CCP have announced the 20th free expansion for the jerk-filled MMO sandbox EVE Online. It's called Rubicon, and it won't just be the usual round-up of new features and balance tweaks. Instead, according to senior producer Andie "CCP Seagull" Nordgren, it marks the first step in a plan to give players "more power over this universe than ever before".

"We are on a long term plan to deliver on what we imagine for EVE Online and New Eden," Nordgren said. "With Rubicon we continue our efforts to improve and balance the game, to support our player community, and give you the unique sandbox science fiction experience that EVE Online provides."

In Rubicon, that will mean a number of ways in which players can break free from the Empire. That includes taking control of Hi-Sec Customs Offices, giving players the chance to tax the flow of resources being harvested, and the ability to deploy temporary mobile structures, "to support your industrial operations and wartime efforts". The combat system will also be tweaked, to allow for guerilla tactics against even the biggest strongholds.

You can find more details on the EVE Online: Rubicon microsite, or watch the hour-long announcement stream below. Rubicon is due out November 19th.

The rough character models don't quite match the ambition of the concept art, but even so, Neo's Land has a real chance at success as a niche MMO. Canadian developer Neojac Entertainment has been accepting community ideas (and now with the launch of its Kickstarter campaign, money), and converting them into an MMO with a design-by-committee approach that has created what sounds a lot like a fantasy EVE Online: a subscription MMO with a simulated economy, open world PvP, non-instanced player buildings, and extensive crafting.

Before Neo's Land, Jacques Rossouw and a small team spent a couple years creating a server-side MMO engine called Atavism Online, which works with the popular Unity 3D engine. Now Rossouw plans to license the engine—which could lower the barrier for indie MMO development—and complete Neo's Land with the help of $100,000 CAD from Kickstarter.

"Neo’s Land is a fantasy MMORPG where the community provides content and has a direct say over development and the state of the game," Rossouw tells PC Gamer. "They literally own the process of world-building and have a big impact on how the game is being developed. We’re doing a series of roundtables. It’s been said a few times by developers that the community can help build the game, but it’s never been done at this scale."



According to Rossouw, "pretty much everything" will be up to the players. Neojac will create content, but the $100,000 in Kickstarter funds will be used to develop a "plug-in" system which allows for assets and concepts to be rapidly implemented. "We’ve done all the heavy lifting by developing the engine, and now all they have to do is put whatever they want in the game. Just tell us, and we’ll put it in."

Even the business model was decided by community roundtables. "One of our roundtables was about monetization and how the players want to pay for it," says Rossouw. "You wouldn’t believe the feedback in regards to this. Everyone is looking for—they don’t want the free-to-play system anymore, which is directly the opposite of where everyone’s saying the industry is going, but this is directly from our players. Everybody is getting to the point where they’re a little tired, it seems, of free-to-play games. It allows a certain group of players into the game, and a certain way it’s being played. A lot of people, the hardcore players, don’t actually enjoy it that much.

"So, what we did is we implemented a subscription system, because that’s what they were looking for. But they also wanted a little bit of freedom in regards to subscriptions. We’re following something similar to EVE Online, where they have the PLEX system. You can generate in-game currency and pay for your subscriptions that way. It’s a little bit of both worlds. You have the free-to-play system or something nearly to it there, if you spend enough time in the game, and you also have, for the people that don’t have that much time, they can buy their subscriptions."



Also similar to EVE is open-world PvP with safe zones protected by guards—Rossouw describes destructible, player-built cities, a simulated economy in which players can craft everything, and an exciting PvP scenario in which a player rises from mayor to king.

"We have a system where, if you have mayors from different towns, they can group together and go to the next level," says Rossouw. "They can become a king, at the end of the day, and maybe rule a certain amount of land. Two kingdoms could fight against each other and declare war on each other. You have a stance towards your neighboring towns. But definitely, buildings can be destroyed...how we built our engine, originally, was to allow as much freedom for players to use as possible, to let them do pretty much whatever they wanted in the world when it comes to creating stuff—spawning mobs, even creating quests and stuff like that."

