WTF is Destructoid? Yes, we’ve become known in the videogame industry as uncle that tells dirty jokes to little kids, but there's so much more to us.  

Sure, we write about games, have a character that appears in videogames, host get-togethers in real life, and possibly encourage heavy drinking amongst legal adults  ... but there's all these other things to Destructoid that needed to be documented for people who thing we're "just a gaming news site."  Hell, these days its a small universe, this site.

My name is Hamza Aziz, the Community Director for Destructoid regional meet-up groups worldwide. Have a minute? Open your mind to my karate.

WTF IS DESTRUCTOID?  

The short answer is probably "that gaming news site with the robot mascot and crazy community." That works.

Some say we became popular because of our mascot, that we'd argue that part is not *entirely* true. Though our mascot is known to pull some crazy stunts (the president of the ESA literally ran from him once) our articles were making the front pages of many sites months before the first helmet was ever made. The other common misconception is that we're a site entire run by a community, when we have a full-time staff. It's probably confusing because you rarely see such a tight-knit group of people that actually love working together and hanging out on their own time. We hire genuine, smart, awesome people and encourage diversity in cultures and opinions.

So what exactly do we do here?

Cover videogames like no one else. Our staff represents some of the most vocal and obsessed gaming critics across America, Japan, the United Kingdom, Europe and Australia. We are there in-person at the Tokyo Game Show, Penny Arcade Expo, and E3, and many other press-only events. We are judges at E3. We're not (all) fat guys covered in cheetos, but we all (mostly) love cheetos and the fat guys that love them. Our staff is arguably the best looking bunch in the gaming industry. Who wants to challenge the Destructoid team to a walk-off? While I'm at it, our community is sexy, too! Just don't look at the "take a photo when you woke up" forum thread. Scary stuff in there.

All jokes aside, it’s our passion to tell you about the latest and greatest in the world of gaming every day. News, reviews, previews, original videos, trailers, live shows, editorials, meet-ups, contests, mods, hacks -- you name it. If it's hot, we’ll be talking about it. It's not uncommon to see a Destructoid quote on a great game's box at a retail shelf.  No seriously, go pick up your copy of Wet and Forza 4 and look at the box. Or pay close attention to that bus driving around with the Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood billboard. You'll find Destructoid wherever videogames are.

PLAY MR. DESTRUCTOID IN A VIDEOGAME

Our mascot/name/likeness has also been featured in a number of games which include: Bomberman Live (XBLA), Bomberman Ultra (PSN), PixelJAM's Dino Run (Web), Eternity's Child (PC), Agent MOO: Maximum Overdeath (XBLI), Raskulls (XBLA), Super Meat Boy (XBLA), BiteJacker (iOS), The Blocks Cometh (iPhone), Ms. Splosion Man (XBLA), Arcade Jumper (iOS) Ms. Splosion Man Pinball, Retro City Rampage (XBLA, WiiWare) and BurgerTime World Tour (XBLA, PSN, WiiWare)

How cool is that?

Back in 2006, Destructoid was a one-man Wordpress blog written by Yanier “Niero” Gonzalez, who later invited friends he met on forums to also contribute to the home page. Our coming of age story is awesome, go read it.

SERIOUS READERSHIP

Your mom secretly reads us: Destructoid’s Network reaches over 3 million people and we publish thousands of stories every month -- that's over 50 stories EVERY. SINGLE. FRICKIN. DAY.  

What, you also want a celebrity endorsement? How about one from a celebrity videogame character? Here's both:

The best part: everything we do, every last bit of it, is completely free to our readers. All of it. Yep. 

We're apparently not that terrible at this: Destructoid has won three Webby Award Honorees/Nominations, 30 million video streams, and served over 350 million web pages. Take that, McDonald's! 

You can learn more about our readership on our company site, ModernMethod.com. We are still owned by our founding bloggers. Yep. This makes us one of, if not the, largest independently-run videogame news source and community on the planet.

THE HOME PAGE

Destructoid.com is updated every twenty minutes with well-rounded videogame coverage from our in-house editorial and video teams. While we occasionally feature reader stories, our trained team does the heavy lifting. Our most popular stories are about new or unreleased games, including first-person shooters, MMOs, role-playing games, mobile games, indie games, and so much more. There’s something for everyone every day.

News travels fast off the home page, but you can always subscribe to our RSS feed to never miss a thing. Don’t care about a certain console? Want to only follow a specific game series? You can! All of our tags have individual RSS feeds, so you can follow along without having to see everything, if that’s what floats your boat.

Just click a tag that’s always located underneath every header image, look for the RSS icon and you’re subscribed. Here are our console RSS links to save you a step:

Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Apple/iPhone/iPad, PC, Wii/WiiU, DS/DSi, 3DS and VITA/PSP.

