ATI finally brings usable multi-monitor technology to the mainstream gamer, but is it any good? Ian Jackson shares his thoughts in his special report…

Total PC Gaming Columnist Kelly Wand makes a compelling argument for developers rewarding online gamers for playing their games- with real money.

My New Year's day hangover was mercifully shorter than my fading fond memories of 2009, but looking back through that skid-tinted pane and with the aid of a little perspective from M2 Research, I've realised just how bloody awful 2009 was for many people in the games industry:

True story: at a recent screening of a finished chunk of James Cameron’s 3D magnum opus Avatar, a director friend of mine realised abruptly that sitting in the row in front of him was Cameron himself, alongside Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg. Briefly before the lights went down, he overheard them discussing the glorious future of 3D filmmaking. All three men were embracing the notion that soon everything was going to be shot in 3D – not just big CGI ...

It’s easy to be popular in an MMO – you just don’t do anything wrong. It’s far harder to nerf it completely, but there are a few things you can do to ensure that your guild comes across as something no sane player would touch with a Perfect Barge Pole of Deliberate Ignorance inscribed with ‘Do Not Want’.

The Endless Forest Possibly the only MMO to double as a screensaver and let you play as a deer, which is surely reason in itself to give it a play and frolic in the woods....

To avoid going insane, Luis Villazon keeps taking the tablets 1. Be not a skinflint Trying to network on the cheap is the single biggest cause of LAN hassle. I’m talking about that horrible, Indonesian, no-name, two-port router that you thought was all you would ever need and those scabby Cat5 cables with no sleeve at the connectors. Cheap components like these make your network more complicated, less reliable and harder to troubleshoot. Overspecifying your kit at the start will ...

Continued from yesterday. Catch the first part of Lara Crigger's insight into in-game advertising here.

Yeah, big surprise. But what do gamers say? Lara Crigger investigates the truth behind in-game advertising.

He’s the quiet man, the one in the background. And yet industry veteran Tony Garcia has achieved more than a modicum of success over the past 25 years… So let’s see. Tony Garcia is a videogame producer. He worked on Indiana Jones And The Fate Of Atlantis. He founded Microsoft’s games division in 1991 and worked there for six years. He became general manager of Electronic Arts Seattle and oversaw Need For ...

I spend an inordinate amount of time being annoyed, usually on behalf of others. The stakes are lower and more boring when you worry about yourself. What’s the worst that can happen? Dying’s just the rich man’s sleeping in. Some annoyance is good. When properly functioning, it’s man’s natural defense mechanism, keeping him from getting ripped off by the same bear-traps and Ponzi schemes more than once (or, in the case of women, eleven times). It’s also, paradoxically, the gateway to ...

Install WinUAE - Nip over to www.winuae.com and click on the download link for the program. Download and run the installer for the latest version. It’ll ask you to quit other applications and will then run through various options. In the meantime, stare vacantly while clicking Next and Install, until the Setup Wizard says it’s done.

Portal is an entire book in the form of a game and by all rights should be a painful chore, but it’s actually the most (if not the only) successful attempt at blending gaming with a novel. 

“Arguably the most innovative, most in-depth and, for its time, the most advanced role-playing game series there had ever been. Paul Rigby talks to the Ultima series creator Richard Garriott in our special three part tribute… ” The computer role-playing game was – and still is – the most difficult game genre for any games designer to tackle. This is not a genre that demands that you wobble a marble over a few stepped levels, shoot a selection of dragon heads ...

Tis the season, as they say, when by long-standing social custom in Western countries' real life tends to assume the worst characteristics of MMOs. Both rigidly enforce participating in communal activities and screaming kids; both entail careful advance planning and the occasional wipe; both expect you to travel outrageous distances to socialise with people whom you normally wouldn’t, all to trade trinkets and clothing in an effort to ‘level up’.