Neo's Land may also feature some parallel thinking with EverQuest Next, with a recently added voxel system. "We wanted players to really be immersed when they’re digging in the ground, so we implemented a voxel system into the engine. It allows players to literally go dig in caves, similar to Minecraft, but it’s got the high polys and stuff like that. We’re excited. It’s something very similar to what EverQuest Next has announced as well."

SOE is also taking a similar design-by-committee approach with EverQuest Next, but as Rossouw points out, not at this level of detail. The plan for Neo's Land, for now, is to launch playable version this winter. Everyone who donates to the Kickstarter campaign or on the official site will have access to alpha and beta versions without a subscription fee, which will kick in at release, though it will be possible to buy land with real money.

At the time of writing, the Kickstarter campaign has earned about $3,000 CAD in a few hours.

CCP's Kristoffer Toubourg will soon be Riot's Kristoffer Touborg, as announced on the EVE Online lead designer's Facebook page. After five years working on the pioneering sci-fi MMO, he's trading the Bjorky shores of Iceland for the distinctly Guinessy city of Dublin to put his skills to use on Riot Games' League of Legends.

"It’s been an incredible five years, working for a company I love, on a game I love," Touborg announced in that Facebook post. "You can’t do the same thing forever though and I feel like after more than five years, it’s time to try something new. So I’m packing my bags again and moving to Dublin, where I’ll be joining Riot games to work on League of Legends.

"I feel a bit lucky that I get to work on not just one of my favorite games, but two of them. I don’t think I could have asked for anything more and it’s pretty humbling to go from one love to another. A few years ago, my overwhelming interest was the EVE universe; now it’s League of Legends and the competitive scene there."

We've had some great interviews with Kristoffer Touborg (and co.) over the years - while we see how long it takes him to add a playable spaceship champion to LoL, why not give them a read?

Thanks, Polygon.

This week, Cory ruins the space-time continuum by moving playlists to the front of the show, while Evan, Tyler, and T.J. look on in horror. We read some real live listener emails, and discuss the concept of mundanity in games. And yes, we discuss Euro Truck Simulator 2... on a US-based podcast!

Watch everything you thought you knew about reality writhe and die in PC Gamer Podcast 358 - Oh, the Mundanity!

@elahti (Evan Lahti)
@tyler_wilde (Tyler Wilde)
@demiurge (Cory Banks)
@AsaTJ (Grand Moff Hafer)
@belsaas (Erik Belsaas, podcast producer)

Over the weekend, a massive battle erupted in everyone’s favorite extremely complicated space simulator/MMO, EVE Online. Thousands of players joined what became the largest battle in EVE’s history.

I’m treading through unfamiliar waters here, having played exactly 10 minutes of EVE about four years ago. However, the nice people at Explain Like I’m Five have a nice summary all lined up for me: somebody accidentally warped all alone to a place he wasn’t supposed to go. He called for backup, the backup called for backup and things escalated quicker than Europe after Archduke Ferdinand’s assassination.



But does it really matter to us why this war happened? No, the thing that matters is how cool it looked. Over 4,000 players piled into a region of space named 6-VDT to slug it out, causing EVE’s servers to automatically slow things to 10 percent real-time speed to normalize lag spikes. Enormous warp bubbles piled on top of each other as more fleets came barreling through to join the fight. Estimates say that short of 3,000 ships were destroyed along with millions of tiny virtual lives. The carnage was reported by the BBC and Huffington Post.

There’s a war on in EVE, and this is just the latest scrap in the ongoing hostilities. It’s the kind of thing that makes me want to jump and try the game again. Then I see a picture like this of what the battle looked like for players:



Maybe it’s better if I just write about it.

Images from The Verge and redditors Dr_Sandvich and emccrckn in r/eve.

Is there any deeper meaning to the phrase "next-gen" than "MOAR PRETTINESS"? Who knows? In these final dwindling days of the current gaming generation, God uttered, "Let there be real-time global illumination!" and then Geomerics put out a video showcasing its video game lighting technology in such next-gen titles as Dragon Age 3 and Battlefield 4, and it was good.

