General Gaming-Related Thread

[Katavia]

I suppose I will create... this thread, because I don't see any other threads like this.
Yeah.

Anybody played M1.5: CogDis?

[nexus73]

Never heard of it.  Matter of fact I can't believe how many new non-video/computer games are out there considering that the gamer community is such a small slice of the general population, so that makes all these new games appearing in large numbers as much of a miracle as rain in the Atacama Desert...LOL!

During the last decade I began as a Magic aficionado and then moved into Mage Knight.  After that game came to an end, I went with some Axis and Allies boardgames but by then the gamer scene here had pretty much dried up.  Now it's a blast from the past in the form of amateur radio for me!

There are so many cool looking games out there that a person could play a new one every week for a year and there would be several times as many being created to make sure one's exploration of them would always be behind the curve...LOL!  Good times indeed for the gamers.

Rick

[Scott5114]

You have the millennials to thank for the resurgence in board games. The problem is that most people grew up on board games like Monopoly, Sorry, etc. that are, honestly, fairly badly designed. Once we got past that and found out well-balanced, strategic games like Catan, Carcassone, Acquire, etc. exist we found out we love the things. Plus, with Kickstarter, it's possible to get a game published without going through the likes of Hasbro and marketing to "everyone who might walk into Walmart" (i.e. making another Monopoly). So there's now a huge pool of deep, interesting games out there with more being created all the time.

Some friends of mine put together a board game cafe here in Norman. They have a library with an ungodly amount of games in it (I want to say 500+). You pay a $5 fee to reserve a table and use the games in the library. While you're there you can have food and drink delivered to the table. Even if you don't know anyone you can usually go there and find a group who needs another player and meet people (or else one of the staffers will usually play with you). They are doing great; all of their customers are excited about the place and visit it regularly.

Traditional gaming is taking off beyond just board games. RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons are extremely appealing to millennials because they're used to immersing themselves in the story of a video game, but with an RPG you're not shackled by the options the game gives you. You can do whatever you want and the person running the game tells you in real time what the result of your decision was. You basically get to write a story with your friends.

I personally run a gaming-related business: Denexa Games, which focuses on plastic playing cards. As part of my site, I research and write about cards that can be played with the standard 52-card deck. So far I've managed to dig up over 160 games, and I'm sure there's at least another 160 out there that I haven't covered. Poker in particular has taken off after the media coverage the 2003 World Series of Poker got, and TV networks have found out that they can get ratings by just showing the drama of people playing poker. Thanks to that, people start to get the itch to play and realize they can have an entire evening of fun with their friends with just a deck of cards and $10.

[Duke87]

You have the millennials to thank for the resurgence in board games. The problem is that most people grew up on board games like Monopoly, Sorry, etc. that are, honestly, fairly badly designed. Once we got past that and found out well-balanced, strategic games like Catan, Carcassone, Acquire, etc. exist we found out we love the things. Plus, with Kickstarter, it's possible to get a game published without going through the likes of Hasbro and marketing to "everyone who might walk into Walmart" (i.e. making another Monopoly). So there's now a huge pool of deep, interesting games out there with more being created all the time.

In large part there is a question of audience maturity here. Sorry, for example, is lame from an adult perspective since it's mostly just drawing the top card off the pile and doing exactly what it says. There is very little decision making on the part of the player, who wins is more a matter of random chance than of skill. But young kids don't think about it enough to realize this and aren't bothered by it. Indeed, to some degree it makes it more attractive to them since it's simple and they have a good shot at beating their parents without their parents needing to let them win.

Meanwhile "better designed" games like Catan require too much brain power and too long an attention span to be accessible to young children, thus limiting their audience to teenagers and young childless adults. The fact that Millennials are waiting longer to reproduce (and eschewing it entirely in greater numbers) than previous generations perhaps also contributes to the greater popularity of such games by affording them a larger target audience.

[hotdogPi]

I used to play Magic: the Gathering. However, there is nobody I can really play with now.

[sparker]

When I was about 10-11, I got pretty much every kid my age in the neighborhood hooked on Stratego (after getting the game as a Christmas present one year).  Some of us even kept charts on how various players would arrange their bomb patterns!  Fun stuff, but it dissipated with the onset of adolescence and the commensurate raging hormones!

