Ramsey Bolton could return in game of Thrones: Legends. Game of Thrones: Legends introduces The Way of Whispers - a Bolton-themed faction - and a major faction overhaul that could pave the way for Ramsey Bolton's arrival, plus balance tweaks and new legendary heroes. Ask a longtime reader of A Song of Ice and Fire about Ramsey Bolton and you'll get a different image than the one TV viewers remember. Iwan Rheon's Ramsey carried a chilling, almost magnetic menace on screen. In the books, though, the character is rougher, less polished, and feral - an unpredictable force who makes even his father, Roose Bolton, uneasy. Video Games That divergence between page and screen is part of what keeps Ramsey so compelling. He's still alive in George R.R. Martin's novels, and the infamous pink letter - one of the story's strangest clues - remains unresolved. Could Ramsey play a key role in Winds of Winter? Many fans hope so. Could he show up somewhere unexpected before the next book drops? Game of Thrones: Legends might be offering an early hint. With its latest patch, Legends rolled out a major rethink of faction design. The centerpiece is a new faction called The Way of Whispers, built around Bolton-style tactics: bleed effects, evasive play, and letting enemies die from their own wounds. It's a clever mechanical nod to the Boltons' cruelty - brutal, quiet, and surgical. Discover more Controller Gaming Controllers Android OS Oddly, no Bolton heroes are in the faction yet. But the groundwork is there. The Way of Whispers currently includes characters whose kits lean into bleeding and deception: Aemond Targaryen, Cersei Lannister, Osha, Petyr Baelish, and Tyrion Lannister with his Casterly Rock title. That roster choice signals Zynga is thinking thematically rather than strictly by family name, and it leaves a clear opening for Ramsey or Roose to appear later as true Bolton archetypes. The faction overhaul stretches beyond one new group. Zynga also unveiled Sun's Dominion, expanded Free Folk into Beyond the Wall, rebranded Greyjoys as Lords of the Tide, and folded the Brotherhood Without Banners into a broader Scattered Banners faction. On top of that, the update adds 17 legendary heroes who can belong to two factions at once - dramatically increasing team-building permutations without stripping any hero of their original identity. Balance changes accompany the structural shift. Stacking multiple faction bonuses on a single team will now suffer diminishing returns, a deliberate move to prevent multi-faction teams from becoming unassailable. Faction perks are being standardized so no single faction hogs an outsized edge. And three new stats - Gem Resistance, Critical Hit Resistance, and Endurance - arrive to flesh out defensive options. Damage interactions from gems, poison, and some defensive abilities are getting tuned too. Discover more Company News Web Apps & Online Tools Why does any of this matter outside the game? For players who've long complained about a thin champion pool and a lack of iconic characters, the redesign promises real depth. It's not just more heroes; it's about meaningful choices when you draft a team. Suddenly, smaller, theme-tight factions can be viable strategies instead of afterthoughts. The update is slated to land later this month. Whether Ramsey will emerge from the wings remains uncertain. But with a faction explicitly channeling Bolton tactics now in the codebase, his return - either as a hero card or as a narrative tease - feels less like wishful thinking and more like a deliberate open door for storytellers and players alike. Game worlds borrow from books. Sometimes they rewrite them. And sometimes they create a third lane where both can surprise you. Video Games

Golf Rival debuts sweeping "Evolve" Update, introducing dynamic wind conditions, Club Mods and new challenges. Product Marketing Manager Get ready to hit the fairway with a whole new level of strategy as Nordeus rolls out the massive 'Evolve' update for its hit mobile golf game, Golf Rival. Available now, this major release introduces the largest and most versatile set of features ever brought to Golf Rival in a single launch. Whether a seasoned pro aiming to top the leaderboards or a casual player looking for a fresh challenge, golfers will find plenty of exciting action waiting on the green. The 'Evolve' update introduces course conditions, kicking off with unpredictable real-time wind Gusts that dynamically alter ball movements mid-flight, making every round unique and ensuring that even holes played a hundred times before now present a thrilling new puzzle to solve. To help golfers adapt to these shifting conditions, Golf Rival is also introducing Club Mods, a powerful system designed to reshape how players approach their gear. Rather than searching for brand new items, the Evolve update is built around breathing fresh life into the golf clubs users already own and love. Club Mods allow for the upgrading and fine-tuning of players' favorite existing clubs to fit specific playstyles and strategies, a true game-changer that ensures players' golf bags play a bigger role than ever before. Golfers will need to utilize the exact tools needed to outsmart the weather and outplay the competition. The excitement doesn't end on the course itself, though. The update also brings another new seasonal offer providing players additional opportunities to earn rewards. It's time to tee off and test your mettle. Nordeus'll see you on the green!

