Simon Hill of Outerlight, the team behind The Ship, introduces himself as a new monthly columnist. Simon talks about how he got started in the industry as a games tester, asking: What role does quality assurance have in game development?

As part of a new series of columns by prominent indie and professional developers, James Silva talks about how he moved from being a dishwasher in an Italian resturant to being a game designer. Beware, the story contains ninjas, zombies and dishwashery!

Last week, I spent some time with AMD in Warsaw, Poland with the intention of finding out what's going on inside the newly-crowned platform company. The three elements that make up the Spider's web were the talk of the town, but I left somewhat disappointed.

After a string of publishers have recently announced major losses this year, Joe Martin examines how such a thing is possible when so many great games are coming out and what it might mean for the gaming outlook next year...

Have you ever posted in a forum for some help, frustrated by the nasty responses and "n00b" replies? Brett Thomas feels your pain as he discusses writing, the dissemination of knowledge, and some good ol' bone-crunching American football.

Windows Vista has been labelled a resource hog by many and some think this is completely justified because Vista doesn't change the way we interact with our computers. Brett Thomas thinks that it's unjustified and looks back to when PCs weren't as powerful as they are today.