EVE Fanfest hasn't been an announcement-per-second whirlwind, but it has seen reveals of some long-awaited EVE Online features. Perhaps the most visually arresting of these is the unveiling of high-resolution textures, due to be implemented into the game later this year.

The textures are made possible thanks to a planned update to the way that EVE's client will handle information. Rather than download the full game, the client will prioritise the data that a player will actually see, and download new textures and assets on-demand as they're encountered.

Players will be able to opt-in to receive all data, and it's this optional process that allows the team to introduce hi-res textures. Only two such screenshots were shown on stage, and you can see them on this page.

The new client system and hi-res textures are due to be introduced sometime in 2015.

Whether you tune in to improve your skills or just love spamming dongerinos while listening to punishing Eurotrance, there s no doubt Twitch has become a major part of PC gaming culture. Blizzard's games are among the most popular on the site and, to celebrate that community, Blizzard and Twitch just handed out $113,000 in award prizes—not just to the most popular streamers, but the most active viewers as well. 

For the inaugural Blizzard Stream Awards, three categories were created for each of Blizzard's five main games—Hearthstone, StarCraft 2, World of Warcraft, Diablo III, and Heroes of the Storm—with the top five winners chosen via fan polls that took place earlier this month. An additional six awards were determined by data provided by Twitch, and included Highest Mean Viewership and Most Active Chat . Two of those six categories were awarded to viewers who were the most dedicated to watching Blizzard games.

The awards in question were for the 'Most Active Viewer', given to the viewers who followed the most Blizzard channels, and 'Most Dedicated Viewer' for having the most active subscriptions to Blizzard channels, averaged across 2014. First place in each category was worth $2,014, second took $1,000, and the prizes went down by $100 each time from there. That means ten square-eyed people just split a $10,828 pool just for watching a lot of Twitch. GG, friends.

The biggest winners in terms of the streamers were primarily from Hearthstone, with Trumpsc earning a total of $5,728 for placing fourth as Best Overall Hearthstone Streamer , third for the Most Engaged Viewers , and first for both Highest Mean Viewership and Most Educational Hearthstone Streamer." He was closely followed by NL_Kripp, who took home five awards and $5,514, while Amazhs scooped three awards for $3,714. 

You can see the full list of awards and winners here.

Another half-dozen Lucasfilm classics have been added to the GOG lineup, including The Dig, Loom, and a fan favorite about the man they call McKracken.

I was always more a fan of the Lucas flight sims—Battle of Britain, Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe, and of course X-Wing and TIE Fighter—but there's no denying that its point-and-click adventures are among the finest ever made. Here's what's in the third batch of Lucas games added to GOG:

• Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders
• Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb
• Monkey Island 2 Special Edition: LeChuck's Revenge
• The Dig
• Loom
• Outlaws + A Handful of Missions

Zak McKracken is probably the dig draw here, but Loom and The Dig are very worthy of attention too—especially Loom, which has a bit of a bad rap among some Lucasfilm fans for being too short and simple. (Read more about that in this really cool Loom post-mortem from earlier this month.) Both of those games, along with Monkey Island 2, are on for 20 percent off until March 26, and GOG said even more Lucasfilm games are on the way.

A lot was announced at the Fanfest keynote for EVE Online. New ship skins, a completely overhauled player-owned structure system, building fittings, ghost fittings, and more. The most mysterious teaser, though, was CCP's plan for "emergent threats". The studio promises that even they don't know what the AI will be capable of when mysterious forces are unleashed into the game later this year.

They do, however, have a trailer to whet your appetite.

It's not as emotive a trailer as last year's brilliant This Is Eve, but it should nevertheless mysteriously hint at the mysterious direction of CCP's mysterious emerging threat. The ultimate plan, CCP says, is to create a system where they no longer need to announce new events and threats. Rather, the system is designed as an unpredictable sandbox, providing constant new things for Eve players to experience (and fight).

We've heard almost nothing about Star Wars: Battlefront since EA announced its resurrection in 2013, beyond a brief teaser, some talk about maps, and a rumored "holidays 2015" launch window. But that's about to change, as Electronic Arts will finally unveil the game to the public at the Star Wars Celebration taking place next month in Anaheim, California.