Our home page can be customized to suit the way you prefer to read articles. If you want to read every single detail, try the blog view. To quickly skim 50 headlines at a time, try the summary view. Lastly, our default view is “mixed,” which expands the popular articles while providing summaries for less popular or niche articles. You can switch between these at any time: look for the gear icon at the top right of the page.

Comments and Chat

You can comment on any story on Destructoid. Comments are moderated with a light hand -- we will not ban you to eternity for calling us out if we make typos, are incorrect on something, or have an unpopular opinion. Part of the reason we started Destructoid is because we HATED how other communities were run. That said, if you push the limits of common sense (i.e.: racism) we will destroy you and mail a bag of feces to your house.  

There's also a chat bar located on the lower right of the screen. You can pop up your own chat window with friends or turn it off completely. We think it's awesome.

Read Destructoid on the go:

We are one of the shortest gaming URLs you can type with your giant thumbs: just point your phone browser to Dtoid.com and you’ll automatically be pointed to Dtoid Mobile: Toilet Edition, optimized for all you smartphone users.

[Remember E for All?  Probably not.  It just goes to show -- we're even at the weird/bad events. Journalism!]

EVENT COVERAGE

Destructoid is EVERYWHERE! We go to all of the videogame expos -- big and small -- to bring you non-stop coverage, live from the show floors.

• January: Consumer Electronics Show (CES, Las Vegas) and the Adult Entertainment Expo (AEE, Las Vegas)
• March: Game Developers Conference (GDC, San Francisco), Penny Arcade Expo East (PAX East, Boston) and Destructoid’s anniversary
• April: WonderCon (San Francisco)
• June: Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3, Los Angeles)
• July: San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC, San Diego)
• August: Gamescom (Cologne, Germany)
• September: Penny Arcade Expo Prime (PAX Prime, Seattle), Tokyo Game Show (Japan)
• October: New York Comic-Con (NYCC, New York), EBGames Expo (Australia)

Destructoid also attends smaller, private showings by the developers and publishers of the games you love. Whether we visit Nintendo’s or Electronic Arts’ offices in Redwood City, California, or go on trips to New York City for THQ, we strive to bring you our unfiltered opinions on the games we see, no matter how much alcohol we can consume at the open bars.

REVIEWS PROCESS AND DESTRUCTOID GAMING AWARDS

Destructoid uses the FULL ten-point scale when we review games. This has generated controversy and debate, in and out of the videogame industry, but we are confident that our reviews are the most honest videogame assessments in the business. We stand by the belief that reviews are not objective fact sheets, but personal, subjective opinions. Read all about our ten point scale and reviews process here.

Destructoid also holds its Game of the Year awards at the end of the year, where we pick the one SINGLE game that was the best above all of the rest. Past winners include Super Mario Galaxy 2, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and Left 4 Dead. We also award games based on graphics, storytelling, best DLC, score, competitive experiences, reader’s choice and more.

ORIGINALS

We not only bring you the news, but we also make it. Look at our original editorials.  There are so many! Commentary aside, there's also some fun oddities in there like The Destructoid Christmas albums or when our mascot was featured in games! Plus we get to do some pretty rad interviews.

THERE ARE SO MANY VIDEOS ON DESTRUCTOID

Speaking of originals check out our expansive video section, organized by game platform and by our shows.  

The Destructoid Show

Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, hosts Tara Long and Max Scoville bring you the best gaming news of the week mixed in with a heaping helping of hilarity on the Destructoid Show. It’s free -- subscribe to the show on YouTube or iTunes. You can also watch it on Revision3.com, on various cable channels, on your PS3, and even when flying on Virgin Airlines. Crazy, eh?

Live Shows: BACKLOG and SUP HOLMES?

Mash Tactics is a community variety show featuring a new game every weekday at 4pm PST. Sup Holmes is our talk show starring Jonathan Holmes as he talks to game designers with all sorts of background about videogames.  Both are streamed on Destructoid.TV. Watch our home page for special events and time changes.

Audio podcasts

• Podtoid Season 4: Podtoid is back. Starring Jim Sterling, Jonathan Holmes and Hamza Aziz. New episodes every Tuesdays. You can subscribe to us on iTunes and RSS, buy our Android App
• BritToid: Once a month, Destructoid Europe's PR face, Becca Roberts, rounds up community members of the European division of Destructoid to talk all things gaming in the United Kingdom.

The community also has various podcast series, all of which are detailed here.

OUR COMMUNITY: BLOGS, FORUMS, IRC, DTOID.TV, STEAM, ETC ETC

The lack of any filters and our total transparency with our readership have become the mission of our company. We wouldn’t be here if it weren't for our readers, so our Rule #1 is obvious: Community first. The staff at Destructoid is just like you. We probably even smell the same. Destructoid is, above all, about giving our experience back to our readers.  We also encourage factions within our community to keep it small and intimate no matter how large we grow, which I’ll explain in great detail below.  

