Congratulations to ^BoXeR^ for winning the trivia contest for December 12th and receiving a copy of Osmos.

Yesterday's trivia question:
Although some previous games had elements of an open world environment, what game is considered the first true open world game?

That's a space station. Elite on the BBC Micro.

Answer: Elite by David Braben and Ian Bell. Elite was released in 1984 for the BBC Micro, and was ported to many other platforms, including the NES. The game featured open world gameplay in a randomly generated universe of 8 galaxies with 256 planets in each of them.

Here's a video of Elite, and another of 100 BBC Micro games in 10 minutes.

The latest in Steam's Treasure Hunt!
Metro 2033 is $9.99 (75% off)
Just Cause 2 is $7.49 (75% off)
Beat Hazard is $2.50 (75% off)

Steam's Midweek Madness: Killing Floor and the Killing Floor Bundle are each 66% off, making them $6.80 and $9.50. They've also introduced a free update, the Twisted Christmas Event. If you already have or buy Killing Floor and Team Fortress 2 before January 4th, you can get a special pyro skin in KF, and pyro items in TF2.

Steam's Weeklong Sale: Football Manager 2011 is $27.99 (30% off)

Direct2Drive has FIFA Soccer 11 for $19.95 (50% off). Which one is better? We don't know.

Games for Windows Live Deal of the Week:
Zuma's Revenge is $7.49 (25% off)
Plants vs Zombies is $7.49 (25% off) Don't know if this is the Game of the Year edition.
Bookworm is $7.49 (25% Off)

If you're really into PopCap games, don't forget that Steam has the collection of 30 games for $99.99.

Gamer's Gate is still having it's big holiday sale, with 79 games currently on sale.

Good Old Games has 290 games on sale.  We added their latest sales feed to the left sidebar.
Tyrian 2000 added to their free games.
Beneath a Steel Sky is also free.

Humble Indie Bundle #2 is on sale. It includes: Braid, Cortex Command, Machinarium, Osmos, and Revenge of the Titans. The games will work on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Currently, Revenge of the Titans is exclusive to the Humble Bundle. Other items included are the Machinarium OST, and a bonus Osmos album. You have a little over 6 days left to take advantage of this.

Goldeneye: Source is no longer in beta.

Here's a video of Realistic Forest, a mod of the Crytek 2 engine.
The goal of this mod was to create the most realistic looking forest possible.

A video for Warface has also been released. This is a mod developed by Crytek for the Asian market. Here's a press release on their site describing it.

ATI is giving Catalyst an overhaul by making the interface more user friendly and providing weekly updates.

OnLive has acquired a patent for the generalized concept of cloud-based gaming. Here's another article on the subject, which includes their press release.

Send your trivia contest entries to pcgamingisdead@gmail.com.  Today's contest closes at 6pm PT on December 15th.