obscure, people just go to the hint system.”

Of course, everyone knew what to do with a rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle. Right?

Thankfully, there’s also a new easy mode – borrowed from Gilbert’s recent Thimbleweed Park.

This new feature, called “casual mode” in Return to Monkey Island, is designed for “people [for whom] this is their first adventure game, or they haven't played adventure games in a long time, or maybe they have lives and kids now,” explained Gilbert. “They can play the casual mode, which is just a lot of simplification of the puzzles. That is our main way to get people into playing a point-and-click game if they haven't done it before.”

Return to Monkey Island sees Gilbert return to the legendary point-and-click series and is expected to be released later this year.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

Nobody asked Zetamasterx to devote a year and a half of their life to capturing Legendary Pokémon with slightly different colour variants to their regular counterparts, but once they started, it became an obsession. For the vast majority of trainers, capturing a Legendary at all is triumph enough – but there are a select few who strive for a prize much, much rarer than that.

In the Pokémon community, these toiling prospectors are known as shiny hunters – a narrow demographic of players who regularly invest hundreds, if not thousands of hours into honing their trade long after the rest of the fanbase have moved onto the inevitable next generation. What this entails is simple: In Gen 8, the most recent generation of mainline Pokémon games, every ‘mon has a 1/4,096 chance to be a different colour to the rest of its species. These odds can be increased to almost 1/100, but even those chances make it a slow process.

If you haven’t already guessed, the objective of shiny hunting is to locate and catch these extremely rare Pokémon. That’s not taking into account that Legendary Pokémon are far rarer than almost any other, meaning shiny versions are very hard to come by.

Zetamasterx collected every single shiny Legendary available in Gen 8.

It’s important to establish the sheer level of busywork here. For Zetamasterx to catch shiny Regirock, they had to soft-reset the game – meaning they saved before the battle, instigated the fight, and then reset their Switch when they realised the Pokémon they were hunting wasn’t shiny – a whopping 18,000 times. And that was after failing their first shiny chance when Regirock struggled to death after 4,000 encounters. Imagine the frustration…

For shiny Palkia, meanwhile, the player embarked on 612 unique Dynamax Adventures, the roguelike minigame introduced in Pokémon Sword & Shield’s’s Crown Tundra expansion. Both the Regirock and Palkia hunts took an entire month to complete, but at time of writing, Zetamasterx is chasing shiny Cresselia in Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and is starting to worry that they’ll break that record once more – which certainly isn't helped by the fact they failed to catch their first one of those, too.

These are the most extreme examples of Zetamasterx’s hard work, but there was much more to do than just those – catching every shiny Legendary in Sword & Shield required roughly 18 months of regular play.

What is it that motivates players like Zetamasterx to commit to a time investment of that magnitude?

Danners99, a relatively green practitioner, recently completed their second shiny hunt. Prior to Sun & Moon, their interest in Pokémon was next to non-existent – but after stumbling across some well-known hunters on YouTube, that interest was instantly piqued.

“One [hunt] only took a few hours, but the second spun over two days,” Danners99 says. “As for if I have been enjoying it, I’d say yes – however, I have taken long breaks between hunts because I’m not accustomed to long grinds just yet.”

For some, however, shiny hunting is even more interesting than the base games themselves:

“I got into Pokémon because of shiny hunting,” Late_Experience_1990 says. “I would see YouTubers hunt for them and thought, ‘I want to give this a try!’

“I’ve only been shiny hunting for about a year. As of now, I’m more casual about it – I have school and other games I’m interested in. But it’s pretty rewarding, because most of the time you have to work quite hard for them. It’s like a trophy after a long hunt.”

YouTube is also responsible for FR00DA87’s gravitation to hunting, although their entry point was slightly different. Instead of watching streamers chasing shinies, they got into hardcore Nuzlocke runs, which revolve around a highly specific, self-imposed ruleset: You can only catch the first Pokémon you encounter on each route; if a Pokémon faints, it’s dead; and if you white out, it’s game over. This served as a gateway to shiny hunting, which FR00DA87 soon developed a passion for.

“I think people do it for the satisfaction of the final product,” FR00DA87 says. “That moment when you see the different colour ‘mon with the sparkles after hunting for ages – it feels like pure ecstasy." FR00DA87 is quick to lambast people who pay hackers to artificially generate their shinies, which they see as missing the point.

It's easy to see where they're coming from. FR00DA87 once spent six hours a day, for a week straight, chasing a single, elusive shiny Giratina, which made their reward a whole lot more special than if they'd just bought it off a cloning site for $5.

FR00DA87 is very aware that this isn’t something everyone would be into: “It’s an excessive and boring process for barely anything of worth. If you enjoy feeling great satisfaction after a long deal of non-enjoyable activity, then it’s for you. But if you don't have much spare time or much patience, absolutely not. I just shut my brain off and do a monotonous task for hours on end, so the adrenaline at the end is worth it for me.”

It's no surprise, then, that the single sentiment echoed by all of our interviewees is that the drive to chase shinies boils down to one specific feeling: it’s less the thrill of the hunt itself than the rush of having finished it, with a reward so few other players will have.

This is perhaps best articulated by our most enthusiastic interviewee – a Redditor who goes by the handle Warcraft101.

“I've been into Pokemon for as long as I can remember,” Warcraft101 says. “The hype was unlike anything I'll ever experience again. The cards exploded in popularity – everyone was trading them at school. If you had a holo Charizard, you were Arceus [the name of a Pokémon God].” Just like those shiny cards, the game’s own shinies offer a similar mixture of personal pride and envy from others:

“I believe shiny hunting is popular because of the reward that comes from it. As with most things in life, it’s the journey you remember. Anyone can go out, catch a Pokémon in a minute, and forget all about that moment. When you've spent 20 hours hunting, you feel all types of emotions – and when that sparkle finally appears, it’s absolutely exhilarating.