[nexus73]

Settlers of Catan and all the accessory sets which came out later sure did make up a spectacular game system.  Nowadays it seems like ancient history in dog years (game years?) since so much has come down the pike.

What I did notice in Scott's post was a game store dilemma getting solved.  People hang out and the mere act of that, although good for potential future sales, does not do well for generating a nice daily cash flow.  Having several hundred games with tables for rent at a cost of $5 (very reasonable!) sounds like a way out of the freebie corner most game stores find themselves in. 

The Coos Bay OR library has a monthly game night for a few hours and I would guess the current game inventory is around 100.  Unfortunately, I prefer to find one great game, immerse myself in it and build up the collection (if a collectible game) or the accessory sets which often add more depth, so a one-time tasting of games leaves me with an empty experience. 

As for children and games, something simple enough to teach the concept of rules being in place and turns being taken while offering all the players some chance to win seems to be a good way to go.  Me being a competitive person who can take lumps in order to learn how to dish them out, went 3 years without a win in chess against an uncle who taught me how to play, but most children and even many adults do not have the hard core inside them to hold on in spite of accumulating losses, so these kind of games have their place.  I do believe all children should be taught how to play games as it boosts many other educational areas and does so in a fun way!

Seeing card games getting mentioned, my parents, grandparents and great grandparents played a lot of them, with bridge and pinochle being their top choices.  During the Great Depression and WWII, people did not have much money for fun times so a deck of cards would be something which could do the job of passing time in an enjoyable way at low expense.  Get a Book Of Hoyle and the card world was your oyster! 

Rick

[7/8]

This thread seems more geared towards board games and card games (as opposed to video games), so I'll stick to discussing those.

Before Christmas 2015, I didn't play too many board games. My family was starting to get bored of the usual Scrabble, Monopoly, Pay Day, etc. But my older brother decided to buy me a couple of board games for Christmas, including Catan and Roll for the Galaxy. Needless to say, we were immediately hooked, and couldn't believe how much fun we were having! I remember regularly staying up past midnight with my two brothers playing these games, and we soon bought two of the Catan expansions. Over the course of 2016, we bought a ton of board games (probably too many ), but it's been a lot of fun. Other favourites we've bought would include Twilight Struggle, Kemet, Codenames, Eldritch Horror, and Battle of the Five Armies.

One thing I have to complain about Catan though is the 5-6 player extensions. I have a family of 5, and we happen to like Catan a lot, so we've bought the 5-6 player extensions for the base game and the Explorers and Pirates expansion. It's ridiculous needing 4 boxes to play 5-player Explorers and Pirates, and setting up/putting away the game is a pain! When I bought the 5-player extension for E&P today, the guy asked me if I had all the other boxes needed to play it. We both kind of laughed at how ridiculous it is, but my family enjoys the game, and I know it'll get lots of use.

I also starting getting back into card games recently. During the fall of 2015, I would go to my aunt's house to play Wizard with her and her husband, and I enjoyed it so much that I ended up teaching the game to my family. My older brother ended up buying plastic playing cards (which are a lot nicer than the standard coated cards), and we've learned some new games like Big Two and Bougami (I'm probably spelling that one wrong ). The fact that setting up card games is so much quicker and easier than board games can make them nice if we don't have lots of time to play.

I'll also mention that one of my close friends I met during university has got me into playing the Pokemon TCG. I'm going to weekly league nights, where you get to play 3-4 matches, and I've been to a few bigger tournaments (2016 Provincials in Brampton and 2016 Nationals in Kitchener). Right now I'm using a Mega Scizor Deck, which I find works pretty well. I just bought a Sun & Moon Booster Box today, and got some decent pulls too (including a FA Professor Kukui, FA Lapras GX, and secret rare Umbreon GX, along with 4 other GX's). Thankfully, he's nice enough to let me borrow lots of his cards, because it can be expensive getting into it if you have to buy everything yourself.

Anyway, I've always considered myself more of a video game person, but the past year has led me to appreciate board and card games a lot. And it sounds like they're gaining in popularity

[slorydn1]

When I was about 10-11, I got pretty much every kid my age in the neighborhood hooked on Stratego (after getting the game as a Christmas present one year).  Some of us even kept charts on how various players would arrange their bomb patterns!  Fun stuff, but it dissipated with the onset of adolescence and the commensurate raging hormones!

