Don't believe what you've heard—the state of Windows gaming is still strong.

Nine months after Windows 7 hit the market, Microsoft has rehabilitated its reputation on desktop PCs. The company has effectively banished memories of Vista's poor performance. Still, PC game sales have been off this year, sometimes by more than a few percentage points, depending on the study.

It's tempting to mount a passionate defense of PC games. Others are already predicting a comeback, though whether or not PC gaming really left in the first place is an open question.

Regardless, we want to offer a clearheaded look at some of the issues affecting Windows 7 gaming in mid-2010. Some issues transcend the PC; for example, a big part of the problem is the increasing amount of cash it takes to develop a top-notch game—PC, console, or otherwise. The mixed reception of a few high-profile titles like Spore and F.E.A.R. 2 can easily put the fear in game industry executives hesitant to commit $15 million to anything less than a "sure thing."

Probably now more than ever, AAA titles have an easier time receiving funding if they're part of an existing franchise, be it yet another sequel to a proven series or a tie-in to an upcoming movie. Thankfully, independent developer studios are picking up the slack wherever necessary, and are creating innovative, original IPs like Machinarium, Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved, and Torchlight, all of which are just as much fun to play as $50 titles.

Still, there's plenty of reason to be optimistic—not the least of which is killer franchises like Mass Effect and BioShock, which we certainly want sequels for. Let's go through some of the latest hardware and software developments, with a quick survey of some of the best games and platforms they're available on. We'll also offer some thoughts on digital distribution and the current state of the gaming experience on PCs.

It turns out that our hobby has matured in some ways over the past few years—and moved in a few surprising directions.

Van Gogh in Paris in March 1886 in the studio of Fernand Corman, where he studied together an apartment in the Rue de Laval Theo in Montmartre. In June, they have to climb a higher level at 54 rue Lepic. Since there is no need to communicate by letters, less is about the time of Van Gogh in Paris known as sooner or later in life. He painted several scenes of Paris street in Montmartre and other places, such as bridges over the Seine at Asnieres (1887). During his stay in Paris, with Japanese ukiyo-e prints in the woods met. His interest in this work, the dates of your stay in Antwerp in 1885, when used to decorate the walls of his study. He has collected hundreds of specimens, and several of his paintings in the background can be seen. In his portrait of 1887 shows Tanguy already exposed several on the wall behind the character. shown in the courtesan or Oiran (after iron Kesai) 91 887), Van Gogh reproduction of an illustration on the cover of Paris, then expanded in his painting. Plum Blossom (after Hiroshige) 1888 is another good example of Van Gogh's admiration for Japanese prints he collected. Your version is a bit more courage than the original.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Portrait of Vincent van Gogh (1887), drawing with pastels, Van Gogh MuseumFor months worked for Van Gogh in Corman, where he attended the circle of Anglo-Australian artist John Peter Russell, and met their Bernard Miles and Louis Anquetin and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, who created a portrait of Van Gogh in pastel shades. The group met in the paint store run by Julien Pre Tanguy, who was seen at this time the only place to the works of Paul Czanne. It would be easy access to all the works of Impressionism in Paris to have time. In 1886, two exhibitions of art, were fantastic. In these shows Neo-Impressionism their first appearanceworks Georges Seurat and Paul Signac were the talk of the town. Although accustomed to Theo, a stock of Impressionist paintings in his gallery Montmarteby Boulevard artists such as Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, Edgar Degas, Camille PissarroVincent apparently had difficulties to recognize the evolution as an artist and see the image of the region. Conflicts have arisen, and the end of 1886 was Theo shared life with Vincent almost unbearable. In the spring of 1887 had peace. He then moved to Asnires There he met Signac. With his friend Emile Bernard, who lived with his parents in Asnires, took elements of pointillism, where many small dots are applied to the canvas to give an optical mixture of colors, from a distance. The theory behind this style focuses on the value of complementarity colorsincluding orangewhich a vibrant blue and contrasts, and support one another when compared. In November 1887, Theo and Vincent met and befriended Paul Gauguin, who had just arrived in Paris. Towards the end of the year, Van Gogh has organized an exhibition of paintings by himself, Bernard, Anquetin and, probably, Toulouse-Lautrec in Montmartre in the lodge restaurant. It Anquetin Bernard and sold his first oil painting, Van Gogh and Gauguin soon left the division of labor in Pont-Aven. Discussions about art, artists, and social situations in this show started continued and expanded to include visitors at the fair, that Lucien Pissarro and his son, Signac and Seurat.
Finally, in February 1888, tired of living in Paris, was after he painted over 200 paintings during his two years in the city. hours before his departure with Theo, he paid his first and only visit to Seurat in his studio.