Geomerics' dynamic-lighting technology, the punnily named Enlighten, is already in use in games like Mirror's Edge, but today's video shows off some of the next-gen games to be Enlightened. Feel the realistically rendered eye-searing glare of the desert heat in BF4. Experience the scorch of a fireball in Dragon Age 3. Admire the oh-so-photogenic lens flare that delicately embraces a shuffling zombie hoard in The Bureau: XCOM Declassified. I've gotta admit that even EVE Online does not look its 10 years of age.

This is some super-pretty stuff, guys. My personal favorite? Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare. I've never seen a propeller-driven garlic bulb cast such crisp shadows upon its sinister sunflower allies.



 

I decided to put on my detective mustache for this story.

Billions of ISK, EVE Online's in-game currency, pass through the sandbox MMO's infamous Jita star system every day. Much is spent on legitimate free market trades, but the heart of EVE's simulated economy is clogged with a sticky plaque: career scammers who spend hours spamming local chat with impossibly enticing offers. I'm quitting the game and want to give away all my ISK!

Sure, and I'm an Amarrian prince who needs help making a space transfer to fund Half-Life 3.

I've always wondered how anyone could fall for these obvious tricks—someone must, because I saw them stacking up in the chat window when I last visited Jita over a year ago, and no one could be that persistent without results. To find out, I flew to Jita like a Las Vegas-bound fool, prepared to be duped out of my life savings—a modest 500 million ISK—in search of EVE's greatest scam.

The contract scam
 
I arrived in a 100,000 ton battleship and pulled up to the Caldari Navy Assembly Plant, the star system's core trading station. Massive whales of freighters drifted outside the cavernous docking bay, while smaller, toothier ships dueled around them. With a 0.9 security status, combat (almost) only occurs here when it’s mutually agreed upon. Artillery and torpedoes don't get you far in Jita, unless you're selling. And if you're buying, make sure you get what you paid for.

The most common scams are falsely advertised sales contracts. The scammer claims in local chat that they want to sell, say, one PLEX—that’s 30 days of game time—for 1.5 million, but the actual contract charges 1.5 billion. Even bolder scams not only tweak the price, but attempt to trick careless buyers into giving away two PLEX for one, or buying the wrong item. A Gnosis is ship worth about 75 million ISK on the market. A gneiss is a rock.



These low-effort, inelegant scams are easy to avoid. It’s a good idea in life and EVE to read contracts carefully before signing them. The same goes for "give me all your stuff and I'll let you join GoonWaffe!" That's not how you join the Goon's corporation.

There’s another type of Jita scam, however, that's much more fun. It's a game of trust and lies, where both scammer and victim try to come out ahead. I'm a gambler, and while the plan was to lose money intentionally, I started to wonder if I might turn a profit. Initially, I did.

The "double or nothing"
 
The game is called ISK doubling, and the proposal is simple and ridiculous. Send me ISK and I’ll send you double back. Just trust me. It's absurd to think this would ever be true, and yet I made 110 million ISK in my first attempt to be scammed. The pitch came from Safar Iyou:

Take your isk to a real doubling business! The only legitimate doubling service in EVE. Details in bio. I follow the rules as long as you do. Stop going to scammers, and start bringing your isk here, to the only real doubler not on the list Convo me!

Safar Iyou, a trustworthy guy.

I sent the minimum amount, 10 million ISK, to test him. Seconds later, he deposited 20 million ISK in my account. This is how you play the game. The first, timid investment is always returned to foster trust. Now that we're buddies, I'll send 100 million, and he'll block me and log off. I was shocked when he returned 200 million, just as promised.

Follow the rules
 
I asked Iyou how he can possibly make money by sending money. He explained that there's a set of rules in his bio. Follow them, and you get your money. Break any of the rules, and he keeps it.

"A surprising amount of people fail follow the rules and i make a big enough profit off of them to pay for the smart players," wrote Iyou. I asked him to clarify the rules, simple requirements for deposit amounts and character age, and he did. "Its not against the rules to confirm the rules lol."

"Tell your friends, for referals, if they mention your name and fail to follow the rules you get 10 percent," he wrote. How nice—if I give my friends a bad tip I can earn even more. Never trust anyone in Jita.

I left the chat, figuring this was a fluke, or that I was bait, someone who would publicize his generosity to attract more "customers" or decide to profit off his referral system. Sure enough, a few minutes later I see a sad message in local chat: "Safar Iyou took all my money!"

