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Editor's Note: I've honestly never understood the appeal of achievements. With so many people seemingly addicted to them, this vision of the future terrifies me. - Jay

About a month ago I decided to start taking the steps, instead of the elevator, to reach my third story office every morning and today -- when I reached the top -- my phone dinged. I checked the message as I sat down in my cozy office chair and read "Life Achievement Unlocked - Stair A Habit - 400 Points." I clicked on the message to check the info, and it explained that I earned the achievement for taking the stairs to my office 30 days in a row. 

That evening on the drive home, I received another ding, and I checked it while cruising down I-70. It read: "Life Achievement Unlocked - Cautious Driver - 100 Points." This time, the details explained that I drove at or under the speed limit for 10 miles straight. 

At home I received an email explaining all the opportunities I missed to earn more "Life Achievements." I lost 50 points by not waiting until the car was stopped to check my message on the drive home. The message also said I was placed on my Family, Local, and Nationwide leaderboards, and it gave me a rundown of the "Achievements" that other people in my network earned. My wife was barely beating me, little Jeffrey earned 100 points for getting an A on his math test, and little Stephanie earned 150 points for practicing her dance routine after school. 

At this point I am used to my wife having a higher score than me. It doesn't really bother me because, if I can get my entire family up to a collective 10,000 points this month, we will get a discount on our insurance plan. 

Obviously, this is not my life, but it could be according to Shoe's recent post: The Future of Everything.

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Editor's note: Like his former Crispy Gamer cohort John Keefer, Kyle Orland has stuff to write for Bitmob because "it doesn't fit anywhere else." Glad to be home to to your "alternative" content, guys! -Shoe

A recent MTV Multiplayer report says that Project Natal demos include a tenth-of-a-second delay between real-world and on-screen movement. How bad is that delay in terms we can really understand? We need some context....

• Average delay between real-world movement and on-screen movement for Project Natal demos: 100 milliseconds (ms) (source)
   
• Average time for a college-aged individual to react to a visual stimulus: 190ms (source)
   
• Duration of a human blink: 267 - 400ms (source)
   
• Approximate time for a 100 mph fastball to reach home plate: 412ms (source)
   
• Average delay between fret press and on-screen display in the PS3 version of Guitar Hero 3: 50ms (source)
  
  

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Editor's note: Jeff's history lesson provides a sobering -- and hilarious -- look at the history of gaming peripherals. It's a must-read for anyone excited about Project Natal or Sony's wand controllers. -Brett

Maybe you've seen them at your local video game shop: piles of odd looking plug-ins, add-ons, and thingamajiggers in the corner collecting dust, over-excited proclamations screaming from their worn boxes -- "FULL BODY ACTION!" "Everything else is child's play!" "Now nothing comes between you and the game!" 

What are they? Gaming's forgotten history, that's what. A history that could possibly repeat itself with the heaps of futuristic peripherals coming out from Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo.

Not that I blame them for trying to sell gamers on the future. The positive perception of any video game company is fueled by technophiles in lust. However, if the technophiles would stuff their e-boners back into their file and think back a decade or two, they might remember that while the tech has improved, the promises haven't changed much.

And if they don't remember, I'm here to help: Here are five gaming technologies that were ahead of their time -- and the lessons companies can learn from them today.

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We finally get to kick ass in ancient Greece, sans whatever type of  proto-bubblegum they had back in those days.

News Blips:

The demo for God of War 3 is now available on the PlayStation Network. The download contains the same content showcased at last year's E3, to remind players just what all the fuss is about. Don't forget to stop and "assist" any suggestive-looking ladies on the way to CHAOS. [PlayStation Blog]

Bungie: not making PlayStation 3 games (at least not yet). While the team is busy working on the upcoming Halo: Reach, community manager Brian Jarrard says that the decision to go forward with any potential PS3 titles is "undefined right now." I'd love to see a Metal Gear Solid remake with Master Chief somehow shoehorned into the zany plot, but they probably aren't taking suggestions. [CVG]

Blizzard opposes account sharing during the Starcraft 2 beta test. While the punishment doesn't necessarily involve a permanent ban, community manager Stefanie Gwinner reminds testers that "sharing your account is not allowed." [Inc Gamers]

At a press event held yesterday, Nintendo VP of Sales and Marketing Cammie Dunaway said that she doesn't expect a successor to the Wii "anytime soon." While the Wii currently sits in more households than the PlayStation 2 did at the same point in its life cycle, Dunaway is confident of finding "a big audience out there that [they] can access with Wii." You're not fooling me, Dunaway: I know world-domination plans when I see them. [GameSpot]

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I recently starting playing Dante's Inferno with the intention of reviewing it. Despite my displeasure with the marketing campaigns surrounding this game, the lure of exploring a digital version of hell was too tempting to pass up.

I am a very cautious and methodical gamer, and I typically use as many save slots as the game will allow. After about two hours, I realized that this game was very linear, with not much room for choice or exploration. Consequently, I broke with my usual tradition as I did not see much point in cluttering up my limited storage space with useless saves. I didn't realize at the time how much of a mistake this would be.

I continued playing the game at what I thought was a decent pace. After five hours or so, I judged that I was roughly 30% finished with the game based on my knowledge of the original literary source. Then I came upon the puzzle that would soon be my undoing.

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Little Sisters are creepy. We can all agree on that. But what about a grown person in a Little Sister costume? Yep, it’s still very creepy [via PlayStation University]:

This is what I imagine Alice looks like in Tim Burton's new Alice in Wonderland movie. Also, I love that she went to an aquarium dressed like that. I'm surprised they let her in with that giant needle thing. She must have told them it was for science or something.