In April 1881 Van Gogh moved Etten, the country with his parents, where he continued drawing, as many subjects with residents. During the summer months he spent much time walking and talking with his cousin recently widowed, Kee Vos-Stricker. She was the daughter of his mother's older sister and Johannes Stricker, who had shown sympathy for the artist. Kee spent seven years older than Van Gogh had a son of eight years. He beat her, but she refused, saying: No, never, never (niet, Nooit, Never). Later in November, wrote a letter to Uncle Stricker strong, then to Amsterdam, where he crashed repeatedly with Stricker. Kee refused to see him and wrote his parents: Your persistence is disgusting. In his desperation, he had his left hand into the flame of a lamp, with the words, see Let me, as long as I can hold my hand in the fire. I do not remember exactly what 's then turned, but then it is assumed that his uncle blew out the flame. Kee's father said that was not the marriage, the inability of Van Gogh, given to economically sustainable. Van Gogh perceived hypocrisy of his uncle and former guardian, affected him deeply. That Christmas he quarreled violently with his father, how to refuse a gift of money, and went to The Hague.

Shelter, view of the Hague Workshop (1882), watercolor, private collection.In January 1882, was in The Hague, where he called his cousin-brother, the painter Anton Mauve (founded 1838C1888). Malva encouraged to paint, but the two soon, probably because the issue of making plaster casts. Malva suddenly seems cold to Van Gogh and the return of a number of letters. Van Gogh had learned from his new adopted purple interior with a prostitute, alcoholic, Clasina Mary Sien Hoornik (1850Cunknown) and his young daughter. Sien had met in late January, when she was a girl of five and pregnant women. O He was not aware of two children who had died, while Van Gogh was. On 2 July, Sien birth to a son, William. At Van Gogh's father the details of their relationship being discovered, a considerable pressure to have to visit his son and their children. Vincent Defiant was the first face of the opposition. Uncle Cornelis van Gogh, an art dealer, service on 20 Ink drawings of the city, the artist in late May, June completed, spent three weeks in hospital suffering from gonorrhea. This summer, he began painting in oil. In fall 1883, after a year together, laissez-being and two children. Van Gogh had thought of moving the family to the city, but after the break. It is possible that the lack of money had been pushed back, has become home prostitutionthe Sien, the less fortunate and feel good, the Van Gogh family life compatible with his artistic development is not. When he left, Sien gave her daughter to her mother and the baby to his brother William. Later he moved to Delft and Antwerp. Willem remembered taken to visit his mother in Rotterdam at the age of 12 years, where his uncle tried to persuade Sien to marry in order to legitimize the child. Willem remembered his mother said, But I know who the father. He was an artist who has lived almost 20 years in The Hague. His name was Van Gogh. She then turned to Willem and said You are demanded of him. Willem Van Gogh, the son of look, but the time of birth, therefore, unlikely. In 1904 Sien drowned in his own hand on the Scheldt. Van Gogh went to the Dutch province of Drenthe in northern Holland. In December, driven by loneliness, he went along with their parents, who at that time in Nuenen, Noord-Brabant were to live.

Vincent Willem van Gogh was born 30th March 1853 in the Great Zundert, a village near Breda in the province of North Brabant in the south of the Netherlands.
He was the son of Anna Cornelia van Gogh Carbentus and Theodorus, a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church. Vincent grandfatherand has the same name as his deceased brother, first a year earlier. The practice of reusing a name in this way is not unusual. Vicente is a common name in the family of Van Gogh, and his grandfather (1789C1874) received his diploma in theology at the University of Leiden in 1811. Grandfather Vincent had six children, of whom three art dealers, including another Vincent, in the letters of van Gogh as Uncle Cent was mentioned. The grandfather was Vincent Perhaps the name of the uncle of his father, the successful sculptor Vincent van Gogh (1729C1802 turn). Ar t and religion are the two professions to which the Van Gogh gravity. His brother (Theo) Theodorus was the first Born in May 1857. He had a brother, Cor and three sisters, Elisabeth, Anna and Willemina (Wil).

