Paul Tassi

Paul Tassi follows the long arcs of video games and genre entertainment, focusing on how live-service design, platform strategy and audience response shape what succeeds and fades. He writes news and opinion on video games, television, movies and the internet for Forbes, with a beat that sits where games, streaming and online culture meet. He has covered this territory for more than a decade, concentrating on console and PC titles and the fan communities that grow around them.

His author bio describes a remit that spans “all manner of console and PC games,” with a particular interest in titles built around looting and shooting, alongside science fiction, horror and superhero entertainment. Public profiles and social pages echo that focus, presenting him as a writer of news and opinion on video games, technology and the internet who also covers television. Beyond Forbes, he has bylines at a range of gaming and entertainment outlets and has published multiple science fiction novels, which feed into his coverage of genre stories across media.

Live-service shooters and online worlds

Tassi’s work often returns to live-service shooters and online worlds, treating them as ongoing services that demand sustained analysis rather than one-off reviews. In coverage of Amazon’s New World, for example, he examines what it means for the company to “finally strike gold” with an MMO and what comes next, framing success as the starting point for new retention challenges. Video essays tied to his reporting show him engaging deeply with games like Destiny and Crimson Desert over dozens or hundreds of hours, then using that experience to assess the health of their systems and futures.

His Marathon coverage fits the same pattern, tracking Bungie’s decision to pull a PvE trigger as a sign of the direction live-service shooters may take when they recalibrate around player sentiment and sustainability.

Within this strand, he pays close attention to how progression, loot design and monetization feel from the player’s perspective, and how those mechanics affect whether a community stays invested. His focus on looting and shooting titles means that changes to modes, content cadence and reward structures are central to his stories, making his coverage valuable when a game shifts business model or introduces major systemic updates. He writes in a direct, iterative format, returning to the same games as they evolve so that readers can see how early promises compare with long-term reality.

Console sales and platform competition

Another recurring thread in Tassi’s work is console performance and platform competition, where he uses sales records and hardware shortages as lenses on wider industry dynamics. In analysis of PS5 and Xbox Series X breaking sales records, he looks beyond headline numbers to what they say about demand, supply constraints and how easily the new consoles fend off rivals.

This kind of coverage blends business metrics with player experience, connecting sales and install base data to questions about exclusive titles, cross-play and how platform decisions affect the games people can actually access.

He approaches platform stories with the same interest in long-term trajectories that marks his game coverage, asking what early success or failure indicates for future content pipelines and ecosystem lock-in. When he writes about console competition, the emphasis is less on corporate messaging and more on how hardware trends ripple into the kinds of games that get made, supported and updated over time.

Streaming, television and genre franchises

Tassi also covers streaming, television and film projects tied to genre franchises, often through the prism of critical reception and fan expectations. His Resident Evil piece on a record-setting Rotten Tomatoes score uses the numbers as a way to track how the franchise is received in its latest incarnation, framing reviews and aggregate scores as part of the story of a long-running brand.

In coverage of Taylor Sheridan’s post-Lioness slate, including projects like Sicario 3 and Call of Duty, he connects individual shows and films to a broader discussion of how genre creators extend universes across formats.

He occasionally writes about science fiction authors and books, as in his piece on Project Hail Mary author Andy Weir’s next novel, which situates publishing news within the current moment for space-focused science fiction. These stories sit alongside his game and TV coverage, forming a through-line around how genre narratives move between media and how audiences respond to each new installment. Metrics such as review scores, renewal decisions and franchise longevity are central in this work, mirroring his interest in player retention and engagement on the gaming side.

Online platforms, avatars and internet culture

Tassi’s beat includes the broader internet infrastructure around games, from avatar systems to social platforms. In his Roblox piece on a metaverse move that Fortnite should worry about, he focuses on a major overhaul of avatar customization and what it implies for identity, style and user-generated economies inside platform games.

His social profiles describe him as covering technology and the internet alongside video games, underlining an interest in how online services shape and are shaped by gaming culture.

Across these stories, he pays attention to how design choices on platforms like Roblox intersect with competition from other games and with wider metaverse narratives. This complements his reporting on consoles and live-service titles, building a picture of a beat that spans from individual games to the ecosystems and online cultures that surround them.