GETTING STARTED AND THEN ADDICTED

The first step: create your account! Duh.

Either sign up with an email address or use Facebook Connect to become a Dtoider. Once that less-than-ten-second process is complete, you’ll be able to upload pictures, share videos and send private messages to others.  

We strongly encourage to customize your profile. Don’t just be a faceless newb! Upload an avatar, customize your profile and tell us a little about yourself. You can be as anonymous as you’re comfortable with.

By signing up, you can write comments, create your own personal blog and submit stories for home page consideration, participate in forums, or join us in person at one of many regional events in major cities around the world. After you become addicted, you’ll find out there’s a whole other world of sub-groups and, by then, your friendship circle will magically grow. Despite the site’s success, our proudest achievement is just how many people we’ve brought together. FEELS GOOD MAN.  

Once you’re set up, you’ll be able to post comments on any blogs. We are pretty open when it comes to what you can say on Destructoid, and we want you to stir up discussion as much as possible. We just ask you to not be a complete racist, bigot, sexist douchebag. Don’t take yourself too seriously, either. Basically: DON’T SUCK.

(Art by deiga-the-semivalant. The flag means SHUT THE FUCK UP AND JUST PLAY GAMES. See Urban Dictionary)

Destructoid City Meet-up Groups + No Apparent Reason Parties

NARPs are a well-known thing around Destructoid. It’s basically whenever the community gathers in real life to have a good time. NARPs happen quite frequently and in a number of places like New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, the UK, Australia and more. All of the city-based groups are detailed here; you can easily join up to have some fun with other Destructoid community members. Don’t see your city listed? Then make one happen!

COMMUNITY BLOGGING ON DESTRUCTOID

Unlike our home page, our community blogs and forums are completely run voluntarily by people all over the world just like you. Here, you can write on any subject of your desire, and anyone can view and comment on your writing, too. Our crack team of C-Blog Recappers (all community members) will highlight their favorite blogs in their nightly recaps too.

Not only does the community read your blogs, but the staff does, too. We actively hunt for well-written blogs and promote them to the front page of Destructoid. A majority of our staff was brought on the team because of their work on the Community Blogs, in fact! The easiest way to be front-paged on Destructoid is by contributing to our Bloggers Wanted Assignment. Every two weeks, we think of a certain subject in the world of videogames that you can comment on in an editorial. Some of the most popular blogs may be promoted to the front page of Destructoid. We’re not just looking for well-thought-out pieces, though! Awesome videos, fan art and anything we or the community deem worthy can and will be front-paged. We want to represent everyone’s voice fairly.

Etiquette and blogging advice

A blog is a short, editorialized essay, whereas a forum is the start, middle, or end of a conversation. We offer both. Not knowing the difference is the fastest way to fail at life online, and at Destructoid in general.

Once you’ve set a blog live, it will appear on the main community blogs page. UNLIKE A PERSONAL STANDALONE BLOG, THIS IS A SHARED SPACE WHERE WE SHOWCASE YOUR WORK. The community frowns upon any type of spamming, so space out the amount of blogs you do since you’ll push down other blogs. Go for quality instead of quantity -- that makes *all* the difference. Blogs are voted up by readers and staff, so make a good impression!

DESTRUCTOID FORUMS: AN EXPERIENCE IN AND OF ITSELF

The forums are our other exotic island paradise, and even the toughest cynics flee there to have a good time and get away from smelly bloggers, IRC goons, and Google Group users. We understand the importance of subcommunities, so united and divided we stand -- whatever you’re into, dude.

A forum account is a separate account (for now, we’ll unify this someday) from the main page, so you’ll have to register again. It’s worth it, though. To quote Mxy, our head forum czar and deputy sheriff:

Yes, Destructoid has Forums! Have something to say, but it’s better suited to an on-going discussion rather than a front page comment or a cblog? In the Forums you can talk with Dtoiders about games, the site, or practically any other topic out there.

Forum sights to see 

 Want to get together with other community members and play some games or organize a tournament? Check out the Friday Night Fights + Meetup & Play forum. If you’re one of those oddballs who actually enjoy socializing in person, the Dtoid Regional Groups and NARP planning threads in the Community Meet-ups section is for you. If you want to make sure your old games go to a good home while scoring some new titles for yourself, then visit the Trade Yo Games forum. If you’d like to get together and geek out with fans of Destructoid’s various Shows & Podcasts or share your own projects with the community, we’ve got you covered!

The Forums community is a bit more closely-knit than you’ll find at most other gaming sites. We’re very proud and protective of our little corner of Destructoid, but as long as you remember Rule #1 (Don’t suck!), you’ll do just fine. Stop on by, introduce yourself, and let us get to know you!