"We could not think of a better or more appropriate place to debut the game officially for the first time than the premier event that celebrates the Star Wars universe and the legions of fans who have fallen in love with it," EA said in the announcement.

No further details were revealed, but that's not terribly surprising since the debut is only a few weeks away: The Star Wars Celebration runs from April 16-19 at the Anaheim Convention Center. We will, of course, be in attendance. Even if we have to don a knock of Chewbacca suit to do so.

Updated pricing information on Feb 17, 2016. We're preparing another update for this guide that switches from Skylake to Haswell-E for our high-end guide, now that motherboard and RAM prices have stabilized. You can wait for that guide, or go ahead with these parts—it's still a killer build.

For a high-end, $2000 PC that can play all the latest games, look no further: this is the build for you, updated with Intel s new Skylake processors.

A $700 budget PC gets you a faster, more powerful, more versatile machine than any game console. A $1300 gaming PC gets you graphics and framerates the consoles can't hope to match, and it'll last you for years. But the PC, as a platform, is all about options—and one of those options is going above and beyond what you need in a gaming PC on the relentless quest for better graphics and better performance.

This is PC Gamer s guide to building one seriously high-end machine. Most gamers don t need this much power. This is for the multi-monitor gamers, the 1440p 120Hz gamers, the gamers who accept nothing less than maxed-out settings on even the most demanding games. Most of us don t need this kind of power, but here is it for the building. My recommended high-end rig comes in at around $2000, with room to dial back or kit it out even further based on your own needs.

With this high-end rig, I took future-proofing and upgradability seriously. Want to add in a second (or third) graphics card for even more power? You can do that. Want more RAM or SSDs than we think you need? You ve got space and ports to support them. Want to overclock your rig like crazy? The cooling has you covered.

Processor: Intel Core i7-6700K

Price: $380 on Amazon

Intel s new Skylake CPUs don t offer substantial performance gains over the previous generation, but they do offer something just as important: more PCIe lanes and support for faster storage and memory. Architectural changes mean you re set for running future PCIe-based solid state drives that blow today s SATA drives out of the water.

And they re hardly slouches when it comes to gaming performance, either. The i7 here comes at a base clock of 4GHz, and you can push that up past 4.5GHz with overclocking.

My high-end recommendation is designed around using one very powerful graphics card, with the potential of upgrading to a two-GPU SLI setup if you want the extra power. That just leaves one question: are you sacrificing performance by having two cards run at only x8 instead of x16? The answer is: no, not really. If you need convincing, check out Linus Tech Tips great video on PCIe lanes.

For our money, the Core i7-6700K is the best choice for a high-end CPU.

Motherboard: Asus Maximus VIII Hero

Price: $230 on Amazon

Like a high-end CPU, a high-end motherboard could easily cost hundreds of dollars. The most expensive motherboards tend to pile on features that I don t think are very important, even in a high-end gaming rig. That s why at $230, I think the Asus Maximus VIII Hero is the right balance of features, performance, and price. It s the sequel to our previously recommended Hero VII motherboard, with the same performance and features, plus some new bells and whistles for Skylake.

In terms of features, the Maximus VIII has new USB 3.1 ports, three x16 PCIe 3.0 slots, and a x4 PCIe M.2 slot for a speedy SSD. It uses Intel networking and has some convenient on-board buttons: power, reset, CMOS clear, and memOK. And it s a standard ATX board, so it will fit in the vast majority of PC cases.

Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series DDR4 2666 (16GB)

Price: $90 on Newegg

G.Skill is likely the best-known name in RAM for gaming rigs behind Corsair. They re consistently promoting their fastest RAM, which brings up the question: how important is RAM speed? How much speed are you getting for your money? How much money should you be spending to get speed versus quantity?

According to my research into RAM speed ( here s a great article on Anandtech), faster speeds and memory timings aren t that important, especially for gaming. You re not going to see much of a framerate difference as a result of RAM speeds. In fact, you probably won t see any framerate difference at all. RAM speed makes more of a difference in other PC tasks, but Anandtech s bottom-line advice is pretty simple: more RAM is a better upgrade than faster RAM, and RAM faster than 1600 MHz makes a small but meaningful difference.

