Joel Durnham of extremetech.com informs that in a panel discussion at the Game Developer's Conference 2007, the idea of PC game viability was discussed by a quintet of industry folks that include: Xbox Live Arcade's David Edery, Electronic Arts' Richard Hilleman, Firaxis' Soren Johnson, Epic Games' Michael Capps, and Obsidian Entertainment's Chris Avallone.

As well as the usual PC gaming competing with console gaming debate that's been ongoing for years now, the effect of piracy on the PC gaming market was discussed. Capps in particular notes that PC Gaming is really falling apart and even though it "killed" them to make Unreal Tournament 3 cross-platform, Epic had to do it.

The reason for going multiplatform, of course, is piracy. Big AAA titles usually get stolen and, as Capps says, the market that would buy a US$ 600 video card also knows how BitTorrent works.

The future of gaming on the PC so far looks like it is set to be dominated by "casual" games and MMOs. Of course there's nothing casual about most casual games since the average Chuzzle/Zuma addict plays for 24 hours a week. MMOs are notable since they can't be pirated - unless of course you steal the source code and run your own illegal server. However, those things are easier to monitor than burned CDs.

They also covered the fact that user-generated game content could be big for the PC since console manufacturers try to wield more control over their products.

They end the discussion by noting that even though things look grim, AAA titles might never die on the PC, and that trends are ultimately hard to predict.

Oh well, so much for the good old days.

PC World, a global computer magazine, has recently named some of the most influential people on the internet. Net heads, here's the top five of a list of those persons who move and shake the internet; we've arranged them from the fifth to the first for emphasis.

5. Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia - Admit it:  whatever piece of information that you get/cite, trivial or otherwise, often  comes from Wikipedia. It's even been cited in more than 100 US court decisions since
2004.

 4. Mike Morhaime, President of Blizzard Entertainment - Some say that there are only two MMO's: WoW, and everything else. Eight million people (and still counting) plus a chance to obtain the Blade of Eternal Justice put this guy at number 4.

3. Bram Cohen, Co founder of BitTorrent - This math and programming whiz kid put up BitTorrent, a way to download large files (like movies) by sharing the burden across hardware and bandwidth.

2. Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple -  DRM-free music and internet browsing through iPhone puts him on top - again.

1. Eric Schmidt, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin, Executives of Google - The most trafficked site on the internet is bound to influence internet users the most.

PC World, naming the Top 50 Most Important People on the Web, has placed Blizzard Entertainment's President Mike Morhaime at the top four spot in the list, sandwiched between Wikipedia and BitTorrent. Largely attributed to their blockbuster MMORPG moneymaker World of Warcraft, Morhaime has become an icon to players and critics alike. This is a big improvement since CNN rated him at the lowest four of the "Top 50 People Who Mattered July 2006".

Because of WoW, eight million online gamers look forward to grinds of several hours online, through different modes of play aside from the ordinary RPG levelling chore. Blizzard has shipped out WoW and The Burning Crusade with services provided in America, Europe and Asia. It grosses US$ 1.5 billion every year, taking it a notch higher than before.

Since he's the fourth most influential dude on the Web, perhaps you frustrated WoW folk can get him to patch up your worries. Or did he just use that influence to serve a nerf sandwich to almost every class out there?

One of the most prevalent problems plaguing online games is lag. Sometimes it gets so bad that we just have to stop playing, and when it gets even worse we can sometimes swear to ourselves that we won't ever play again (although more often than not we get right back on the MMO wagon).

This is the problem that Bigfoot Networks hopes to remedy with their new product, the Killer Network Interface Card which we already featured a few months back. To shed more light on what the Killer NIC can do, in an interview with MMORPG.com's Jon Wood, the guys from Bigfoot Networks revealed that their Killer NIC helps out in two ways: ping and frames per second. Pings get lower, while the latter gets higher.

The Killer NIC is also more versatile than the average network card. Users can actually write their own programs on the card. Programs like TeamSpeak, Ventrillo and even Bit Torrent that usually eat away at a game’s performance can be compiled to run through this new card. It even comes with an external USB 2.0 port so that you can plug in an external hard drive.

The card is especially useful when you're in a situation where there are lots of monsters and players on-screen at the same time, say during a raid. the guys from Bigfoot Networks say that this is where the Killer NIC shines most, reducing the lag that is common in these situations.

How does it perform when used in a high raid content MMO, say World of Warcraft? According to Bigfoot, as well as outside reviewers, the game sees about 9 milliseconds of improvement in latency and a 41% improvement in frames per second. Man, if this card really lives up to the hype, we're getting ours right away. We suggest you guys give it a try too.