The player told me he followed the rules, but as of the last time he was in touch (about a week after the incident), Iyou was still missing.

EVE's greatest scam
 
After that, I kept trying—I made about 50 million more before someone finally yanked the hook and took me for 100 million. Dalamarr Shimaya congratulated me for being his first successful scam, then, feeling guilty, returned a small portion. Even in games, it's hard to escape your conscience. A few days later, I was still his only successful scam.

Reedy Cassidy > Still at it, eh? Any luck?
dalamarr Shimaya > nah :/
dalamarr Shimaya > im getting convos from people saying random stuff then leaving
Reedy Cassidy > That's weird.
dalamarr Shimaya > its what i deserve i guess

Shimaya should take notes from the final scam I encountered. It's diabolical. Not only does this scam effectively convince players to hand over hundreds of millions of ISK at a time, every bite is recorded in a public record. And yet it keeps working, over and over.



It starts like the others. Olivia Skylee, Lou Xlejitt, Borderline Nutz, and other aliases are advertising ISK doubling with variations on the following message:

I Want to SHARE The Wealth
I cannot make all of EVE wealthy
To receive your ISK you must PLAY my game
Risk = ISK ( I put the ISK in RISK! )

Below that, a payout chart claims those who risk 100 million ISK will receive 700 million, 200 million will receive 2.2 billion, and 500 million will receive a ridiculous 7 billion. The payouts are unbelievable, so to convince those who are about to be scammed, proof is offered.

Proof Of Honesty:
My Wallet Journal API: http://bit.ly/Borderline_Nutz
(test it yourself, send me 1 ISK, wait for cache to refresh)

Using an API, it's possible for third-party websites to track EVE player information, including transactions, which is this scammer's proof of legitimacy. Let's take a look at Borderline Nutz' wallet.



It looks like Nutz is keeping his promise, and if you think it's all faked, go ahead and transfer 1 ISK to his account—it will show up on the API page, proving that it's real data. And it is, just not entirely real.

All of the incoming transactions are real, but the payouts are spoofed. This has been going on for at least a few months, possibly longer, with over a billion ISK in profits on a good day. My favorite part: Nutz asks players to place a small bounty on him "as a 'thank you' gesture." So far, he's got over 500M ISK in thank yous on his head.

It may not be the most complex scam in EVE—there are many nuanced methods of extracting money from players—but its success and use of out-of-game deceit makes it one of the most sophisticated and impressive.

You probably shouldn't trust anyone named "Borderline Nutz" in the first place.

I knew it was a con when I first saw it, but I couldn't help but think about all the ships I could buy with 2.2 billion ISK. I could transfer it to my corporation's wallet, start recruiting and expanding into low-sec space. I sent the 200 million, certain that it was the story I was after, but part of me hoped for the one-in-a-billion chance that this would be another Safar Iyou. Of course, my riches never came. I tried to contact Nutz, but I was unable to get in touch. Of course.

And that's how the ISK doubling game works. Just like in Vegas, we'll risk a lot—sometimes everything we have—when teased with the prospect of sudden wealth. But just like in Vegas, the house always wins in the end.

That is, unless you bring your ISK to a 100 percent legit ISK doubling service. Contact Reedy Cassidy to find out more about this one-of-a-kind offer.

Update: After this article was published, Safar Iyou got in touch again. "Lol, thanks for featuring me in your article," he wrote. "I remember talking to you too lol, explaining the rules etc etc. I really was just milking you trying to land the big deposit lol." He then revealed much more about the EVE scamming scene, which I'll continue to investigate. lol.

If this were the Discworld, the Tranquility server would be the Great A'Tuin, the Giant Star Turtle on which all existence rides. But, this is Eve Online. Entombed within what is recognized as the gaming industry's largest supercomputer is the ruffian-riddled, single-shard universe of New Eden. According to its creators, CCP, the monstrous London-based server cluster has 3,936GB of RAM, 2,574GHZ worth of processing power and even military-grade hardware.

