Web entrepreneur Jeff Atwood, who first highlighted the ads, writes that they "take advertising on the internet to the absolute rock bottom," and toward the moronic, hypersexualized future foretold in Mike Judge's movie Idiocracy.

Yes, sure, inevitable cultural and intellectual decline of America, whatever. Vulgarians that we are, we're far more burned up by the game's false advertising: After all that flesh, there's not actually a "queen" to "save" in the game! The boobage was strictly for "marketing purposes," according to Evony. Now that's something you can (probably!) sue over.

The first ad emphasized Evony's pedigree as a clone of the strategy game Civilization, in which the player must "build an empire to stand the test of time."

The next picture used a stolen catalog photo to emphasize the game's ample... opportunities for adventure!

But that ad really didn't convey the teamwork aspect of the game. To get across the "cooperation" theme, what could be better than hot twins?? The word "lover," perhaps. There's your ad!

The words "my lord" in prior ads really didn't properly convey a player's dominion over buxom females as well as a kneeling woman with an exposed bra and a sword pointed at her chest. But we'd have gone with, "buy our game or we stab this hot lady" for the tagline, here, as it's really more direct than "Help! Save the Queen," but without distorting the original message.

Oh, forget about saving the queen. So much work! Click here to just have wench sex and rule the world, already.

The orgasmic wench-elf and the kneeling queen and the lusty court twins were all too subtle, it turns out. Click here to play the boob game!* (*Game does not actually involve boobs). (This is an actual ad.) [Coding Horror]

What the game does is provide an incentive for people to develop new software and ideas for collaborative production. Many of those ideas will translate to other group activities, including those within the business world. I think [massively multiplayer online games] will be, at a minimum, a significant testbed for these new technologies, because users see a direct benefit and are willing to experiment with new things.

(Photo by Brian Solis)

Former president of Dennis Publishing (Maxim, Blender, etc) Steven Colvin will soon be leaving his year-old postion as head of CNET / CBS Interactive entertainment and lifestyle division (Gamespot, mp3.com, tv.com, Chow, etc). Within the department, Colvin is widely believed to be the "brains" behind Jeff Gerstman's unceremonious canning last December. Just before the firing, Colvin spent hours in a meeting with Eidos attempting to salvage the relationship after Gerstman's negative review of Kane and Lynch. No word on if this departure is volunary or not, but his role is being taken over by CBSi COO Steve Snyder, which might be indicative of hardly-unexpected "restructuring" occuring sooner rather than later. Control of one of the department's largest assets, tv.com, was recently transfered out of the department.

There was also an annoucement today that CNET's extremely generous vacation hours package will be discontinued after this year, sick time hours will be reduced, health care providers will be changed, and benefits cut for "opposite-sex domestic partners", in order to be "consistent with CBS' company-wide poilcy".

On the plus side, parking fees can now be paid pre-tax.

the terrible irony, shawn rose should never have been hired to run tv in the first place, as he talks and talks his way into all kinds of crazy shit. now another suit replaces the suit they booted, and this one's wearing purple. he literally got nothing done at Y, and to date, has done nothing at CNET

another examaple of how over-puffed-up yahoos wiggle into new digs and maintain that same level of low-productivity and paper pushing...

i'm a former cneter with friends at both companies, and it's just sad to see a good (though embroiled) talent like Larson go, for a sucker like Rose - all my contacts on the inside are literally scratching their heads... totally blindsided the team... they feel like chumps because no one told them this was coming

if Rose gets you in a room, he doesn't shut up... talks and talks, and his claim to fame that he'll invariably bring up to everyone he meets, is that he created some search engine that he sold to AltaVista some 10 years ago. Something I'm sure he made a few bucks on, enough to buy a small bit of vineyard up north, but something that is so entirely irrelevant to any current internet job it's laughable

She writes that Trevett sent her a platinum American Express card to cover expenses on a trip to Vietnam. But she captioned a photo of herself holding the card, "Guess who loves this douchebag?" Before, maybe it was just Piggy, Chinh. But even though we're not sure quite what's going on here, you can count us as fans, too.

Readers posted an astounding 485,393 comments across our 15 sites in February. That puts the average at 16,738 comments per day, which is the highest activity level we've ever seen across Gawker properties.

At 219 million pageviews, traffic declined softly but continues to show momentum. Setting aside the January spike, growth from December to February held strong at 29%. Contributing heavily to this increase — Kotaku (33.8m), Jezebel (16.4m), Consumerist (10.8m), and Valleywag (4.4m) with their highest monthly numbers ever.

Takeaways? Last month's noisy news events may have exited, but publishing and reader activity on Gawker properties continue to chug along, month over month.

