In January, the developer of DEFCON, the much celebrated Introversion Software announced that they were seeking academics to assist in development of the world's most intelligent and destructive DEFCON bot, one which would ultimately have one goal, destroy the world and all its inhabitants using the most devastating weapon developed in the history of man - the nuclear bomb.

Introversion have just gained some level of recognition for their work with academic community, with DEFCON having been selected for use in an annual international symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games, which will be held this year at the Politecnico di Milano, the largest technical university in Italy.

As avid PC gamers are aware, nuclear war has raged on our platform for quite some time in the form of Introversion's excellent game, DEFCON. The eager developer has announced that it has regained the rights to a Nintendo DS version of the title, which was developed in conjunction with "troubled distributor" Pinnacle.

A press release issued by Introversion indicates that a DS version of DEFCON is complete. It is currently seeking a publisher for the title, which was well received by PC gamers when it was first released in 2006 on the PC and Mac platforms.

If you've ever wanted to know what goes on behind-the-scenes in game development, Introversion are here to help. They've taken the huge step of unveiling a whole bunch of developer information for their upcoming Xbox Live Arcade release Darwinia+.

First announced twelve months ago, Darwinia+ promises to combine the original indie cult smash Darwinia with last year's multiplayer extravaganza, Multiwinia into one handy dandy combination package, thanks to Microsoft.

The developers of DEFCON are currently seeking submissions from academics and the average Joe alike in a bid to develop a fearsome AI for their game that can be crowned the "most efficient killing machine". DEFCON, with its cheerful tag line of "Everybody Dies", is an end of the world simulator developed by Introversion Software, in which full scale nuclear war and the populations of the world perishing are both regular occurrences.

Given the fact that DEFCON is inspired by the film Wargames, in which a computer AI teeters on the brink of unleashing a nuclear arsenal upon humanity, this concept of an "unbeatable AI" could be considered both a terrifying and enchanting prospect. The AI project is a partnership between The Imperial College Department of Computing and the developers of the game, Introversion Software.

Today, our regular weekly fix of Multiwinia goodies looks at the King of the Hill game mode, complete with video tutorial and screenshots fresh from the workbench at Introversion.

We hear that King of the Hill is a step up from Domination mode (which we looked at last week) - a "strategic conundrum", which promises to put your battle-planning skills to the test!

Living in Australia, we're used to the pesky concept of time differences, and the way they may affect certain things. A recent victim of our GMT+0930 timezone is Introversion's introduction of Multiwinia Mondays, a six-week course focussing totally on everything you need to know about Multiwinia: Survival of the Flattest. The feature boasts all-new content for the sequel to the award-winning Darwinia, focussing on video tutorials for each of the six game modes, plus screens, wallpapers, artwork and developer interviews.

...and, for us, it'll have to be Multiwinia Tuesday, which doesn't have quite the same ring to it, but the content's still pretty cool.

This week, the series kicks off with a look at the Domination mode, complete with video and new screenshots!

Quick little update for you all - the Steam client has just gotten a couple of Friday Morning tweaks.

In a thoughtful gesture, just before the holidays, you can now buy games for other people, and send them a gift purchase! How thoughtful! You can do all your Christmas shopping without leaving the house - without leaving your PC, even. I'm sure that Mum would love a copy of Peggle Deluxe, my sister is a perfect match for Defcon, and Dad's life is incomplete without Team Fortress 2!

Phew! Got a huge pile of games here for you - both free samples and full free games for you to try out over the weekend. If you do grab any of these - let me know what you think. There's a couple of interesting new ones in here - and a re-appearance from everyone's favourite, DEFCON! If you haven't tried that one out yet, now's your chance!

This week, we have for you demos from Adventures of Tuber: Map of Treasures, Amju Super Cool Pool, Death to Spies, DEFCON, Depths of Peril, Galactic Dream, Mayhem Intergalactic, Sam & Max: Season 1, Scallywag: In the Lair of the Medusa, Space Strike, The 80's Game With Martha Quinn ...and full games from Archlord, CellFactor: Revolution, Company Of Heroes: Opposing Fronts, Cronous: The Shadow of Conspiracy, Face of Mankind, Granado Espada, Project Torque, Project Visitor, Red Stone, Seven Hearts, Tabula Rasa, Tales of Pirates, The Settlers - Rise Of An Empire, Twilight Mu.