Tranquility didn't start out this way, over ten years it’s grown from “a couple of computers” into a classroom-sized behemoth, swallowing up new tech and evolving to meet the needs of a the half-million players that live in Eve's universe. CCP chief technology officer Halldor Fannar explains how one of gaming's biggest supercomputers came to be.

"The cluster has 2,574GHZ of processing power and even military-grade hardware."

"We initially began designing back in 2000 when latency was a huge issue across the Internet. To combat this, we designed these proxies that we were going to place around the world to cache information queries on market prices and so on, just so we could reduce latency."

The idea was sound but proved completely unnecessary. By the time CCP Games finally launched EVE Online in 2003, latency had become less of a killer, more of a nuisance. "We ended up putting all the proxies into the same data center as the server. It's kind of interesting how things changed even as we rolled out. We ended up with all the server nodes in the same location where before we had expected to place them around the world."

Things kept escalating. In the beginning, CCP Games made plans for a maximum of 100,000 subscribers, a number that translated to, roughly, 20,000 concurrent users. Needless to say, those designs were shattered. The number of players continued to climb beyond initial expectations.



"We had to change a lot of things." Halldor reminisces. "We had to take services that were tied together and living together on one node and break them apart so that we could run them independently and, maybe, dedicate a piece of hardware to running a specific service."

Making an example of the market nodes and the character nodes ("It didn't use to be like that but once you have so many characters and so many people that want to access their skills - "), Halldor explains that the practice now is to identify high-use services and break them out, a process that is more complex than it sounds.

"Tranquility is perpetually assimilating new tech."

"You don't want to break out a service that still has to talk a lot to another service. Because then, sure, you might have moved it out but you're going to have a communication bottleneck between those two anyway."

As the team continued to work on moving out 'high locality' services (services that did not require constant communication with other services) and implementing web technologies similar to those being used by Facebook, the server cluster itself continued to evolve. Like a living thing, Tranquility is perpetually assimilating new technologies and unburdening itself of obsolete parts - with the help of human hands, of course.

"When technology gets better, server hardware gets better. Sometimes, we are able to simplify things and replace a couple of computers with a single computer, one that has multiple processor sockets and multiple cores."



"we had to get military clearance to go into a bunker in Texas to evaluate the hardware."

The biggest problem here, according to Halldor, is ensuring that improvements do not catalyze more issues down the road. "We also have to be careful because, sometimes, you can look at some of our problems and go, 'Hey! You should just go for that solution.' but that solution might turn out to be technologically complex or difficult to maintain. Our code base is constantly evolving and, really, maintenance is key here. If something is hard to maintain, we'll normally opt against that route and go with the one that's maybe only 80% efficient but easier to maintain."

One of the key components within Tranquility is its persistent layer, the backbone that comprises so much of New Eden's daily activities. At one point, this was contained within solid state disk drives purchased from Texas Memory System in 2009.

"The funny thing was that, at the time, the technology only existed in the military so we had to get military clearance to go into a bunker in Texas to evaluate the hardware because the company, back then, had only just started looking into commercializing this thing that they made for the US army. We were one of first clients and they thought it was really funny that they went from building things for the army to something that's so completely light-hearted."

With a grin, Halldor adds, "Of course, we told them that the Internet spaceships are serious business."



Fast forward to the present day and there are few who would look askance at Tranquility. Halldor says that hardware partners have been excited to work with CCP Games as their environment is 'pretty unique' - an understatement, given that most supercomputers are traditionally reserved for job-oriented tasks. Complicated as all this might sound, it's this adherence to optimization that keeps EVE Online functioning like a well-oiled machine.

While other developers might have buckled under the weight of the Burn Jita event, CCP Games chose to migrate the solar system to a node ("Our special snowflake node, as we call them." Halldor deadpans) of its own. Then, after installing a cap, they slowed down time based on the number of people present in the fight. The technique worked. EVE Online players found the war they wanted, and CCP Games found a technique they would later use again in the Battle of Asakai.

"That's an example of an improvement we made. The battle of Asakai couldn't have happened without time dilation."

But CCP Games isn't satisfied yet. Though they have the analogical race horses stabled and prepared for usage, CCP Games are intent keeping a step ahead of their own players. "One of the things we're working on right now is predictive algorithm so we can analyze everything that happens in the world. If we have even 10 minutes forewarning, we can move the simulation and resume it on a different piece of hardware."