In Forumwarz, you don't play something stupid like a dwarf. You play something stupid like an Internet user, who goes to forums, wreaks havoc, gets points for lowering the quality of discourse to nil, and repeats. This gives the satisfaction of acting like a moron without the repercussions of actually screwing around on the web. Your constant raiding of Internet forums like YouBoob ("You'll spend hours searching for pornography at YouBoob - but you'll never find any!") and Fanfiction Freaks builds you "cred" and helps the secret plans of a shadowy Illuminati figure who gives you new quests.

Forumwarz knows its stuff. The game references 4chan, Fark, emo kids, camwhores, Ron Paul, and everything else that makes the Internet beautifully stupid. Blogger Andy Baio, who interviewed the game's creator, says there's even a minigame riffing off R. Kelly's "Trapped In The Closet."

The gameplay is actually simple and well thought-out. The copy is clever. And because users can create new levels, the jokes don't run out. If Kingdom of Loathing wasn't witty enough for you, and you'd rather be caught watching porn than playing World of Warcraft, give it a little try.

Forumwarz! Interact with the web's greatest intelligences and wits!

A vegetarian-owned and managed emerging sports games startup in San Francisco is looking to hire vegetarian software development interns for summer 2008 (and potentially beyond) who are interested in entrepreneurship and promoting vegetarianism. We were founded by experienced entrepreneurs and venture capitalists with a track record of success, and deep technical and business experience at top companies in the industry, such as Microsoft and Square Enix, as well as consulting experience at McKinsey. Our management team includes MIT-educated computer scientists and Wharton and INSEAD MBAs.

Interns will join an experienced team developing a new product that will redefine its segment in the sports gaming space.

Interns will have the opportunity to work with experienced entrepreneurs across many facets of a startup business. Roles include a breadth of responsibilities, including:
* Development in C++, high-performance network programming, and 3D graphics development
* User interface and game play design
* Unit and user testing

The successful candidate will be proficient in C or C++, creative, have a strong work ethic, and be an enthusiastic learner. This paid internship will provide significant development opportunities, as well as an opportunity to experience a broad range of roles in a startup company.

Please submit resumes and enquiries to <vegprogjob@bigfoot.com>

Who knew EA had so much money to spare for a chap who owns $37 million worth of EA stock, including options? EA continues to bleed cash, lay off workers, and shut down studios. And yet it can take care of Riccitiello.

We've seen the perils of tech-obsession firsthand: Earlier this month a reader emailed to complain about a business dinner she attended, where "there was music, champagne, the food was amazing, the setting lavish. But did the men at my table pay any attention? No. They were all playing with their iPhones." And she's not the only one to forfeit male attention to Steve Jobs. Our very own guest columnist, Heather declared herself an iPhone widow last year. "Wherein we used to actually interact with one another during cab rides or walks or, you know, dinner," Heather lamented, "Now I sit there and watch him make love to that damn phone, his unblinking eyes glazed over with rapt-geek puppy love."

But guys aren't the only ones with geek love to go around. My own boyfriend tried to ban laptops after work hours in our household. The first day he made me go cold turkey and I was relegated to answering emails on my BlackBerry in the bathroom. Since then I've maybe gone one night without perusing the internet for at least ten minutes. But I'm not addicted at all! Though if someone destroyed my wireless network I would cut them in a hot second.

"Technology Overload" Can Ruin Relationships: Expert [Reuters]

Earlier: The iPhone is Cool and All, But Can You Stick Your Dick in It?

I'm not talking merely about tech and gaming journalists who write about sex and porn. Wired is doing its job when it analyzes the business of porn; Gizmodo is just playing when its staff leaves the CES tech conference for the AVN porn conference next door to poke fun at the dildos. Gaming journalism doesn't need to sanitize itself; gaming gets dirty and so should the writing. Plus, well, I wanna read about sex.

What needs to stop is the boy's club, in which women are only featured as sex objects. Forget being offended by it; I'm just sick of it — if I want titillation, I'll go to porn or, you know, an actual woman. Maybe I'll read Esquire, where they at least pretend to respect an actress's work before showing off her calves. See, it's not just that gaming journalism is obsessed with sexy women, it's that the obsession takes such an awkward form. The practice is found all over the industry. Some examples:

• Porn Stars Love Video Games! Popular site GameDaily interviews porn stars about whether their boyfriends can play video games, and which game characters they'd like to get with. In the interest of service journalism, each micro-interview is smaller than the photo of the porn star above it. (No male stars, natch, but then again who ever wanted to hear something from the mouth of a male porn actor?) GameDaily also wants you to read "Babe of the Week" and "The Most Outrageous Boobs in Gaming."
• Strip Halo 3: Porn stars get naked on video while playing a shoot-em-up with ugly guys.
• Shooting Range: Industry leader Electronic Gaming Monthly sent a team of girl gamers to a shooting range to test their real-life skills. Am I picky for being annoyed that they were chosen for hotness?
• Digital Lust: Now folded, Gamestar Magazine was an unapologetic tits-and-games mag. These "behind the scenes" photos from a holiday gift guide shoot looked so much like the start of a soft porn gallery, I felt surprised when I scrolled to the bottom and saw the model still had some lingerie on.
• Gaming's kinkiest costumes: "Got a fantasy? Chances are there's a game to match," promises this gallery from Games Radar. The copy is full of "then go talk to a real girl" asides, which only make it sadder that the site is so desperately reaching for the never-touched-a-girl audience.

