I have seen several games that have a video display mode that is windowed with no borders, at the same resolution as the desktop. It's sometimes called 'Borderless Windowed' mode, or 'Maximized Fullscreen' mode. It seems to balance the trade-off between running in fullscreen, and running a game in windowed mode. Fullscreen vs Windowed A game in fullscreen mode fills your screen and is more immersive. Supposedly fullscreen mode provides better performance, but I don't anything about that (nor have I recently observed better performance in fullscreen mode).

Force fullscreen games to in window mode? Computer game you want to play in windowed mode instead of full screen. How I force alt+tab on programs that don't.

The most common caveat is that your computer chokes momentarily if you alt-tab to go do something else. Playing in windowed mode allows you to switch to other tasks with no delay, or even multitask. Windowed mode also seems to be better for users using dual displays.

In Maximized Fullscreen mode, the game is in windowed mode, but the borders and title bar are removed and the resolution matches your desktop's. In effect, it looks like you're playing in fullscreen mode, but you can still switch to other applications with no delay. Sounds like the best of both worlds to me! Multitasking is great if I happen to be respawning, waiting for a loading screen, or if I need to look up information about the game (like looking up quest info for MMOs). Clicking on the game pushes the other (naughty, immersion breaking) windows and the taskbar into the background, seamlessly filling the full screen.

Unfortunately most games don't seem to include this feature yet. How To Install Ettercap On Windows 8 there. For the games that don't, is there a way I can force this mode?

There's a very simple utility that I've used for ages to accomplish this very purpose. It was originally written for EVE Online, but it will support any game. When you install it, it looks like this: You basically choose the game you're running, and it will automatically move the game to completely fill the window. The advantage of this over the AHK method mentioned earlier applies mostly to users of multiple windows.