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Editor's note: Sometimes, it's not just a rushed release that hurts a licensed product. Kevin takes a look at all the factors that were working againt Avatar: The Game from the very start. -Shoe

Ubisoft loses money on an Avatar gamble and now says it will reduce its investment in movie licenses because AAA films' stringent release schedules do not mesh with the needs of AAA game titles.

But it wasn't a single factor that saw Avatar: The Game fail. Mismatched media goals, technology, and game identity all had a hand in its demise.

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Editor's note: Although Borderlands was one of my favorite games of last year, I haven't tried any of the DLC yet, partly due to developer Gearbox's sub-par PC support and glacier-inspired approach to bug fixing. According to Michael, I can skip Mad Moxxi. But that General Knoxx trailer looks kind of amazing. I may need to re-up. -Demian

Dear Gearbox Software,

I want to start off by saying congratulations on the release of the latest Borderlands DLC, The Secret Armory of General Knoxx. I’ve been following the coverage, and so far, I’m impressed. From new vehicles and enemy types, to a raised level cap and even more ridiculous guns, General Knoxx looks extremely promising.

However, I should note that I was one of the people who bought Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot on day one, and the coverage on that expansion looked compelling as well. It’s a little late to say this, considering General Knoxx is complete, but I wanted you to know how important this DLC is to the fans, and how thin the ice you’re walking on may be.

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Let's hope this General Knoxx thing turns out better than Mad Moxxi....

Video Blips:

• Those Geabox guys sure know how to make a trailer. I have no idea what that narrator lady was even talking about in this Borderlands: The Secret Armory of General Knoxx DLC teaser, but I am in. [GameVideos]

Continue after the break for an iPhone-ified Street Fighter 4, a Metal Gear: Arcade trailer, a peak at some of the more cunning moves in Red Steel 2, and a preview of the new Army of Two: The 40th Day DLC.

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Editor's note: Some developers secretly or not-so-secretly think you better know your B-splines from your framebuffers before you pass judgment on their games. But the history of criticism across multiple artistic mediums says otherwise. Michael weighs in.... -Demian

A few weeks ago, I sat in on the Grubb on Games live stream, hosted by Bitmob's own Jeffrey Michael Grubb. I left for a bit to take a break, and when I came back, Jeff was playing an odd Flash game that I had never seen before. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. The art style consisted mostly of dull greys and blacks, and from what I could tell, the character's movement lacked precision. “What is this?� I asked. “Rocketbirds Revolution,� several people in the chat channel replied.

“This game looks underwhelming,� I declared. Jeff and a few others asked if I was trolling, which confused me at the time. As it turns out, one of the people viewing the stream was an artist for Rocketbirds Revolution, and I had just insulted his game based on a three-minute visual demo.

I felt really raw about it. I know what it's like to have people trash your work, and to have it done to your face is one of the worst feelings a creative type will ever experience. My guilt worked its way past the foot in my mouth, stirring up some deeper issues about the role of critics in the game industry. What gives me -- or anyone else in the enthusiast press, for that matter -- the right to critique the work of others, especially when most of us lack the skill to make our own games? Would I still have said what I said if I knew a member of the development team was in the room? And really, how fair was it for me to form an opinion in such a short time, without having touched the game personally?

I thought about it over the past few days. Eventually, I came to some conclusions.

Flash game, or pathway to catharsis? You decide.

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Editor's note: Brian shares with us how he gained confidence as a writer. It's a moving piece, and I hope it inspires those of you who may have doubts about your own writing prowess. It's hard to improve if you don't actually write, after all. -Jason

Nine years ago, when I was 8 inches shorter, I received a paper from an imposing figure. This piece of paper -- my first essay of the year -- was on the transition from nomadic to agrarian societies. Despite my best efforts, I received a D on my 10th grade history paper. At the time, I thought my writing career was over.

I'd grown accustomed to receiving As before that point -- in part because I went to a low-income middle school that didn't value its students. At my school, we didn't receive instruction in elementary grammar; we were left to fend for ourselves in a brutal world of paper and pens. Sadly, my math education wasn't any better.

During the sixth grade, I was one of the four students in prealgebra because I excelled in arithmetic while in elementary school. The teachers didn't have room for us, however, so we were left to study on our own in the hallway. As you can imagine, we got nothing done, but somehow we passed despite not knowing the fundamentals.

Unfortunately, this caused me to miss out on a number of important algebraic techniques, so I didn't understand certain concepts in future classes. I went from being someone who was extremely confident with math to someone who absolutely hated it. The reason I mention this is because my writing experience was similar.

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Editor's note: I've rewritten this note about nine times. This article made me upset. When I did a search on the site, I only found one other piece about homosexuality. While I'm not gay, civil liberties for homosexuals are something I'm very passionate about. We've advanced pretty far as a culture, and it disgusts me that we still aren't affording the same rights to every human being on earth.... I have to stop now (before I go full-tirade). Anyway, check out Garreth's astute take on how video games portray gay characters. -James

Homosexuality is a hard issue. In the former part of the last century, it was taboo. Recently, we have seen an amazing acceptance of homosexuality in all forms of media. We see it in music, movies, and prose fiction. But not in video games -- developers still constantly drag their heels on the subject.

Finally, we are starting to see the emergence of gay culture and gay characters in gaming. The most talked about and controversial issue concerning gayness this year has been Dragon Age: Origins (and last year, Mass Effect).

Bioware's narrative experience allows players to do whatever they want: Your character can sleep with partners of either sex, and many side characters are bisexual. This is a huge step forward; it is one of the only moments in my mind where you have the option to choose your character's sexual preference.

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