I am so glad that these Civony/Evony people are finally getting called out. Their shady ads featuring stolen art assets are everywhere. I can only hope they haven’t tricked many people into playing, but I know that mammary glands are powerful things.

This is a big one, and I will admit that I skimmed a bit, but there’s some interesting stuff here. Particularly, the acknowledgment that the general perception of the PC gaming market’s health is largely due to a lack of marketing and representation; that’s interesting coming from a PC manufacturer, not to mention a founder of the PC Gaming Alliance. Next up: much respect to Chris Remo for not letting the comment about $1,500 – $2,500 being what somebody needs to spend on a gaming PC slip by. The notion that a person needs to spend more than $700 to play any game is one that is hurting the platform. Finally, I very much like the idea of Steam being pre-installed on Dell and Alienware systems. I’m no fan of crapware, but if they’re injecting new machines with a bunch of it anyway, they may as well throw in something great like Steam.

This just tickled me.

Check the source link on the BigDownload post, there is a PDF of the PC Gaming Alliance’s 2008 report. It’s clear that the PC as a gaming platform is expanding (not shifting) to reach new people with the casual games market and MMOs. Knowing that the platform brings in more revenue anually than any other single gaming platform from Sony, Microsoft or even Nintendo ($11 billion world-wide – $6 billion in the USA and Western Europe) is some comforting information.

Though Joystiq neglected to mention it (despite the information being in the press release they link to), Max Payne 3 isn’t being made by Remedy (the developers of the original game and its sequel), but by Rockstar Vancouver instead. Max Payne 3 will be their first new game since shipping Bully for the Playstation 2 in 2006 (they’re credited with Scholarship Edition for 360 & PC, but I think those were outsourced to other Rockstar developers, for the most part).

I think this may be the first gameplay footage we’ve gotten. While most games press seems pretty excited for this game, I’ve remained skeptical. I’ve been burned so many times in the past by Batman games. Although I can’t figure out why there’s so many gargoyles hanging off the walls inside the Asylum, the gameplay does look fun and, dare I say, unique.

Classy.