Ah yes, Stratego. +1 on charting the bomb patterns. My best friend could never figure out how I beat him most of the time. It was because his flag was always one of 2 places (back corners) surrounded by layers of bombs. He didn't even try to throw me off by putting a bomb or 2 on the other side.

I once beat him by putting my flag unprotected in the front row. He was convinced it was a bomb because I wasn't moving it, so he just left it alone.

[sparker]

When I was about 10-11, I got pretty much every kid my age in the neighborhood hooked on Stratego (after getting the game as a Christmas present one year).  Some of us even kept charts on how various players would arrange their bomb patterns!  Fun stuff, but it dissipated with the onset of adolescence and the commensurate raging hormones!

Ah yes, Stratego. +1 on charting the bomb patterns. My best friend could never figure out how I beat him most of the time. It was because his flag was always one of 2 places (back corners) surrounded by layers of bombs. He didn't even try to throw me off by putting a bomb or 2 on the other side.

I once beat him by putting my flag unprotected in the front row. He was convinced it was a bomb because I wasn't moving it, so he just left it alone.

Yeah -- after a couple of losses where my multiple-bomb-pocket-with-the-flag-in-one-of-the-pockets strategy backfired, I started putting sergeants (#7, to beat the #8 "miners" who could destroy bombs) in most of the pockets and the flag off to the side in a "mini-pocket".  That got me a winning streak -- or at least a "non-losing" streak, including draws -- for a good while (time goes by so slowly when you're 11 years old!). 

But it was always the added element of the unknown menace that made Stratego such a good game -- I carried the analytical concepts into my college years, when I spent much of my spare time (actually too much) playing bridge, sometimes for money!.  Interestingly, a few of the "lounge lizards" who frequented the dorm-lounge bridge games (U.C. Riverside in the late '60's) went on to become ranked tournament players! 

[slorydn1]

My "usual" set up would be to put my flag in the back row, usually aligned with the center of one of the lakes, then surround it with a loose layer of bombs with a 6 or 7 on either side or in front of it but behind the bombs. 9 detects the bomb, 8 destroys it and my 6 or 7 handles the 8's business. I always kept my 1 or 2 (never both) in the general vicinity just in case I absolutely, positively had to take care of a serious threat.

Every once in a while I would do something crazy (like the aforementioned front row flag placement) just to liven things up a bit. I really believed that game would have been over in about 5 turns and we would have had a good laugh and then set up another game. I was shocked that he didn't go for it.

[Rothman]

Had fun setting up bombs so my team couldn't move from the first turn due to the lakes.

[sparker]

Had fun setting up bombs so my team couldn't move from the first turn due to the lakes.

Now there's a recipe for self-destruction!  Occasionally, I'd put the flag in some random rear location and set up a "gauntlet" of sorts with the bombs to intimidate my opponent.  That'd usually work once with a given opponent before they'd just do a 8-blitz the 2nd time out and pretty much wipe me out.  Live & learn!!!!

[noelbotevera]

If this includes video games, I've had hundreds of hours of fun playing TTT (Garry's Mod Trouble in Terrorist Town). Most of my funny moments come whenever I snipe a person from across the map and say it was an act of pity by a great deity.

I ended up full of lead moments later.

[Bruce]

I bought Overwatch about 2 months ago and have been sucked into the game completely. It's not a total replacement for Team Fortress 2, which I played off and on for years, but it's got a nice variety of ability-using "heroes" that keep things interesting.

On the mobile/casual front, I've been loving Mini Metro since it made the jump to mobile. It's a great, immersive little game with the simplest of graphics and set-ups, but gets more complex the further along you go. I highly recommend it to any transport geek, even the non-transit type.

[noelbotevera]

I bought Overwatch about 2 months ago and have been sucked into the game completely. It's not a total replacement for Team Fortress 2, which I played off and on for years, but it's got a nice variety of ability-using "heroes" that keep things interesting.

I still cling to TF2. I'm aware of my young age, and I started playing at the age of 7 (Nov. 8th, 2011 - I also joined Minecraft hours earlier, on Nov. 7th). I've logged over 3k hours, and I'd say I'm good at the game with offensive classes.

I also love city management/life simulation games. I love Cities Skylines just because I can take my anger on my citizens and flood parts of the city with poo.