Continuing after his recent piracy survey, Cliff Harris wants to ask you a question about how happy games make you and whether choice is always a good thing. Cliff outlines a new pricing model for games based on how happy they make players.

Are all games that phone-home to a publishers server inherently bad? Isn't it possible that in some case copy-protection can be a good thing that can help game design? Cliff Harris ponders how the software that traps us could also be used to free us.

Cliff Harris sees a bleak future for the games community. An insular group that purges n00bs, defends violent media and pirates games regularly - the end could be at hand! Thankfully, Cliff has a whole list full of ways to make gaming good again...

It's a dark and haunting day at the bit-tech offices and James Silva is taking to the columns page once more to tell us some ghost stories. How is it that games create a feeling of fear in players and how do horror games generate such a feeling of unease? Jim explains.

Cliff Harris, ex-Lionhead AI coder turned indie developer, talks us through why he thinks sequels are actually a good thing. Is it possible that EA's endless sequels are a good thing? Cliff thinks so, pointing to his experience at Lionhead as an example...

James Silva talks about how repetition in game design is actually a very good thing and, looking closely at games like Halo 3, Marathon, BioShock and Ninja Gaiden, asks whether repetitive gameplay is responsible for ruining otherwise excellent titles?

Rob Yescombe, games writer for Free Radical Design and the mind behind the upcoming Haze, takes the microphone in a new guest column. He asks, just why is it that there are no good TV shows about games and whether this could change any time soon?

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?