Lincoln Carpenter

Lincoln Carpenter

News Writer

Lincoln has been writing about games for 12 years—unless you include the essays about procedural storytelling in Dwarf Fortress he convinced his college professors to accept. Leveraging the brainworms from a youth spent in World of Warcraft to write for sites like Waypoint, Polygon, and Fanbyte, Lincoln spent three years freelancing for PC Gamer before joining on as a full-time News Writer in 2024, bringing an expertise in Caves of Qud bird diplomacy, getting sons killed in Crusader Kings, and hitting dinosaurs with hammers in Monster Hunter.

Latest articles by Lincoln Carpenter

The character customization menu added by Khione96's Character Creator mod for Crimson Desert.
Crimson Desert female character creator mod lets you cook up your own gender-swapped Kliff, and there's a male version in the works

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News Be the Kliff you want to see in the world.

News
Marathon Protect/Destroy 4: A close-up of MIDA's Gantry liaison.
As frustration with Marathon cheaters intensifies, Bungie says improvements to its 'zero-tolerance policy around cheating' are underway: 'This is an area that we will continue to invest in'

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News It's also investigating how to better manage player toxicity and stream sniping.

27 Comments
News
Damiane in Crimson Desert.
Devious Crimson Desert players are sending NPCs tumbling to their deaths by weaponizing their insatiable apple cravings

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News It's a sandbox, they said. Let people have their own fun, they said.

News
A Gundam Battle Operation 2 illustration of the Crossbone Gundam paired with a screenshot of Kliff from Crimson Desert.
Your joys will always be someone else's junk

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

SUIT YOURSELF People don't like a game I've been playing, and that's okay.

35 Comments
SUIT YOURSELF
echo point nova game
Our favorite open world FPS indie gem is getting New Game+, Spider-Man swinging, and wallrunning later this month

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News Another excuse to play more Echo Point Nova? How could I refuse?

News
Slay the Spire 2's new mystery character
Mega Crit co-founder says he wasn't bothered by the Steam backlash to Slay the Spire 2's beta balance patch: 'It's difficult for players to feel like they're heard'

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News Casey Yano says that, ultimately, reviewers are just using the tools they're given.

News
Marathon Survival Directive - Runner
Marathon game director says Bungie's rebalancing 'god-like' knife damage, buffing Vandal and Recon shells, and knocking bubble shields down a peg

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News Maybe Recon's tracker drone will start terrorizing someone else for once.

News
Pikachu crying in Pokemon: The First Movie
US Patent Office revokes Nintendo's controversial Pokémon battling patent in nonfinal decision

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News Nintendo has plenty of space to respond, however.

7 Comments
News
Xal'atath sneers at the viewer in World of Warcraft: Midnight.
WoW's latest raid cinematic could be the start of a massive story retcon for its worst expansion

By Harvey Randall Published

News Death is not the end.

News
marathon thief
Bungie nerfs Marathon's slide cancel movement tech, says no movement freaks allowed: 'Unbounded movement, while expressive and clip-worthy, is ultimately unhealthy for the pace of play'

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News Please just kill me like a normal person.

News
Arc Raiders: An upper-body shot of a character wearing warm clothes as they fiddle with something out of shot in a snowy environment.
Arc Raiders' latest update brings its best improvement yet: Making late spawns less awful

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News If you head out with your own loadout, you'll be less likely to find yourself in a half-finished match.

7 Comments
News
Astromech droid, mass murderer, and historic keystone R2-D2.
Star Wars Zero Company's lead mission designer is eagerly waiting to watch all your all-astromech challenge runs: 'Granted, it might not be a very easy thing to do'

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News D-Squad rides again.

News
A clone trooper firing a blaster in Star Wars Zero Company.
Star Wars Zero Company devs said 'there were some fights' about its story-centric squadmates suffering permadeath, but accepting that 'Star Wars is about loss' made the game stronger

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News Hopefully nobody's processing that loss while the Tuskens are around. We know how that goes.

News
Star Citizen Squadron 42 Mark Hamill
Squadron 42: Everything we know about Star Citizen’s singleplayer campaign

By Lauren Morton Last updated

Star-studded Get up to lightspeed on Squadron 42's cast members and story details.

12 Comments
Star-studded
A Slay the Spire 2 character dual wielding daggers and preparing to fight
Analysts say Slay the Spire 2 is the best-performing deckbuilder of all time—and the competition isn't close

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News Slay the Spire 2 has been averaging over a million users per day since launch.

News
WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 20: Meta and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg attends the Inauguration of Donald J. Trump in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol on January 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. Donald Trump takes office for his second term as the 47th president of the United States. (Photo by Ricky Carioti - Pool/Getty Images)
Mark Zuckerberg is building an AI co-CEO as part of his continuing mission to free himself from the burden of human interaction

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News Just me, myself, and my elaborate playground of AI agents.

8 Comments
News
Kliff leaning against a tree.
Crimson Desert players demand bear domestication

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News Countless bear cavalry dreams, dashed.

News
Leon Kennedy aims a pistol in RE Requiem
Capcom says it 'will not implement assets generated by AI into our game content,' but still plans to use AI to 'enhance efficiency and boost productivity' in game development

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News Capcom told its investors that its players won't be presented with any AI-generated assets, but it's unclear where it draws the line.

8 Comments
News
Slay the Spire 2 art
Slay the Spire 2 players leave over 9,000 negative Steam reviews in one day over a card nerf that hasn't even gone live yet—but China's Steam restrictions might bear some of the blame

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News There are some nuances to this absurdity.

22 Comments
News
Crimson Desert Twitch Drops: A close-up of Kliff bracing while holding his sword over his shield, ready to thrust.
Pearl Abyss announces Crimson Desert has sold more than 2 million copies in less than 24 hours, promises to 'work to make improvements quickly'

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

Mixed Steam reviews, but not mixed sales results.

7 Comments
Action
A True Kin knight stands in a ruin in Caves of Qud, flanked by bloodstained furniture and a freshly mortalized corpse.
'We're playing game designs from 2005 still': Caves of Qud's co-creator wants to build new kinds of sicko gameplay systems that'll use all the processing potential being left untapped

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News My body is ready, but my CPU might not be.

News
Thomas looking bemused in Thomas & Friends: Wonders of Sodor.
You're laughing—Thomas the Tank Engine is being brutalized by Unreal Engine physics, and you're laughing

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News Shield your eyes, Ringo.

News
Freya Holmér's rotating falling-block prototype.
After this game dev shared her prototype online, it took less than 5 hours for someone to post their vibecoded knockoff

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News "It kinda disincentivizes me from sharing progress when there are slop ghouls around every corner."

25 Comments
News
Marathon Introducing Traxus: Art of Traxus' liason sat in a chair with a lion next to them.
The co-creators of Caves of Qud, our favorite roguelike fever dream, worked as narrative consultants on Marathon—which mostly meant they 'got to sit there in the room and throw completely absurd ideas at the wall'

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News I knew something about that Tick Milk felt familiar.

News
Nvidia's Jensen Huang showing off DLSS 5 at GTC 2026.
Nvidia DLSS 5 reveal: PC Gamer reacts... not wholly positively

By PC Gamer Team Published

So... DLSS 5 This has been one of the most controversial reveals of an Nvidia technology I can remember, and people have a lot of thoughts.

13 Comments
So... DLSS 5
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