[Editor's note: Community member Coonskin05 contributed a piece to our Weekly Musing subject on how to make gaming communities suck less. Please post your own over on the Community blogs. It may get read during our panel at PAX this Friday! -- CTZ] 

The term "gaming community" is a very loose term. In the most basic sense, it means the members of a videogame Web site.

To me, this is a very cheap use of the word. By this standard, every gaming Web site has a community. But how those "communities" interact is often not very community-like. At other Web site, these communities comment on their Web site's articles, and it pretty much ends there. The members are only known by their handles, and usually don't know each other unless a certain member comments on everything and is constantly involved in discussion. view full story + comments

[It's time for another Monthly Musing -- the monthly community blog theme that provides readers with a chance to get their articles and discussions printed on the frontpage. -- CTZ]  

Always being one late to the party, I recently started a playthrough of Call of Duty: World at War. To be completely honest, I don't like it very much. Though Treyarch certainly does better than their last attempt, I just can't go back to the slower pacing of a World War 2 game after the bliss that is Modern Warfare. That being said, I recently experienced one of the toughest, most morally ambiguous decisions I've ever faced in a video game while playing it.

The level is Eviction. You are playing as Russian Private Dimitri Petrenko, and the first 30 seconds set the stage for the rest of the level. You enter a room where the rest of your squad has captured a German soldier who is begging for his life. After a moment of bickering between two of the Russian soldiers over whether the German could be more useful dead or alive, one simply raises his rifle and shoots the German POW in the head. After seeing this, one of your squad mates disgustedly mutters, "This isn't war, this is murder."  view full story + comments

Ask anyone what comes from Texas and you'll get one of two answers: steers or queers. Yeah, thanks for that, Mr. Kubrick, you a**hole. The common conception that only backwards rednecks and drunkards reside in the Lone Star State is incorrect, if not understandably conceived.

Not only have we recently evolved from riding horses everywhere to driving cars, we actually have a good number of videogame developers in the area, such as id Software, 3D Realms, and Gearbox Software. So when Editor-in-Chief Nick Chester asked me to represent Destructoid at Gearbox Software's "Victory Party" Friday night, I felt it was my duty to represent the southern population of the industry.

The "Victory Party" was held in Dallas, Texas to celebrate the release of Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC) and Samba de Amigo (Wii), both of which come out on September 23. I was told I could bring one guest along, so before the party I picked up fellow Dallas community member blehman, and we headed over to the Palladium Ballroom where the event was taking place.

Details after the jump. view full story + comments

[Editor's note: coonskin05 takes a look at the Final Fantasy series and tells us how he would change it as part of May's Monthly Musing topic. -- CTZ] 

"Final Fantasy, have a seat. Your mother and me are worried about the kind of game you're becoming. We know you've been ... experimenting recently with different gameplay mechanics, and while some of them have made you a better game, others are isolating you from your fans. Is that really what you want to do to yourself?"

That is what I would say to Final Fantasy if I were its father. Final Fantasy is loved by millions, but recently the changes in the series have raised many an eyebrow. I know, however, for a game to stay relevant it has to do some things differently. So I would like to recommend Squeenix to implement the following changes to the series if they want FFXIII to be the best possible game it can be. Hit the jump to read on.

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