One of the biggest console gaming tournament organizations is moving into the PC game tournament space. Major League Gaming just announced plans to start up the MLG PC Circuit and has wisely decided to use the biggest current PC multiplayer game World of Warcraft as its basis.

The plan is to begin at the MLG's San Diego tournament on June 13-15 and use Blizzard's MMO World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade for players with a total of over $20,000 in cash to be given out to the winners. The MLG will use HP's Blackbird 002 PCs as their tournament systems. World of Warcraft tournament swill also be held later in the year in Orlando and Dallas and more PC games could be added in the future to the circuit. With the recent shut down in operations for the PC based Cyberathlete Professional League and the World Series of Video Games, it's good news that Major League Gaming is recognizing that there is a large PC gaming tournament market that is currently underutilized in this country.

Remember Fury? The fantasy PvP oriented MMO from Auran that has a massive marketing campaign last fall before completing bombing with both critics and players? Well, the development team may have been drastically reduced and the game itself turned into a free-to-play title but Fury is still being updated with new content. Last week the developers announced a new promotional push for Fury with a new PvP league with real money to be given out to players.

Fury League is basically a way for players to earn real money by playing against others in PvP matches. The league has already begun with a qualifying season with $25,000 to be given out in two different competitive ladders later in May. It's also designed as a precursor to the actual launch of Fury League in June. Every game that is played earns a free game ticket for the Fury League launch. So will this new push get more people to play the game? It certainly can't do any worse.

[Via Blue's News]

Uwe Boll. You love to hate him and you certainly hate to love him. The German movie director behind such films as House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark and the upcoming Postal and Far Cry films (to name just a few) has been responsible for some of the worst reviewed movies ever made, video and PC game based or otherwise. A recent chat with Boll on the Fearnet web site, however, gave a ray of hope for those folks who want him out of the film business. He said he would consider a move to stop making movies if an online petition asking him to do that very thing reached 1 million signatures. So far, about 234,000 name are on that site.

Now Stride, the gum company, has announced a unique way to promote their product. Basically if the "Stop Uwe Boll" petition reaches that 1 million number by May 14 Stride will give each petition signer a downloadable coupon for one free pack of Stride gum. That coupon will be made available on May 23 which just happens to be the release date for Boll's Postal film adaptation. According to Stride's marketing director Gary Osifchin, ""Look, it's nothing personal against the guy. Maybe his non videogame-based films are unbelievable! But we've seen such intense passion for this cause that we couldn't help but get involved." Of course this is no guarantee that Boll will indeed stop making movies; he's free to ignore this movement. But hey, it's a cool way to promote gum, don't you think?

The folks at Massive Entertainment may be working on the upcoming Soviet Assault expansion to their terrific 2007 alternate history RTS game World in Conflict but the dev team will now also take some time to judge the entries in the just announced official World in Conflict map making contest. People can now take the official map editor for the game and submit their best work in the contest. Massive will judge them and put their favorite in a "future World in Conflict product."

The grand prize winner will also receive $1,000 cash for his or her efforts. Four runners-up will get an Nvidia 8800 series video card. Those runners-up will be chosen for each of four categories; Best Domination Map, Best Tug of War Map, Best Assault Map and most interestingly Best Use of DirectX10. Massive dev team members might even give you some advice on your maps and allow you to resubmit them with their input. That's pretty classy of them. The deadline for entries is June 29.

People are always asking, "Are PC and video games true works of art?" The folks who create artwork for games would certainly say, "Yes!". The industry gets to prove that every year with the Into The Pixel game art exhibition where traditional art galleries meet the game world. The 2008 edition is now taking entries for this year's exhibition that's co-sponsored by the Entertainment Software Association and the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences.

Artists that are employed by the game industry can submit their entries for the exhibition by May 21 where they will be judged by a panel that includes people like Oddworld Inhabitants' Lorne Lanning, NCsoft's art director Daniel Dociu and more. A preview of the final exhibit will be displayed during E3 this July in Los Angeles and the full exhibition will be shown during the 2008 E for All Expo on Oct. 3-5.

There's one thing that's better than getting Mass Effect for the PC and that's getting the game for $10 below its standard price. Electronic Arts has announced just that kind of a deal for people who pre-order the game from retailers like Gamestop, Amazon and GoGamer.

If you decided to pre-order the game from the EA online store, you won't get that $10 discount. You will get some extra items from Dead Space, EA's upcoming sci-fi survival horror title. The extra items will include the first issue of the Dead Space prequel comic from Image Comics. So...get the game for $10 less or some extra stuff for a game that you may not have heard about? The choice is yours.

While the folks at ArenaNet have been busy working on the upcoming Guild Wars 2, they haven't forgotten players of their original multiplayer action-RPG title. This week, the first Guild Wars celebrates its third anniversary with a sweepstakes that anyone can join in.

You will need to go to the official Guild Wars web site between now and May 31 to be entered into the sweepstakes and you don't even have to play the game to enter the contest (there is an optional survey but if you wish you can skip over the questions). The grand prize is an Alienware Area 51 laptop PC with Logitech speakers, keyboards, mice,and Creative sound cards also being given away. If you are a player look for special in-game events being held today including fireworks, special gifts for long-standing players and much more.

It's a rather unusual move when a major game publisher openly asks for developers to turn in a proposal for a game. But that's exactly what European based Jowood is doing today with the announcement that it is seeking a game development team to create a new action-RPG for the PC and other platforms.

There's not much info on what the game will be like except that it will be based on a previous Jowood game franchise. Could it be another Gothic title or maybe Spellforce or perhaps even a Painkiller based game? If you want your shot at developing this game you can contact Jowood as well as sign and then fax over an NDA agreement. The deadline for proposals is May 15 so there's not a lot of time to get your ideas in order.

It was perhaps the most popular and most successful gaming mod contests ever run and now we have a sequel. Epic Games recently announced the launch of the new Make Something Unreal mod contest using the PC version of their sci-fi shooter Unreal Tournament 3. The original Make Something Unreal contest yielded a ton of imaginative mods for Unreal Tournament 2003/2004 and some actually turned into full fledged commercial games.

The overall winner of the first contest, Tripwire Interactive's WWII shooter Red Orchestra, morphed into a stand alone game that has gotten a small but very loyal audience. It was recently announced that a runner-up in the last contest, Blue Omega's wield western shooter Damnation, would also be released as a stand alone game via Codemasters. Epic Games is teaming up with sponsor Intel to give people who win the various phases and categories over $1 million in cash and prizes. The grand prize, which will be awarded in fall 2009, will be a full Unreal Engine 3 license to the winning mod team. Of course we will be following the contest and its winners in the months ahead.

PC gamers who participate in professional tournaments are sometimes looked down upon by some in the media but the Championship Gaming Series has decided to put more legitimacy into the sport by teaming up with the government of Wuhan, China to launch the Wuhan Optical Valley Electronic Sports Stadium. Yep, it's a permanent structure devoted solely to training and tournament play for eSports; the CGS plans to hold their 2008 Pan-Asia Final at the facility in late April-early May. The Cyberathlete Professional League once talked about building a similar eSports stadium; however that was well before the CPL shut down its business earlier this month.