With the upgrade to DDR4, we re getting more speed for free, and DDR4 prices have come down dramatically in the past year. G.Skill is a reliable brand, and while this 2666 RAM isn t the fastest you can get, it ll offer good performance without worry of compatibility issues.

Now, why 16GB? It s more than you strictly need for a gaming PC, but I ve been running 8GB in a number of PCs for years, now, and today I d consider it the bare minimum for anyone who uses their PC for more than gaming. If you use Photoshop, or edit video, or like to stream games, you ll see benefits from the extra RAM. It ll ensure ensure demanding games eating up 4+ GB of RAM won t be slowed down by the other applications running in the background. And 16GB is far more future proof: in a year or two, 16GB will likely be the standard. It s a worthy investment. 32GB is overkill: more than you ll use for gaming in the next half decade, and certainly not worth the money.

Graphics card: MSI GTX 980 Ti Gaming 6G

Price: $660 on Amazon

The GTX 980 Ti. It's the most powerful single-GPU card around and goes neck-and-neck with the AMD Fury X, with an extra 2GB of memory on its side. You can easily get by with a regular GTX 980, our previous recommendation; the 980 Ti is overkill for a lot of games, especially at 1080p resolution. But maxing out some games like GTA5 will find them hungry for more than 4GB of VRAM (even though they still perform just fine with a smaller memory pool), and that trend will only continue. The 980 Ti isn t the best price-per-dollar card out there, but it s an absolute beast, delivering nearly the same performance as the $1000 Titan X at a much lower price. If you're gaming at 1440p or 144 Hz, you'll appreciate the extra performance of the 980 Ti.

You can read more about the 980 Ti in our review.

And why MSI's GTX 980 Ti? It's one of the most affordable 980 models at $670 and has universally positive reviews. It's extremely quiet and even spins its fans down entirely when idling. Best of all, MSI's card is overclocked out of the box but that overclock can easily be pushed further. Thanks to good binning, it can crack the 1500 MHz mark.

Power supply: EVGA Supernova 850 watt G2 80 Plus Gold

Price: $140 on Newegg

For a high-end gaming rig, a power supply should meet three criteria: reliable, modular (and thus pleasant to build with), and beefy enough to support a pair of powerful GPUs. The EVGA 850 checks all of those boxes. It has a five-star average on Newegg and is 80 Plus Gold certified, making it very efficient when drawing large amounts of power. And at 850 watts, it can handle even a pair of power-hungry graphics cards.

Primary storage: Samsung 950 Pro SSD (250GB)

Price: $180 on Amazon

For a high-end system, I m not satisfied with the speeds of your average SATA SSD. And since the motherboard I recommended has an M.2 port, it s worth putting to use with Samsung's brand new 256GB M.2 SSD. The x4 PCIe 256GB model takes advantage of Skylake's new memory speeds to push past the limitations of SATA with sequential write speeds of over 900 MB/s and read speeds over 2000 MB/s. Damn, that s fast.

Secondary storage: Samsung 850 EVO (500GB)

Price: $150 on Amazon

256GB is a good size for a system drive, but today s biggest games can take up more than 50GB of storage. That ll eat up a 256GB SSD really quickly. On top of the M.2 SSD, I recommend a secondary 500GB drive for storing tons of games and other files without sacrificing performance. The Samsung 850 EVO is my go-to affordable SATA SSD, with great sequential R/W speeds of over 500 MB/s.

And if you need even more storage for music, photos, and other personal files, the Western Digital Black is the HDD I d recommend. The speed of the Black drive gives you plenty of storage, still at a good price, without poor I/O performance.

CPU cooler: Corsair H90

Price: $90 on Amazon

For my budget and mid-range builds, I recommended the great Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO air cooler. Air coolers really can keep your system just as cool as they need to be, even when they re overclocked. But closed-loop liquid coolers pose one major advantage: they re much better at getting your processor back down to idle temperatures very quickly. For an overclocked i7-6700K, that s worth the extra money.