C. Vincent van Gogh? 1866, about the child's age was 13As, Vincent serious, quiet and thoughtful. He attended school in Zundert in 1860, where the only Catholic teachers taught about 200 students. Since 1861 he and his sister Anna were taught at home by a governess, until 1 October 1864, when he referred to a boarding school in January Provily Zevenbergen, Netherlands, about 20 miles (32 km) went. It did leave me sorry for his family's house, and recalled this even in adulthood. On 15 September 1866, addressed to the new high school, college Willem II Tilburg, Netherlands. Constantijn C. Huysmans, a successful artist in Paris, Van Gogh taught at the school to shoot and promotes a systematic approach to the subject. In March 1868 Van Gogh abruptly left school and go home. A later comment in his early years was: My youth was gloomy and cold and sterile ... In July 1869 he helped his uncle to get a job with the art dealer Goupil & Cie in The Hague. After training transfer in June 1873 it Goupil in London, where he at 87 Hackford Road, Brixton, presented and worked with Messrs. Goupil & Co., 17 Southampton Street. This was a happy time for him, was successful in the job and was at 20, earning more than his father. Theo's wife later said that was the happiest year of the life of Van Gogh. He fell in love with the daughter of his landlady, Eugnie rent, but if he confesses his feelings for her, she refused and said she was already secretly engaged to a former tenant. It has been increasingly isolated and fervent religion. His father and uncle sent him to Paris to work at a car dealership.
However, it is how art as a commodity, a fact obvious to customers shocked treated. On 1 April 1876, was finished with his work.

Van Gogh returned to England in unpaid work. He took a job as a professor of supply in a small boarding school overlooking the port of Ramsgate, where he sketches the hearing. The owner of the school relocated to Isleworth, Middlesex, Van Gogh moved to the new location to take the train to Richmond and the rest of the way up.] However, the agreement did not work and Van Gogh leaves is the assistant to a Methodist gentleman Minister to announce his desire to further the gospel everywhere. At Christmas he went home and worked in a bookshop in Dordrecht for six months.
However, he was not happy in this new position and spent most of his time on the back of the shop or doodle or translating passages from the Bible in English, French and German.  His roommate at the time, a young teacher named G? rlitz later recalled that Van Gogh ate frugally, eating no meat better.

Van Gogh's religious feelings grew until he felt he found his true vocation. In an effort to support their efforts to become a priest May 1877, his family sent him to Amsterdam to study theology. He stayed with his uncle Jan van Gogh, Admiral of the Navy. Vincent for the entrance exam with his uncle Johannes Stricker, a respected theologian who published the first prepared for Life of Jesus in the Netherlands. Van Gogh, and left the house of his uncle in January, in July 1878. So unsuccessfully started a period of three months to school a lay preacher Protestant missionary in Laeken, near Brussels has become.

The house where Van Gogh Cuesmes 1880 live, while here, decided to become Artisti as January 1879, took a temporary job as a missionary in the town of Petit Wasmes coal mines coal mining district in Belgium. Under Christianity, which he regarded as its logical conclusion, Van Gogh chose as those living tosharing their difficulties to the extent sleeping on straw in a shed behind the house of bread, which was granted, preached. Baker's wife, said he had heard of  Van Gogh cry the whole night in the hut. His choice of squalid living conditions rather not dismayed at the church authority, which dismissed him for undermining the dignity of the priesthood. Then he went to Brussels, returned briefly in the village Cuesmes Borinage, but gave the pressure from their parents to go home in Etten. He remained there until around March next year, a growing concern and frustration for parents. There is a specific conflict between Vincent and his father have Theodorus inquiries about his son in the asylum made in Geel.

Cuesmes again, where he stayed with a miner named Charles Decrucq to October. He became increasingly interested in ordinary people and scenes around him. But he saved his time in his drawings and this year has followed the suggestion of Theo and the art was taken seriously. He went to Brussels, to Theo's recommendation with renowned Dutch artist Willem Roelofs, that the fall of the follow persuaded Van Gogh to want to study, to visit, despite his aversion to formal schools of art at the Royal Academy of Arts. Although currently not only studied anatomy, but also the standard rules of modeling and perspective, which he said: ... you need to know, just to be able to understand it all.