Congratulations Link777 for winning the trivia contest for December 9th and receiving a copy of World of Goo.

Yesterday’s question:
When On-line Systems renamed their company to Sierra, what genre defining adventure game series did they release to help establish the name change?

King’s Quest had impressive graphics for the time, with 4-bits (16 colors).

Answer: King’s Quest!

A few people answered Mystery House. This game was originally made and released back when Sierra was still called On-Live Systems.

New Steam Treasure Hunt objectives released today.
Mafia II is $33.49 (33% Off)
Magic: The Gathering is $4.99 (50% Off)
Droplitz is $2.49 (75% Off)

Now that Steam is using its achievements to earn items in TF2 and to encourage people to buy games that are on sale and participate in communities, has Steam become a meta-game?

TF2 received an update that says, “Updated some files, for no reason whatsoever.”

The Weta Workshop make Valve a TF2 sentry.

Dejoban announce new game: 1... 2... 3... KICK IT! (Drop That Beat Like an Ugly Baby).
Trailer and screenshots are here. You can pre-order it from Dejobaan’s web site, and play the alpha.

Bethesda posted a blog about all of the changes in their new Fallout: New Vegas patch.

EVE Online is running a commercial in select movie theaters in the US.
The trailer will also be released on CCP’s YouTube page.

The meeting between Australian government officials over adding an R18+ rating for video games seems to have been delayed until 2011.

18 months from now, combined tablet and smartphone sales will surpass those of PCs. This probably have an effect on the gaming industry, causing more companies to focus on smartphones.

New York Times: "On a Hunt for What Makes Gamers Keep Gaming
Highlights of this article:
- The typical 21 year-old American has spent 10k hours playing PC games.
- Gamers report being “engaged, focused, and happy” with their hobby. This is interesting, because so many games (such as MMOs) aren’t very leisurely and are essentially like work.
- Researchers are finding out what makes gaming such a rewarding activity, and how we can apply these lessons to other areas of life and make them similarly engaging and rewarding.
- An important component of games is “hard fun,” or overcoming difficult obstacles and getting a sense of achievement from that.
- If the amount of effort that people spent on games could be applied to other activities, a lot could be accomplished. People are logging more hours in WoW every week than has been spent on the entirety of Wikipedia.
- The creation of realistic virtual environments is important to understanding real possibilities.

Something implied in the article:
- It seems that the media only became concerned about gaming being an “addictive” hobby when people started forsaking other addicting activities (such as watching TV, consuming alcohol at clubs, etc.) to pursue spending time on their PCs.
- Although gaming is often treated like a special category, it’s not very different from most other hobbies or personal interests.

One researcher and game designer that they mention is Jane McGonigal, who has written a book on gaming titled, “Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World.” She also gave a talk at TED titled, "Gaming Can Make a Better World."

DICE video called "Design Outside the Box" on how many different “real life” things can be turned into social games, and why social games are successful.

Our thoughts on why gaming is rewarding:
- You can work together with others in a controlled environment to accomplish specific tasks. It’s easy to get a feeling of accomplishment from this.
- You can also experiment with an environment fully, without worrying about consequences.
- Gaming is an activity that is exciting and promotes good feelings and self-esteem, except when it clashes with other things.

Unrelated weird thing of the day:
FarmVille for Dummies book on Amazon.

Send trivia contest entries to pcgamingisdead@gmail.com.