In case anyone is interested in some gaming retrospectives, check out Ars Technica's 'War stories' series on Youtube. It's really interesting stuff and the creators talk about their challenges and setbacks and how they worked around them (or integrated them).

Here are some of my favorites (if you have some time to kill):

Agreed. I've watched a number of these and they are quite interesting.

Ooh I'll have to check these out. I recently watched a couple of videos where someone got his wife to try games without any direction and it was quite eye opening, how we all instinctivly understand a new game because we know the 'language' of games (i.e. red barrel = boom) where she had no clue and therefore was trying some random stuff (or failing over and over at something that, to us, was obviously not gonna work). I'll dig them out and post the link.

Edit: Just watched the UO one. The UO community spoils EVERYTHING. And I knew Richard Garriott was weird but wtf is some of that stuff he has