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Why we still love board games

timharford.com

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Re: Why we still love board games

#71

Post by marekmroz »

michaelochurch wrote: post #25

Board games are discrete and closed, often in a well-thought-out and beautiful way. It's generally intended as a social experience, but the discrete world makes the game possible to take apart and analyze, so that if you want to dive deep into the game, you can. It's up to you what kind of experience you want to have. If you want to play today and forget who won tomorrow, that's fine. On the other hand, if you want t…

Funny you should mention the board game cafe concept. In Toronto we have Snakes and Lattes, it's very popular and constantly expanding into adjacent buildings/floors. Fun place to go and hang out, have a beer play with friends. I think that somehow in last several years board games begun to be perceived not as a nerdy thing to do but something cool. I have seen people go on dates to SnL.

Re: Why we still love board games

#72

Post by colomon »

qznc wrote: post #24
DanBC wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

German style board games are so named because of the influence of a few designers in Germany, and because of the popularity of some games in Europe. Luck is reduced. Planning and skill is increased. They can be short fun easy to learn games for a wide age range (Carcassonne; Bohnanza), or they can be harder more in depth games that take longer to play (Le Havre). Usually there's an element of competing against the ga…

I think you rather classified "modern" board games, not "german style". On the other hand, do you know a modern non-german board game?

Betrayal at House on the Hill (Avalon Hill) comes to mind as one we play often.

Re: Why we still love board games

#73

Post by intinig »

I would have never expected a thread like this to pop up on hacker news :)

Anyway I have to weigh in and suggest to try a game I produced with some friends (by co-founding a publishing company): Al Rashid (http://www.yemaia.com/al-rashid -- http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/127282/al-rashid).

I think most people with a development background are naturally disposed towards liking eurogames, and in my case to work on one :)

Re: Why we still love board games

#74

Post by michaelochurch »

Adrock wrote: post #69
michaelochurch wrote: post #25

Board games are discrete and closed, often in a well-thought-out and beautiful way. It's generally intended as a social experience, but the discrete world makes the game possible to take apart and analyze, so that if you want to dive deep into the game, you can. It's up to you what kind of experience you want to have. If you want to play today and forget who won tomorrow, that's fine. On the other hand, if you want t…

There is a "board game cafe" in my neighborhood: http://www.thebrooklynstrategist.com/ They seem to be doing quite well.

Awesome! This deserves 5 upvotes, but I only get to give you one, so here's this.

Does one just show up and play games, or is there a specific time when it's best to arrive?

Re: Why we still love board games

#75

Post by T-hawk »

jdludlow wrote: post #53
throwaway1979 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love powergrid! I recall the last two turns require a lot of calculations. When I played with non-mathematically oriented people (most people in my life), they got frustrated.

Power Grid has a lot of simple arithmetic. You're adding numbers in your head constantly. Barring a runaway leader, the endgame tends to have a slingshot effect where the person who is "leading" is actually behind those who are currently in 2nd or 3rd place. Timing this come-from-behind win is a big part of the fun for me. It's the #6 game on BoardGameGeek [1], and well deserved to be there. Saying that "it's filled…

I found Power Grid to be significantly improved by keeping a calculator on hand for all that addition.

How much of my hundred can I bid on this power plant? Well I need four oil this turn at what might be seven cost each, and I want to buy three houses at fifteen, so that means forty five plus twenty eight is seventy three, so I can spend up to twenty seven in this auction. There's no reason to force all that mental arithmetic, and it really sucks if someone loses because they missed carrying a digit mentally. Just use a calculator to abstract away the math and speed things up.

