So the amazing AlphaDeus made songs about the staff and various community members at Destructoid. I can't believe I can say I have a theme song now. How cool is that?! The song AlphaDeus made for me is called "Shark Dick Punch" and has a little heavy metal vibe going for it. You can check out the song over on YouTube.

AlphaDeus is working on even MORE songs. That's crazy! Dude is a music making machine. If you have a moment, do send him some love as he can use it right now due to some real life bullshits. You're awesome, Pasquale!

Yesterday I spent most of my day looking back at Destructoid's content that went up while I was away in Europe for a month. Partly to just see everything that happened and partly to keep better tabs on certain end of year projects.

One thing I want to do at the end of the year is recognize the best videogame trailers that were released. I feel like video editors are the unsung heroes in the gaming industry, both on the press side and developer side.

So far, I think Gearbox's recently released "Borderlands 2 Launch Date Trailer" is the best trailer of the year. I couldn't get into the first game and now after this trailer I can't stop thinking about Borderlands 2. It's also impressive that it got over 1 million views on YouTube within 24 hours. Send some love to Gearbox's MikeyFace for creating the trailer (and also for being one of the lead writers on the series!)

My second favorite trailer of the year thus far is the Sleeping Dogs live-action debut. Typically, live-action videos can never live up to what the game can be, right? That's not the case here. I played Sleeping Dogs a couple of weeks ago and the trailer immulates the game to perfection. Everything you see that happens in the trailer can happen in the game. Even the slow-motion bits happen in the game!

I really think that Sleeping Dogs is going to be one of the biggest surprises of this year.

Those are the only two that really stick up there for me so far in 2012. If I have to pick a third, it would be the latest Lollipop Chainsaw trailer that focuses on Juliet's boyfriend, the decapitated head.

What have been your favorite game trailers in 2012 so far?

SOPA and PIPA are really bad. Like really really really bad. Sites like Destructoid, Reddit, Twitter, YouTube, Wikipedia and so many community minded sites will be gone for good. EVERY entertainment site will feel the effect, dramatically changing how you use the Internet for the worse.

On Jan 18, members of the House Committe will be discussing PIPA/SOPA in Washington, D.C. On that same day, we are joining Reddit and many other sites/networks to go dark for 24 hours in protest over these bills.

What we need from you: Pictures! Take a picture of yourself showing us how sad/angry SOPA/PIPA makes you feel. Leave them in the comments so we can all feel the sadness.

OKAY! We're all drunk, it's great. Of course it's great. It's the Dtoid Community getting together at a convention for the sole purpose of getting drunk and maybe MAYBE playing some videogames.

Dtoider Sam Gobbldigook is the main photo guru of this weekend and took some lovely photos of all of us here the day before MAGFest officially starts! LOOK AT HOW HANDSOME WE ALL ARE!

Expect some more picture dumps as the weekend progresses!

I don't even know where to start, you guys. I meet so many people, did so many things that I just don't even know.

Thank you to Carol who put me up at her place Wednesday night, made cookies and then proceeded to play Portal 2 co-op with me in her apartment's giant theater complex until 3AM. Thanks to her for also being my assistant bitch the whole weekend.

Thanks to Spencer, Jesse Cortez, Andrew (PowerGlove) Burton, Katamaya and Andy Dixon for all the help and assists during the convention.

Thanks to Joy, Chanh and all the various other photographers who made sure to capture all the special moments.

Thanks to Jon, Reid and all the people at Fangamer for the Dtoid love and the general awesome.

Thank you to 2K's Jennie Sue, Elizabeth Toby and Digital Extreme's Sheldon Carter for joining us at the panel and keeping the horrible food eating competition going.

Thanks to the awesome Enforcers at the Unicorn Theater for putting up with us and sorry again about the carpet.

Thanks to Jake DiGennaro for all the TopWare/Two Worlds II prizes we gave out at the panel.

Thanks to Sega's David Bruno, Kellie Parker, Thu Nguyen for the Sega dance battle at our panel and for the killer Sega party Saturday night at Gameworks.

