We'll see how many gamers actually jump through the hoops and confusion that is openid. It's one thing to get programmers or IT to use it and adopt it. It's a whole different story to get an average gamer to use it. These are the same distrustful stubborn people who have been getting hacked for decades by giving up too much personal information. In addition many gamers don't want their game identity anywhere near their real identity. This is compounded by those same gamers being the most active participants and most ardent in their attempt to separate game and real identities.

Now - even though technically they should prefer openid over normal login - that doesn't mean they'll roll with it. There is a lot more involved in making a decision when it breaks convention like their login.

Clearly I prefer the direction that HN and most other startups are going - away from openid. I don't like or agree with limiting users to openid for years old 'industry politicking' reasons. But in the end I use the content and don't give back, so the loss is on the community and site not me. On most stackexchange sites that don't have critical mass, simple decisions like this can still cause a huge problem.

EDIT: Grammar Syntax ...