In a follow-up session, the Zurich researchers announced that by this time next year, they hope to have imaged two molecules. "We won't stop there," said one scientist, "We plan to image ten, then a thousand, and so on until we are able to image an entire piece of, say, fairy-cake."

Perhaps because good customer relations will make you more money in the long run?
Perhaps because there's more to life than the money you can make by exploiting the misery of others?

Already been done. The result was Indigo Prophecy (aka Fahrenheit).

Avast. I don't know about how it compares to AVG, but compared to Norton, McAfee and the like it's far less of a resource hog. Hans

The big question: Will last.fm on the Xbox 360 stop playing after 45 minutes of no input, the way it does on the PC? The "Are You Still Listening" prompt would seriously decrease its value.

Actually, by tourist I meant that I play games to experience the content, whether that is new environments or the story or cool toys or new gameplay.

As Penny Arcade's Gabe wrote, "I don't play games to beat them, I play games to see them."

More on this topic here: A New Taxonomy of Gamers

Achievements are for completionists. I'm mostly a tourist. I play to "see the sights", not to get every last gold star or become the best player.

Hans

More like I couldn't play for seventeen months and go into 0.4 space alone.

Hans

I was in EVE for 17 months, playing between one and 10 hours a week (3 was typical), between fall '05 and winter '07.

I was in a corps, and the most exciting group activity we ever did was... mining in .4 space.

Perhaps this was a mistake, but I concentrated on leverage skills first (learning), then ship-handling and combat. I hunted rats rather than mining.

I never got powerful enough to spend time in .4 space, let alone 0.0, and it took forever to make enough ISK to buy a new skill (at 4.5M ISK per skill).

Eventually I realized that I was never going to get anywhere playing three hours a week, and cancelled. I don't like grinding; I get much more fun/second out of single player games, even grindy JRPGs, and session-based multiplayer games like Freelancer or Halo 3 or Unreal Tournament 1 than any MMO.

That's not to rag on MMOs; my player style is simply unsuited to them. I'm a tourist with a little completionist, and almost no perfectionist tendencies.

Hans

For me, it's not about the interface or complexity.

My problem with it is that I'm a tourist, and like every other MMO it caters to perfectionists. It's not well designed for completionists or tourists.

The NPC missions are few and far between, and most are not very interesting.

Oh sure, I've heard all about the player created PVP drama in the game, but that's all endgame content. And it takes months if not years of mining or 'rat-hunting for hours every day to earn the skills needed to enter 0.0 space without getting pod-killed every five minutes.

And getting pod-killed can set you back days (implants), weeks or months (underinsured with inadequate quality clone), or back to where you were when you first got your account.

So while the tourist content might be there, it's behind a giant wall of perfectionist grind. No thanks.

If the combat were actually fun, it might make up for the grind, but it really isn't. Lock on and auto-attack until the enemy blows up. Yawn. Even Starfleet Command's combat was better. What I want in a space MMO's combat is something like LucasArts' X-Wing, or Freelancer.

A Freelancer MMO... now that I'd play.

Hans

Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth does exactly this at one point (flee and try to lock doors behind you). Never had a game induce quite that level of panic.

Haunting Ground tries it with a hide mechanic, but after the first couple of encounters it becomes more annoying than frightening.

Hans

Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth has a full-on FPS control scheme.

Yet, Attack of the Fishmen from that game is the single most panic-inducing sequence I've ever encountered.

Capcom's argument is complete bollocks.

Hans

Zombies don't count as kills, they're already dead.

Hans

Daleks are not robots.

Hans