Thanks to the awesome Revision 3 team of Zac Minor, Graham Hancock, Jay T. Conrad, Jackie Talbott and the rest of the team for busting so much ass and putting out nearly 30 videos just from the weekend.

Thanks to Neal Pabon from THQ and J Goldberg from Volition for the exclusive Saints Row: The Third reveal where we showed off the giant tits/dicks feature at our panel.

Shout outs to Shaun Norton, Lizzie Cuevas, Andy Eddy, Square Lola, Andy Salsbury, Emminentt, Screw Attacks, Tina Amini, VampyBitMe, Twisted Pixel, Brian Provinciano, .tiff, Nelly, everyone that took the time to be Mr. Destructoid, all the awesome community members I got to see again and all the new ones I met. Every one of you is just awesome.

So yeah, lots of new faces right? I'm sure you've all noticed ... or haven't because you just go straight to the C Blogs (which is cool!) We've brought on a lot of new people for a variety of reasons, but most specifically to help us cover stuff we don't typically cover or focus on with the core team.

For example, anyone who reads us knows that are PC coverage is non-existent. That's something we aim to change as we prep something new that's coming soon. But for now know that we're basically building up the ground work to focus better on not only PC games (like MMO and social), but PC hardware too. Side note: This is going to bring the PC asshole elitist crowd with it too. NEAT!

A lot of these faces you actually know. Sean Daisy (CaptainBus!), Alastair Duncan (Ali D!) and as of tonight, Andy Butler (Grandpa Sandy, er Gandysampras!) These are just a few of the many new faces you're seeing now on a regular basis. I know you guys and gals like to get to know the editors so we've encouraged them all to say a little something on the blogs or forums. It's totally up to them if they want to or not, but either way welcome them!



There's actually multiple teams but I'm going to talk to you specifically about my teams that I run: Community, Events and International. You know what's awesome? I have a team in San Francisco now! This is a HUGE relief for me because it can get really crazy with event coverage just in SF. This week alone we've been invited to see 7 games. Okay, I'm sure you're thinking "Waahhhh first world problems waahhhhh" and that I'm complaining about playing videogames for a living. I'm honestly not trying to. Preview events are a real time consuming thing, especially when I have other responsibilities that take up a lot of time as it is (COMMUNITY!)

But that's really not an issue now as I have a really awesome team of people to send to these things. It PAINS ME to give up on the chance to see games before they're released, drink endless amounts of alcohol and give up all the free swag but I've taken one for the team in order to get you all better coverage. Actually I'm totally fine with this but that's not to say I won't take previews still when it's something I really want to see (first hands-on with Saints Row: The Third next week!!!)

This is just a first step. Next up I'm going to be tracking down people in New York and Los Angeles to do the same thing. I think we're pretty set with Seattle (Chris Morris and Hope) and Texas (Allistair, who's going to Quakecon this week for us!) That about covers it for the US as the major places where cool videogame things happen. So the step after that?



International! We've always had overseas team members but we're going a step further with it now. At the moment, I have a few folks in Australia, the UK and Greece starting to do more coverage. The goal? To start covering international news. Dtoid gets pretty dead from midnight to the 8AM so it seems like the perfect time to fill it up with the news from the other side of the world where people are just waking up for the most part.

The Internet is a worldwide affair so it only makes sense that we bring about more coverage for the international audience. Pretty soon I'm going to have someone focusing on South America (Brazil specifically), a Germany based guy (who doubles as a French guy!) and Japanese content as well. Really all that's left is that I'm looking for a couple of Canadian residence (One in Vancouver and one in Toronto) and my world domination plans will be more or less complete.

Having people in these key locations will also mean we can send them to events in their area. Australia specifically is growing with gaming events, such as the upcoming EB Expo which is sounding like Australia's answer to gamescom, PAX and E3 all rolled up into one.

So yeah, lots of new faces. It's pretty exciting times here at Dtoid. And speaking of exciting and PAX, I'll have news for you on that front pretty soon. Lots of planning going between me and the community team.