I recommend the Corsair H90 as an affordable, reliable liquid cooler that s easy to install. It uses a single 140mm radiator, but still delivers great performance even stacked up against some 240mm radiators. In Anandtech s massive cooler roundup, the H90 got top marks for being quiet even spinning at full speed. And even with a heavy system load, it ll keep your CPU chillin at around 30C.

Disc drive: LG Blu-ray reader

Price: $35 on Amazon

A high-end gaming rig might as well have a Blu-ray drive for reading and ripping discs, right? If so, this LG Blu-ray drive costs less than $50 and has received near-unanimously positive reviews on Amazon.

If you don t care about Blu-ray, I recommend a cheap $21 Asus DVD R/W drive, just for that occasional disc you need to throw into your machine.

Cases: 

It's good news and bad news for the besieged settlers of the planet Shear: Four new monster hunters are about to join the Evolve fray, but so is the Behemoth.

In a surprise twist, the settlers didn't have to call in these hunters, because they were already there! I'm not sure what the practical impact of using home-grown talent will be ("absolutely nothing" is my bet) but in any event, here they are, along with their unique, inspirational quotes/battlecries.

Torvald, Assault: "I have crossed the depths of space to find you, beast! I am your death!"

- The mutilated survivor of a monster attack, Torvald is a "half-human walking tank," with back-mounted mortar cannons, an autofire shotgun, and shrapnel grenades.

Crow, Trapper: "These things are tough... Wonder how they taste."

- Crow has a trained Batray named Gobi that will fly ahead and enable him to "see" nearby creatures.

Slim, Medic: "You've got too much health, Goliath! Gimme some!"

- A highly specialized combat medic, Slim's DNA has been modified so extensively that he now looks like Jeff Goldblum.

Sunny, Support: "Yay! We did it! Why didn t anyone believe me? You guys are such downers."

- Sunny has a jetpack booster that enables her teammates to fly farther and faster.

All four new hunters are included in the Hunting Season Pass, which sells for $25, or will be purchasable separately for $7.50 each. Joining them will be the Behemoth, revealed in January as literally the biggest monster Turtle Rock could make, which will be free for everyone who preordered the game and sell for $15 otherwise.

The International is less than six months away. That doesn't feel quite right—I'm pretty sure last year's tournament was two weeks ago, but whatever. It's coming in August, it's very likely to be back at KeyArena in Seattle, and a lot of fans, myself included, will be looking for the event to recapture a bit of the spirit that was lost in 2014.

That's not to say that TI4 was a bad event—not at all. It felt like a much bigger deal than the Benaroya Hall Internationals did. The scope of everything involved was larger, from the prize pool to the merchandise. But it was also a colder event, less intimate, which perhaps goes with the increase in size but does not necessarily need to. Having more fans in the building should make for a more energetic show, but TI4 moved in the opposite direction.

With that in mind, there are a few changes I'd like to see this year. The key thing, though, is that the Valve need to re-establish an understanding of what type of event The International is. Esports tournaments traditionally fall somewhere on a spectrum between 'fan convention' and 'sporting event', and Dota 2 has been no exception to that. In the main, however, it comes down closer to 'sporting event', with less emphasis on things like cosplay competitions and, over time, a reduced focus on the Steam Workshop or voice actor meet-and-greets.

TI4's biggest problems emerged when the 'convention' part of the equation started to intrude upon the 'sport' part. That's where I'd start.

Rethink the Secret Shop

If you needed any more evidence that cosmetic items have a strange, powerfully detrimental affect on esports, look at last year's International. The Secret Shop was a very slick, efficient operation with a two part ordering system designed to move people in with their money and back out with their stuff as fast as possible.

Even this, however, was not enough to prevent the line for the Secret Shop from occupying most of KeyArena's mezzanine for the full duration of every day. When huge chunks of your audience are standing in line for hats (actual hats, this time) rather than watching the sport they came to see, something has gone wrong. Unless you're trying to create a live-action version of the Year Beast event, in which case good job.