We don't get a whole lot of news about mainstream game releases from new software companies. We have news of a new shooter, To End All Wars, which is set to be released on Xbox 360 and PS3 by new publisher Ghostlight. As far as I am concerned, it is the small, developing companies which need our greatest support. Look at the success story which Introversion have been. Introversion are producing highly successful games such as Darwinia and DEFCON, which are a refreshing change to some of the mainstream releases which are pushed by the major software developers.

Looks like another minimal week on the demo front, sorry kids... my advice is to just play Defcon instead. Or maybe a nice game of chess. Or maybe you could just catch up on some tv, instead.

...that said, the Fallout 3 Van Buren Tech Demo is really quite worth checking out, if you're into 2003 nostalgia...

We've also got samles of PeaceMaker, Real E$tate Empire, Sonoro TV, and The Hell in Vietnam.

Good morning, children. Are we happy it's Friday?

A couple of games have been updated for the weekend - first off the ranks is Defcon. It'll either update automatically over Steam, or you can grab your choice of the Windows or Mac version from the library.

They've fixed a few bugs, including the nuke queue counter bug, and sorted out some "serious performance problems", just in time for a pleasant few days of thermonuclear war.

I like changelogs with a bit of humour. Not the inadvertent humour that sometimes pops up when something perfectly normal ingame is hilarious when taken out of context, but the entries that show the devs have had a bit of a giggle over this one.

Today's major Steam update is for Defcon, and a new contender for my favourite line in a changelog is right at the bottom, in amongst network compatability fixes, a new game option, and an upgraded word-wrapping system.

Steam, since its rocky creation has quickly become the distribution network for small Indie games and games made by some of the largest publishers in the world alike.

The latest publisher to jump on the Steam train is Eidos with many of the Hitman titles, Battlestations: Midway, Just Cause, and the entire Commandos series going live on steam today. However for Eidos, this is just the beginning with many other titles being announced in the coming weeks.

While in a Steam-y mood, there's also a couple of updates for Defcon and Garry's Mod. I could probably have smooshed these in under the Winter Update banner, but figure they're good enough to stand on their own, instead. So there.

Anyway. Defcon fans, there's all sorts of new stuff and fixes for you. You can now draw a battle plan directly on the world map and share it with your allies, remember the last game name in the lobby, change your player name directly from the option menu, if you want - and the rest.

Garry's Mod, on the other hand... you've basically got a big pile of fixes. Dynamite will now duplicate properly, the turret angle will remain set when duplicated, the download process is sped up, servername will no longer spill out of the scoreboard, the incorrect/missing text for various things has been added and corrected... the list goes on.

Looking back, what will 2006 be most remembered for, gameswise? Obviously, there's the Wii, and everything that came with it - Zelda, Rayman, cracked TVs, which is probably a highlight for most people. There's also Battlefield 2142, which let a lot of people down and didn't do much to restore faith in EA/Dice. Then there was a little game about thermonuclear war, which took the world by storm (ha!), surprising even the developers. 2006 also saw E3 change significantly, and countless similar events pop up around the globe to pick up the slack, meaning gamers have no shortage of events.

Speaking of shortages, the PS3 was delayed in Australia, while Wii was launched, and the Xbox 360 plodded along happily, among brightly coloured pinatas and killer locusts.

On a more local level - the Internode Games Network has doubled in size. We now boast an impressive news portal, a comprehensive File Library and get more than 100,000 unique visitors a month (and more than 20,000 downloads a week). Server-side, there are now eight more quad-core machines hosting game servers (with three more on order), in four cities around Australia - giving more than 2,000 peak players a night somewhere to play.

We've written up a few questions and handed them around to various Internode Games Network types, to find out about their highlights, lowlights and memorable events of 2006.