An interview by @spookysyntax.bsky.social of @colewehrle.bsky.social and @amabel.bsky.social on how game designers can get serious topics wrong.
Raises a question of credibility: When a publisher releases a game that seems shallow, how will their other games be received?
bsky.app/profile/spoo...
Is science a game?
An essay on how board games present science as a game of puzzle solving and prestige
by Stefan Sulzenbacher, Stephan Voss, & Michael Penkler
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
A history of cheating in chess, from the Mechanical Turk in the 18th century, to psychic battles in the audience during the Cold War, to the monetization of cheating drama in the era of social media
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtN-...
Today's board games—which are not about money—depend on fragile social norms. At the table, we're at once competitors and comrades. Even mundane games ask for a trust that is not universally held, like teaching or therapy.
This has not always been possible, and it may not always be possible.
"I did Liberation Day tariffs in Victoria 3, and it all went well until the famine in Colorado, the 2 lost wars with Canada, and the president beating a man to death with a stick"
An ironic simulationist take on tariff policy By Joshua Wolens, benevolent dictator and warden of virtual Colorado
A search for a missing game designer and a meditation on the inaccessibility of history. Who shows up in the archive, and why? And what does it cost to uncover our past?
Amabel Holland encourages us all to participate in the stewardship of shared history in this wonderful video essay
Penetrating analysis of who wins on reality TV from @leighalexander.bsky.social
Reality TV depends on being seen as both game and not-game, with stars both playing and not-playing. Does this internal contradiction help explain our reality TV president?
xleighalexanderx.substack.com/p/what-makes...
🎲✂️
Another interesting hypothesis!
Fair comparison of games with and without feedback loops may require a "feedback aware teach." A challenge, as teaching "rules as written" will usually not reveal feedback loops and other emergent properties of games
bsky.app/profile/jcw....
If the alternative hypothesis is correct (and we hope it is!) then a gateway game with feedback would need to be simpler in other respects to catch on in the current environment
An alternative hypothesis might be: 1) players have a limited cognitive budget; 2) unfamiliar ways of thinking are more expensive; 3) "one way" commerce is familiar and 4) feedback loops are not
I.e., "no feedback loops" could be a cultural niche, not a basic cognitive limitation
@gengelstein.bsky.social's theory here is, implicitly, a theory of cognition. There must be something about feedback loops—predicting them, planning around them—that runs against the cognitive grain, making games with feedback loops less appealing in some way, for a big chunk of the gateway audience
A theory of gateway games by @gengelstein.bsky.social.
Gateway games have "one way flow." You get something, you spend it on something else, you buy victory points. Each step is an interesting choice, and some games add a "twist"—but as a rule, gateway games avoid feedback loops.
Sad for us!
Still here, still thinking about games
A thoroughly researched history of wargaming, from ancient Rome through Prussian kriegspiel to Starcraft, by Super Bunnyhop
www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6Am...
March 28, 2025
Wood feels like a better thematic fit, but I wonder if there are ways to test how the pieces will look (and whether they'll be legible) with lots of wear. (The wear might be beautiful!)
From the depths of BGG:
An historical account of an elaborate Victorian murder party, where the host started preparations weeks in advance by "planting cryptic personal messages in London newspapers as clues"
They did not have to go so hard.
boardgamegeek.com/blog/13034/b...
Posted Nov 28, 2024
A game can look like one thing while it does another thing entirely
Patrick Klepek on Balatro, a video game rated 18+ by PEGI that *looks* like poker but contains no gambling.
patrickklepek.substack.com/p/is-balatro...
Posted Dec 17, 2024
I think many folks have moved to Discord servers for podcasts, publishers, and topic interests.
Maybe fleeing the stress of social media?
Bummer that many deep discussions are less accessible, but it’s hard to begrudge people building a niche for themselves.
Game of Life At our Airbnb, they have the board game LIFE, which I haven’t played since I was 10. It’s been updated, but the core principles remain the same. You spin the dial and arrive at a series of life junctures: career, marriage, kids, real estate, investments, retirement, and have to make a series of choices about your future. Marriage costs you $50k up front, but your spouse is worth $50k at the game’s end. Kids cost $50k a pop, but pets, mysteriously, cost nothing. A scientist makes a salary of $80k, but a chef, $70k. A cottage costs $120k, but an eco lodge runs you $200K. At the marriage juncture, Ada has already purchased a beach bungalow ($120k) and a ski chalet ($150k), so she doesn’t have much money left, as she considers the cost of a spouse. She looks at me and Jacob as she weighs the decision: “Soooo,” she says, “would you say there is anything actually good about being married?” We tell her this is a decision she needs to make on her own. In the end, after much deliberation, she opts for a spouse because she would “like the company” and “he’ll be worth $50,000 at the end.”
"He'll be worth $50,000 in the end"
A poignant vignette on parenting, marriage, and The Game of Life by Youngna Park
youngna.substack.com/p/eight-vign...
Posted Dec 2, 2024
Oops, forgot the source and date. Published in the Washington Post, July 15 2001.
A promotional photo of John Scarne with two other people, possibly his family, featuring the games Teeko and Scarney, along with many books and other products.
"Cards and gambling authority John Scarne claimed to have invented one of the greatest board games of all time. Was he bluffing?"
Blake Eskin on the strange history of Teeko, an abstract game—and also a fantasy of intellectual achievement and community.
www.blakeeskin.com/articles/a-w...
A case study on the fonts of Pentiment, a video game about books and writing and how words carry the awkward heft of history.
lettermatic.com/custom/penti...
By @rileycran.bsky.social, posted Nov. 15 2024
Lighthearted fun from the depths of BGG:
A Marxist critique of the Zoch Verlag edition of Potato Man.
"Can anyone recommend a more recent version of Potato Man which shows a deeper engagement with the principles of Marxism?"
boardgamegeek.com/thread/34081...
By Frederic Heath-Renn, Nov. 19 2024
People always say "Kill your darlings," but why?
Kory Heath tells us why: "Darlings" can be "monkey traps;" fantasies about our work that aren't realistic. Design is the process of escaping these traps.
www.koryheath.com/monkey-traps/
Posted June 2, 2014
Thanks so much for the kind words.
Photo posted to BGG by Andrew Petrarca: boardgamegeek.com/image/107655...
Sad to hear that Kory Heath has passed.
Here are the rules to Heath's game Zendo, which (truly!) teaches the players how to become scientists. It is a masterpiece.
(The rules call for Looney Pyramids, but you can play Zendo with anything you have around.)
www.koryheath.com/zendo/
From the depths of BGG: A sweeping treatise on the value of traditional games as a bulwark against the cultural ravages of modernity. Also a Schnapsen tutorial.
By the pseudonymous Marcus Ludicrus, posted November 17 2024.
boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/346...
Tim Clare on how playing games to promote brain health is like having sex to burn calories: it’s missing the point