The issue is ultimately that the Secret Shop will always draw people away from the main event regardless of how efficient it becomes. The lure of hats is like a gas; it expands to fill the available space. The only answer, I think, is to turn the Secret Shop into a mail order service. You should order and pay for goods online and, in the case of International-specific items, be given a collection time at the event when you can go and pick up your stuff. If you miss it, have general 'free for all' periods at the end of the day when all of the games have been played.

The Secret Shop needs to become something that you jump up from your seat and do in 20 minutes between games, not something you commit an afternoon to. And that means giving Valve as much control as possible over how many people arrive and when. Ultimately, it'd be awesome if they looked into something like Disney's MagicBand. They have the resources for it, after all.

Every team plays on the main stage

I hope that this one is already in the bag: after all, this year's event will run for a full six days. The problem with 2014's structure was that it underestimated the value of pre-existing narratives to sport. They can be limiting, sometimes: teams, scenes and metagames change, and fans should be encouraged to change along with them and not expect the same 'el clasico' matches every year.

On the other hand, those events have a unifying effect that helps the community cohere. Even if it takes place in the opening stages of a long bracket, people will pack the stands to watch EG vs. Secret as they would have packed the stands for Na'Vi vs. Alliance last year. You need those moments, and you can't reliably get them if the majority of the tournament happens in a hotel a week before the live event.

Having a structure that guarantees at least one main stage game for every team vastly reduces the risk involved. Functionally, it insures the tournament against sudden changes—which is exactly what happened in 2014, when the competitive meta shifted a few times and left fan-favourite teams behind. I'd say that was less likely this year, but it's never off the table and the event needs to account for it.

Figure out how to make All Star matches work

They're such a no-brainer on paper, but it's weird how often just-for-fun 'All Star' matches fall flat. There's a lot to account for: players not being invested in the games, the audience feeling disconnected from whatever is going on in the booths, the games running too long, the games running too short, the showrunners having a particular gag in mind, and so on.

There are two I can think of has having worked well: The International 2013 and The Summit 2. In both cases it's because there's a strong link between the teams and the audience—either directly, in TI3's case, or implied by BTS' 'this could be happening in your house' deal.

That's harder to achieve in a larger arena, and it can be a real energy-sapper if the match enters a slow midgame—which is what happened last year. Nontheless, I don't think gimmicks are the solution—the solution is ensuring that the players are into it and that the audience get a sense of that. Part of that is down to the selection of players (which may well be down to a Compendium vote) and part of it is down to timing. If there isn't a time when it makes sense to have an All Star event without eating into players' schedules, it might not be worth doing.

All Star matches are, ultimately, part of the 'fan convention' part of the equation—and you can tell when it's being treated like an obligation rather than a fun diversion. Like The International as a whole, what I'd like to see in 2015 is an approach that identifies what makes these events special and makes a concerted effort to not only capture that spirit, but ultimately exceed it. The odd slightly-flat event is fine, but two in a row signifies a troubling loss of momentum.

To read more Three Lane Highway, click here.

This weekend the home of British esports, the Gfinity Arena, will host a titanic showdown between Counter-Strike: Global Offensive greats. The CS:GO Spring Masters include world-renowned teams Cloud 9, Team Orbit, Team Envyus, Ninjas in Pyjamas, Virtus.Pro, Gamers2 and Team Infused, who are flying in to battle for a $50,000 prize pool at the UK's first dedicated esports arena in London. How would you like to witness the action first-hand?

The event kicks off on Friday evening and runs all day Saturday and Sunday. Tickets are available now from just 12.50 and grant you access to the action at the Gfinity Arena at Vue Fulham Broadway. It's a great chance to share the drama of an intense CS:GO competition with a crowd of Counter-Strike aficionados, and to witness the birth of a big new fixture on the CS:GO circuit.

The arena features three custom-built stages with comfy seats for 600 spectators the perfect environment to relax and absorb the spectacle. The arena is designed to support all kinds of gaming competition, and the CS:GO Spring Masters is just one in a series of exciting upcoming fixtures in the coming months. Keep an eye out for the StarCraft II Spring masters later this month, the Call of Duty open in April and tense tactical card combat in the Hearthstone Spring Masters 2 later in April.