And if Skynet ever comes to pass, we'll know exactly who to blame.

The press conferences that precede E3 set the tone for the event, they determine the conversations and questions that follow. With no single unifying organisation to set up such an event, it's one of those rare occasions when the open nature of the PC can prove a detriment. The consoles have had their say, now we can't help but wonder what a similar a show for the PC would look like. Who would take the stage? What would they show? What song-and-dance numbers would we get?

Take your seat, make yourself comfortable and put those Doritos away as we welcome you to this year's purely hypothetical show, the E3 2013 conference that PC gamers deserve.

Introducing - our host! A lone spotlight picks out a trundling figure on a wide, dark stage. It grinds noisily to a halt to rapturous applause and spreads its tiny plastic arms wide. "GREETINGS. I am Medianbot," it drones, bionic monotone dripping with the collective charisma of a platoon of Microsoft presenters. "I have been selected by a vast conglomerate of PC developers as a completely impartial neutral representative for this event. My collective masters to remind you that not one of them owns the platform. We are multitude. We make things we think you might like, and we'd like to show some of those to you this evening. Enjoy."

The auditorium goes dark. A Roman appears on a huge main screen, charging up a beach as flaming rocks soar overhead. XBox One conference attendees sigh, for a moment they think it's the new Roman hack-'em-up, Ryse.

It isn't. The camera's pulling out. There are dozens of Romans. Hundreds. Thousands charging battlements under a a storm of arrows. A mouse cursor appears and it's controlling every last one of them. It's Rome 2. The Creative Assembly are on stage. They talk about diplomacy, subterfuge, politics and war on a huge scale. They talk about players crafting their own stories on the stage of history. They explain that there's no grunting and quick time events. This is a game for grown-ups.



It's Blizzard's turn. Dustin Browder takes to the stage and introduces a trailer for Legacy for the Void, but when the lights come back up, two booths have appeared on stage. In one, Flash, in the other, Life - veteran StarCraft and StarCraft 2 esports players. Browder explains talks about the PC not just as a platform for space adventure, but as a field for sport. He introduces top shoutcasters Tasteless and Artosis as our commentators, and the contestants go to war. There's no awkward, staged banter, only two athletes, laser focused on their screens.

In the coming ten minutes both players demonstrate the agility and quick-thinking that makes them masters of their game. The retiring "GG" is met by a resounding cheer.

A tough act to follow? Perhaps not, when you have a huge open world RPG to show off. CD Projekt RED take the mic. They talk about Geralt's final adventure, they show us the cities and forests we'll be able to explore in The Witcher 3. We've had competition, we've had huge strategy, now we're getting a huge explorable RPG. The showing of their debut trailer sends a ripple of excitement through the crowd.



But CD Projekt RED change tack. New zones, monsters and characters start appearing on the conference screens. They're not officially part of The Witcher 2, or The Witcher 3, it's a modding showcase. It's not about picking out individual examples, it's a catalogue of creations only possible on PC - whole new free campaigns, weapons and options, and the power to reshape entire worlds. Another video plays. Geralt walks into the swampy town of Flotsam - familiar to players of The Witcher 2 - only instead the tyranny of a malicious local thug, the Witcher finds that the town is under attack from a twenty foot tall fire-breathing horse. Modding at its finest.

Medianbot rolls back onstage to thunderous applause. "Greetings and thank you revellers. The soundwaves generated by your slapping meat-paws sustains me. I hope you enjoyed the pictures of the angry man with two swords doing things, but not less or much more than any prior or following presentation, for this is about mathematically identical representation for all aspects of the platform. Farewell."

ANGRY MACHINE NOISE. STROBE LIGHTING. It's DICE. It's Battlefield 4. It's running on PC live. It's big. It's loud. It's full of guns. Now, a while tundra - the THUMP of an AT-AT's boot crunching into the snow. It's Star Wars: Battlefront. Then it's Respawn's mech-blasty game, Titanfall. It's loud and angry, polished and beautiful, because the PC can do all of that too, but faster, and prettier.