IRC

As Professor Pew states, The Unofficial Destructoid IRC channel is where you can talk in real time with a group of Dtoiders. A lot of people in there have been regulars for years now, and chatting can go pretty fast (or really slow) at times, so don’t feel offended if you don’t get a direct reply immediately. Like the forums, it is a place to hang out and have fun, and no topic is really off limits as long as doesn’t become tiring.

IRC has a largely UK and Euro crowd active during the European daytime, while most Americans tend to hop in whenever they wake up properly. Especially during live streams of events like E3 or the VGAs, you can always jump into IRC to go "oohhh I want that" or point and laugh at something being ridiculous. Or just hop in if you’re bored!

There are a lot of ways to connect to the room, but this guide might help you along.

Friday Night Fights and The Destructoid Steam Group

Each week, a bunch of Destructoid readers and usually an editor or two get together to play some videogames online. Basically, this is what Friday Night Fights are all about.

The planning for FNF takes place in the forums, where community members volunteer to host by posting their information (gamertag, time to meet up, game, etc.) in the forum post corresponding to the system they're interested in playing on.

Then, every Friday, reminder posts for those who don't read the forums regularly go up in the community blogs

LIVE VIDEO SHOW THINGS

Mash Tactics Live

Every weekdays at 4PM PST and weekends at 4PM, hosts Carnage and Pico plus other Destructoid staff bring you hours of entertainment as we live-stream on http://Justin.TV/Destructoid. The show IS live, so anything goes: it’s all completely unpredictable. We’ve played games half-naked, we’ve played new releases weeks before their official release and there’s just no telling what could happen in a given day.

Backlog Live

A live broadcast series featuring Associate Editor Conrad Zimmerman, in which Conrad plays games he has deemed to have been sitting on his shelves for too long. Games played are voted on by the Destructoid community from a range of titles and Conrad progresses through them, one hour a night, while interacting with the chat audience. You vote what Conrad plays next! Backlog airs weeknights at 9pm Pacific on Destructoid's Justin.tv channel.

(Image by Dtoid's comics editor Mikey Turvey.  THIS IS ACTUALLY TATTOOED ON A DUDE, PEOPLE)

SOCIAL THANGS

Twitter

Hey, we’re on Twitter! You can subscribe to two flavors of Destructoid - the full feed @Destructoid (which tweets every frigging story) or smaller semi-hourly updates instead by follow @Dtoid on Twitter for an alternative feed to our daily news. Plus, sometimes I give away free codes/drunk Tweet on accident because I clicked the wrong thing on TweetDeck because I was drunk.

Facebook

Go Like us! Our Facebook group is a more streamlined feed of only our original videos and top stories, and you’ll get our best stories in our friend feed. Plus you can stalk our Associate Editors and look at their ugly mugs.

Flickr

Occasionally, we’ll throw a ridiculous party and all the photos end up here in high resolution.

Wallpapers and icons

Community member bushofghosts made a set of animated Destructoid heads perfect for any comment or forum usage. Download the pack here.

Need a new desktop background too? We got you covered with dozens of wallpapers that feature Mr. Destructoid right here.

Contests

We give away a lot of stuff. In fact, we gave over $30,000 in prizes in 2010. We love giving back as much as we can and we do some kind of giveaway each week. Keep up to date with the contest page to see what you can easily nab.

Shirts!

Consumer whorism! Yes, we sell shirts and we have over a dozen designs. Some of them were created by other community members, in fact! Not only do we sell shirts, but we have beanies and stickers for sale too. REPRESENT!

Charity

Destructoid is all about giving back and we've held a number of charity events to raise money for good causes. Most recently, we've raised over $6,000 for the 24-hour gaming marathon Extra Life and over $7,000 for the Charity Water organization to build a clean water well in Africa.

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CONTACTS

Have a news tip, want us to cover something? Send your links to tips[@]destructoid.com
Need to talk to the Editor-in-Chief? Contact dale[@]destructoid.com
Want to send us a game/product to review? Contact jim[@]destructoid.com
Advertising inquiries? Contact paul[@]gorillanation.com
Want to set up a contest or won something in a contest already? Contact hamza[@]destructoid.com
Tech issues/abuse? Contact support[@]destructoid.com
For everything else, contact our CEO/founder/robot/jefe  niero[@]destructoid.com

Destructoid’s mailing address is located at:

548 Market Street #59757
San Francisco, CA 94104

Send us cookies, so long as they don’t contain raisins. Raisin cookies are fucking GROSS.

And that’s Destructoid in an extremely over-sized nutshell.We hope you enjoy your stay and become active enough to the point that memes are born about you (it happens!) Now go have some fun. 

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