If you can't make it down to London this weekend, there's no need to miss a shot. You can keep up with all the action on Gfinity's dedicated Twitch channel, where you'll also find recordings of all the action from recent Hearthstone Spring Masters and more live coverage of Gfinity's upcoming events. With $50,000 on the line, there's no substitute for seeing the real thing close up, however. Grab your tickets now!

[Update: Konami and Kojima have released a joint statement on the future of the Metal Gear series. Read more here.]

The "A Hideo Kojima Game" message is a familiar tagline for Kojima Productions titles, but the message, and the Kojima Productions logo, have been removed from Metal Gear Solid 5 imagery on the new MGS5 website, which has been relaunched as part of Konami.com. The Kojima Productions Twitter account is now a generic Metal Gear Solid 5 Twitter account, and Eurogamer note that Hideo Kojima has disappeared from Konami's list of corporate officers.

The change, spotted by posters on  NeoGaf and Reddit, arrives during a planned move to a "headquarters-controlled" company structure. A Konami statement to Videogamer attempts to reassure MGS fans. "Konami Digital Entertainment, including Mr. Kojima, will continue to develop and support Metal Gear products. Please look forward to future announcements."

Kojima himself has said nothing, though much is being made of a  cryptic tweet he made on Monday. He does tweet this sort of thing all the time, however. He also recently said that "with Metal Gear Solid 5, I'm finally closing the loop on that saga. Even if the Metal Gear saga continues, to me this is the last Metal Gear." Again, he says that a lot.

Has Kojima split with Konami? Is this a some sort of meta Kojima stunt? What does any of this mean for Koj Prod's Silent Hills game? It could just be an extensive rebranding exercise on Konami's part, though it's odd to remove the name of such a respected designer from packaging when he's such an integral part of Metal Gear's identity. We'll have to wait on Konami's "future announcements".

I'll leave you with Kojima's most cryptic public statement, the deeper meaning of which we've yet to discern nearly three years later. MGS 5 is out on September 15 this year.

UPDATE: An anonymous source has told Gamespot that Kojima Productions and its owner/publisher, Konami, have suffered some kind of falling out, and that senior staff at the studio have had their access to corporate communications, internet, and telephone restricted. Limits have also been placed on how they will be allowed to promote the upcoming Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain. The changes leave Kojima and other members of the studio effectively working as contractors rather than Konami employees, and it's now expected that once MGS5 is completed, the studio will disband.

In a statement sent to IGN, however, Konami indicated that Kojima is not leaving. "As we have already announced, we are shifting our production structure to a headquarters-controlled system, in order to establish a steadfast operating base capable of responding to the rapid market changes that surround our digital entertainment business," a representative said. "Konami Digital Entertainment (including Mr. Kojima), will continue to develop and support Metal Gear products. Please look forward to future announcements."

It's well-known that Kojima has mused about walking away from Konami and Metal Gear Solid in the past, leading to suggestions that this latest outburst is more of the same: Another "bluff" that ultimately won't lead to anything. Over at GamesRadar+, however, Dan Dawkins argues that this could actually be the end—and that it might not be a bad thing.

"'This is good, isn't it?' says Big Boss, chewing on a final cigar, in his final words. What is good? The cigar? The game which at the time we thought might be Kojima's last? The final moments with his son? It hardly matters, but in the fading of an icon, Kojima brings us away from the pompous complexity of the series', and into a beautiful human moment and in walking away from MGSV, we could expect a very human reaction to his departure. A point of reflection, allowing us to consider all that we have lost," he wrote.

"How would Kojima spend his time if he only had one year left? 'Right now I'm making MGSV. I would do just about anything to keep on making the project, I'd sell body parts, whatever I had to do. But if I only had one year left, I think my answer would be different. I think I'd like to stop exploring games and maybe make a movie, or write a book. I would also like to go into space. You know, things like that.'"

The full article is a good analysis and an entertaining read—well worth your time, even if you're not a fan.