I believe you meant "trademark".

To determine if things are working as designed, we use people whose entire job revolves around ensuring that things are, in fact, working as designed. Quality Assurance (QA) runs thorough testing plans to make sure everything is ostensibly working as it is supposed to. Of course, just because something is working as…

Ideally, each type of character build has its own strengths and weaknesses throughout the game's content, but ultimately ALL character builds should feel viable in different ways. No player wants to spend 40 hours working toward a dead-end build. Similarly, few players want to accidentally discover that their…

I'm kinda put off that the gameplay is basically Dark Souls' combat with minor tweaks (now don't get me wrong - I adore Dark Souls). I was hoping for something... fresh.

Daniel "Abysswolf" Oliver's pixel art reminds me of the Metal Slug games, especially Barret's look in the Final Fantasy VII piece above. But he's mostly into JRPGs and recently, he remade the cast of a couple of classic games as detailed, colorful 2D sprites.

It's usually worth it to pay attention to what Michel Ancel has been up to.

The lead designer of the original Starcraft and the original Guild Wars? A MOBA with giant fighting bases? ***drools***

You may want to check out Northlanders, by Brian Wood.

I recently asked the diversity question to the creators of Splatoon, a new all-ages multiplayer game from Nintendo involving characters who shoot globs of paint. They had it pretty easy, since their game lets you play as boy characters or girl characters. "Obviously, since this is meant to be the stand-in for you, we…

But lately I've heard a call for game reporters to just stop asking about diversity, to stop nagging about social issues. I've seen a call for game creators to stop answering, to just shut up, to stop doing more harm with every word they say.

I see all these questions about diversity in gaming these days, about women in Assassin's Creed or gay marriage in a Nintendo game. Hell, I hear myself asking these questions sometimes and see the game developers and executives to whom I'm talking stiffen up or cast their eyes at the floor. They sense a trick or a…

"How long is your game?" That used to be the tough one. That used to be the question a video game creator could hardly give an answer to without birthing a scandal.

Okay but lets maybe not use Viper, who makes the most annoying sound on earth every time he attacks. Actually maybe his voice is just the worst:

So it's troubling to think that a game like Mass Effect or Dragon Age gives young players the idea that nobody will ever treat them differently once they find out they're anything other than straight, rather than give them the tools with which they can start to understand and accept the discrimination they may end up…

I was free to get up and walk out of the bar in real life, too. But just meeting the man in the first place was dangerous in a way I didn't fully appreciate until I began to learn from him and his friends what gay life was for them. I was studying abroad in Jordan, which at the time had a relatively relaxed attitude…

It actually sounds new, fresh, and fun. I'm glad to see them take the shooter genre and try to do something different with it. Unfortunately for me, it's not enough to get me to buy a Wii U though.

If we're gonna bring up Bully: the realization that you can make out with other guys.

Soul Blazer is the first game in what is affectionately referred to as the "Quintet trilogy," named after the long-defunct Japanese studio known for making some pretty great action-role-playing games. The next two games in the series, Illusion of Gaia and Terranigma, are far more interesting. Soul Blazer is the worst…

I started playing Persona 4 recently. It's my first MegaTen game, but I have to say that I was pleasantly suprised that characters swore in it. Swearing is usually reserved for those games who are trying to be "MATURE!". While P4 as an M rating, the swearing in it just feels like it's there because that's the way many…

While Bandai isn't releasing too many details about the new character, they do say he might "rewrit[e] DRAGON BALL history as we know it." Hence why you can see him during classic Dragon Ball moments he was never originally in, like the one above. I think it's kind of neat, though I'm curious as to how this character…