Re: Why we still love board games

#76

Post by nosecreek »

bergie wrote: post #47
DanBC wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

German style board games are so named because of the influence of a few designers in Germany, and because of the popularity of some games in Europe. Luck is reduced. Planning and skill is increased. They can be short fun easy to learn games for a wide age range (Carcassonne; Bohnanza), or they can be harder more in depth games that take longer to play (Le Havre). Usually there's an element of competing against the ga…

Sort of unrelated: but Ticket to Ride is a great example of how well German-style board games can translate to tablets. You can either play with friends as pass-and-play, or with bots. Different maps are in-app payments. We've killed time on some long train rides in Germany with it: http://www.daysofwonder.com/online/en/t2r/ipad/ Update: seems you could also play it between iPads online. We only have one iOS device s…

Works well on an iPhone too. My friends and I played it a lot on the trains while travelling through Germany.

Re: Why we still love board games

#77

Post by peapicker »

RTigger wrote: post #57

Love this article. I think the end captures it perfectly - there's really nothing else that gets the same social interaction as board games. At work we use board games on a daily basis for team building, usually play a 1-hour-or-less game over every lunch. It's amazing how quickly you get to know someone and how those relationships build and blend into your work as well. You can see how someone teaches a new person h…

We play a lot of those on game-lunch Fridays... also popular at our lunches:

Core Worlds ( http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/98351/ )

Quarriors ( http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/91536/ )

Infinite City ( http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/46807/ )

We occasionally have a Saturday game day among friends for longer games, but these three are great less-than-an-hour games. Core Worlds is about an hour, the other two will get you 2 to 3 games in in an hour.

Re: Why we still love board games

#78

Post by michaelochurch »

marekmroz wrote: post #71
michaelochurch wrote: post #25

Board games are discrete and closed, often in a well-thought-out and beautiful way. It's generally intended as a social experience, but the discrete world makes the game possible to take apart and analyze, so that if you want to dive deep into the game, you can. It's up to you what kind of experience you want to have. If you want to play today and forget who won tomorrow, that's fine. On the other hand, if you want t…

Funny you should mention the board game cafe concept. In Toronto we have Snakes and Lattes, it's very popular and constantly expanding into adjacent buildings/floors. Fun place to go and hang out, have a beer play with friends. I think that somehow in last several years board games begun to be perceived not as a nerdy thing to do but something cool. I have seen people go on dates to SnL.

This is a great idea. Adults tend to become socially retarded once Work gets in and asserts total dominance over peoples' lives, and board games are a great way to build a context that's independent of (a) people trying to hit on each other, which becomes pointless once you're married, and (b) people trying to assess each others' professional status and "network".

One of the things that I see in board games is their subversive potential of breaking down barriers. Adult life is so shit-broken in so many ways, and one of those is socioeconomic stratification. A healthy game culture could kill that by creating cross-class connections.

Re: Why we still love board games

#79

Post by RTigger »

peapicker wrote: post #77
RTigger wrote: post #57

Love this article. I think the end captures it perfectly - there's really nothing else that gets the same social interaction as board games. At work we use board games on a daily basis for team building, usually play a 1-hour-or-less game over every lunch. It's amazing how quickly you get to know someone and how those relationships build and blend into your work as well. You can see how someone teaches a new person h…

We play a lot of those on game-lunch Fridays... also popular at our lunches: Core Worlds ( http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/98351/ ) Quarriors ( http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/91536/ ) Infinite City ( http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/46807/ ) We occasionally have a Saturday game day among friends for longer games, but these three are great less-than-an-hour games. Core Worlds is about an hour, the…

I've been wanting to try Core Worlds, and I haven't heard of the other two - I'll have to check them out!

Re: Why we still love board games

#80

Post by endersshadow »

JimWestergren wrote: post #49

I absolutely love board games and card games. And I love to think about game mechanics. If I would not be a web developer I would love to work with this kind of game development. I have developed a version of Magic the Gathering which is played with a normal 52 card deck (one deck per person) with much more simple rules and good strategy (better?) and less luck. I have played it around 100 times and the rules are fin…

I'm very curious--is there a way for me to play this game? I'd love to get the rules from you and try it out. I loved the mechanics in Magic when I was younger, and I'd love to not have to buy all the cards and worry about building a deck, and just be able to play the game with my fiance without telling her it's Magic.
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