Another changeover. A video. A montage, devoted to the low-budget, innovative games that wouldn't normally get their time in the limelight. We see interactive fiction games, Dwarf Fortress, Princess Maker, Kentucky Route Zero, Receiver. As if in a frenzied music video, bouncing between everything from Transistor to Minecraft to Project Zomboid to Frozen Synapse in quick but stunningly done style and backed by anything except bloody dubstep. Anything but that.

The lights come up again, and the stage is full of figures playing games on big screens. It looks like the indie showcase that the PS4 put on, but it's vast. Dozens and dozens of developers are playing their games on tiers and tiers of screens. Look - three tiers up on the left - Koakim "Konjak" Sandberg is playing the latest build of Iconoclasts. Hey, down there on the right - Introversion are quelling a riot in Prison Architect. Over there, Mitu Khandaker is climbing a starship's social ladder in Redshirt. Here, in the front row, the Fullbright developers are showing Gone Home. The message here is simple. Yes, you can play some fun games on console. On PC though, you get a whole world of gaming that no one company controls. And it's brimming with honest-to-god new ideas.

But it's not just about the games. The Oculus Rift developers take to the stage arm and arm with the Omni Treadmill creators. They talk about how hardware is advancing all the time, how static systems will inevitably fade in the face of new hardware from the big PC manufacturers. They mention that the consoles are still talking in familiar terms, about streaming via Twitch, about a camera that watches and listens to you, as though such concepts haven't existed on the PC for years already. The PC is a tool, they say, not a living room lifestyle choice. It does what you tell it, and it can show you the future.

Then up on stage, we get the Oculus Rift team to show off their latest prototype, along with the Omni Treadmill and the Epoc mind-reading headset. In front of a gasping audience, we see - live - someone step into Skyrim and kill a mud crab with his mind.



A cheerful Belarusian fellow walks out now. Who is he? It's hard to tell, but it's clear before he's even said anything that he loves tanks, because he's wearing a T-shirt that says "I <3 TANKS." Aha! it's Wargamng CEO Victor Kislyi, and he's here to talk about World of Tanks, kicking off a section about all the games you can play on the PC right now for no money. Quality games like League of Legends, Tribes Ascend, Team Fortress 2. Games that demonstrate that, while the initial cost of the PC may be expensive, a single buy opens up a world of free entertainment. Oh, and it does Netflix. AND you don't need to pay a monthly subscription to go online and try your free games out.

It's been a few hours. But who walks out now, at the end of it all? Is it Newell, talking about Dota 2, Team Fortress 2, how Valve think player-created content that adds value to their games should be rewarded monetarily? Is it CCP CEO Hilmar, talking about player run economies, betrayal and intrigue in Eve Online? Is it Bioware, talking about how they plan to tell stories on the PC we've never seen before? Is it SOE, talking about how they managed to get hundreds of players to fight a galactic war on a single battlefield in Planetside 2? Is it Arenanet, talking about dynamic MMO battlegrounds in Guild Wars 2? The question is posed to Medianbot. Its chrome head explodes.

It should be all of them. Perhaps PC gaming is just too big for one conference. Too varied, too niche, too wonderfully weird to play the same PR game as the platform holders.

Oh, what the hell. Let's go with Gabe.

Microsoft has demoed the Xbox One. Sony has shown off the Playstation 4. Then, in an equally big hall, the lights go down, Gabe Newell steps onto the stage. He says nothing. He just coughs. He points at the screen. A Half-Life 3 logo appears. The crowd goes wild. He walks off, still silent.

Then a minute later, he casually pokes his head back round the curtain. "Wait, did I forget to mention it's free and available on Steam right now?" he asks. "Sorry it took so long. Also, you can trade Steam games now. Don't mind that noise, it's just a pig taking off. Ah, one second. Someone needs to Heimlich Steve Ballmer's tongue out of his throat."

But before he can leave, a single voice cries from the audience. "Why, oh Gaben? Why?"

And the man pauses, the sound of choking from somewhere off stage echoing slightly. Slowly, he pulls on a pair of sunglasses. Half-turns. Smiles. Replies, quite simply, "Because we can."

For the latest from E3, check out our complete coverage and our pick of the best games of E3 2013 so far.