In life everyone has their pet peeves, and the same is true with videogames. Whether it's piles of junk everywhere or slow travel from place to place or stilted dialogue, game designers should keep an eye out for the things that bring their audiences to nails-on-the-chalkboard levels of irritation.

Sometimes our characters talk, and other times we make them talk. What happens when our choices mean as little in the first case as they do in the second? Can a game take away player agency and still be better for it? For character dialogue, that just might be true.

Nothing is a pure original, but if that is true, then what does it mean when videogame protagonists are so homogenized that they can be boiled down to a series of journal entries of no more than a paragraph?

Without action there can be no stealth. Or is it, without stealth there can be no action? Either way, sneaking, hiding, and gathering information in order to get the upper hand on NPCs or other players is a fascinating and thrilling experience when done right.

Restrictions may breed creativity, but what happens when the restrictions become the starting point? Game genres help marketers, publishers, and press decide how to discuss a given title, and help gamers make purchasing decisions. However, many of those definitions were created and maintained by very different creators than those working today.

Special guest Ryan Payton of Camouflaj joins Nate and Scott to discuss his studio's new game, Republique Episode 1: Exordium and the Kickstarter process that led to the game's publication.

Does gameplay, real gameplay, emerge? Or, does a designer have the final decision? Whether a guiding hand or a free-for-all, the discussion around the best way to design games continues toward better products for all. Nate and Scott weigh in on this as well as gaming related news from CES.

When all the gaming outlets are discussing Game of the Year, does it make more sense to consider Game Played this Year? Scott and Nate take a look back at not only the year in games, but the year in games that they played and enjoyed.

Avatars represent more than just our preferences in character design. Statistically, players choose characters that resemble themselves, and often characters that represent idealized versions of themselves. What goes into the avatar selection process? Nate and Scott discuss and vaguely disagree.

No matter the topic, occupation, or activity, rarely do people want to feel like outsiders. With the games industry expanding in content and subject matter, the old identifiers (namely "gamer") no longer seems accurate in great many cases. And yet, how can we create meaningful identities for ourselves without some kind of identifier?