21–30 of 53 posts
My friends from school and me moved all to different places, but we still meet up once in a while to spend a day and night playing, all of us getting close to being 30 :)
I love board games.
The BoardGameGeek Gift Guide opened up a whole new world for me: http://boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/Board_Game_Gift_Guide_201... I now own about half of the games on it. I discovered early on to buy only games that are either suitable for my two young kids (like Carcassonne, King of Tokyo, Blokus and Labyrinth) or are suitable for two players (my wife and me; Dominion, Pandemic and Ticket to Ride Europe). We seldom g…
My family with two teenagers has recently discovered that board games (specifically Dominion) are the most effective and enjoyable means of communication. We have spent over $250 on expansions and accoutrements. It is worth every penny and more. If anyone is struggling to connect with your teenagers in a meaningful way, you should really try board games. It sounds funny to say, but board games have improved our relat…
Board games can connect people in ways video games cannot. There is a level of rapid interaction, brought about by being at a shared table, which cannot be mimicked digitally. If you like Settles of Catan, and you are looking for something more advanced, I'd highly suggest Eclipse, Twilight Imperium, and Puerto Rico. These are challenging games that require careful resource management, political negotiations, and lon…
Agreed, and I think a lot of it has to do with the physical presence of the board, pieces, cards, etc. as well. Something video games can't offer players is that tangible appeal, where you have to feel the weight of a card or game piece lifted from the table or board and then slamming it back down. The innate psychology of being able to feel even the tiniest of texture and weight of an object is something we may neve…
The use of actual figurines with fiducial markers to control the UI was particularly interesting.
Board games can connect people in ways video games cannot. There is a level of rapid interaction, brought about by being at a shared table, which cannot be mimicked digitally. If you like Settles of Catan, and you are looking for something more advanced, I'd highly suggest Eclipse, Twilight Imperium, and Puerto Rico. These are challenging games that require careful resource management, political negotiations, and lon…
a shared table, which cannot be mimicked digitally Not to dispute your point (I like tactility too), but I am very interested to see where the next wave of 'coffee tble computers' go, eg Panasonic's 4k toughpad ( http://www.panasonic.com/business/toughpad/us/windows-4k-tab... ) when they reach commodity rather than vanity pricing (they're $5-6k now, aimed at medical/media professionals).
Something like Agricola expands to encompass all space. That's actually a pretty serious issue if you get into "huge" games like steel wolves.
Only slightly off topic, card driven games (not strictly board games, because there is no board) like Dominion and the Pathfinder card game also expand to encompass all space.
One big problem is TVs / computers / monitors are value engineered to only last 2-3 years before replacement, whereas my Carcassone sets from 15 years ago are all fully playable. I'm not saying its an impossible problem, I'm just saying if you try to push tech into board games you're going to get pushback from people who have a copy of Axis and Allies from 1991 which they still play and they're not going to be happy if you try to sell them a $1000 monitor that only lasts two years.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
a shared table, which cannot be mimicked digitally Not to dispute your point (I like tactility too), but I am very interested to see where the next wave of 'coffee tble computers' go, eg Panasonic's 4k toughpad ( http://www.panasonic.com/business/toughpad/us/windows-4k-tab... ) when they reach commodity rather than vanity pricing (they're $5-6k now, aimed at medical/media professionals).
I think board games on table touchscreens would already be common if there were an open platform/framework to program them on, and they took advantage of additional phones/tablets over IP. The manufacturing cost on big touchscreens is already pretty low.
Note the engine might be open but there's all kinds of schemes WRT the data files ranging from "we don't care" to DMCA takedowns to the max.
Also some people are simply tactile and really want meeples and feelies in their games, so an ipad is going to be a very rough sell to them simply because they very explicitly don't want a screen experience.
Also the resolution of a tablet is incredibly low. Maybe some kind of google glass thing can be implemented, walking around in a backyard? I've occasionally considered this problem and I feel cramped at a mere 5-ft round table and 5 feet at 300 dpi is something like eighteen thousand pixels, assuming you can "invest" in a 5 foot round screen and the best COTS available now is only about a tenth of that resolution at that size...
It's fascinating on a number of levels, from the individual creator stories (Frustrated designer quits job, raises $2MM) to the way small businesses are evolving the platform (some co's have turned stretch goals into a marketing artform). I've written about a few of these companies in the past if you'd like more details:
http://www.wired.com/design/2012/12/kingdom-death/
http://www.wired.com/design/2012/08/reaper-miniatures-bones-...
http://www.wired.com/design/2012/06/coolminiornot-success-ki...
http://www.wired.com/design/2012/05/zombie-apocalypse-board-...
http://www.wired.com/design/2012/05/game-salute/
http://www.wired.com/design/2013/02/designers-kickstarter-an...
My son (9 next month) loves playing Munchkins, Risk, Monopoly, Settlers of Catan. We've also played Puerto Rico, but it's not very fun with only two players.
There are various 2p variants for puerto rico. We play 2p all the time, see http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/650038/puerto-rico-as-a-2-pl... Sometimes we play behind the laptop with tropic euro (anagram) exchanging some tactile and atmosphere for time