The industry is addicted. Like a GOP presidential candidate, they're too afraid of losing the base to appeal to normal people with reasonable options. No wonder they're losing attention to mainstream coverage (who says GQ can't review video games?) and sites like Penny Arcade, a biting comic and review site in which a pre-teen girl — the niece of one of the authors — is the maturest, most capable gamer. Gawker Media's gaming site Kotaku, says editor Brian Crecente, goes out of its way to stop boy's-club coverage. Both sites have enjoyed years of rising traffic.

Sure, it's probably unhealthy to train men to treat women as sex objects. Screw that, it's unhealthy to the industry to alienate half its audience, and likely most of the other half too, particularly the part that's not living in its Mom's basement with little disposable income. We're not aching for a flash of tit from a girl made of polygons; we're not desperate to hear that our favorite girl from Bang Brothers wants to cuddle with Raiden from Mortal Kombat. We have money, we consider ourselves normal and maybe even cool, and we want to buy video games that don't suck.

Chuck Klosterman asked in 2006 why there was no Lester Bangs of video games. Writer Clive Thompson answered the cultural critic in Wired News: A. No one would hire him; B. He's already here and he writes Penny Arcade; C. The research takes too long; and D. The medium needs a new approach. I say E: The 18-year-old future Lester Bangs of video games is at some site being forced to compile "Twenty Hottest Asses of Xbox 360."

I've had a pet project I've been working on for years, three of them if my memory is right. It started as a simple idea: You can judge a lot from a person's desk. I bet you could judge just as much from their home entertainment system. So I decided it would be fun to try and track down some pictures from the work desks and home gaming set-ups of the people who work in and cover the video game industry. Simple right? Not so much.

Turns out that many of the people are either too busy or too private to want to participate in such a project. To make matters worse, there's always fear that something sitting on someone's desk, that ends up in a photo, could actually be news worthy. Like a secret project or the next big thing. But I didn't give up and about once a year I'd harass a bunch of game developers for photos. Finally, this year, the harassment paid off.

What started as a trickle of photos turned quickly into the collection of galleries you'll find on the jump: More than 40 different photo galleries from 17 studios, seven publications, two industry movers and shakers and a couple of fun surprises.

You'll get to see the desk of such greats as Sid Meier, Peter Molyneux and Tetsuya Mizuguchi along with plenty of others. Remember you can comment both on the next page and on each individual photo if you click on them.

If I find there is interest, I will try to periodically update this gallery of galleries with more developers, journalists and industry movers and shakers. Have fun.

DEVELOPERS
2K Games

ASTRO Gaming

Buzz Monkey Software

Capcom

Eat, Sleep, Play

Electronic Arts

Firaxis Games

Flying Lab Software

Gearbox Software

Harmonix Music

Incognito Entertainment

Insomniac Games

Kojima Productions

Lionhead Studios

NanaOn-Sha

Naughty Dog

NCSoft

NetDevil

Neversoft Entertainment

Ninja Theory

Pandemic Studios

Petroglyph Games

THQ

Q Entertainment

JOURNALISTS

Blue's News

BoingBoing

EGM

The Escapist

GameLife

Joystiq

Kotaku

MTV

Slashdot Games

VE3D

VH1

INDUSTRY FOLK

MISCELLANIES
I AM 8-BIT

Penny Arcade

Whorecraft

Video Games Live

Which writer’s father bought a Playstation 3 specifically to play Grand Theft Auto 4?

One analyst remarks, "Everyone argued that games would be distributed online ... but these guys stuck to their game plan." That's true, but GameStop's success is mostly due to the nascent state of digital distribution. Broadband is still too slow, and console hard drives are still too small. Those limitations hinder the sale of full-length, multiple-gigabyte games. GameStop's success has been a matter of luck as much as timing. Playing videogames has grown as a mainstream obsession even faster than the broadband pipes that were supposed to make GameStop's business model obsolete. That, and it's still really hard to download a Wii. (Photo by maulleigh)

Traffic is down from last month's mega-high, but still well above September's record. 167,377,226 across the network for November. And our uniques continue to increase, 23.9m globally this month according to Quantcast. New highs for Valleywag, Consumerist, Kotaku and Jezebel.

Looking for something a bit less spiteful? Take a look at our full catalog of shirts, including Yes, I'm Quietly Judging You, New York: If You Can Make It Here, You Must Have a Trust Fund, and Douché.

We have plenty of other shirts, too, including Yes, I'm Quietly Judging You, New York: If You Can Make It Here, You Must Have a Trust Fund, and I Hate Your Kids.

Douché [The Gawker Shop]

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