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

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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Our idea of Azeroth could have looked very different, because Jeff Kaplan said he 'really wanted WoW to be first-person' in its early days: 'I argued a lot for that'

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News We narrowly dodged an FPMMORPG craze.

18 Comments
News
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Jeff Kaplan is sick of hearing you demonize games you weren't going to play anyway: 'Shut the f**k up. No one cares. We don't need to hear that you weren't into it'

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News In a 10-hour stream of his studio's upcoming game, Kaplan said he's "bored" with compulsive online outrage.

113 Comments
News
Arc Raiders: Key art for the game showing a character wearing makeshift armour and helmet, walking forward with a gun by their side. There are two more characters in the background overlayed by an orange and blue hue on the left and right respectively.
Amidst high profile live service failures, Arc Raiders production director says he hopes other studios are 'given the same chance we had, because it's so hard to put a game out'

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News Arc Raiders got to reinvent itself. Many other games can't.

News
A gamer in peaceful repose atop his Electric Gaming Bed 2.
Japanese furniture brand reveals the Electric Gaming Bed 2, the 'forbidden layout' built for the 'supremely decadent'

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News Wouldst thou like to recline deliciously?

43 Comments
News
Rob Pardo delivering the keynote address at GDC 2026.
Blizzard vet Rob Pardo closed this year's GDC keynote by urging executives to cool it with the layoffs: 'The game team is more valuable than the game itself'

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News Somebody does have to make the next one, after all.

49 Comments
News
A group of adventurers, including a stern human warrior, gather their forces to defend Azeroth in World of Warcraft: Midnight.
Playing World of Warcraft with a controller might become my preferred playstyle thanks to this excellent gamepad-friendly addon that's letting me enjoy Azeroth from my couch

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News Please, try to contain your contempt.

15 Comments
News
TF2 Heavy giving the Bret Rambo thumbs up
PC games revenue will outgrow consoles by 2028, analyst predicts

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News That's assuming the RAMpocalypse doesn't revise those estimates in the meantime.

11 Comments
News
Robert stares at a computer screen like a sicko
Dispatch doesn't let you derail conversations with blank, vacant stares because 'less than 1%' of players ever chose to stay silent in Telltale games

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News Unfortunately, weaponized awkwardness still takes up development resources.

7 Comments
News
Robert, the protagonist of AdHoc Studio's dispatch, stands in a crammed elevator full of superheroes.
Making Dispatch was motivated by 'a mix of arrogance and stupidity,' its creative directors say

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News Developing Dispatch meant ignoring investors and publishers who insisted it was doomed.

News
A low-poly Old School RuneScape man stares ahead, dejected.
RuneScape's monthly membership now costs as much as a World of Warcraft subscription as Jagex announces its second price hike in less than 2 years

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News Meanwhile, its annual membership is now a worse deal than ever.

13 Comments
News
Pickmon key art showing just a mess of imitative character designs.
Steam game listing achieves knockoff singularity by aping Pokémon, Zelda, and even Overwatch designs with a shamelessness Palworld could only dream of

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News I don't feel good.

20 Comments
News
A player character stands next to a Rathalos in Monster Hunter Stories 3.
Monster Hunter Stories 3 review: An excellent monster battler bogged down by a war story without stakes

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

Mirror mirror War is hell, theoretically.

Mirror mirror
Leon modded to be shirtless in Resident Evil Requiem.
Stop the clock: Resident Evil Requiem's first sexy Leon mod hit Nexus Mods just 4 days, 11 hours, and 23 minutes after launch

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News I'm glad we can all share this moment.

News
Key art for Ambrosia Sky, showing Dalia spraying her cleaner while resting on a planet's rings.
After planning 2 more paid acts, narrative scifi power-washer Ambrosia Sky is instead finishing its story in one free update to 'maximize' its focus on what players loved: 'People got in on that sapphic yearning right away'

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News So much for slow burn.

News
Fallout developer Tim Cain seated at computer wearing brown paper bag on head in the '90s
Fallout co-creator Tim Cain says less is often more in game design: 'As a very wise designer once said to me, a game that includes everything is about nothing'

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News As hard as it is to admit, an idea isn't necessarily worth implementing just because it sounds cool.

8 Comments
News
Aiming at a crab in Cicadamata.
If you love Marathon's vectorheart style but not its PvP, get your aesthetic fix from the gorgeously overstimulating demo for this time trial FPS instead

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News Tear flesh from bone.

News
Standing up to the plate to bowl
Steam Next Fest's top demos were packed with gnomeslop hijinks, open world piracy, and vampire card battling, but then—well—Marathon happened

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News Oh, and cowboy robot wizards. Can't forget those.

News
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive CS:GO Flip Knife Doppler Cosmetic Skin
The New York Attorney General's Office has flipped at least one Counter-Strike knife skin on the Steam Marketplace for purposes of state

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News The funds went to a good cause: Buying a Steam Deck. Also for state purposes.

News
A frowning goblin portrait from Stardew Valley.
An early version of Stardew Valley's mines featured an 'underground goblin village' before ConcernedApe scrapped it

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News Goblin mode denied.

News
The Hero King, a towering rekon warrior, in Project Windless.
He directed 4 Far Cry games, but Project Windless is offering its lead developer a chance he's been waiting for his whole career: 'I never had the opportunity to work on a medieval fantasy'

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News Creative director Patrik Méthé said adapting an acclaimed Korean novel series is "a great honor" and "a huge responsibility."

News
The Hero King, a massive avian warrior, cleaves through enemy soldiers in Project Windless.
Project Windless creative director says the developers chose a 9-foot warlike rooster goliath as their protagonist because literally 'every candidate' interviewed to work on the game wanted to play as one: 'All of them—and we were like, OK'

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News Hard to argue with that.

News
A robot cowboy emotes in Far Far West.
This co-op FPS Steam demo feels poised to do for spellslinging robot cowboys what Deep Rock Galactic did for space dwarves

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News Far Far West's frantic gunfights earn a hearty yeehaw from me.

News
The DJI Romo robot vacuum in its charging base.
Guy accidentally takes command of 7,000 robots in the homes of 7,000 strangers while trying to control his vacuum with a gamepad

By Lincoln Carpenter Published

News Oops.

10 Comments
News
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