How to keep a creative team inspired under pressure with Zynga's Javi Digiorgio. At PGC Barcelona, Zynga's Javi Digiorgio shared how he keeps a creative team motivated in one of the toughest corners of games marketing August 13, 2026 * Digiorgio said better creatives move the numbers, so keeping the team sharp is a performance issue. * His rule for surviving UA's volume demands: drop your personal taste and let the data decide. * He turned a nervous team's fear of AI into curiosity by starting with a few early adopters. An effective ad creative is a performance lever and keeping the people who make it motivated is a business problem. That was the argument from Javi Digiorgio, associate creative director at Zynga, in a session on creative resilience at Pocket Gamer Connects Barcelona. Digiorgio oversees creative strategy for live titles including Dragon City, Two Dots and Monster Legends, working "hand in hand with UA teams, product teams and different stakeholders". His pitch for why any of this matters is: "creatives are multipliers." Better ads mean more engagement, more installs, higher IPMs and lower CPIs, so the creative team has "a direct impact on performance and ROAS". A tougher industry every year The backdrop, he said, is an industry that "is only getting tougher and tougher". It is dynamic, buffeted by macro trends like hybrid monetisation and incoming underage regulation in the UK, Australia "and most probably soon everywhere". It moves fast on AI and other emerging tech. And the player, "our ultimate judge", is "more tired, more at fatigue than ever and less willing to spend money and time on your games". It is also demanding. Creative strategists don't just upload ads to ad networks, they "play with their algorithms", each one different. The job is to "test 100 creatives, gather learnings and data, and put those insights into our strategy" over and over. Add new formats, especially playables, which have become essential now so much spend runs through networks that require them, and you get the industry's biggest creative headache: the sheer volume of production. Teams are asked to make not one compelling ad but "hundreds of iterations out of it". Something old: use the talent you already have He framed his three lessons as a marriage story, needing something old, something new and something borrowed. The "something old" was simply making the most of your team. Because the industry moves so fast, he said, "when we are presented with a new challenge, we quickly jump to solve it with the same processes, the same means and the same skill set" without pausing to consider alternatives or the talent already in the room. "Eight out of 10 times, artists on your team are not just artists," he said. They are people "motivated by growth, exploration and developing their skills". Link what motivates them to a business challenge and "there's massive success there". The practical route is rethinking your one-to-ones, treating them as an investment, actively listening for what motivates people, then doubling down "with transparency" and a concrete plan of expectations and milestones. His own example: a team member keen on coding and scripting in After Effects built a workflow that turns a single six-second intro clip into "216 videos, in all lengths, all formats, in around 20 minutes". The team has since iterated into a wider production pipeline "with minimum impact on our current workload". Something new: pick the right opportunities The "something new" was about filtering the flood of opportunities that appear daily, from a competitor's move to an article forwarded by the CEO. Chase them all and "you won't be able to conclude any of those", nor measure them. His three-step filter: identify the right opportunities, understand them fully rather than stopping on a headline and make sure you can actually activate them, since a flashy opportunity may need structural change you aren't ready for. Then put a plan in place to measure it, because the only way to learn is to judge each cycle a success or a failure. Even a failure "will help you a lot when it comes to learning". His case study was AI adoption. Two years ago the team's AI use was limited, partly by the legal requirements of a large company. But the real blocker "was not legal, it was their own artists" and their fear of being replaced. That fear, he realised, came "from the lack of understanding of how AI works". So he pushed a few early adopters to take on easy AI-based tasks. As their confidence grew and their work impressed the rest of the team, others followed, until the situation "totally reversed". Something borrowed: learn from your peers The final lesson, "something borrowed", was to tap the wealth of shared knowledge around you. The reason conferences repeat the same themes, he noted, is that "we are in the same boat and we face similar challenges". Build a network, "stay humble" and openly share your concerns so you can learn how others tackle the same problems. Inside a big company, that means sitting with different profiles - for example a data analyst facing the same challenge, and borrowing their tools. "Learn from your buddies and just stay open." All three, he said, revolve around the same idea: turning challenges into opportunities through transparent communication. For more creative and marketing insight, catch Pocket Gamer Connects Nordics in Helsinki on October 20th to 21st. Register now.