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3-hour Civ

For Civ fans, the ones who stay up all night playing the game, the latest hot topic hasn't been the prospect of EA owning their favorite studio, however. The question has been whether Firaxis has had to dumb down its game to appeal to a more mainstream audience that doesn't have a long attention span. Previous versions of Civ could take more than a dozen hours to play. The Xbox and PlayStation versions will take only about three hours to complete.

- Washington Post (link here)

I will have to try it.

Conan

With its essentially amoral tenor, one can almost think of Age of Conan as akin to Grand Theft Auto, with swords instead of machine guns.

- NY Times (link here)

Interesting review.

If I had a high-end PC and 80 extra hours per week, I would play it.

Solve Puzzles for Science

http://fold.it/portal/index.php?q=adobe_main/

Advance the cause of science by playing games that involve folding proteins.

Cool concept.

Dwarven Forge

http://www.dwarvenforge.com/store/home.php

Awesome terrain for miniatures.

Buy American

(Thanks to Elizabeth for calling my attention to this one.)

http://www.wowgold-usa.com/index.html#

If I were still playing World of Warcraft, I would only buy American-farmed gold, no Asian-farmed gold for me.

Microsoft storytelling

http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/

Features a very grandiose and preachy intro video.