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Board: New game console recognizes physical pieces, with an open SDK

board.fun

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Re: Board: New game console recognizes physical pieces, with an open SDK

#151

I think this is a neat product but not one I have any interest in. I play board games in part to avoid the digital world. If a board game needs a computer to handle the rules, then it is a needlessly complicated board game.

There's plenty of games where either the setup is tedious, or some of the rules create confusion. Game of the year "Wingspan" confused everyone in my group the first time we played, and only made sense after watching a YouTube explanation. A confident system would have been great. Setting up a game can be tedious as well; Axis and Allies is notorious for taking longer to set up than to play, but it's a lot of fun onc…

I actively avoid boardgames with overly long setup times. There's no reason to spend more time prepping than playing if you can play something else with better prep time instead. Time is in limited supply as an adult. If a game needs a digital support device, then there's no reason to waste time on the "board" aspect. Why not just play digital game instead?

Confusing rules can be ok, it depends on how complex they are (as in, what interactions they have). If the confusing rule is mostly self contained, then after playing a few times you'll learn it and it's no longer a problem. If the confusion stems from how the rule interacts with other rules, then it's a much bigger issue since you constantly need to cross-check the rules reference or worse, youtube videos and forums, on what to do.

One of my favorite games, Arkham Horror the card game, has some pretty complicated rules, but as long as they're just part of the player cards or base mechanics you eventually learn them and they become a non-issue.

It's a whole other issue when the complex rules are on specific campaign cards. Each campaign is only played a few times, so that means you never get familiar with the rule and learning it doesn't really "pay off". The campaign experience is lessened because you had to stop the game to check youtube or a forum to resolve the discussion, or just bicker and argue until a consensus is reached nobody is happy with.

As new campaigns get released the complexity of the campaign cards just keeps getting worse, requiring more prep-time as well, and my enjoyment of the game lessens as a result. The first couple of campaigns remain the most enjoyable, even on repeat plays, because they're just easier to explain to new players.

Re: Board: New game console recognizes physical pieces, with an open SDK

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't a board game. Maybe that's your problem. It is a roleplaying game. The mechanics of spellcasting aren't very important because combat just isn't very important. Most people don't even play with a grid and figurines (at least traditionally). You haven't explained why it is a "horrible experience" to look at a photocopied piece of paper or to open a book to a post-it note bookmark. I do these things every day…

> Most people don't even play with a grid and figurines (at least traditionally). This is simply not true. If you want to play a pure roleplaying game, play a rules-light one. DnD is not that. Everyone homebrews little bits so I'm not going to harp too much on that, but there's no point discussing the issues of DnD's design if we're not talking about DnD's design but rather whatever your homebrewed version of DnD is.…

The game isn't balanced at all. Are you playing the modern version or something? I'm talking about D&D which was always traditionally a roleplaying game and not a rollplaying game.

Re: Board: New game console recognizes physical pieces, with an open SDK

#153

I can tell this is much more than just “Tabletop Simulator on a tablet”, although at $500 you’re likely to get a lot of attention from the Twilight Imperium and Gloomhaven crowd. I know more than a few childless people in my local gaming circle who would drop a half-large on accessories that simplify game execution. But clearly this product isn’t about making existing board games easier to set-up/play/clean-up. I thi…

I don't think the existing board game community is their market, but it's for people who like to be early adopters of tech and think they'd like to play games and have extra money, which is a pretty small market.

Re: Board: New game console recognizes physical pieces, with an open SDK

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

mt tables are fine and dandy and exactly what friends have built. There are several solutions for augmenting consumer panels for multitouch. This product is a bit further than multitough though. The problem is that I see few reasons for playing boardgames, with friends, on them. You loose a lot of 'delight' factor. Physical pieces are very important to most people. I think if you asked two chess players if they would…

If you missed physical objects, they did not do ftir with fiducal markers, I guess? There were some nice demos back when that was novel, like over a decade ago. Some of the tables I saw at trade shows (e.g. E-World in Essen) this year also had them. On one you could place 3d printed power plants and various energy storage systems onto a map. To adjust their output, you could turn them like a knob. The company sold a…

longer than that, there was a medialab project for a 'sensetable' in like the late 90s. (radio based instead of cameras )

Re: Board: New game console recognizes physical pieces, with an open SDK

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Disclosure: I worked on both) Detection technology on Board is much more robust. The MS Surface FTIR approach was lovely, but so over-featured no one could imagine a scoped-down (ie. cheaper) version of it.

Aha, so there are ex-Surface developers working on this too! That's reassuring actually. Yeah, the boardgame demos of Surface were gorgeous, and I was definitively disappointed that this cool technology didn't "arrive" even as the years went by. Wishing you all good luck, and I may have to see how hard it is to get my hands on one of these...

To give proper credit: I don’t work at Board now, I just helped them explore the board game piece detection space over a year ago. The tech has done great work since then, really robustifying the detection algorithm and making experiences native to it.
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