These two aren't necessarily true.

4. Smaller developers especially may not have things like quotas and sales targets which dictate their entire behavior. They're also more likely to be developing for fun as much as income such that $$ aren't the only consideration. And they're more likely to pick free to play as a model just because nobody will pay up front for a game/company they've never heard of.

5. There are plenty of ways around this. Many games don't even require direct player-to-player competition. You can also segregate players so that payers and non-payers can compete in different tiers, or allow modes of gameplay which exclude or dampen the benefits of "pay to win" items. You can even allow ways for non-playing players to gain the same benefits, but in ways that are inconvenient enough the really dedicated will do it, while some others will decide they'd rather pay than put in the effort.

Thanks for the discussion about Hearthstone. I hadn't heard about it, but it's been fun. I played a little Magic back in the 90's and miss that style of game. Free is an excellent price for a little dabbling.

Also, PvZ2 includes a lot of components that you cannot eventually earn, but can only buy. A handful of plants, a number of other bonuses. I added it all up at one point, and it was well over $50, just for the perpetual benefits, not even consumables. I resist paying that much for an AAA title. No way in hell will I pay it for a little iPhone distracter. I was late to the original and only paid $5, which I thought was fair. I'd pay $5 or even $10 for everything in #2. But not $50 or $60. Ridiculous.

Sure, I understand the double-blind system. But it's not placebo vs. actual medicine, it's placebo vs (medicine + placebo.) Outside of the study, when your doctor gives you a pill, you're not only getting the full benefit of the medicine, but also the psychological benefits of the placebo effect. It's *not* a placebo, but your brain is still telling you that you feel better for the same reasons, and any treatment you get should automatically convey those benefits.

I acknowledge your point about side effects - there's a greater chance of negatives, which could balance out some positives.

I thought it wasn't just lack of mastery, but actually poor controls, which contributed to the inability to master it. This isn't a sad movie making you sad, this is a skipping DVD during a crucial movie scene inducing rage when you can't get it to work.

ET was bad, but not even in the same league as Ghosts 'n' Goblins.

I still remember the one and only time I beat the original Castlevania. Only time I made it past the Reaper, actually, with some kind of luck. From there the run to Dracula wasn't bad, but I had to retry that boss fight dozens of times. It took so many times I had to pause the game and leave it running overnight and keep trying after school the next day. Finally only beat him by accident, I think, which involved getting hit at a weird point and landing somewhere I didn't expect to be, but running with it. Perhaps the crowning achievement of my NES days.

Don't you think modern medicine should have just as much of a chance of tapping into the placebo effect as anything else?

I remember being assigned 40 pages of reading. Per class. Due in two days. With four classes, that'd be 160 hours of work every 48 hours. Perhaps my texts weren't as dense as Axler's?

It helps, though I've also had moments where someone asks me about a word and I can say, "Well, I can give you three sentences that use it in ways I see a lot, but I'm a little fuzzy on the precise definition." Context gets you close, but not always all the way there.

I get scolded if I make changes to my retirement account which result in moving in and out of a stock any time within a three-month window. I rebalanced once and then adjusted some holdings a few weeks later and got a letter about it. Of course I'm sure the fund manager isn't restricted like that, they just didn't want me to do it.

I had a very brief moment reading this summary when I thought, "Gee, I didn't know there was mathematical complexity snuck into the Merovingian's ties." Then I thought, "Damn, I wish they'd taken that four hours of thought into the script. They could have doubled the satisfaction value of the story with that effort."

No mod points, so I just wanted to say: Well done.

Could be a bunch of things:
* very soft atheist
* wishy-washy
* I just don't know
* I don't know, so ... whatever people think may be right
* I don't want to talk about it

I'm kind of mystified by a spectrum like yours which essentially discards the word atheist, only applicable to those who are being highly illogical or deluding themselves. There ought to be some useful purpose for it.

Please don't add to the perpetual accusations of hypocrisy that come up every time this is discussed. Faith is a vague word, with many meanings. The faith exercised by the religious is not the "faith" one might put in science, and using the same word for each is confusing at best and often a disingenuous linguistic trick used to try to put the two on the same level. Trusting in the reliability of consistently repeated results is so far removed from "believing without evidence, by definition," it does nothing but harm to use the same word for both.