“We do it because we're dedicated masochists.”

Warcraft101 isn't being hyperbolic when they mention masochism. They're currently 140 runs into their hunt for shiny Ho-oh – whom they affectionately refer to as their "sparkly silver birb" – and it took them an astronomical 1,822 eggs to hatch shiny Pichu, whose very existence they questioned on multiple occasions.

"I started shiny hunting thinking, 'I just want Ho-Oh & Eevee'," they explain. "Boy was I wrong. I still have yet to get my own shiny Ho-Oh, and after I got that first hatched Eevee in 441 eggs, I thought, 'Okay, well maybe I'll just do the Eeveelutions'. Nope. I keep finding random reasons from childhood that inspire me to hunt more.

"Hunts can be very time consuming depending on your method of choice, but [they’re] more rewarding than anything I've ever experienced in a game."

Interestingly, despite some fans’ love for the grind, more recent Pokémon games have taken it upon themselves to streamline the process of shiny hunting. Pokémon Let’s Go Eevee & Pikachu introduced shiny chains, which increase your shiny odds for every Pokémon of the same species you consecutively catch. Pokémon Legends: Arceus, meanwhile, implemented a revised mass outbreak mechanic (a spruced-up version of the similarly named phenomenon from Pokémon Diamond & Pearl) that also heightens your chances. In both of these cases, shinies are visible in the overworld, meaning you don’t have to waste time instigating battles to check your luck.

But the real king – or curse, depending on your preference – of shiny hunting is mobile game Pokémon Go, where your odds and encounter rates can skew higher than any traditional Pokémon game. Alongside Let’s Go and Legends: Arceus, Go is something a lot of shiny hunters feel pretty ambivalent towards.

“I've noticed there are mixed opinions throughout the games,” says Warcraft101. “I personally love most shinies the same, regardless of acquisition. The only ones I'm slightly less fond of are from Go. A lot of people tend to dislike the Pokémon Go shinies because they are easy to get at 1/500 without any extra effort. I've seen some say full odds shinies are the only way.”

Danners99 reckons Arceus’ odds specifically are a little too high. Another interviewee, Whiskey_Rain_, agrees – they believe shiny hunting was too difficult in early games, but was made too easy in Legends: Arceus. In their eyes, Sword & Shield marked the point where Game Freak struck a good balance between the two.

The rest of our shiny hunter interviewees are less worried about the modern trend towards making shiny hunting less approachable.

“I don’t think making shiny hunts easier is a bad thing, because to be honest the 1/4,000 odds are just tedious and monotonous,” says FR00DA87. “Nobody does it for the experience of hunting, so easier odds are never bad. But not stupidly easy like Arceus seems to be, or the Max Lair, which can seem excessive at times when you get two in a row.”

“I think it depends on the game,” another hunter, shiniki, counters. “For example, Dynamax raids feel pretty appropriate for Sword & Shield since that's the mechanic for this gen. I'm not as familiar with Pokémon Go, but I do really enjoy shiny hunting in [Legends: Arceus] – if you complete all the tasks in a Pokémon's ‘Dex entry, you have a higher chance of encountering a shiny. You have to work for it, but the reward is worth it, and you can choose which Pokémon you would prefer to hunt first.

“I know Dynamax wasn't as popular as it could have been due to the NPC AI not being very intelligent, but I would love to see more co-op modes with shiny hunting.”

So what about the future of the series – where do these hunters want their niche pursuit to go in the upcoming Pokémon Scarlet and Violet?

Whiskey_Rain_ is hoping for an additional, ultra-rare shiny variant – particularly for ‘mons like Gengar, whose shiny sprite is barely distinguishable from its ordinary one. Some might point to the even rarer “square shinies” introduced in Gen 8, which are only differentiated by a slightly altered sparkle animation – but fans tend to prefer the idea of all-new colour schemes. For Late_Experience_1990, meanwhile, the current odds in the mainline games are fine. Their main concern about the practice becoming more streamlined is that easier shiny hunting will lead to less valuable shinies.

“I’d like there to be similar odds, because the 1/100ish with the Shiny Charm isn’t awful, but also for each Pokémon to have equal methods of hunting,” FR00DA87 says, referring to how some Pokémon types aren’t affected by the Shiny Charm. “I’ve seen some hunts go into stupid numbers just because of luck, so a hard cap would be nice.”

“I look forward to seeing the new shinies for Gen 9 for sure,” says a more enthusiastic Warcraft101. “I could wish for a ‘complete game’, but I know with the current market in gaming we'll probably be getting a DLC-type deal. I'd love for a returning mechanic such as Mega Evolutions over a new gimmick like Dynamaxing. I've always flirted with the idea of half-shiny distorted-type Pokémon as well.

With all of the above accounts, it’s safe to say that the future of shiny hunting is unclear even for those who devote hundreds of hours to it. After all, with shiny hunting important to such a small sub-set of players, it’s unlikely to be a headline announcement for any new Generation – but that only increases the anticipation for fans when they first get to try out the new games.

One thing is for sure though – shiny hunters will remain as obsessed with the practice as ever. While Zetamasterx has their fingers and toes crossed for a return to Dynamax Adventures, they’re still reeling from the 18-month odyssey they embarked on to complete their collection of shiny Legendaries.

“I’m not sure if I'll hunt them all again in future games,” they say. But the obsession is seemingly never far away. “Maybe I'll give it a try.”

Cian Maher is a freelance journalist. You can follow him on Twitter.