I had my laptop with me last nite while I was hanging out with some friends and booted it up to show off the game. I played with one of them who does nothing but play console games (Playstation freak). He never plays PC games. As I already knew, figuring out how to play the game seems harder than it really is. He was confused a lot in the beginning but as he played more and more he began to understand, and wanted to keep playing to learn more. This is the draw I'm hoping will attract others as well, especially the casual gamer. GC is great in that you can play as a casual gamer or a hardcore strategist. In the end he really enjoyed the game. It's just one person but for someone who doesn't play games on a PC and doesn't play games anything like GC, the fact that he enjoyed it so much is a good sign. Looking forward to the demo this weekend.

Still haven't started recovering my lost progress - it's not as bad as I initially thought, but it will still set me back a few days. Ugh. Backups are going to my damn server every single day *sigh*