Ben offers some advice that I can agree with: vote with your dollar, and don’t be a hypocrite. I also agree that piracy is not a valid way to protest. But it’s not enough for gamers alone to take a more effective stance against game makers, and joining an advocacy group won’t solve anything. To really spur change, the press needs to come around as well, as Ben has attempted to here.

I rather liked that Torchlight didn’t have skill trees. It made me a lot less stressed out about picking skills during the early levels.

Were it not for this news, I would have bought Resident Evil 5 during Impulse’s Thanksgiving sale. I’m thankful for Shacknews for saving me money.

Adding Tropico 3 only a month after its release is a quick turnaround for GameTap. More publishers should follow Kalypso’s lead.

It’s good that not everyone at Pandemic lost their job last week, and that their projects will continue at EALA. It’s also good to see that some of those who did lose their jobs have been able to find closure.

Good luck, guys. I mean it; I grew up using third-party memory cards in my consoles. They’re cheaper, they work just as well, and they come in wacky colors and capacities.

So cool:

This is big news that you’ve probably already heard, but MaxPC gets the link because they’re the one site that I’ve seen properly acknowledge that the next Fallout game will be made, by and large, by the same folks who made the original Fallout game. This is kind of a big deal.

Ah, well. At least it sounds like Dragon Age development is finished except for PC polish and the console port-job. Regardless, Dan Tudge still has the coolest name in the industry.

Though I would have made a couple different component choices, this article did well to illustrate that you can get a solid gaming PC for not a lot of scratch.

Part one of a five-part walk down memory lane that BigDownload ran (walked?) throughout the week. It’s quite a comprehensive look back, they didn’t leave much out. Here’s part two, part three, part four, and part five.